From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Sat Mar 1 09:30:33 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 04:00:33 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Star Witness on Iraq Said Weapons Were Destroyed In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030301040033.93384.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> FAIR-L > Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting > Media analysis, critiques and activism > >MEDIA ADVISORY: >Star Witness on Iraq Said Weapons Were Destroyed: >Bombshell revelation from a defector cited by White House and press > >February 27, 2003 > >On February 24, Newsweek broke what may be the biggest story of the Iraq >crisis. In a revelation that "raises questions about whether the WMD >[weapons of mass destruction] stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist," >the magazine's issue dated March 3 reported that the Iraqi weapons chief >who defected from the regime in 1995 told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had >destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and >banned missiles, as Iraq claims. > >Until now, Gen. Hussein Kamel, who was killed shortly after returning to >Iraq in 1996, was best known for his role in exposing Iraq's deceptions >about how far its pre-Gulf War biological weapons programs had advanced. >But Newsweek's John Barry-- who has covered Iraqi weapons inspections for >more than a decade-- obtained the transcript of Kamel's 1995 debriefing by >officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the U.N. >inspections team known as UNSCOM. > >Inspectors were told "that after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its >chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them," >Barry wrote. All that remained were "hidden blueprints, computer disks, >microfiches" and production molds. The weapons were destroyed secretly, in >order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of someday >resuming production after inspections had finished. The CIA and MI6 were >told the same story, Barry reported, and "a military aide who defected >with Kamel... backed Kamel's assertions about the destruction of WMD >stocks." > >But these statements were "hushed up by the U.N. inspectors" in order to >"bluff Saddam into disclosing still more." > >CIA spokesman Bill Harlow angrily denied the Newsweek report. "It is >incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue," Harlow told Reuters the day the report >appeared (2/24/03). > >But on Wednesday (2/26/03), a complete copy of the Kamel transcript-- an >internal UNSCOM/IAEA document stamped "sensitive"-- was obtained by Glen >Rangwala, the Cambridge University analyst who in early February revealed >that Tony Blair's "intelligence dossier" was plagiarized from a student >thesis. Rangwala has posted the Kamel transcript on the Web: >http://casi.org.uk/info/unscom950822.pdf. > >In the transcript (p. 13), Kamel says bluntly: "All weapons-- biological, >chemical, missile, nuclear, were destroyed." > >Who is Hussein Kamel? > >Kamel is no obscure defector. A son-in-law of Saddam Hussein, his >departure from Iraq carrying crates of secret documents on Iraq's past >weapons programs was a major turning point in the inspections saga. In >1999, in a letter to the U.N. Security Council (1/25/99), UNSCOM reported >that its entire eight years of disarmament work "must be divided into two >parts, separated by the events following the departure from Iraq, in >August 1995, of Lt. General Hussein Kamel." > >Kamel's defection has been cited repeatedly by George W. Bush and leading >administration officials as evidence that 1) Iraq has not disarmed; 2) >inspections cannot disarm it; and 3) defectors such as Kamel are the most >reliable source of information on Iraq's weapons. > >* Bush declared in an October 7, 2002 speech: "In 1995, after several >years of deceit by the Iraqi regime, the head of Iraq's military >industries defected. It was then that the regime was forced to admit that >it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly >biological agents. The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely >produced two to four times that amount. This is a massive stockpile of >biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable of >killing millions." > >* Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5 presentation to the U.N. >Security Council claimed: "It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it >had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX >on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons. The admission only came out >after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of >Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law." > >* In a speech last August (8/27/02), Vice President Dick Cheney said >Kamel's story "should serve as a reminder to all that we often learned >more as the result of defections than we learned from the inspection >regime itself." > >* Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley recently wrote in the >Chicago Tribune (2/16/03) that "because of information provided by Iraqi >defector and former head of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, >Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel, the regime had to admit in detail how it cheated >on its nuclear non-proliferation commitments." > >The quotes from Bush and Powell cited above refer to anthrax and VX >produced by Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War. The administration has cited >various quantities of chemical and biological weapons on many other >occasions-- weapons that Iraq produced but which remain unaccounted for. >All of these claims refer to weapons produced before 1991. > >But according to Kamel's transcript, Iraq destroyed all of these weapons >in 1991. > >According to Newsweek, Kamel told the same story to CIA analysts in August >1995. If that is true, all of these U.S. officials have had access to >Kamel's statements that the weapons were destroyed. Their repeated >citations of his testimony-- without revealing that he also said the >weapons no longer exist-- suggests that the administration might be >withholding critical evidence. In particular, it casts doubt on the >credibility of Powell's February 5 presentation to the U.N., which was >widely hailed at the time for its persuasiveness. To clear up the issue, >journalists might ask that the CIA release the transcripts of its own >conversations with Kamel. > >Kamel's disclosures have also been crucial to the arguments made by >hawkish commentators on Iraq. The defector has been cited four times on >the New York Times op-ed page in the last four months in support of claims >about Iraq's weapons programs--never noting his assertions about the >elimination of these weapons. In a major Times op-ed calling for war with >Iraq (2/21/03), Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution wrote that >Kamel and other defectors "reported that outside pressure had not only >failed to eradicate the nuclear program, it was bigger and more cleverly >spread out and concealed than anyone had imagined it to be." The release >of Kamel's transcript makes this claim appear grossly at odds with the >defector's actual testimony. > >The Kamel story is a bombshell that necessitates a thorough reevaluation >of U.S. media reporting on Iraq, much of which has taken for granted that >the nation retains supplies of prohibited weapons. (See FAIR Media >Advisory, "Iraq's Hidden Weapons: From Allegation to Fact," >http://www.fair.org/press-releases/iraq-weapons.html .) Kamel's testimony >is not, of course, proof that Iraq does not have hidden stocks of chemical >or biological weapons, but it does suggest a need for much more media >skepticism about U.S. allegations than has previously been shown. > >Unfortunately, Newsweek chose a curious way to handle its scoop: The >magazine placed the story in the miscellaneous "Periscope" section with a >generic headline, "The Defector's Secrets." Worse, Newsweek's online >version added a subhead that seemed almost designed to undercut the >importance of the story: "Before his death, a high-ranking defector said >Iraq had not abandoned its WMD ambitions." So far, according to a February >27 search of the Nexis database, no major U.S. newspapers or national >television news shows have picked up the Newsweek story. > > >*** >Read the Newsweek story: >http://www.msnbc.com/news/876128.asp > >*** >Read Glen Rangwala's analysis of the Kamel transcript: >http://middleeastreference.org.uk/kamel.html > >*** >If you'd like to encourage media outlets to investigate this story, >contact information is available on FAIR's website: >http://www.fair.org/media-contact-list.html > ---------- >Please support FAIR by subscribing to our bimonthly magazine, Extra! For >more information, go to: http://www.fair.org/extra/subscribe.html . Or >call 1-800-847-3993. > >FAIR SHIRTS: Get your "Don't Trust the Corporate Media" shirt today at >FAIR's online store: >http://www.merchantamerica.com/fair/ > >FAIR produces CounterSpin, a weekly radio show heard on over 130 stations >in the U.S. and Canada. To find the CounterSpin station nearest you, visit >http://www.fair.org/counterspin/stations.html . > >FAIR's INTERNSHIP PROGRAM: FAIR accepts internship applications for its >New York office on a rolling basis. For more information, see: >http://www.fair.org/internships.html ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From rachel at sarai.net Sat Mar 1 23:17:18 2003 From: rachel at sarai.net (rachel) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 23:17:18 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Crisis/Media workshop programme Message-ID: <200303012317.18495.rachel@sarai.net> Crisis/Media: The Uncertain States of Reportage Sarai-Waag Workshop at Sarai-CSDS, Delhi March 3-5, 2003 If you are unable to attend, but are interested in finding out what is going on, please check the following for daily reports: http://waag.sarai.net/crisis/ Programme DAY 1 < 3rd March 2003 > 9:30 Welcome Address: Ravi S Vasudevan, Sarai-CSDS Introductory Remarks: Geert Lovink & Shuddhabrata Sengupta 9:45 Morning Plenary: The Media Circus in the Build-up to the War on Iraq Danny Muller, Voices in the Wilderness/ Iraq Peace Team, Chicago 10:30 Tea Break 11:00 Morning Session: Reporting from Situations of Crisis Presenters: Dangers and Challenges of Reporting from Kashmir Muzamil Jaleel, Indian Express, Srinagar Despatches from a Civil War: Covering Sri-Lankan Conflicts from the Inside Manoranjan Selliah, Independent Journalist & Human Rights Activist, Colombo Reporting Crisis or Part of the Crisis? : Rastra Chetna and the Media: Coverage of the North East A. Bimol Akoijam, Visiting Fellow, CSDS, Delh i Discussant: Abir Bazaz, Independent Filmmaker,Delhi/Srinagar 1:30 Lunch 2:30 Afternoon Plenary: Media Representations and Memorialisations of the Kargil Conflict Subarno Chatterji, Delhi University 3:30 Afternoon Session: Remembering Balkan Conflicts Presenters: The Development of Independent Media during the Balkan Crisis: The Case of Radio B92 Adrienne van Heteren, Press Now, Glasnost Defense Foundation, Moscow Bitter Medicine Katarina Zivanovic, REX, Belgrade Translating War and Violence Kathy Young, Western Washington University Discussant: Geert Lovink 5:00 Tea Break: 5:30 Film Screening: Before the Rain [Fiction, 1995, 113 min] Directed by: Milcho Manchevski Starring: Katrin Cartlidge, Rade Serbedzija, Gregoire Colin, Labina Mitevska Cinematography: Darius Khondji and Manuel Terán Shot in Macedonia and London, Before the Rain is a haunting study of war and its tragic consequences, especially when the fighting occurs between neighbours. Introductory presentation: 'Taking Sides' Costas Constantinou, University of Keele DAY 2 < 4th March 2003 > 9:45 Morning Plenary: The Ethical Quandaries of Bearing Witness Ranjit Hoskote, Assistant Editor, The Hindu, Mumbai 10:30 Tea Break 11:00 Morning Session: Gujarat: One Year After Presenters: Gujarat and the Media: One Year After Siddharth Varadarajan, Deputy Chief Editor, National Bureau, Times of India, Delhi Use, Misuse and Abuse of the Media: The Gujarat Example Darshan Desai, Special Correspondent, Outlook, Ahmedabad The Gujarat Violence Shared Footage Project Gurpal Singh, Independent Filmmaker, Mumbai The Legal Response to Gujarat: Moving between the Universal and the Particular Arvind Narrain, Alternative Legal Forum, Bangalore 1:30 Lunch 2:30 Afternoon Session: Crises of Everyday Life Panel I <2:30 - 3:15> Presenters: Dispatches from South Africa: Where are the Women in South Africa's Media? Crystal Orderson, Young Africa Television, Johannesburg, Connecting 'Local' Voices Marni Cordell, www.smallvoices.org, Melbourne Panel II <3:30 - 4:15> Presenters: Playing with the Media/Hiding from the Media: Media Tactics of the European No Border Network Paul Keller, Waag, Amsterdam, No Border Network Improvisations after the Collapse: Media Reprtage of Economic Crisis in Argentina Marilina Winik, Argentina Indymedia Centre, Buenos Aires 4:15 Tea Break Panel III <4:45 - 5:30> Presenters: Identifying Crisis in North East India: A Perspective on HIV/AIDS from Manipur Chitra Ahanthem, The Imphal Free Press, Imphal The Media in India & Sexuality Minorities Dipika Nath, PRISM, Delhi 6.00 Film Screening: Paradise on a River of Hell [Documentary, 2002, 30 min] Directed by: Meenu Gaur and Abir Bazaz Produced by the Public Sevice Broadcasting Trust, The screening will be introduced by the filmmakers The violence Kashmir witnessed in the 1990s shattered human dignity and changed everyday life beyond recognition. Years of insurgency and counter-insurgency not only interrupted the continuity of Kashmiri lives but forced Kashmiris into roles in which they no longer recognise themselves. Not attempting to situate the 1990s in this or that event, person, space or time, the film's mappings of personal and collective memories bears witness to Kashmir's historical solitude. DAY 3 < 5th March 2003 > 9:45 Morning Plenary: Newsas 'Collateral Damage' Arundhati Roy, Writer, Delhi 10:30 Tea Break 11:00 Morning Session 1: The Encounter: Truth as a Casualty Presenters: An Encounter with the Official Secrets Act: Notes from a Journalist's Professional Life Syed Iftikhar Gilani, Kashmir Times, Delhi The Willing Suspension of Disbelief: Reporting Terrorism in the English Language Media Anjali Mody, The Hindu, Delhi Trial by Media: The Need for Forensic Examination of Electronic Evidence Arun Mehta, Telecommunications Engineer and Media Activist Discussant: Vijay Kumar Nagraj, Amnesty International, Delhi 12:30 Morning Session 2A: [Sarai Interface Zone] Freedom of Expression in the Hindi Public Domain Hindi Jankshetra mein Abhivyakti ki Azadi Presenter: Na Likhne Ka Karan: The Odds Against Writing/Writing Against Odds Rajendra Yadav, Editor: Hans, Delhi Discussant: Ravikant, Sarai-CSDS, Abhay Kumar Dube, Fellow, CSDS [This panel will be in Hindi] Morning Session 2B: [Seminar Room] Round Table: What Next for Global Independent Media Participants: Katarina Zivanovic, REX, Belgrade Adrienne van Heteren, Press Now, Glasnost Defense Foundation, Moscow Marni Cordell, www.smallvoices.org, Melbourne Marilina Winik, Argentina Indymedia Centre, Buenos Aires Sanjay Bhangar, Indymedia Bombay Discussants: Geert Lovink, Rachel Magnusson 1:30 Lunch 2:30 Afternoon Session 1: Confrontations in Cyberspace Presenters: Challenging the Far Right in Cyberspace Harsh Kapoor, South Asian Citizens' Web, http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex Emergence of AMAN:the Autonomus Media Network Aditya Nagam, Fellow, CSDS, www.amanjunction.org Discussant: Asha Varadharajan, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario 3:45 Tea Break 4:15 Afternoon Session 2: Stories of Earth and Water: Reporting Ecological Crises Presenters: Is the Environment a Media Issue whose Time has passed? Darryl D'Monte, President, International Federation of Environmental Journalists Putting Politics Back into the Picture: Witnessing Environmental Crises in the Media Sanjay Kak, Independent Filmmaker, Delhi Beyond Reportage: Influencing Engagements and Strategies Ravi Agarwal, Toxics Link and Srishti, Delhi What the Media Doesn't Drink: Water in the Mainstream Media Pradip Saha, Managing Editor, Down to Earth, Delhi 6: 15 Tea Break 6:30 Film Screening: Words on Water [Documentary, 2002, 85 min] Director : Sanjay Kak Edited by : Sameera Jain and Reena Mohan Photography: Ranjan Palit and Sanjay Kak Location Sound : Samina Mishra Music : Rahul Ram, Amit Kilam, Asheem Chakravarty Shot and edited over a period of three years, Words on Water is a film about sustained non-violent resistance by the activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan against the building of the Sardar Sarovar Dam. In a world where the use of violence has become the arbiter of political debate, this film reflects on the joyous defiance, which empowers the people as they struggle for their rights, and yet saves them from the ultimate humiliation of violence. From hari_roka at hotmail.com Sun Mar 2 11:09:29 2003 From: hari_roka at hotmail.com (Hari Roka) Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 05:39:29 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] boys wnts to go back Message-ID: Dear friends It is my second posting, want to share from the work. I have been waiting your comment, criticism, suggestions and even appreciation. Teenagers are in hurry to go back home: If you are habitual to take breakfast, launch, or dinner in nearest Dhaba or small restaurant in Delhi, you can find out easily a Nepali boy working as a waiter and cleaner in a dirt cloth with innocence face. If you notice the voice of Dhaba owner�s calling using word �Bahadur� some where �Kanchha� to serve to the customer or to do something else then you can recognize easily that a Nepali boy working in Dhaba. Dhabas boys with dirt clothes are busy in their work from early morning to late night. There is no fixed working hour. Usually they have little leisure period around 3 pm to 4.30 pm and they get time for rest after twelve at night to six early in the morning. But in restaurants and Dhabas of Bus Park and the railway restaurants the job is very tough. Usually they got opportunity to sleep only three to four hours at night. And they got one full day leave for cleaning themselves and clean their clothes once a month, in which day of the month they get holiday depends on owner�s wish. Mostly 12 to 48 years old ages people are engaged in Dhaba and restaurant. Most of the teenager (12 to 18 years group) joins here in Dhaba�s job last year. But the old and middle age group came here earlier 1998 and before and working till the date. Dhaba�s job is not a permanent job, coming and going is the nature of job in other word very transitory. The owner usually recruits boys in their Dhaba with the guarantee and recommendation of old. Even owner fixed the rate of remuneration for boys with the help of old. A small boy gets only Rs. 700 to 1200 per month at the first recruiting after taking food and shelter. Then gradually, owner increase their salary after six month to one year. Similarly, some times later or having experience they get promotion from vessel- washer to waiter. But it depends on new arrivals. According to some experienced boys, the remuneration is not recently increased due to tough competition. The highest salary of the old who earned -especially as a cooker in Dhaba- is getting Rs 4000 per month. All the experienced boys those who work more than one year are not feeling any competition. Instead of feeling of competition they help new comer to search job and keep them in their room till not getting job. Most of our respondent answered �there is no competition; it is an easily finding job- �those who comes finds, without any difficulties�- through the help of owner and friends�. But the teenagers are saying �when new arrivals appeared for job then there is less chance of the growth of salary. Most of the young boys are literate and attended middle school, some of them passed pre-school leaving certificate examination in Nepal. But most of the above thirty age�s group are illiterate although they are very energetic and working another shift as a community chaukidar (Guarding at night). Boys usually took their food (breakfast, lunch and dinner) at their own Dhaba where they work. Usually below thirty age group boys are unmarried, above thirty age group young left their family at home. Most of them like Nepali folk music. But in Dhaba and restaurants usually owner heard Hindi and Punjabi folk songs. In their first arrival they could not follow the word and tuning of song but later they learned and become habitual in Hindi music and songs like Hindi language they learned. When I asked how you learn Hindi then they replied it became very easier, we speak without hesitation that is why we learned slowly and gradually. In their rented room (for one room they pays one thousand to fifteen hundred rupees per month) usually they heard Nepali folk song which they brought some cassettes from their home town and occasionally they exchange cassettes with friends too. In Delhi, in one room generally they live five people who come from the same village and have a same type of job. So they have bought common radio or cassettes player. Those who does not have cassettes player listen FM radio. �But Radio Nepal not comes in our radio� one of the boy commented. They are not good listener of any kind of news in radio and television. All the good and bad news of their native place, they knew from their relatives and friends and some time letters and telephonic contact, and from relatives. Usually they send their letters and savings to their relatives by hand and later take confirmation of the delivery usually asking their relative through STD call in short. Still their village telephones are working. But there are anxieties to call their family, first they have to left news for calling then after one week they again contact directly. Most of the boys are not organized politically and socially. They said none of them contacted by any political organizations here. Even they are not familiar with any organizations. But when they were in Nepal most of the young boys were known about the electoral politics and favored too the particular organization. Some of them easily said about their involvement e.g., they were in UML and congress. But, some of them did not want to clarify about their affiliated organization. There might be political reason or their shyness. Umesh Thapa Magar a young teenager only thirteen years old boy whose father was killed by the Royal Nepal Army behind his house in last January 2002. At that period he was studying in class seven in local school of his home district Salyan. When his father killed then her mother could not mange money to pay fees and stationary of school for her two children. Thus, he left school and became helping hand of his mother to cultivate their occupied land and other domestic work. But it was not sufficient to mange their home from the small income from the grain produced from their cultivation even to pay the fees of his sister, now, who reads in class 5. At the moment when Maoist came at home and tries to recruit on their red- army, because of fear, her mother denied and send India with one relative who is working here in Delhi. Now mother with one small sister are living at home and he is working in Dhaba in same villager�s recommendation. He is getting food and shelter in Dhaba and earning 1200 Indian rupees per month. Usually he saves all. But when he remembers his mother and sister he calls at home. He spent some time Rs.300 in telephone call. (I interrupt him while we were talking and ask �why you are spending more in telephone call? Instead of using expensive telephone why you are not writing letter to your mother?� He replied with tearing his eyes that he gets satisfaction from the hearing mother�s voice in telephone) in last October he purchased one pair of cloth that was his extra expenses. Otherwise all the money whatever he earned and saves and keeps with his villager sends home to his beloved mother and sister. Now Umesh has only one dream to schooling his sister till higher education. He was looking very bold and committed to her education. He was looked like a very serious and sincere guardian at the age of 13. The story of other boys Ram Prasad, Nara Bahadur Thapa chhetry, Durga Prasad Dangi, Amit Shakya, Krishna K.C, has little bit different than Umesh�s story. Their parents are still living at home. They were also students at class 9 and 10. They fled from home because the Royal Army personnel arrest them and racked them on the suspicion of their affiliation with Maoist. Similarly, Maoist followed them for new recruiting in their red-army. When the pressure increased from both sides then their parents gave advice to flee from home. At first they did not have any idea where to flee but later they came here arbitrarily. They did not hear the news of ceasefire between Royal army and Maoist till when we were conversing. When I told them that, now peace initiative has begun. After a short period of time Government and Maoist will reach in negotiation and peace will be establish in the country. But they did not believe me. When I gave them newspaper in which the news of ceasefire was published. Then they started to argue that the current peace initiation not took any longer. They compared this peace initiation with last year cease fire and talk and reminded later grand attack and violence over military barrack from the Maoist side. When I tried to assure them this time both parties are very serious, international situation is very different and all national and international forces are pressurizing for peaceful settlement then they were looking very serious. Some were became very happy and said to call their parents to return back. Some of them want to join again their school. But few teenagers refuse to return, they said to read again is not possible. But when they knew about other people those who continue their study after a long years gap then they confused. All most teenagers came here from the remote villages; some were very happy with the current life style and colorful city�s life and want to continue their life in Dhaba till not getting another suitable job. They loves Hindi cinema and looks once a month. But majority of them want to go back at home hurriedly. They seemed that they are remembering their parents, family members and villagers. Again, I met Umesh and ask his desire. He wept appallingly. Then asked me in small voice uncle! Who gives me the expenditure for further reading? _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail From lachlan at london.com Mon Mar 3 12:34:24 2003 From: lachlan at london.com (Lachlan Brown) Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 07:04:24 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] [a knife and fork, a bottle and a cork] 'here come the planes, they are american planes' Message-ID: <20030303070424.35593.qmail@iname.com> pretty chilly in Toronto tonight -25 -37 windchill, so backbreaking manual labour exposed to the elements all night is out of the question - the price of doing cultural studies i'm afraid, hence i thought up a wee poem i thought to share. still have to meter the last stanzas and this may be a bit judeo-Xtian-Islamo-centric for your readers, but i am sure it all has the same source code ultimately. L let us return to the source let us be open to the source let us consider the clay let us return to eden gather between the rivers and war in the garden let us war and mourn again between the rivers where clay is still wet and make our mark in mesopotamia our sighs in sarin our signs in shrapnel and contaminate the clay let us remember our signs in the clay at Ur and the distribution of the barley and the wheat let us war in the garden to spare the oil and the wine from the scales let us repeat the refrain 'let us war' or let us source, selah let us consider the clay the barley and the wheat the wine and the oil in a balance, selah between the rivers where the garden will hang on the table where we break bread and share wine Let us consider the clay and what is written there. Let us interpret what is written, selah. or let us war! let us war between the rivers where the garden will hang and make our mark in manhattan. return sarin to sender? anthrax address unknown? no such nuclear number? fallout zone? let us return to babylon gather between the rivers and war in the garden let us war or let us source let us return to the source let us be open to the source let us consider the clay let us break bread and share wine and affirm that political discourse and diplomacy as the more appropriate way to resolve political disputes regarding the distribution of resources between the all the nations in this here time, pass the vinegar, pretzels anyone? its our choice, do we feel lucky, punks? Lachlan webmaster at worldwidewebproject.com Lachlan Brown T+VM: +1 416 666 1452 eFax: +1 435 603 2156 -- __________________________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Mon Mar 3 14:15:40 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 08:45:40 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Journalists: Watchdogs, Lapdogs, And Sleeping Dogs In-Reply-To: <20030303070424.35593.qmail@iname.com> Message-ID: <20030303084540.88046.qmail@web8001.mail.in.yahoo.com> Watchdogs, Lapdogs, And Sleeping Dogs by Will Potter; February 24, 2003 Journalists like to think of themselves as watchdogs, nipping at the heels of the powerful and guarding democracy. Progressive critics see them as lapdogs for the political and corporate elite. More often reporters are just tired old dogs asleep on the porch. Take a recent Sunday morning adventure at NBC studios in Washington, D.C., where I joined a pack of these wet dogs taking shelter from a downpour in the NBC lobby. The NBC staff wheeled out a TV cart so reporters could watch "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert. Russert interviewed Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board (a Pentagon advisory panel charged with overseeing military preparedness), and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat who has emerged as one of the few strong congressional voices against war. It's a Sunday routine: At the end of the show, reporters gather outside the front door and beg the guests for a few soundbite scraps. Until then, they sprawl out on benches in the lobby, absent-mindedly watching the interviews. This is the state of American media, the free press: reporters and camera crews watching an interview on television as it takes place just down the hall. Journalists don't like the ridiculous setup, but they don't have much choice. They have to meet the demands of the corporate media conglomerates they work for, and to do that they have to play the game. Some read newspapers. One takes notes. Another reporter talks on a cell phone to his wife. "Yeah, they're just bickering right now. No, I don't know how much longer it will be." They listen to Perle beat the drums of war. It leads to a discussion of democracy. He says that it would be good if Israel were surrounded by democracies. He says it would be good if Iraq were a democracy. "Democracies," Perle says to Russert, "do not engage in aggressive wars." The dogs awake. "What? Is this guy smoking crack?" one reporter nearly shouts. Everyone laughs and nods in agreement. The reporter expressed the frustration and outrage that millions of people around the world know, and what many journalists understand, but almost never articulate. As I watched the interview, I wondered if Russert was also thinking, "What is he smoking?" I hoped he would say, "Well, Mr. Perle, either the laundry list of foreign aggressions in U.S. history (covert actions like those in Guatemala in 1954, proxy aggressions like in Nicaragua in the 1980s, and overt aggressions including Vietnam and Panama) are make-believe, or the United States is not a democracy. Which is it?" Russert never questioned the core of Perle's arguments: his assumptions on democracy, power, and violence. He moved on to the next topic. His silence spoke volumes. The dogs go back to sleep. The program ends. The reporters trudge outside and assume their positions. The first to pounce was the reporter who made the "smoking crack" comment. But she didn't pounce. She asked a generic question nearly identical to one Russert asked Perle. Perle gave a nearly identical answer. The reporters asked questions they already knew the answer to, and Perle handed them scripted answers (reporters sometimes do this so that on their broadcasts they can use their footage instead of a clip from a talkshow). Voila. News is made. It's like a game with unwritten rules, but neither party wants to admit they're playing. Journalists are not dumb. Most of them have an idea of how the world works and how power structures operate. They are generally informed of world news. They have the ability to ask questions, like those on the minds of the millions of people who took to the streets weeks ago, yet most choose not to. They operate in a much larger system of corporate-controlled media, and must base their decisions on what they think is the best way to survive in that system. Journalists who want to work for the national bureau of a major network know they must not only ask the right questions but also avoid asking the wrong ones. Asking hard questions could earn a reporter a reputation as a troublemaker (it once could earn the reporter a reputation as a "muckraker"). There are rewards in this system for complacency. There are few rewards for critical thinking. At that moment, I couldn't handle it. Moments earlier this reporter had seen through the lies. I wanted to grab her and yell, "YOUR COVER IS BLOWN. I know you aren't clueless. You know the truth, and you have no excuse for not speaking it." Something had to be said, so I jumped in and asked, "Mr. Perle, you said that democracies do not engage in aggressive wars. Could you please explain, then, how you view this 'pre-emptive war,' against the will of the international community and millions of people around the world?" I think it caught the reporters more off-guard than it did Perle. He avoided the question, and calmly said that this is not an aggressive war because Iraq has violated U.N. resolutions. He answered another reporter's question and walked away. Next came Kucinich, and the situation repeated itself. The reporters repeated Russert's questions nearly verbatim. They were more aggressive with Kucinich, though, and I had trouble getting a question in. So, when Kucinich walked away, I followed him and asked a few questions about his vision for a Department of Peace in the federal government, which angered the other reporters. "Why don't you come say that over here so we can all use it?" they yelled. Kucinich didn't respond. "Fine," one reporter shouted, curtly. "Goodbye to you too." We had broken the rules of the game. The behavior of some journalists is frustrating, but it is not enough to simply blame them for acting like lazy dogs. Journalists work within larger institutions that constrain them. [For more on these constraints, check out the propaganda model presented by Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent or in Herman's Myth of the Liberal Media.] They can, and should, push against the constraints of those institutions, but that is only a partial solution. We need media reform movements working to change the ownership and regulation of media. [For more on this see the work of Robert McChesney {http://www.robertmcchesney.com/} and check out his new book with John Nichols, Our Media, Not Theirs.] In a media system not dominated by corporations and money, it would be easier for journalists to do more than beg, roll over, and have their bellies rubbed. They could refuse to walk on a leash. They could bark, growl, and sometimes bite. Will Potter is an intern for a national newspaper based in Washington, D.C. He has written for the Texas Observer, the Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning News. In his spare time he pays attention to politics and the state of American media. He can be reached at will.potter at lycos.co.uk article found on: http://www.zmag.org/ZNETTOPnoanimation.html ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From hansatin at yahoo.co.in Sun Mar 2 21:36:30 2003 From: hansatin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?hansa=20thapliyal?=) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 16:06:30 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] sorry for re- sending Message-ID: <20030302160630.74333.qmail@web8007.mail.in.yahoo.com> everyone on list, sorry- for resending 'bys wants to go back' i was trying to forward it to another account of mine- hotmail has put my reader list mails into my junk box, so- was trying to preserve for a later read.. apologies hansa Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030302/ae798e37/attachment.html From shuddha at sarai.net Mon Mar 3 16:56:35 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 16:56:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] CRISIS/MEDIA : The Uncertain States of Reportage Message-ID: <03030316563500.01406@sweety.sarai.kit> CRISIS/MEDIA : The Uncertain States of Reportage For Concept and Programme, http://www.sarai.net/events/crisis_media/crisis_media.htm For more Details and Reports see http://sarai.waag.org/crisis For Live Stream http://www.opuscommons.net:8000/crisis Crisis/Media : The Uncertain States of Reportage, a workshop produced by Sarai-CSDS and the Waag Society/for Old and New Media begins today at Sarai in Delhi. The three day workshop brings together independent media practitioners, journalists, writers and scholars to reflect on the role of media in times of crisis. Key note speakers include Arundhati Roy (writer), Delhi, Ranjit Hoskote (Journalist and Critic), Mumbai, Danny Muller (anti war activist) Chicago, and Subarno Chatterjee (media researcher) Delhi. And journalists/activists./practitioners from Buenos Aires, Moscow, Melbourne, Srinagar, Mumbai, Delhi, Amsterdam, Imphal. The workshop features panels and discussions on crisis situations in South Asia, Crises of Everyday Life, Ecological Crises, Case Studies of the Media in Ex Yugoslavia, and the Future of Global Independent Media, as well as screenings of films and exhibitions. Reports from the workshop will be posted on this list (and others) soon regards Shuddhabrata Sengupta From khadeejaarif1 at rediffmail.com Mon Mar 3 21:52:18 2003 From: khadeejaarif1 at rediffmail.com (khadeeja arif) Date: 3 Mar 2003 16:22:18 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] independent fellowship Message-ID: <20030303162218.1270.qmail@webmail36.rediffmail.com> Dear Sarai,this is the third posting of our research titled,'Lives of women'.We look forward for feedback. “The body manifests the stigmata of past experience and also gives rise to desires, failings, and errors. These elements may join in a body where they achieve a sudden expression, but as often, their encounter is an engagement in which they efface each other, where the body becomes the pretext of their insurmountable conflict.” (Michel Foucault 1984:83) Zakir Nagar, as a place, highlights its spatial politics in its narrow bye lanes, communally charged posters on its walls, the kabab shops surrounded by men and the ‘Islamic’ literature telling the different ways of leading ‘true Islamic’ life, sold outside every mosque and, of course, in its ‘bodies’. In terms of the space provided to its individuals, it operates on the binaries. The inside space of the house is directly associated to the women, and is always expected to be occupied by them only, unlike their male counterparts. A large part of the population, in Zakir Nagar, is comprised of the people who have migrated from the different parts of the city as a result of the communal tension-both at the individual and political levels. Most of the people came here immediately after the 1987 riots, after Babri mosque demolition and consequent communal tension in the city.Most of our characters have moved to Zakir Nagar from different posh colonies of New Delhi. For most of them, their identity got threatened when, one fine morning, as a result of communal tension in Delhi, they found themselves alienated and insecure within their respective neighborhoods. This sudden movement has worked differently to both men and women. For the women, Zakir Nagar, as a male dominated, ‘Islamic’ locality has led certain behavioral pressures unlike their previous neighborhoods. All of our women characters have faced tremendous amount of conflict regarding their habits, clothing and their constant movements from ‘inside’ world to the ‘outside’. Some of them have accepted this conflict as part of their daily existence, whereas others are still trying to create a space for their individual way of living. Maine Zakir Nagar aakr Jeans pehanni bilkul chodi di Ab to mein sirf salwar suit pehanti hun .Hame bhi achcha Nahi lagta hai apne dosto ko yahan bualna Who log kehte hain ke Jab koi gandi gali aaye to samjho ke who musalmno ki hai (Rani.Zakir Nagar) This month, we interacted with one of our characters, Rani . Rani came to Zakir Nagar after the disruption of communal riots in 1984.Before moving to Zakir Nagar she lived in the DDA flats, New Friends colony. Rani lived there with her in-laws. It was then a joint family. As a result of the communal tension in the city, and the anxiety caused within the different religious groups, her family decided to move to Zakir Nagar. It was only her family that migrated . Her in- laws decided not to come here, for they considered Zakir Nagar not a place worth living. They rather moved to their farmhouse in Sainikpur. The only reason behind Rani’s choice of Zakir Nagar as a place to spend rest of her life, over her Sainikpur farmhouse is her identification of Zakir Nagar with her religion i.e. Islam.Despite the fact that here Rani has to adopt a different pattern of life altogether, she still believes that Zakir Nagar is the only place where she feels most secure. Most of Rani’s friends and relatives stay in the posh colonies such as GK1 and South extension. At times, it is difficult for her even to disclose her true identity of her place to her friends, for her friends finds Zakir Nagar “extremely dirty and claustrophobic” For Rani’s sons -Mohsin,Nadeem and Biloo it’s very difficult to identify with Zakir Nagar. Most of their time is spent outside Zakir Nagar. They go to their beauty saloon in GK1 and Jangpura. They have no friends in Zakir Nagar. They hardly spend anytime in Zakir Nagar. Despite the sheer pressure from her sons to move out of Zakir Nagar,Rani still prefers to stay only in Zakir Nagar. According to her: “Bachche zakir Nagar se nikalkar islam ko bilkul bhool jayenge .Vese to yeh log namaaz bhi bilkul nahi padhte hain lakin yeh to pata he ke hum Musalmaan hein” .. Rani has suffered the duality in her daily existence Zakir Nagar has demanded, from her, a different way of living from what Rani actually believes in. she has always lived a free life in terms of her fluid movement from the four walls of the house to the everyday kitty parties at her friends house, shopping, and spending time with her friends in different picnic spots, and wearing the clothes of her own choice. Before coming to Zakir Nagar, there was no check on her “makeup, dress and regular habit of stepping out of her any numbers of times in a day”. Now she feels uncomfortable to move out of her home more than twice in a day, for all her neighbors, especially men keep an eye on her movement.There is a constant effort on Rani’s part to negotiate the conflict between her ‘modern’ life style outside and closed, conservative lifestyle in Zakir Nagar. Rani has to cover her face while passing through Zakir Nagar which she undoes once she is out of Zakir Nagar. For her, wearing jeans and other western dresses is quite liberating, but she can only experience this sense of freedom when she is out of Zakir Nagar. Rani hardly interacts with the women of her neighborhood because she feels that she does not want to be a ‘typical behanji’. Rani never shops from the local market in Zakir Nagar. She neither trusts the local beauty parlors nor does she follow the local fashions.According to her, the pressure, which she feels is growing intense day by day, on her body to behave in a particular fashion is determined by the political demands to assert ‘Islamic identity’ especially after 9/11.But for her, its more of a masculine thing rather than a collective, unified gesture because she sees no demands made on men. Ambarien/Khadeeja From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Tue Mar 4 07:48:11 2003 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 18:18:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] US spying on UN delegates in its own backyard Message-ID: <20030304021811.96697.qmail@web41108.mail.yahoo.com> memo leaked to the observer, london: http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,905954,00.html commentary in the nation: http://www.thenation.com/outrage/ R Sunday March 2, 2003 To: [Recipients withheld] From: FRANK KOZA, DEF Chief of Staff (Regional Targets) CIV/NSA Sent on Jan 31 2003 0:16 Subject: Reflections of Iraq Debate/Votes at UN-RT Actions + Potential for Related Contributions Importance: HIGH Top Secret//COMINT//XI All, As you've likely heard by now, the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc - the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters. We've also asked ALL RT topi's to emphasize and make sure they pay attention to existing non-UNSC member UN-related and domestic comms for anything useful related to the UNSC deliberations/ debates/ votes. We have a lot of special UN-related diplomatic coverage (various UN delegations) from countries not sitting on the UNSC right now that could contribute related perspectives/ insights/ whatever. We recognize that we can't afford to ignore this possible source. We'd appreciate your support in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar, more in-direct access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines. I suspect that you'll be hearing more along these lines in formal channels - especially as this effort will probably peak (at least for this specific focus) in the middle of next week, following the SecState's presentation to the UNSC. Thanks for your help __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Tue Mar 4 08:43:46 2003 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 19:13:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] non-citizens of the US Message-ID: <20030304031347.58610.qmail@web41107.mail.yahoo.com> referring to a leaked draft of bush administration's Domestic Security Enhancement Act. includes the idea that US citizens could be stripped of their citizenship and thrown out. they would be non-citizens of everywhere. anywhere. whatever. the world seems to throw up more and more of these surreal thoughts at the moment. only expressible with twisted double negative phrases. R Patriot Act's Big Brother by David Cole http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030317&s=cole In early February, the Center for Public Integrity disclosed a leaked draft of the Bush Administration's next round in the war on terrorism--the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (DSEA). The draft legislation, stamped Confidential and dated January 9, 2003, appears to be in final form but has not yet been introduced in Congress. Presumably the Administration had determined that the timing would be more propitious for passage--meaning less propitious for reasoned debate--after we go to war with Iraq. But it is one thing to play politics with the timing of a farm bill; it is another matter to do so with a bill that would radically alter our rights and freedoms. If the Patriot Act was so named to imply that those who question its sweeping new powers of surveillance, detention and prosecution are traitors, the DSEA takes that theme one giant step further. It provides that any citizen, even native-born, who supports even the lawful activities of an organization the executive branch deems "terrorist" is presumptively stripped of his or her citizenship. To date, the "war on terrorism" has largely been directed at noncitizens, especially Arabs and Muslims. But the DSEA would actually turn citizens associated with "terrorist" groups into aliens. They would then be subject to the deportation power, which the DSEA would expand to give the Attorney General the authority to deport any noncitizen whose presence he deems a threat to our "national defense, foreign policy or economic interests." One federal court of appeals has already ruled that this standard is not susceptible to judicial review. So this provision would give the Attorney General unreviewable authority to deport any noncitizen he chooses, with no need to prove that the person has engaged in any criminal or harmful conduct. A US citizen stripped of his citizenship and ordered deported would presumably have nowhere to go. But another provision authorizes the Attorney General to deport persons "to any country or region regardless of whether the country or region has a government." And failing deportation to Somalia (or a similar place), the Justice Department has issued a regulation empowering it to detain indefinitely suspected terrorists who are ordered deported but cannot be removed because they are stateless or their country of origin refuses to take them back. Other provisions are designed to further insulate the war on terrorism from public and judicial scrutiny. The bill would authorize secret arrests, a practice common in totalitarian regimes but never before authorized in the United States. It would terminate court orders barring illegal police spying entered before September 11, 2001, without regard to the need for judicial supervision. It would allow secret government wiretaps and searches without even a warrant from the supersecret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when Congress has authorized the use of force. And it would give the government the same access to credit reports as private companies, without judicial supervision. Historically, we have imposed a higher threshold, and judicial oversight, on government access to such private information, because government has the motive and the wherewithal to abuse the information in ways private companies generally do not. But the trajectory of the war on terrorism is probably best illustrated by an obscure provision that would eliminate the distinction between domestic terrorism and international terrorism for a host of investigatory purposes. The Administration's argument sounds reasonable enough--terrorism is terrorism, whether it's within the United States or has an international component. But in the Patriot Act debates, the Administration argued that it should be afforded broader surveillance powers over "international terrorism" because such acts are simultaneously a matter of domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence. Because foreign intelligence gathering has traditionally been subject to looser standards than criminal law enforcement, the government argued, the looser standards should extend to domestic investigations of "international terrorism." But now it proposes to extend the same loose standards to investigations of wholly domestic crimes. The DSEA's treatment of expatriation and domestic terrorism are harbingers of things to come. Thus far, much of the war on terrorism has been targeted at foreign nationals and sold to the American people on that ground. Americans' rights are not at stake, the argument goes, because we're concerned with "international" crime committed mostly by "aliens." With the DSEA, however, the Administration seeks to transgress both the alien-citizen line, by turning citizens into aliens for their political ties, and the domestic-international line, extending to wholly domestic criminal-law-enforcement tools that were previously reserved for international terrorism investigations. How will Congress respond? Thus far, when citizens' rights have been directly threatened, Congress has taken civil liberties seriously. Most recently, it blocked the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness data-mining program. But it blocked it only as applied to US citizens. As long as the Pentagon violates only foreign nationals' privacy, Congress in effect said, Go ahead. But that tactic--protecting citizens' rights while ignoring those of foreign nationals--is untenable, not only on moral grounds but because if the Administration gets its way, we are all potentially "aliens." __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From uspia at nus.edu.sg Tue Mar 4 08:57:12 2003 From: uspia at nus.edu.sg (Irina Aristarkhova) Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 11:27:12 +0800 Subject: [Reader-list] non-citizens of the US Message-ID: It looks like USSR + KGB practices were the future of the US and its followers, as Foucault and others predicted, not its 'opposite other' or 'Soviet past'. 9/11 is used to bring to light, figuratively speaking. The question - would again social movements follow to the same scale as in the 60s? Are they effective? Or who cares? Irina -----Original Message----- From: Rana Dasgupta [mailto:rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 11:14 AM To: reader-list at sarai.net Subject: [Reader-list] non-citizens of the US referring to a leaked draft of bush administration's Domestic Security Enhancement Act. includes the idea that US citizens could be stripped of their citizenship and thrown out. they would be non-citizens of everywhere. anywhere. whatever. the world seems to throw up more and more of these surreal thoughts at the moment. only expressible with twisted double negative phrases. R Patriot Act's Big Brother by David Cole http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030317&s=cole In early February, the Center for Public Integrity disclosed a leaked draft of the Bush Administration's next round in the war on terrorism--the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (DSEA). The draft legislation, stamped Confidential and dated January 9, 2003, appears to be in final form but has not yet been introduced in Congress. Presumably the Administration had determined that the timing would be more propitious for passage--meaning less propitious for reasoned debate--after we go to war with Iraq. But it is one thing to play politics with the timing of a farm bill; it is another matter to do so with a bill that would radically alter our rights and freedoms. If the Patriot Act was so named to imply that those who question its sweeping new powers of surveillance, detention and prosecution are traitors, the DSEA takes that theme one giant step further. It provides that any citizen, even native-born, who supports even the lawful activities of an organization the executive branch deems "terrorist" is presumptively stripped of his or her citizenship. To date, the "war on terrorism" has largely been directed at noncitizens, especially Arabs and Muslims. But the DSEA would actually turn citizens associated with "terrorist" groups into aliens. They would then be subject to the deportation power, which the DSEA would expand to give the Attorney General the authority to deport any noncitizen whose presence he deems a threat to our "national defense, foreign policy or economic interests." One federal court of appeals has already ruled that this standard is not susceptible to judicial review. So this provision would give the Attorney General unreviewable authority to deport any noncitizen he chooses, with no need to prove that the person has engaged in any criminal or harmful conduct. A US citizen stripped of his citizenship and ordered deported would presumably have nowhere to go. But another provision authorizes the Attorney General to deport persons "to any country or region regardless of whether the country or region has a government." And failing deportation to Somalia (or a similar place), the Justice Department has issued a regulation empowering it to detain indefinitely suspected terrorists who are ordered deported but cannot be removed because they are stateless or their country of origin refuses to take them back. Other provisions are designed to further insulate the war on terrorism from public and judicial scrutiny. The bill would authorize secret arrests, a practice common in totalitarian regimes but never before authorized in the United States. It would terminate court orders barring illegal police spying entered before September 11, 2001, without regard to the need for judicial supervision. It would allow secret government wiretaps and searches without even a warrant from the supersecret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when Congress has authorized the use of force. And it would give the government the same access to credit reports as private companies, without judicial supervision. Historically, we have imposed a higher threshold, and judicial oversight, on government access to such private information, because government has the motive and the wherewithal to abuse the information in ways private companies generally do not. But the trajectory of the war on terrorism is probably best illustrated by an obscure provision that would eliminate the distinction between domestic terrorism and international terrorism for a host of investigatory purposes. The Administration's argument sounds reasonable enough--terrorism is terrorism, whether it's within the United States or has an international component. But in the Patriot Act debates, the Administration argued that it should be afforded broader surveillance powers over "international terrorism" because such acts are simultaneously a matter of domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence. Because foreign intelligence gathering has traditionally been subject to looser standards than criminal law enforcement, the government argued, the looser standards should extend to domestic investigations of "international terrorism." But now it proposes to extend the same loose standards to investigations of wholly domestic crimes. The DSEA's treatment of expatriation and domestic terrorism are harbingers of things to come. Thus far, much of the war on terrorism has been targeted at foreign nationals and sold to the American people on that ground. Americans' rights are not at stake, the argument goes, because we're concerned with "international" crime committed mostly by "aliens." With the DSEA, however, the Administration seeks to transgress both the alien-citizen line, by turning citizens into aliens for their political ties, and the domestic-international line, extending to wholly domestic criminal-law-enforcement tools that were previously reserved for international terrorism investigations. How will Congress respond? Thus far, when citizens' rights have been directly threatened, Congress has taken civil liberties seriously. Most recently, it blocked the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness data-mining program. But it blocked it only as applied to US citizens. As long as the Pentagon violates only foreign nationals' privacy, Congress in effect said, Go ahead. But that tactic--protecting citizens' rights while ignoring those of foreign nationals--is untenable, not only on moral grounds but because if the Administration gets its way, we are all potentially "aliens." __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. List archive: From sarang at flomerics.com Wed Mar 5 11:16:12 2003 From: sarang at flomerics.com (Sarang Shidore) Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 11:16:12 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Eyewitness account of Indo-Pak match in Austin Message-ID: After hesitating initially on whether we could summon what it takes to stay up all night, a friend and I decided to go ahead and check out the India-Pakistan world cup cricket game. For me, it was at least as much to watch the crowd reactions as anything else (it was the first cricket match I was about to watch after many years). But the prospect of watching some potentially great cricket after being out of the loop for so long was also fairly enticing. First stop: Bismillah restaurant, a smallish Pakistani-owned joint a couple of miles north of the campus area (where I live). The crowd strength here was about 30 - 35 Pakistanis and perhaps 10-12 Indians. I discerned three groups - about 8-10 older (50's) Pakistanis sitting behind me, another group of 8 or so much younger, Westernized gang and a third group that seemed to be more from a working class background. The Indian group was all bunched up at the back of the room, except for me and my friend who were sitting right up front near the large TV screen. Pakistan opened, and the initial cheers were for Saeed Anwar's strokes, which I joined in. For a while things were fairly calm. Then Zaheer Khan picked up Taufiq's wicket. "WafadarŠwafadari dikha raha hai!" ("how loyal Š.trying to show his loyalty") shouted someone from behind me. I spotted a man with glasses, probably in his late 50's. Some of the Pakistanis sniggered. It was all too obvious why Zaheer Khan had been singled out for the sarcasm. Pakistan continued to build up a respectable total, and the cheering grew louder and more enthusiastic. The hip crowd of guys and gals sitting near me were now clapping enthusiastically. Two Pakistani fans next to me, I noticed, were also clapping politely at good Indian deliveries. Pakistan racked up a respectable total of 273. After the lunch interval, Sachin the superstar let loose an incredible set of strokes that were a delight to watch. The loud roars from the Indian camp at the back of the room were met with expressions of irritation among the Pakistani fans. The working class group however reacted in a fairly poker-faced manner, except for one particular (again, older) fan with a thick moustache and a craggy face who, at one point, let loose a sarcastic comment about the cheering. Then Sehwag fell in one of his carefree hitting sprees. The next ball trapped Saurav Ganguly for an LBW. The Pakistani crowd was now roaring. As Mohammad Kaif walked in to take his place, I heard another loud comment behind me "Dekho, aur ek wafadarŠdikhade teri wafadari!". I couldn't help turning around and casting a baleful glance at the group of grinning men. The atmosphere had turned electric. The match was poised in balance, and everyone in the room knew that it was anybody's game. The next two overs were marked by aggressive appealing by Pakistani players, but Kaif seemed unruffled. Then Sachin was back; and more boundaries followed. As the runs continued to mount, it seemed that India had regained the upper hand. The Indians in the room were now smiling, and the smiles stayed even when Sachin survived a couple of close calls. As the applause grew more confident, I heard a muttering, and then "Unhone qualify kiya hai na, isiliye morale oopar hai unka, nahin to abhi out ho jaate." The man with the glasses behind me, again. I turned to my left and noticed that craggy-face was scowling. The hip youngsters had fallen silent, and one young woman had her head sunk as though in silent contemplation. About 100 runs short of victory, Tendulkar fell to a brilliant delivery. The Pakistanis showed signs of tremendous relief rather than joy. I sensed that the Indians were disappointed but not overtly worried. At this point, we decided to leave for another venue: Shalimar restaurant. It was a whole different world over there. The proprietor had rigged up a huge room with two big-screen projections. The crowd strength was at least 300. It was clear that the Indian fans outnumbered the Pakistanis here; my guess at the ratio was 3:1. Within minutes I spotted two core groups of Indian supporters - one about 30 strong in the center that seemed to be led by a young man with a red T-shirt. At the back was another enthusiastic Indian group, smaller but almost as vocal. At this point it seemed to me that it was going to be India's day. The crowd clearly felt the same way. As the magic number of 274 galloped closer, red-shirt was having the time of his life. The cheers were getting wilder and slogans were being raised. At first I heard "That's the way, aha, aha, I like it, aha, aha". It was quickly followed by "Bharat Mata ki JAI". The JAI was ear-splitting, even the quieter Indian fans were now bellowing their hearts out. "Jo jeeta wo sikandar" and "Hame jeetna aata hai" were followed by another round of "Vande Matarams" and then "aha aha" was back. Then a short burst of "Pakistan Hai Hai" and "Pakistan Murdabad". The Pakistanis attempted to launch their own weak counter attack with "We want Shoaib", which was cut off by another sound stroke by Yuvraj, and the Indian cheers were back. Red shirt was now dancing and flaying his arms wildly. I could almost swear that I saw him froth at the mouth. The Vande Matarams were now much more aggressive, being directed directly at the Pakistanis. Then the magic figure was reached and all hell broke loose. The Pakistanis began leaving quickly, clearly sullen and disappointed. Red-shirt was surpassing himself, his group began a little jig. The wild gesticulations and jeers were not hard to miss. The chauvinism was apparent. Good cricket was surely appreciated by many in the crowd, but for many others, clearly, darker emotions were at work. I have never witnessed a communal riot, and never once did I sense the slightest possibility of violence among this crowd. Yet the emotions were not pleasant, the perfectly acceptable joy of a victory was laced with a raw meanness that won't be easy to forget. The certainty that I would have seen probably the exact same spectacle from the other side had Pakistan won was doubly depressing. Later I heard that back home in cities with names like Bombay and Delhi, India exploded with raucous celebrations and processions through the night; in Ahmedabad Muslim shops were looted and burnt, and in Bangalore Hindus and Muslims clashed violently. And at the Indo-Pak border in Punjab this remarkable incident - thousands of enraged fans throwing stones and hurling abuses at each other at the international border. It may be the last India-Pakistan cricket match I will dare to see for a long time. -- Sarang From announcer at pukar.org.in Wed Mar 5 13:28:59 2003 From: announcer at pukar.org.in (PUKAR Announcements) Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2003 13:28:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Prabhat Patnaik Budget Talk, 6.3.2003 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030305/9131ebd2/attachment.html From kalakamra at vsnl.net Wed Mar 5 19:33:28 2003 From: kalakamra at vsnl.net (shaina) Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 19:33:28 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Narmada-the stroy of a river Message-ID: 8th March Saturday International Womens Day. Nehru Centre Worli. 6:30 pm Narmada "the story of a river" An oddissi dance ballet. Conceived and choreographed by Jhelum Paranjape. Featuring: The Smitalay Dance School Smitalay, so named by Jhelum Paranjape in memory of her dear friend and critically acclaimed actress Smita Patel, is the dance wing of the Sane Guruji Arogya Mandir, a registered cultural & educational charitable trust. Activities at Smitalay include imparting rigorous and complete training in the Odissi dance form and constantly producing innovative original dance ballets. For the past decade, Smitalay has been annually celebrating international women day by presenting a performance exclusively choreographed with "woman as the central theme. This year the ballet is called NARMADA Narmada is a story of the river; about its beautiful and bountiful nature and life giving force. It is the story about life on the banks, and the adivasis who pray to her and call her mother. Narmada is also about a fiery woman who single handedly took on the world to fight for a peoples sustenance the woman the adivasis of the valley regard as an avataar of the mighty river itself. Narmada also depicts the river as a woman-a woman with many moods, sometimes vivacious, sometimes joyful and sometimes full of anguish. A woman faced with choices, confrontations and constrictions. A woman who combines strength and continuity, conflict and resolution. Narmada is indeed about the very essence of a woman. Narmada makes neither a political nor ecological statement. It merely tells us what the river embodies, thinks and feels. Guest of honour: Medha Patkar For more information: please contact Jhelum Paranjape: 98202 16315. Tickets available at Sane Guruji High School, Santacruz(W) and Nehru Centre, Worli. Rs 200, Rs 100, Rs 30.=20 _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From Harwood at scotoma.org Wed Mar 5 20:05:41 2003 From: Harwood at scotoma.org (Harwood) Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 14:35:41 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] GRID UNLOCKED Message-ID: GRID UNLOCKED ----------- Matthew Fuller 9 = 32 Nine(9) is given its name from the difference in the number of years of healthy life expectancy from birth between a woman born in Jamaica in 2001 and a woman born in Sweden in the same year1 ; the length in months of human gestation regardless of where you're slotted in the market of freedom; or the number of jellied eels it takes to change a light bulb? Numbers join things in ways that are absolutely arbitrary, but at the same time, they provide some of the most concrete and supple tools that we have for talking about things and relations between them. Their palpable abstraction is what makes numbers useful: 9 groups = 81 archives = 729 maps = 6561 images with 59049 links to any of the 2125764 files on a server. You on the guest list? What would a nice friendly artist want to do with what people who run computer networks call permissions structures? Underlying Nine(9) is a complex sequence of rules for who can do what to what: change the contents of an archive, add text, make a link. Instead of 'free expression' which embeds its laws in vague secrets, here, the lists of what you can do are up front. It's a bit daunting, filling in a Nine(9) archive. Perhaps the software is aimed at people with the most experience at form-feeding, those of us who keep the welfare state well nourished with our lives; people who shift from one regulatory zone to another without a lawyer in tow? Those forms, they lower the blood sugar a little. But, it being a program, you got to love the upgrade path potential. Linker Nine(9) is, in some senses, a reversion of an earlier programme by Mongrel : Linker.2 This is a stand alone programme that is used offline. It is usable only if you have the programme and the files provided by the maker of a particular map. Nine(9) takes the basic principles of Linker, extends them and moves them onto the web. This makes it more generally available. It means it doesn't have to rely on running on a particular kind of operating system. It does mean you need an internet connection to use it, at least for now. That Nine(9) That Nine(9) is on the net also has distinct advantages in the way it makes different kinds of connection occur. When you make a map, it's possible to link to a file in another map. Linking is a normal part of the function of the world wide web. The difference with Nine(9) is that the underlying software makes the link, but also uses it to make a connection between you and the other map's maker. An email is automatically sent notifying them of the use. Multiple layers of connection run through Nine(9), they form its underlying principle. Links are made by users, by people who make the maps, but also automatically, by the software. Shuffle Each Nine(9) map has nine spaces for images to be included. Along with the structure of permissions built into the software, this is one of the constraints around which it is organised. Nine images is enough to tell a story, but few enough to make you choose which of them mean enough together to be worth combining. Shuffling pictures, arranging them into sequences, making connections. It's difficult to take one photograph which takes upon itself the function of a masterpiece here, three's a crowd. Even if one or two of your photos doesn't work on its own, it will get mobilised by conjunction with others. Random fandom How do these patterns of images make of themselves anything more than what you'd get by random collision out of an image search engine? Some of them don't. It takes skill to be truly random. In Nine(9) archives, thing work by clusters, by association. They can be boring as well as brilliant. That's permissible. Software and Autonomy If something has autonomy to the extent that it is able to exist separately from its representation, the extent that images and systems cannot be imposed upon it, how autonomous is a user of Nine(9)? It's not quite as simple as saying the rules are up-front, users choose the software they want. Not all the software that could be made gets made. Nine(9) belongs to a current of software which aims to put what is missing somehow into view, part of the way this is done is by being clear about what it demands. But it also operates with others by opening up a gap between the applications and companies that economically and conceptually dominate software and the spaces and processes by which software might develop. A piece of software doesn't guarantee you autonomy. What it is, what it's mixed with, how it's used are all variables in the algorithms of power and invention that course through software and what it connects to. Mongrel designed Nine(9) to be used primarily in workshops and in collaboration with others. The conditions by which users come to the software, what previous computer skills they have, whether they can use an image editor to make pictures to include in Nine(9); the way in which the workshop is run; the reputations and usability of the space it's being held in; all these things connect to and shape how well the software can be said to work. Collaborative data A further way in which Nine(9) generates more room to maneuver is because of the stuff it is made of. Nine(9) is a combination of, XML parsed as HTML; Perl scripts; image manipulation and formatting tools such as Imagemagick and the Gimp; and a MySQL database. HTML is the basic way of organising the structure and style of web-sites. Perl is a scripting language which codes how the data is processed and arranged. MySQL organises the data so that it can be retrieved. All of these elements are used not only in Nine(9), but also contribute to a growing mass of resources available online that are used, shared, changed and developed. Copyright, where it exists, gets bent out of whack. Otherwise, code runs like the river of lemonade down sugar rock candy mountain: it's a free-for-all. So long as you don't fancy cherryade instead. Coding gets easier and, with attention, it gets better. Word knots Any text that is fed into Nine(9) is filtered by the computer. The program looks for words that are shared across parts of a Nine(9) map or - depending, of course, on the permissions structure - across archives. The words appear as links to another appearance of that word, or a variant of the word, a plural for instance. 3 On a normal website, links are hard-coded. That mean that they have to be specifically chosen to operate as links. In its use of text, Nine(9) allows links to occur as a natural outcropping of their commonality of usage. This doesn't mean of course that the same ideas are linked together. People might use the same words to say different things. The messy richness of words and the unsane rigour of computer logic mix here to trick each other up, make new conjunctures. fuller at xs4all.nl (matthew fuller) http://9.waag.org http://9.waag.org/Info From Harwood at scotoma.org Wed Mar 5 20:05:54 2003 From: Harwood at scotoma.org (Harwood) Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 14:35:54 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] THE PEOPLE BELOW THE SURFACE Message-ID: THE PEOPLE BELOW THE SURFACE ---------------------------------------------------------Josephine Bosma How to reflect upon the world? The artist collective Mongrel has developed a new tool for doing just that, a program called Nine(9). Instead of reflecting upon the world, this relatively easy to use program reflects the world quite literally in some ways. It was created for you and me, for the wo/man on the street so to speak. It was made to tell stories, personal stories or self invented histories. It could be called a virtual scrapbook, collective sketchbook or living photo album. The difference with many other on line diaries or meeting places is that the space of Nine(9) has no beginning or end, no top and no bottom, no fixed entry. We roam through the contents of Nine(9) like we roam our cities or our thoughts: a different starting point, a slight variety of trajectory and the possibility of new views almost every time. This is the world without a grand narrative, this is the world from multiple points of view. When you enter Nine(9) and start to feel your way around you will feel a bit lost the first couple of times you visit. All these pictures, clustered in groups of nines. Odd voids in the map. The slowness of your movements. Not knowing what lies ahead, or whether anything lies ahead at all. Yet there are people here, you discover. Voices, faces, views appear. You might stumble upon familiar faces even, like I did. The faces and stories of children, friends or neighbors start to form a personal trajectory, a storyline based upon your personal curiosity or interests. I entered Lani's world, the world of a three year old boy who came from London to live in the Bijlmer, one of Amsterdam's most unpopular neighborhoods. Through Lani's experiences I discovered that this unpopularity is, even to my surprise, largely based on prejudices and racism. I saw Lani's friends and learned about the occupation of their parents, the social structures in the Bijlmer and the state of environment there (often pleasantly small townish and green). Lani's mother Matsuko reveals it all for you in pictures and short texts. Her space in Nine(9) is only one example though, one of many. Some stories are personal, other people prefer to enter obscure underground art, and again others play with a combination of images, words, short films or sounds themselves. One can imagine Nine(9) to harbor reflections on politics or philosophy as well, which one can enter and perceive (by way of your storyline, that is) at wish. Walking or flying across the various maps of Nine(9) one is at the same time close to and distanced from their content. Mongrel has tried to create a structure without hierarchies, but not without power of the individual. Nine(9) is kaleidoscopic and endless. The repeated maps of nine stories within nine images form a rhythmic visual metamap in which all borders meet like on a globe. Or like on a giant Rubik's cube, if you will. Even if this creates a sense of space, it can also create a feeling of claustrophobia. This is enhanced by the apparent slowness in the navigation of the space. Yet after a while you get familiar with some of the maps and you develop a sense of where you are and how to get somewhere else. You keep strolling past the same pictures, bumping into the same maps here and there and you discover there is a way to make big leaps over them. Experiencing Nine(9) feels a bit contradictive at times, more even so then you already might have experienced browsing the web. It is a strange mixture of traveling places and meeting different people in one space. Yet where on the web the variety of form and design of the different web pages can create huge differences in (however subconscious) valuation of individual sites, redeeming their content more or less important depending on their either professional or clumsy appearance, Nine(9) almost entirely eradicates these differences. Entering one's story into Nine(9) means submitting to the wish of the Nine(9) designers to present everyone as equal, or to give everyone equal chances, in the battle for representation in a stressed attention economy. Picture after picture, map after map, glowing like stars in a dark sky, all information in this space is presented within the same modest frame. Even if the visual interface, the surface, is not the most important aspect in the end, it certainly is the most dominant in how you navigate and perceive everybody's stories in Nine(9). The first impression of Nine(9) is a visual one: that of many, many pictures, together yet distinct. Nine(9) is in some ways like a slow movie. A film played one image at the time, and you are the final editor. In a documentary for Dutch broadcaster VPRO called 'the end of television as we know it' someone working for the Disney corporation claimed that future communication would be image based, not text based. Even if this remark was mostly wishful thinking concerning Disney's market position in the future it probably contains more truth then some of us might care to admit. Yet already in the early 20th century people thought film, the wide distribution of moving images, would help us return to a "pre-Babel 'great human family", that film would bring people together. It only did so in an indirect, still faulty way. Even if Nine(9) can never be called a solution for the language problem between peoples (since solving that seems a utopian dream), it is a step in the right direction. There is an extra dimension to Nine(9), something film does not have, which is its relatively easy interface and its connection to the 'street' via the Mongrel workshops and events, in other words, it's accessability. Nine(9) was developed to demystify and unravel the world of electronic media. Nine(9)'s sober and anti hierarchic design can create very strong and interesting social spaces indeed. jesis at xs4all.nl (Josephine Bosma) http://9.waag.org http://9.waag.org/Info From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Wed Mar 5 20:10:46 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 14:40:46 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Europe Hacker Laws Could Make Protest a Crime In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030305144046.57012.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/05/international/europe/05BRUS.html?th March 5, 2003 Europe Hacker Laws Could Make Protest a Crime By PAUL MELLER RUSSELS, March 4 — The justice ministers of the European Union have agreed on laws intended to deter computer hacking and the spreading of computer viruses. But legal experts say the new measures could pose problems because the language could also outlaw people who organize protests online, as happened recently, en masse, with protests against a war in Iraq. The agreement, reached last week, obliges all 15 member states to adopt a new criminal offense: illegal access to, and illegal interference with an information system. It calls on national courts to impose jail terms of at least two years in serious cases. Critics from the legal profession say the agreement makes no legal distinction between an online protester and terrorists, hackers and spreaders of computer viruses that the new laws are intended to trap. Last Wednesday, protesters against a possible war against Iraq barraged the White House and Senate offices with tens of thousands of messages by phone, fax and e-mail, as part of what was billed as the first-ever "virtual protest march." Under the new agreement, if European Union citizens undertook a similar electronic bombardment of the e-mail, fax and phone lines of the British prime minister, Tony Blair, they might be liable for prosecution, said Leon de Costa, chief executive of Judicium, a legal consultancy based in London. The new code "criminalizes behavior which, until now, has been seen as lawful civil disobedience," Mr. de Costa said. Ulrich Sieber, a professor of law at Munich University, urged lawmakers to amend the code to add a specific reference to the right to free expression as outlined in the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Human Rights. Marco Cappato, a European Parliament deputy from Italy, said he failed to persuade the ministers to insert wording that differentiates between the online equivalent of trespassing and someone breaking and entering. The role of the European Parliament is consultative, so it cannot force changes to the law. A European Union diplomat involved in the drafting of the measures agreed that protection mechanisms in the code are soft and said that amendments could still be made. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From bulle_shah at hotmail.com Wed Mar 5 20:27:23 2003 From: bulle_shah at hotmail.com (Anand Vivek Taneja) Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2003 14:57:23 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: This is a brief(?) report of a part of day 3 of the crisis/media workshop. Which has been one of the most intellectually explosive sessions i've ever attended Anand Day 3, Plenary Session - Arundhati Roy - Peace is War: The Collateral Damage of Breaking News. In response to a question at the end of her presentation, about recovering the possibilites inherent in reportage, Arundhati Roy spoke of the 'laziness of the use of language'. How this laziness needed to be fought; how every sentence had to be honed and polished, how even a 200 word report had to be made a weapon - because 'they' aka 'the motherfuckers', (aka The World Bank the IMF and .......) steal and co-opt language to suit their own twisted ends. Crisis/Media, for me, has been working through certain trajectories over the past three days, coming up with ideas, and trying to express them, and this morning's Plenary was t the perfection of an idea that had been struggling for expression through a series of sessions. Language as a weapon. Honed. Polished. Language as an ally of thought, rather than its polite obfuscation. Shuddabrata Sengupta, who was chairing the session, reminded us of a term from The God of Small Things. Locusts Stand I. Who are you to say these things? is something that is always hurled at you to silence you. Exactly a year ago, it was used to send Arundhati to jail for one absurd day - who are you to ask/say these things? Locusts Stand I. Where do you stand when the locusts come flying? (Istand with the sons of Cain.) Metaphors, imagery, the play (and hard work) with words and phrases that turns them on their head. These are her weapons. Weapons which cut through the doublespeak of 'development reports' and the ranting report of the right wing; words which provoke all of us to think, and to find our own truths. Arundhati's presentation today, though self-admittedly more 'theoretical' than her past work, was no less powerful. Beginning from the Times of India selling space to wannabes on Page 3, through 9/11, to the shrinking space of Civil Disobdience and the self-fulfilling prophecy of 'Terrorism', to Peace is War, the importance of talking about everyday struggles; it was brilliant Theory, constantly informed by the realities that the Media ignores in its constant search for Crisis. The behemoth conglomerates of Old Media, though plagued by the buzzzing flies of 'New Media' (which can come up with minor irritants like the millions of anti-war marchers in 750 cities) keep lurching from Crisis to Crisis to satisfy its insatiable appetite for Spectacle; for Theatre. 'Crises' are disconnected from their context, from their historicity, and then dumped... Social Movements, Resistance Movements, are being sucked into crisis production, becuase if you don't have a crisis of your own, you're not in the news; if you're not in the news you don't exist. While 'real' crises, and those who suffer genuine socio-economic problems which are grounded in the real - are increasingly dealt with by brutal repression; 'symbolic' , virtual crises , like the ones created/fed by the Right Wing are given media coverage, denied to the real, and allowed to shift agendas in the country with a ridiculous ease. As Arundhati Roy said in the context of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, " People resisiting dams are suppoosed to conjure up new tricks, or give the struggle..." When victims refuse to be victims, they become terrorists. The space for genuine Civil Disobedience is is atrophying; conflated with the fear of 'Terrorism', is closing every avenue for non-violence protest - and leaving no choice to people to become 'Terrorists'. The solution to this? For the resistance movements to stop feeding the the media's endless appetite for theatre, and get back to the real issues. To recognise that for most people in the world, 'Peace is War.' That the daily struggles of existence are the more important struggles than the spectacles/spectres of War and Terrorism that the media/government create. To lose our fear of the mundane and to dwell on these struggles, to become 'Peace' Correspondents. In response to one of the questions, Arundhati spoke of 'normality' as being magical and celebrated in literature, and the need to blur the lines between literature and reprotage. This tied, for me, up with one of the themes of the first day, when shuddha had suggested poetry and a poetic form as a possible way of writing about violence; as an alternative to the 'objective', balanced report as news. (Hermann Goering - Tell the people they're being attacked, then denounce the peacemakers.) The Truth as Casualty - Yogendra Yadav, chairing the session, joked about mistaking the topic of the session for 'Truth' and 'Causality', the two things disapperaing in the social sciences. Though the jokes were followed by Ifthikar Gilani talking about his own, near farcical experiences with the Intelligence Bureau and the Courts, it wasn't funny. In the plenary, Arundhati Roy spoke of how we live in a judicial dictatorship and are unaware of it. Ifthikar Gilani was made painfully aware of this, when the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of Delhi refused to grant him bail for having in his posession a pamphlet of an independence movement in PoK, " for believing(?) in the liberation of Kashmir." Ifthikar Gilani went on to say that he was scared by the lack of judicial accountability, becuase he could get justice after only seven months having access to the media and the government in the capital of the country, but what would happen to the arbitrarily accused in the small towns of India without access to the portals of power? Gilani went on to point out that the new Freedom of Information Act, which was passed while he was in jail, does not override the draconian Sec. 5 of the Official Secrets Act, by which the mere posession of any document deemed to be dangeropus to National Security, could lead to the arrest of people, and their incarceration for upto fourteen years. He mentioned a sketch of Meerut Cantontment, which was planted on 4 different people... which had far less information which could be considered detrimental to national security, than issues of India Today which give maps and figures of troop deployments in border areas. Gilani also mentioned how his trail and incarceration were misprepresented by the media, particularly the Hindustan Times and the Pioneer, whose reporters gave entirely fictive accounts of the court proceedings and his 'confessions' of being an ISI agent and a terrorist plant. (Judges can be bought, why not journalists?) Anjali Mody's presentation on the 'willing suspension of disbelief' by the media, noted how the media now ignores the 'other side' of the story, which is a very basic tenet of the profession. This laziness, and the willing suspension of disbelief, has created the sense of a nation under siege, becuase the only source the media follows, particularly in the coverage of 'terrorism' is the government sources, which are shadowy, and 'non-verifiable'. The media cannot even think of the governemnt as a perpetrator of terror, something which is exclusively reserved for non-state actors, except for Pakistan. Anjali locates this failure of the media in the Information Culture present; in which Information is not free, but a state owned commodity, dispensed as a favour, so that even routine information dispesned by the government is valued. She also locates the media's 'laziness' in its class intersts, which make its goals the same as that of the state. Anjali spoke of the terrain of the 'encounter', which led well into the presentation of Vijay Nagraj of Amnesty International, who dwelt upon the the discursive power of the 'encounter', the extra judicial executions that we are all aware of. Vijay spoke of how the media reportage of these 'encounters' has done away with the words 'suspected' and 'alleged'. Now they are plain, unadorned terrrorists. Police lies become facts. The laziness of media language in reporting 'encounters', has lethal implications; delegitimizing an entire struggle. the truth as casualty. The media has completely ignored the 1997 directives of the NHRC, which call for an investigation of all police officers involved in an encounter. The police versions are now the truth. The 'lazy 'assumptions which led to the arrest of Ifthikar Gilani are part of the media's commonsense about all Kashmiri Muslims. Vijay warns us of worse things to come, like the Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003, to come out in the US, which by maintaining a blanket security policy for detainees, will in effect legitimize disapperance. And since repression has become globalised... Arun Mehta, in the same panel, spoke of the need for electronic forensics, especially when the major evidence presented in almost all the spectacular crises of the past two years or so, which have allowed governemts to kick up levels of repression and aggression; has been largely electronic in nature... the bin Laden tapes, the december 13 mobile intercepts, the West end tapes, etc. Arun Mehta noted, especially in the Tehelka case, how there were no standards for the presentation of electronic evidence, especially in the Tehelka tapes, and went on to highlight guildelines for accepting/using electronic evidence. The guildelines are simple - Good audio quality of recording is an essential, for it makes it much harder to distort content. Backup coipes of all evidence should be taken immediately, and distributed, to prevent police tampering. The public should have access to all these materials, unedited. The recording hardware should aslo remain untampered with; and accessible. Na Likhne ke Kaaran - In the Hindi session, 'Na Likhne ke Kaaran', the concerns about the media from the morning plenary, and the first session, as well as the preceding days, spilled over. The dissatisfaction which had followed Siddharth Vardarajan's absolvement (sort of) of the role of Editorial decision making in the finished product of the 'newspaper', even in times of crisis; was addressed by Abhay Dubey's short, punchy presentation. Abhay humurously traced the trajectory of how JANSATTA, a paper he worked for, transformed from a communal paper to a markedly secular paper, almost in one day - the 6th of December, 1992. Through this trajectory, he attempted to understand the role of the Editor in the functioning of the newspaper, and where the decision making power lay, to which all the other writing/expressions in the paper were reactions. Abhay thenpresented the triangular model of content-decision making and problematized it. instead of the triangle of Capital, Governemnt and Obstacles(e.g - Hindutva), he proposed a 4th corner to the Triangle, the made invisible corner of the Editor; whose say in the newspaper's policy is hidden under excuses of the disaggregated model of American newspaper policy. But the speech de resistance of the pre-lunch session was Rajendra yadav, speaking of 'Na Likhne ke Kaaran', 'Reasons not to Write...' . Rajendra Yadav's understated sarcasm and anecdotal style made for great listening. He was talking of why it is easy to be a status quoist, becuase everything you write abouty is a holy cow, so if you challenge something you are asking for trouble... more of the 'laziness of langauge'. It is better not to write if you can't challenge Religion, Family, Society or even Economiccs and Politics. (Which hasn't stooped Yadav from writing about any of these, and provocatively, in his long and chequered carreer) Ravikant, in his introduction, to Rajendra yadav, mentioned how despite Hans, which yadav edits, being a literaray magazine, it delas alo with the politics of the literature. This becomes more important to me as it highlights the theme of blurring the lines between literature and reportage... Rajendra ji spoke of huis unflinching commitment to rationalism and free thinking in the face of all kinds of obscurantism and the controversies he has created through his writing, especially the writings which have problematised the way all morality and patriarchy is located on the woman's body. On why na d how he went around defending MF Hussain in his writing, when the right wing was gunning for him - his was an a free-flowing and inspirational talk, in which he made it clear that the reasons not to write are the very reasons to write. At the end he spoke of why we leave abuses, Gaalis, out of our sanitsied discourse. Gaalis, particulalrly in Hindi and Punjabi, are one the most expressive forms of langauge we have, especially for those who use them as daily discourse. Rajendra-ji made a plea for the retention of abuse in literature. At the end of her presentation, Arundhati Roy re-deployed cheesy 'Titanic' in a beautiful metaphor. That we continue sailing on the Titanic, as it slides into the sea. Even as the third class passengers drown, the banquetting continues, even with decks tilted, becuase they know that the lifeboats ar reserved for club-class. And the motherfuckers may be right. The final edge to the weapon of language. The eloquence of abuse for those who deserve it. To paraphrase Shuddha, once again, We need to break the norms of polite, bourgeoise discourse. If you're reasonable today, you have to be strident, pasiionate, uncomfortable. Fuck you, motherfuckers. _________________________________________________________________ Cricket World Cup 2003- News, Views and Match Reports. http://server1.msn.co.in/msnspecials/worldcup03/ From prosperoscell at rediffmail.com Thu Mar 6 01:32:43 2003 From: prosperoscell at rediffmail.com (Souvik Mukherjee) Date: 5 Mar 2003 20:02:43 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] First Submission on Computer games and Interactive fiction Message-ID: <20030305200243.9598.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> And Alice Played A Video game: Alice, Harry Potter and the Computer Game: a study of the relationship between children's fantasy adventure stories and interactive computer games by Souvik Mukherjee How often one wishes to learn some magic and to be Peter Pan or Harry Potter or visit Wonderland with Alice! But, then again I often wonder, would their stories remain the same if I stepped into their roles? Would I have acted differently? And, would that have changed the narrative altogether? Then, what if every one of us wanted to 'be' Harry Potter, in his or her own separate way? Then what would happen to the infinity of Harry Potter stories, thus generated? The result we might expect would be chaos. The actual result, however, would be something else: it would be a computer game! In this paper I would like to propose that the multiple possibilities of narrative action in children's fiction, especially fantasies such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or the Harry Potter stories, bring these stories very close to computer games. I believe that certain sub-genres of children's fiction work with premises similar to the computer game as regards narrative flexibility and other features. A child's dream, as in Alice or in Hojoborolo, can create an unreal world full of constant activity as in computer games. These can be shown as prototypes for computer games or games in the making. I shall therefore take two children from fiction to compare the child in literature with the child in the game: Alice in Through the Looking Glass and Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (also known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone). The chief reason behind the choice is that they are both popular and representative of their respective centuries. The other reason is purely technical: both characters have been represented in eponymous computer games. I am here using the American McGee's Alice and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, both made by Electronic Arts, as examples of such games. Since I haven't as yet played the Harry Potter game, I shall use the Alice game for a first-hand account. I shall however use screenshots and game reviews to comment about both of them. But first let us see how a computer game actually works. The computer game consists of infinitely branching levels of narrative. The story changes from player to player. In fact, the player is both the author of the story as well as reader. Therefore very often, comparisons have been made with Jorge Luis Borges's short story The Garden of the Forked Paths or with hypertext and interactive fiction. The game does not follow narrative time: every action in it happens 'now'. Because of the innumerable possibilities involved, the game is distanced from reality. And it often evaluates the player's skill. Let us then build up a workable definition from these clauses: The computer game, then, is an activity taking place on the basis of formally defined rules, containing an evaluation of the efforts of the player and the story of which differs from player to player. When playing a game, the rest of the world is ignored. The American dramaturgist and computer theorist Brenda Laurel has extended the idea of stories to interact with and take part in in a more theoretical way. [1] In this proposed system, the computer program must take on the role as author while the game progresses. Any action by the player must lead to the system adapting the fictive world. According to the game designer Chris Crawford, computer games have four basic characteristics (Crawford 1982) [2]: 1. Representation: A game is a closed formal system that subjectively represents a subset of reality. (By subjective, Crawford means that a game is not necessarily trying to represent reality.) 2. Interaction: The game acknowledges and reacts to the player. (Unlike a puzzle, which simply lies still.) 3. Conflict: A game presupposes a conflict. This can be either between several players or between the players' goal and whatever prevents the player from reaching that goal. 4. Safety. The player is safe (in a literal sense) from the events in the game. (Gambling presents a special case, where the outcome of the game is designed to have impact in the real world.) To this fourfold definition, I will add a fifth clause: 5. The construction of narrative: as stated before, every game keeps constructing its own narrative. We will first look at the inherent game-like structure in both the stories of Alice and Harry Potter. Then we shall consider each of the five defining clauses of the formal computer game and see how applicable they are to the stories of Alice and Harry, and thereby to some types of children's fiction. Before that, however, we could possibly look at a few other types of literature and see how closely they resemble the computer game. I have concentrated on children's fiction set in fantasy environments and not on 'serious' children's fiction. Children like Oliver Twist or Little Nell are essential part of an emotional and realistic environment. Hence they have no place in the computer game. The real world excludes a large number of choices, which can be made in the fantasy world. As Humpty Dumpty says to Alice, 'When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean'. You couldn't do that in the real world, could you? As for emotions, I do not think any extant computer game can accommodate what E. M. Forster calls a 'round' character. Instead there is, a rather flat character whose involvement in the plot is not emotional, but rather a matter of exploring a world, solving problems, performing actions, competing against enemies, and above all dealing with objects in a concrete environment. This kind of involvement is much closer to playing a computer game than to living a Victorian novel or a Shakespearean drama. Certain other types of narration have often been cited as being very close to the game-structure, namely science fiction and the cinema. My argument would be that these do not show an equal degree of interactivity to the game, or for that matter the children's fantasy. I shall elaborate on this later on, when I look at interactivity separately. Most children's fiction, however, shows a game-structure to some extent. Let us see how. Both Alice and Harry are playing games in their respective stories. Through the Looking Glass can be looked at as a chess game in progress. Lewis Carroll himself comments on the playability of his story: 'As the chess-problem, given on the next page, has puzzled some of my readers, it may be well to explain that it is correctly worked, so far as the moves are concerned.' [my italics] This comment makes the game associations of his book even more obvious. In fact, both Alice books are based on games. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland could be seen as a kind of card game, and we have already spoken of Through the Looking Glass. Besides the cards and the chess games, they also contain plenty of mathematical puzzles and word games. Being awfully bad at maths, I would not dare bother you with mathematical problems. Speaking instead of word-games, Humpty Dumpty's analysis of the Jabberwocky poem is a famous example: "To 'gyre' is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To 'gimble' is to make holes like a gimlet." "And "the wabe' is the grass plot round a sundial, I suppose?" said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity. "Of course it is. It's called 'wabe', you know because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it . . . " "And a long way beyond it on each side," Alice added. "Exactly so. Well, the 'mimsy' is 'flimsy and miserable' (there's another portmanteau for you)." Both Humpty and Alice are playing with English words and juggling with them to create new ones. The reading of the Jabberwocky poem is also a game. Alice uses a mirror to read it and finds a poem, which resembles English. But there could be plenty of other ways to look at it. There could also be an utter failure to make anything out of it. Other than these the books are replete with all sorts of games: there is croquet, a caucus-race and a mock-chivalric joust. Like the many games in the Alice books, Quidditch in Harry Potter seems to contain many games in one, perhaps a combination of hang-gliding, hockey, and bungee jumping. And Harry loves quidditch; there are over three games of quidditch played in the first book alone. As in Through the Looking Glass here too there are games of chess, called wizard chess, being played. Harry's best friend, Ron Weasley is a past master of this game. In the Harry Potter stories, games actually play a major part in problem-solving. In the first book, two of the spells guarding the philosopher's stone involve game playing. Harry has to play one of his best games of quidditch to gain the key to the door. The door itself opens to reveal another game: this time, a huge set of wizard chess where the huge pieces actually destroy themselves. To cross the floor they have to checkmate the white king and conquer the white army, which guards the passage. ''It's obvious, isn't it?" says Ron. "We've got to play our way across the room." Like all games, the games played in these books have their objectives. It might be to cross a passage as in the last example, or to go to a new place as in Through the Looking Glass, or simply to win house points for Gryffindor as in Harry's quidditch matches. Similarly, the story as a whole has its objective: to destroy Voldemort's evil plans in Harry Potter and for Alice, to become a queen or simply to go home. Now it would be instructive to compare this with the computer game per se. This too has its objective: victory or the maximum points scored. If the game evaluates the player, Harry Potter in the story is also being constantly evaluated and keeps gaining or losing house-points. The formal set of rules that form the base of the computer game can be compared to the basic conventions of the fictional narrative. We said earlier that while playing a game the rest of the world is ignored. This is evident both in Alice and in Harry Potter. The definition we prepared for the computer game is therefore equally true of these books. What remains now is to consider the five clauses which were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the computer game, namely: representation, interactivity, narrative construction, conflict and safety. About the representation of a subset of reality, I do not have much to say. The Harry Potter story has a quasi-real environment, which is a 'not-so-well-known part of England'. But it is there and even has its own ministry - the ministry of magic. The same goes for Alice. Interactivity of games and narratives has long been a controversial topic. Questions of how interactive a game or a book can be are matters of dispute. But that the computer game, at least, is to some extent interactive has been accepted. Once I start a game, I can control the fate of my narrative. I keep interacting with a set of rules and thereby make my own changes and augmentations to a narrative existing only in its shell, as in the base narrative told at the beginning of games like American McGee's Alice and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. This interactivity is not present in normal forms of fiction where there is no possibility of intruding into the plot. Nor would it be possible in the movie or in science fiction as much as in children's fiction like Harry Potter that involves fantasy and a game-structure as shown earlier. For example Harry Potter has to work out a riddle for reaching the philosopher's stone. He has to discover a hidden set of rules by which he changes his story in his favour. In other forms of narrative, barring some forms of science fiction [3], the possibilities of change are far the lesser. Not so in the Harry Potter stories. Hogwarts literally keeps changing itself. The staircases keep moving and changing places. Doors pretend to be walls. Paintings move from canvas to canvas. On top of everything, there is Peeves the poltergeist to confuse you. Similarly, in Wonderland Alice finds no help in the Cheshire cat when she asks for directions: "In that direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: and in that direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad." But there are always plenty of possibilities present: if the staircase had not confused him, Harry would never have discovered the secret door guarded by the three-headed dog. The story could then have been entirely different. Had Alice not played the chess-game the way she did the story could have taken a different turn. She could either have won the game in more than the eleven moves, which make up her story or she could have lost all her pieces. It is just that both Harry Potter and Alice have used the numerous choices available to construct their stories as we read them now. The errant staircase could have behaved itself in the Philosopher's Stone and Alice could have proved a less competent chess-player. For that matter, so could Ron Weasley. God knows what would have happened then. I can, however, give you one alternative. For this I must tell you a story: The White Rabbit popped up every now and then and told me, 'Don't dawdle Alice. We must be on our way'. And guess who was my guide! it was the Cheshire cat. And as can be expected, it ditched me whenever I needed advice and vanished into thin air. Suddenly two chessmen attacked me: the knight charged and the castle blocked my way. Luckily, I found the vorpal sword in time and killed them both. Now was the time to set out and kill the Jabberwocky. But I believe, I had been a trifle careless and a red pawn cut my head off with an axe. And before I had fully realized what had happened I heard, as I had heard so many times, the Hatter's insane laugh and once again the game was over. This, though I am a rather bad storyteller, is not entirely my own concoction. Yet in a way, it is. This was just one outcome of my playing the game called the American McGee's Alice, which I have already introduced. The basic plot might belong to the game but the choices which take it further are mine. And even if I might not have realized it, I was constructing an entirely new narrative while playing. Let us now discuss the other chief clause that we have spoken of: the construction of the narrative. In the process let me introduce the basic story of the two computer games, for those of us who are not already familiar with them. For this purpose I shall use game reviews published in popular gaming magazines or web sites. TechTV, a computer game-oriented web site comments: The key to this game's success is its simplicity. You navigate through Harry Potter with the arrow keys or, occasionally, the mouse. Gameplay is in the third person and your view is fixed over Harry's shoulder, his Hogwarts cloak flapping in the wind behind him. The game begins with a quick voice-over synopsis of the story's opening events. Gameplay kicks in after the Sorting Hat places Harry (at his request) in Gryffindor. Next we meet Albus Dumbledore, who invites Harry to explore the castle but reminds him not to be late for class. The game then takes on a tutorial tone as Harry explores Hogwarts and its environs and learns how to cast spells and navigate the puzzles he'll face later. In other words, this game is about jumping puzzles, timing puzzles, and exploration - all very simple and not at all challenging. There is no death here, only the prospect of Harry fainting and having to restart. Instead of posing a challenge, Harry Potter offers variety and charm. It never lets you stay in one place for long. One minute you're engaged in jumping puzzles, the next you're levitating giant statuary onto platforms, and then you're riding a broom . . . I've already spoken about the Alice game, but the Electronic Arts Review would perhaps be of some more help: When Alice answers a distressed summons to return to Wonderland, she barely recognizes the befouled setting. From the fungal rot of the Mushroom Forest to the infernal chemistry of the Mad Hatter's Domain and beyond, Wonderland festers to its core. Undaunted by the diseased ambience, cavernous confusion, and mortal danger that surround her, Alice must undo the chaos. Equipped with courage, a keen appetite for the bizarre, and a lethal array of transmogrified toys, she'll penetrate the strongholds of her enemies, confront the forces of evil, and put the wicked Queen of Hearts in her place. In this game, of course, one finds the basic plot of the Alice stories given a different twist. As far as I have been able to play it, all the characters from the book are there, but the hints of evilness in the Queen of Hearts and the madness of the Hatter and the March Hare have been given a diabolic twist. For regular gamers this game is scarcely different from the 3-d shooting games (first-person-shooters) like Doom or Quake. Both games involve constant action. The action is dependent on the player's choice. If the player's interpretation of the situation differs then he makes different choices. These choices determine what puzzle he must solve and in what time sequence. Together with that there is the constant risk of failure. As in my case, where the white pawn attacks me from behind. There is also the chance of getting lost in the game world if one strays onto the wrong path. This is again reminiscent of Borges's The Garden of Forked Paths. Borges makes his character, the famous sinologist Stephen Albert say, 'time forks perpetually towards innumerable futures'. The narrative in the game too, forks towards innumerable futures. In this sense the game has also been compared to the hypertext. The hypertext theorist David Bolter claims that when Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish argue that the reader constitutes the text in the act of reading, they are describing hypertext. If that is so, then the reader-response theory can also be applied to the computer game. Of course, the reader-response theory itself has several positions within it, so this might prove difficult. We could possibly apply Fish's theory, that the reader creates the entire text, to the computer game. Instead of 'creates' perhaps one should say 'recreates' because the game is not completely free of the base narrative. This would then bring us to a question of control over the narrative. Game design theory talks of controlled access vis-à-vis random access. Controlled access refers to the series of choices which govern the game, and random access to the element of uncertainty plus the base plot of the game. it is only with a balance of the two that a narrative can be properly constructed. I would argue that even in the books, Alice and Harry try to maintain this balance as they play along their respective game patterns and construct their stories. Let us take an example from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Harry has suddenly been moved from the human world to the wizarding world by the giant Hagrid. This is an instance of random access. Whoever knew that the boy from Privet Drive had magical powers! That he has to go to Hogwarts and join the sorting ceremony is compulsory. Such events in the book correspond to the basic rules of the game. But when he puts on the sorting hat a different thing happens. He makes a desperate mental effort to exercise his choice not to join the Slytherins. This is controlled access. Harry Potter has made a controlled choice. Therefore even in narrative construction, the book has some similarities with the games. The next things to consider would be the penultimate and ultimate clauses of our comparison: conflict and safety. Without conflict there cannot be any fun in achieving your objective. And fun is essential to any game. It is the reason why we play. This is one area where both the Harry Potter books and the game are the most similar. In both of these there is the major conflict with Voldemort and certain minor conflicts between Draco Malfoy and Harry, or with the ever-wrathful Snape. In the American McGee's Alice game, the conflict is simple: almost every creature in the diabolic Wonderland is an enemy. The conflict in the Alice books, however, is more difficult to define. Robert Polhemus in his essay Play, Nonsense, Games: Comic Diversion has this to say about the nonsense in Carroll: But there is an equally strong hostile impulse in nonsense - the desire to satirize the senselessness of the world. The Red Queen sums it up: 'you may call it 'nonsense' if you like . . . but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!' As usual in Carroll, what at first seems self-enclosed is in another light, mimetic and referential. The nonsense poem A-sitting on a gate says in effect that there are things in Wordsworth's Resolution and Independence just as absurd as anything the white knight can devise." The conflict in the Alice books is against society and a backdrop of nonsense veils it. [4] Safety in a computer game implies both the players literal safety from the violence in the game and the apparent distance from the rest of the world while playing. In the literal sense, we must admit, neither Alice nor Harry are safe from the action in their stories. In fact, Harry comes out of it badly injured after his encounter with Voldemort. But as far as the distance from the outside world is concerned, we must remember that when Harry fights Quirrell, he is completely alone. As for Alice, she is in a strange world of dreams and the outside world is far away as long as she is asleep. We have seen the intrinsic similarities of these two books with their counterparts in computer games and with the structure of computer games, in general. Analysed in terms of the defining clauses of such games, these books reveal many similarities. Many of the clauses have been as easily applied to these books as to games. Like the player of the computer games, both Harry and Alice create and simultaneously read their own stories. The story as we currently have it in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and in Through the Looking Glass can then be seen as one played game among the infinite playable games possible. Among the latter, even my own abortive Alice game finds its place. Here I would like to point out that some children's books capitalized on their game-like narrative flexibility long before video games were conceived of. At a recent seminar on the History of the Book, Dr. Alexis Tadie drew attention to a parallel story narrated in the marginalia of a British soldier's copy of Kim [5]. The fact that the story of Kim can be read also as a Tommy's life-story is intriguing, indeed. In effect, then, perhaps the soldier who possessed that copy of Kim was playing 'the Great Game' mentioned in the novel, in his own way. Thus we can see how certain types of children's fiction can be looked at as proto-computer games. And though unlike computer games in that they tell just one story at a time, they are similar because they contain numerous other potential narratives. I would like to conclude by saying that the child in the book looks forward to the child in the game and thereby to an ideal inexhaustible narrative. Bibliography: Texts: Lewis Carroll. Through the Looking Glass. [available online] J K Rowling. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. (also known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone) Rudyard Kipling. Kim [available online] Jorge Luis Borges. The Garden of Forked Paths Sukumar Ray. Hojoborolo (English trans. by Dr. Sukanta Chaudhuri) Games: American McGee's Alice. Electronic Arts Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Electronic Arts Game reviews: TechTV. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone review EA (Electronic Arts). American McGee's Alice review Nintendo. GameBoy review of American McGee's Alice Books: Blake, Kathleen: Play, Sport and Games Brooks, Peter: Reading for the Plot. Knopf, New York, 1984. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Bush, Vannevar: As we may think. 1945. [Project Gutenberg] Crawford, Chris: The Art of Computer Game Design. 1982, electronic version Fish, Stanley: Is There a Text in This Class? Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980. Iser, Wolfgang. The role of the Reader Juuls, Jesper. Games telling stories. (jesper juul: text) King, Geoff. Narrative and Spectacle: Video games and Hollywood Landow, George P.: Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology 1992. Laurel, Brenda (ed.): The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990 Lesnie-Oberstein, Karin. Fantasy, Childhood and Literature: in pursuit of wonderlands McGann, Jerome. The Rationale of the Hypertext [available online] Platt, Charles: Interactive Entertainment. I Wired 3.09 Polhemus, Robert. Play, Nonsense, and Games: Comic Diversion. References: 1 . Brenda Laurel (ed.): The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990 pp.135-42 2 Chris Crawford: The Art of Computer Game Design. 1982, electronic version 3 The concept of Time travel is especially worth mentioning in this context. The classic example , of course, is H.G.Wells's The Time Machine 4 Johan Huizinga mentions the Halsrätsel (roughly translated as 'neck-riddle') as a form of the rather dangerous medieval 'game'. I believe a comparison with the Halsrätsel and the Queen of Hearts' frequent "Off with her head" would be instructive in this context. 5 Dr. Alexis Tadie of the University of Paris mentions this in his paper at the Book History Seminar, Jadavpur University, Calcutta. http://www.telegraphindia.com/archive/1020211/the_east.htm prospero's cell wishes you a happy and magical time. From subhajitc at rediffmail.com Thu Mar 6 11:43:39 2003 From: subhajitc at rediffmail.com (Subhajit Chatterjee) Date: 6 Mar 2003 06:13:39 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Independent Research Project Posting 3 Message-ID: <20030306061339.2529.qmail@webmail7.rediffmail.com> Sarai Posting 3 Given the outline of my reflections on romance in the city , I would now like to take up an issue that is more discursive and a matter of popular debate. I have tried to point out how urban spaces are used by inhabitants for purposes that are at odds with their intended function. Now of course the case is not so simple as it seems because the legal and social apparatus has its own way of conceptualizing and/or surveillance of intimate encounters within the city. Before coming to concrete instances and city spaces in Kolkata I would like to reflect on the legal aspect of this issue and it's representation in literature where the problem is narrated in more psychological terms. Let's take an instance from literature this time before coming down to legal aspects. Bengali literature , for instance has a number of examples particularly short stories which articulate such cultural experience of the city. Dipen Bandopadhyaya's 'Ashawamedher Ghora' (The Horse of Ashwamedha), is a typical example of modernist storytelling that incorporates a thoroughly urban sensibility. The tale begins with a couple walking in the city. As I have stated in my earlier posting this used to be and remains one of the most active phase of amorous life of Bengali middle class. So this couple Kanchan and Rekha , are legally married but have not been able to acquire social sanction from the wife's family due to economic problems of the husband and the caste difference. So until Kanchan is able to manage a climb up the economic ladder, the couple is condemned to meet in secrecy like lovers that they were earlier. Since the 'private' is simply unavailable in concrete terms they resort to the streets as usual walking mostly, stopping to chat at small restaurants and sometimes taking rides across the city by buses and maybe taxi when they can afford it. The story describes one such regular stroll when the couple decided to ride a horse drawn carriage in Central Calcutta from Esplanade to Khiderpore. They move on to the carriage after much bargaining and amidst the journey the driver pulls down the side curtain thereby creating a really private space for the first time. As the couple contemplate their privacy and attempt to resist their erotic impulses, the ride comes to an end . When they get down and offer the decided fare the driver demands much more than that. On being asked the reason he sneers caustically " you'll had fun and now don't even want to pay the hotel charge." Such transformation of public places into 'hotels' is a common phenomena in many cities where restaurants have private cabins with curtains or even in Kolkata boats across the Ganges have a place in the middle more or less secluded from the public gaze. Taxi's also are more often used for erotic purposes by lovers and also clients dealing with flying sex workers. But such spaces are always prone to verbal or gestural harrassment from various sources. Under tipped waiters in restaurants for example, might just barge in the cabin destroying the intimate moment. Not to mention the lewd whistles or comments that might follow an intimate couple in a taxi. But this story also representations an anxiety that is more abstract. The story alternates between objective narration and first person narration of Kanchan often fusing the two smoothly to complicate the source of enunciation. Thus the narrator's voice often unsuspectingly gives way with Kanchan's subjective first person musings about his amorous situation and his failure to take up social responsibility . Quite curious is the way in which his hatred is directed at the city itself which is represented as a hostile, claustrophobic and virulent entity. At one point while the couple walk down the narrator describes through Kanchan's voice : " some unknown fear started following me - I remembered the registrar's chamber - small, congested, remembered the restaurant cabin --- small, congested, remembered the stairs of the bus-small , congested, remembered the bedroom -- small , congested. I was almost breathless." Just after the curtains are put down in the carriage detaching them from the world the narrator describes : "the two sat absolutely quiet. None of them could look at the other .What a strange situation! We were searching for desolate place where we could sit intimately. The city of Calcutta does not have such private space. We searched for time when we could be extremely close. We can't have time in our life. We were searching for a sphere where we could be sovereign rulers. Our times does not allow us such a sphere. Still today, still what .. still in this way --- the closed carriage moves, it's raining outside, today is our first marriage anniversary. My wife Rekha - with God as witness-lawful wife ". Such anxieties regarding the city spills over to Kanchan's perception of people in general which again invokes the imagined city . " Kanchan was irritated because the smile of the bloodshot eyes the horse carriage driver seemed unreasonable and obscene. But his recollected images of horse carriages from foreign novels and Madhusudan Datta's History of Calcutta was of an entirely different shape." I will come back again to this real and imagined city that the couple has to negotiate in various forms but right now I shall focus on the question of harassment that the story draws attention to. A signboard in front of a church in Goa that I have just visited claims that the premises of the church (constituting of some roads, some small lawns adorned with tress and benches etc.) is holy. Therefore no unholy activities are permitted on the premises. The curious part is that while describing such 'unholy' activities the board specifies activities by couples and other people. While 'activities by other people' is generally an unclear notion one can easily imagine what such activities refer to in case of couples. Of course this might not actually be a public area in technical terms but some such unwritten laws are operable in public places as well particularly in parks, amusement centers , metro stations, libraries, or even museums etc. The question that is usually raised pertains to the problem of availability of spaces for the amorous couple. The issue, as evident from the story discussed above, is obviously more relevant in a post-colonial nation -state like India where ties with pre modern modes of social organization is still operative and the state happens to be only one of the power points that overlooks interpersonal social organizations. The dissent is thus related to a double harrassment : one by the pre modern forms of symbolic surveillance that would deny fully articulated privacy to the unmarried couple (in some instances even to the married couple) and the legal machinery's surveillance over spaces which by definition are public spaces. The latter issue is directly related to everyday cases of police harrassments coupled with harassment of local youth groups or even 'goondas' (thugs) who have their own forms of authority of spaces termed in regional languages as a 'para' (locality). So let us first look at the legal domain to investigate what actually gives authority and agency to the police. Well, as I tried to look into the matter, at first sight there is no such law that actually prohibits physical intimacy of heterosexual couples. Below I give the records which I found relevant in this context : Section 268. Offences Affecting the Public Health, Safety, Convenience, Decency and Morals. A person is guilty of a public nuisance who does any act or is guilty of an illegal omission which causes any common injury, danger or annoyance to the public or to the people in general who dwell or occupy property in the vicinity, or which must necessarily cause injury, obstruction, danger or annoyance to persons who may have occasion to use any public right. A common nuisance is not excused on the ground that it causes some convenience or advantage. Section 294. Obscene acts and songs Whoever, to the annoyance of others- (a) does any obscene act in any public place, or (b) sings, recites or utters any obscene song, ballad or words, in or near any public place, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three months, or with fine, or with both. It is to be noted that these are the only laws that in any way can be mobilized to harass intimate couples in public spaces. While neither actually mentions any consensual intimate acts such as holding hands, touching parts of each others body or kissing, both of them vaguely ascribes offence to acts which are immoral or obscene in a social sense. Now obviously the catch phrases are 'obscene acts' which can cause 'annoyance to people who may use public space as a matter of right.'. Both the descriptions are suitably vague and open to interpretation and therefore necessarily take recourse to some sense of agreed social consensus about public morality. How then does the police invoke this social agreement with which the victims might disagree given that the definition of obscenity is not clearly stated? Here comes the addendum from regional police acts : PREVENTIVE ACTION OF THE POLICE 149.Police to prevent cognizable offences.- Every police officer may interpose for the purpose of preventing, and shall, to the best of his ability, prevent, the commission of any cognizable offence. Here the operative term is 'cognizable offence' which gives the authority of interpretation to the policeman concerned at least for immediate pick up or arrest. This of course is sufficient condition for harassment because in such cases it is not of interest to either parties to drag the matter to court but to settle the issue through bribery : 'extortion' is a better word to describe the situation. But my concern is the general anxiety in relation to urban spaces that gets articulated in everyday oral accounts that describe experience or cases of harassment or is represented in more abstract terms in cinema and literature. The intention is to bring out a more complex web of cultural anxieties that is veiled by what at first sight seems to be a progressive argument for a right to privacy. For this we need to look at a concrete case which I shall come to in the next posting. References : 1.Ashawamedher Ghora( The Horse of Ashwamedha) by Dipen Bandopadhayay in Samaresh Majumdar (ed.) Eksho Bochorer Sera Golpo(Best Stories in Hundred Years ,Kolkata:Mitra and Ghosh 2. The Indian Penal Code , Justice M Hindyatullah and V.R.Manokar, 27th edition,1992. 3.Bhat's Criminal major Acts, 2nd edition by D.N.Sen,Delhi: Bharat Law House,1996,2001. SUBHAJIT CHATTERJEE From douwe at oberon.nl Thu Mar 6 15:49:17 2003 From: douwe at oberon.nl (douwe at oberon.nl) Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 11:19:17 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] non-citizens of the US In-Reply-To: <20030304031347.58610.qmail@web41107.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Actually, I think in most countries you *can* be stripped of your citizenship for high treason, so it is not something fundmentally new. Still scary though. Douwe > -----Original Message----- > From: reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net > [mailto:reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net]On Behalf Of Rana Dasgupta > Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 4:14 AM > To: reader-list at sarai.net > Subject: [Reader-list] non-citizens of the US > > > referring to a leaked draft of bush administration's > Domestic Security Enhancement Act. > > includes the idea that US citizens could be stripped > of their citizenship and thrown out. they would be > non-citizens of everywhere. anywhere. whatever. > > the world seems to throw up more and more of these > surreal thoughts at the moment. only expressible with > twisted double negative phrases. > > R > > > > Patriot Act's Big Brother > by David Cole > > http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030317&s=cole > > In early February, the Center for Public Integrity > disclosed a leaked draft of the Bush Administration's > next round in the war on terrorism--the Domestic > Security Enhancement Act (DSEA). The draft > legislation, stamped Confidential and dated January 9, > 2003, appears to be in final form but has not yet been > introduced in Congress. Presumably the Administration > had determined that the timing would be more > propitious for passage--meaning less propitious for > reasoned debate--after we go to war with Iraq. But it > is one thing to play politics with the timing of a > farm bill; it is another matter to do so with a bill > that would radically alter our rights and freedoms. > > If the Patriot Act was so named to imply that those > who question its sweeping new powers of surveillance, > detention and prosecution are traitors, the DSEA takes > that theme one giant step further. It provides that > any citizen, even native-born, who supports even the > lawful activities of an organization the executive > branch deems "terrorist" is presumptively stripped of > his or her citizenship. To date, the "war on > terrorism" has largely been directed at noncitizens, > especially Arabs and Muslims. But the DSEA would > actually turn citizens associated with "terrorist" > groups into aliens. > > They would then be subject to the deportation power, > which the DSEA would expand to give the Attorney > General the authority to deport any noncitizen whose > presence he deems a threat to our "national defense, > foreign policy or economic interests." One federal > court of appeals has already ruled that this standard > is not susceptible to judicial review. So this > provision would give the Attorney General unreviewable > authority to deport any noncitizen he chooses, with no > need to prove that the person has engaged in any > criminal or harmful conduct. > > A US citizen stripped of his citizenship and ordered > deported would presumably have nowhere to go. But > another provision authorizes the Attorney General to > deport persons "to any country or region regardless of > whether the country or region has a government." And > failing deportation to Somalia (or a similar place), > the Justice Department has issued a regulation > empowering it to detain indefinitely suspected > terrorists who are ordered deported but cannot be > removed because they are stateless or their country of > origin refuses to take them back. > > Other provisions are designed to further insulate the > war on terrorism from public and judicial scrutiny. > The bill would authorize secret arrests, a practice > common in totalitarian regimes but never before > authorized in the United States. It would terminate > court orders barring illegal police spying entered > before September 11, 2001, without regard to the need > for judicial supervision. It would allow secret > government wiretaps and searches without even a > warrant from the supersecret Foreign Intelligence > Surveillance Court when Congress has authorized the > use of force. And it would give the government the > same access to credit reports as private companies, > without judicial supervision. Historically, we have > imposed a higher threshold, and judicial oversight, on > government access to such private information, because > government has the motive and the wherewithal to abuse > the information in ways private companies generally do > not. > > But the trajectory of the war on terrorism is probably > best illustrated by an obscure provision that would > eliminate the distinction between domestic terrorism > and international terrorism for a host of > investigatory purposes. The Administration's argument > sounds reasonable enough--terrorism is terrorism, > whether it's within the United States or has an > international component. But in the Patriot Act > debates, the Administration argued that it should be > afforded broader surveillance powers over > "international terrorism" because such acts are > simultaneously a matter of domestic law enforcement > and foreign intelligence. Because foreign intelligence > gathering has traditionally been subject to looser > standards than criminal law enforcement, the > government argued, the looser standards should extend > to domestic investigations of "international > terrorism." But now it proposes to extend the same > loose standards to investigations of wholly domestic > crimes. > > The DSEA's treatment of expatriation and domestic > terrorism are harbingers of things to come. Thus far, > much of the war on terrorism has been targeted at > foreign nationals and sold to the American people on > that ground. Americans' rights are not at stake, the > argument goes, because we're concerned with > "international" crime committed mostly by "aliens." > With the DSEA, however, the Administration seeks to > transgress both the alien-citizen line, by turning > citizens into aliens for their political ties, and the > domestic-international line, extending to wholly > domestic criminal-law-enforcement tools that were > previously reserved for international terrorism > investigations. > > How will Congress respond? Thus far, when citizens' > rights have been directly threatened, Congress has > taken civil liberties seriously. Most recently, it > blocked the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness > data-mining program. But it blocked it only as applied > to US citizens. As long as the Pentagon violates only > foreign nationals' privacy, Congress in effect said, > Go ahead. But that tactic--protecting citizens' rights > while ignoring those of foreign nationals--is > untenable, not only on moral grounds but because if > the Administration gets its way, we are all > potentially "aliens." > > > __________________________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more > http://taxes.yahoo.com/ > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > From avinash332 at rediffmail.com Wed Mar 5 22:57:31 2003 From: avinash332 at rediffmail.com (avinash kumar) Date: 5 Mar 2003 17:27:31 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: <20030305172731.12032.qmail@webmail7.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030305/12bc480e/attachment.pl From sam at media.com.au Fri Mar 7 09:46:42 2003 From: sam at media.com.au (sam-de-silva) Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 15:16:42 +1100 Subject: [Reader-list] Anti terrorism and spying on peace activists Message-ID: <200303071516.42014.sam@media.com.au> hi, this may be of interest - its a story by alex kouttab a local commentator ... --- Australia, its anti-terrorism legislation and the isolation of the Arab and Islamic community by Alexander Kouttab "alexander kouttab" The transformation of Australia into a 'police state' continues unabated, despite the limited success of those who have campaigned against Australia's proposed 'anti-terrorism' laws since they were first introduced after 9/11. The laws allow for individuals to be detained without trial, and in their original format, those detained would be held incommunicado, denied the right to legal representation, denied the right to silence (refusal to answer questions carries a 5 year prison term) and their detention could be continued indefinately. No special provisions were made for children and the only concession that the government has made since the laws were first proposed, is that children under the age of 14 won't be strip searched. As worrying as this blatent erosion of basic civial liberties is, the grounds for detaining someone are even more worrying. An individual detained doesn't have to be suspected of belonging to a designated 'terrorist' organisation or of being involved in terrorist activities - they only have to be suspected of maybe having information about possible terrorist activities in Australia or abroad. Many have pointed out that the selective definition/charge of terrorism has its own politics - one that strenuously excludes the links that should be made between the modern state, state warfare and state terrorism. It is also no coincidence that the map of America's 'war against terrorism' is tailored to first world-third world relations and the divide that still separates coloniser from colonised. Terrorism is so ideologically overloaded with Hollywood stereotypes and images of the fanatic which implicate all Arabs and Muslims as possible terrorists solely by virtue of their ethnic and/or religious background, that it should not be hard to guess which communities 'the authorities' will swoop upon as fertile beds of possible information about the less than plausible chance of terrorist activity here in Australia. ====================================== Spy force eyes radicals > By Mark Dunn > 07Mar03 > > SECRET spy dossiers on radicals and religious extremists have been compiled by a Victoria Police special squad since the US and Bali terrorist attacks > > The Herald Sun has learned that hundreds of suspect Victorians have been investigated by Victoria Police's Security Intelligence Group, formerly known as Special Branch. > Covert operations also include monitoring Islamic associations and Muslim youth groups. > > Freedom of Information documents reveal an SIG targeting committee decides whether to infiltrate radical groups, monitor their activities and build dossiers on members. > > Since September 2001, the spy force has: > > MONITORED the Australian Muslim Students and Youth conference on Islamic re-awakening, which touched on terrorism and September 11 events. > > PROBED security incidents linked to the Bali bombings at the Stock Exchange, Parliament House, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Defence Department and Crown casino. > > MONITORED the large Iraqi community in the Shepparton area. > > ASSESSED security at CSL Parkville to guard against "bio-terrorism hazard issues" and listed all radiological and chemical storages in Melbourne. > > HELPED overseas investigators in February 2002, possibly the FBI, on an international terrorism matter in Melbourne. > > REMOVED car registration records of US diplomatic staff from VicRoads data bases and ran security checks on all guests at the US Consul-General's Melbourne home. > > IDENTIFIED and profiled members of Melbourne's controversial Black Shirts group. > > Victoria Police would not comment last night. > > For the SIG to legally compile dossiers and conduct covert operations, there must be a "proven or believed" involvement in, or planning for, a political, religious or ideologically motivated crime. > > The SIG can also initiate undercover surveillance if an individual has a criminal history linked to political or religious violence that goes "beyond lawful protest". > > In 1998 almost half of 20,000 intelligence files at police headquarters were destroyed because they were more than 10 years old or were irrelevant. > > In 1983 the Cain government ordered the destruction of many of the 9300 files then kept by the former Special Branch. > > It is unknown how many were kept and police will not say how many have been created since the beginning of the war on terror in 2001. > > The SIG reports show that environmental, racial and humanitarian activists are kept under surveillance. The special squad: > > KEPT files on members of the International Socialist Organisation and Socialist Alternative involved in globalisation demonstrations and protests against Nike. > > IDENTIFIED and profiled members of Melbourne's controversial Black Shirts, a militant fathers' rights group. > > MONITORED members protesting against monkey experiments at Melbourne and Monash universities and threats against researchers. > > ASSESSED members of the Animal Humane Society believed to be behind vandalism in a fight to save bats at Melbourne's Botanical Gardens. > > MONITORED the Refugee Action Collective and other refugee advocates who ran regular protests at the Maribyrnong Detention Centre. > > LAID charges of threats to kill against two members of the Hindu community and assessed racial tensions as "extremely volatile" in Melbourne's Tamil-Sri Lankan community. > > INVESTIGATED threats against TAC officials and a government minister. > > PROVIDED assessments and surveillance of anti-logging groups. > > The SIG's so-called Team Two handled the bulk of post-September 11 investigations into some members of Victoria's Islamic community after allegations of links to terrorism. > > A decade ago, Ombudsman Barry Perry was highly critical of the secret files kept by police. > > His three reports led to an overhaul of how covert operations and dossiers are conducted. > > "They can no longer keep files on every Tom, Dick and Harry simply because they have got up and said something that is not politically correct," he said. From meenugaur at hotmail.com Fri Mar 7 17:55:18 2003 From: meenugaur at hotmail.com (meenu gaur) Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 12:25:18 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] JAGMOHAN AND THE VALLEY FULL OF SCORPIONS (Posting 3) Message-ID: In this posting I feel it�d be worthwhile to remain focused on how and why the migration of Kashmiri Pandits took place. The events leading up to the migration have always often come up in all my visits to the Camps. Most people seem overanxious to fix blame for the migration and convince you of their own explanation of the events. But most of the time people in the Camps were eager to see this to mean that the narrative on the migration is the same even if it speaks itself through different people differently. People seem anxious to represent the migration as unavoidable. This is understandable because at times they face hostility in Delhi where people often cite to them the example of the way the Hindus in Sikh-dominated Punjab chose to brave the situation rather than �flee� in the 1980s. When I attempted to go deeper into the reasons that catalyzed the migration, then most people seemed to hold the selective killings of the Pandits in early 1989 and early 1990, threats to life and property, the honor and dignity of the Kashmiri Pandit women, the rise of new militant groups with a virulent Islamist ideology, some warnings in anonymous posters and unexplained killings and the helplessness and silence of the State administration as responsible for the internal displacement of the Kashmiri Pandits. But above all they seemed to be obsessed with exonerating the then State Governor Jagmohan from all accusations of complicity in the forced migration of Kashmiri Pandits which they perceive as the dominant narrative of the Kashmiri Muslims on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. What is most important to realize is that there is no single narrative on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. There is a multiplicity of narratives which overdetermines the casuistry of the migration. And we must remember that even though the migration from Srinagar happened in the first two years of 1990 and 1991; from rural Kashmir the migration happened even as late as 1993 and 1994. Even then hundreds of Kashmiri Pandit families chose to stay on in the Valley. The imaginary (at times even spectacular) escape of the Pandits from a tyrannical Muslim Valley bent on genocide, over the few nights after the January 19th in the backdrop of Islamic slogans that reverberated from the mosques of the Valley, is a retroactive memory deeply implicated in political fantasy (even if one were to recall the fear instilled by the hysterical loudspeakers from January to March 1990). This brings us to the controversial role of Jagmohan (Delhi�s Demolition Man), the then Governor of J&K State and the present Minister of Tourism in the Central government of the Hindu nationalist BJP in the forced migration of Kashmiri Pandits. The simplistic response on the streets of Srinagar to the question on the migration of Kashmiri Pandits is something like this: Unko Jagmohan ne nikala (Jagmohan forced the Pandits to leave). Now in the Camps there is a deep concern to disprove this �Jagmohan theory� on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits-a �theory� which continues to exert its pressure on any possible reconciliation between the two communities. The Camp people feel compelled to defend themselves against this compelling though absurd conspiracy theory which seems to have so much explanatory power in the Valley. The Pandits are often accused in the Valley of falling into the trap laid out for them by Governor Jagmohan and deserting the Muslims of the Valley to a punitive State and gubernatorial zulm (oppression). There is no denying the fact that it is during Governor Jagmohan�s 1990 tenure that the Valley witnessed the exodus of almost the entire small but vital Kashmiri Pandit community from the Valley. The Janata Dal-led United Front Government, supported by the BJP and the Left, chose to send Jagmohan to the Valley which the latter himself chose to describe in his book, My Frozen Turbulences in Kashmir, as a �Valley full of scorpions�. It is widely quoted and validated even by the members of the Kashmiri Pandit refugee camps that the Kashmiri Muslim community leaders, Kashmiri political parties, including some militant organizations, appealed to the Pandits not to leave the Valley after the selective killings of some prominent Kashmiri Pandits such as the politician Tikka Lal Taploo (the leader of the RSS in Kashmir) or the civil servant Lassa Kaul, had instilled fear in the Hindu minority in Srinagar. Balraj Puri writes in Kashmir: Towards Insurgency about how the Kashmiri Pandit leader H.N Jatoo had welcomed and endorsed these appeals but soon migrated to Jammu. Jatoo later told Puri that soon after the Joint Committee of the prominent members of the two communities had been set up to deal with the emerging situation, the governor sent a DSP to him with an air ticket for Jammu with an offer of accommodation and an advice to leave Kashmir immediately. Even though it is difficult to believe that a whole community would have left their ancestral homes merely because Jagmohan urged them to do so, but it is fairly clear that the state machinery may have helped in the process and done nothing to look at possibilities that would have stopped it. It is equally difficult to speculate on how a Joint Committee of community leaders could have protected the minority community when Kashmiri Muslim leaders and intellectuals such as Moulvi Farooq and Dr. A A Guru themselves fell to the bullets of �unidentified gunmen�. Even then I feel that a process could have been initiated which could have either delayed or averted the migration. The narratives in the Camp eulogise Jagmohan as some sort of a saviour. While the people are critical of the Congress and the BJP for their opportunism and political manipulation of the Kashmiri Pandit problem, they reject the argument that Jagmohan had any role to play in abetting the migrations. Rather most seem thankful for the relief measures, the flat allotments which Jagmohan managed for them as Urban Development Minister in the BJP-led Union government and other such measures taken to ease their suffering. At the Camps I was told that when the Pandits were leaving the Valley, their neighbors and friends from the Muslim community urged them not to go, and ensured them of their safety. One member of the Camp told me that he had heard that they did this because they felt that once the Hindus left the Valley the Indian Army would wreck havoc in Kashmir and if the Hindus stayed back then they would not be able to do that (��agar Hindu yahan se chalegaye phir yahan par Hindustani fauj bumbaaree karegee��) He said we (the Kashmiri Pandits) used to think that they are holding us back as hostages so that they (the Kashmiri Muslims) are more secure from the Indian security forces. I had been told almost exactly the same in Kashmir by a young Kashmiri Muslim architect. He said that the Pandits left the Valley because they were told by Governor Jagmohan that once they leave the Valley it would be easier for the security forces to crush the rebellion with brute force. This might well be excessive and have no real basis but what it does frighteningly put forward is the state of the psyche of the people from both communities: India and its institutions, the Army and the paramilitary are seen as Hindu forces that would be unsparing on a Muslim population however innocent they might be. It is surprising that it seemed plausible to people from both the communities, unquestioningly so, that the Muslims of the Valley could only be shielded by the Kashmiri Pandits from what is their own Army. The collapse of the Indian State as Hindu by the people in the Camps was as spontaneous and unquestioning as that by the Muslims of the Valley. I have chosen to bring this up in my posting as most of my initial interviews revolved around the more political aspects of the migration. _________________________________________________________________ Cricket World Cup 2003- News, Views and Match Reports. http://server1.msn.co.in/msnspecials/worldcup03/ From shefalijha at hotmail.com Fri Mar 7 20:39:55 2003 From: shefalijha at hotmail.com (shefali jha) Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 20:39:55 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Women's hostels- second posting Message-ID: Hello everyone. Our monthly posting is a little late and we�re sorry about that. Our search for theoretical material on Women�s hostels continues, and if anybody has any suggestions on that we�ll be very grateful. For this month, our round of interviews was begun /continued. One person we had a long and extremely interesting and helpful conversation with was a lecturer in Political science at Osmania University, who told us about her own experience of hostel life and introduced us to some of her students who could help us out. She spoke about the time of the Mandal agitation, when she was actually warden of the Women�s hostel (the largest in Asia- bet none of you knew that! We didn�t !) and helped to bring about some sort of harmony in an increasingly polarised community. She also spoke about the time they launched an agitation to implement women�s reservation in the University, after which the number of women students has increased steadily. Another interesting thing she told us was about the experience of living in a hostel for the first time,having come from a smaller town and been away from the family for the first time, since this is one of the axes of our own project. She spoke about managing not only her own life on new terms but also taking part in others� lives as,say, a member of the Mess committee. The other set of preliminary conversations we conducted were with some ex-inmates of the CIEFL Women�s hostel, who told us about the time that they had an agitation about changes in hostel rules. This coincided,unexpectedly,with a new initiative in this direction,this time from a much younger first MA batch, but this time the struggle did not even get to the administration, which was the case in the first instance, but was carried on mainly within the hostel, with some very interesting debates taking place. These were debates that seemed to challenge our ideas about binary oppositions like orthodoxy-heterodoxy, the traditional and the modern etc. which are the terms such discussions are usually carried out in. Thus, although our main focus this month has been on the OU hostel, CIEFL has also turned up some very useful discussions which have fed into our research this month.And we must thank Sadan and Shilpa, especially Shilpa,for their interest and inputs. We�re looking forward to more of these. Regards, Shefali and Navaneetha. _________________________________________________________________ Cricket World Cup 2003- News, Views and Match Reports. http://server1.msn.co.in/msnspecials/worldcup03/ From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Sat Mar 8 01:58:16 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 7 Mar 2003 20:28:16 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Partition, Cold War and Kashmir Message-ID: <20030307202816.31055.qmail@webmail7.rediffmail.com> NATIONALISM’S MIRED HOPES Partition, Cold War, and the conflict in Kashmir. Uday Singh Mehta I Kashmir has the unfortunate distinction of having been important to too many fantasies and a way station on too many journeys. Known for the legendary beauty of its inaccessible terrain and home to important religious sites for Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, Kashmir has attracted the attention of adventurers, imperialists, and evangelists for over a thousand years. It has played a role in the ambitions of the Huns and the Tartars, Hindu, Buddhist, and Moghul emperors, the Pathans from the west, Sikh rulers from the south, Russian Tsars from the north, the Chinese from the east, and the British from far away. For centuries adventurers heading eastward have fixed their imagination on Kashmir the moment they moved beyond the magnetic fields of Jerusalem and Egypt and across the Tigress River. More than most places, its history is marked by a regularity of tyranny and violence—no doubt the legacy of successive invasions and a corresponding inconstancy of rulers. But in this long history it is the violence of the last sixty years that has earned Kashmir a special significance; it has emerged on the global stage as the nexus of forces in a distinctly twentieth-century tragedy. The recent history of Kashmir is a story of decolonization and the triumph of nationalism; of how, even before its triumph, nationalism bred sub-nationalisms; of how both nationalism and sub-nationalism, even when they professed a commitment to liberal constitutionalism, relied on an implicit naturalistic community, for which religion became a convenient, albeit awkward, stand-in; and of how the British found in this stand-in a similarly convenient exit strategy while retrenching an unwieldy empire. In India, as in Ireland, Palestine, and Cyprus, the British became the willing supporters of a partition that was hastily scissored along the hem of religion and ethnicity. The partition would, in the end, compromise the very modernity on which the new nations were built. In its misguided view of the basis of the unity of a state, partition lies at the root of India and Pakistan’s failure to live up to their founding principles. Kashmir’s is also the story of how, almost to the day, decolonization and nationalism coincided with the global Cold War. For newly independent countries like India and Pakistan the project of nation-building—from cementing a viable national identity to settling national boundaries—became intermeshed from the outset with the machinations of distant international powers in a game in which they were proxies, tragically induced to militarization. Thus, much of the idealism that had attended the struggle for independence of postcolonial nations found itself vitiated by an atmosphere of international suspicion, strategic considerations, and pandering to superpowers whose ultimate concern was each other and not the local exigencies of any particular region. And, the consistent and principled support the superpowers had given for decolonization was obscured by a global strategic and ideological calculus. The coincidence of the Cold War and decolonization meant that the superpowers repeatedly misread the distinct imperatives of diverse nationalisms through the lens of their anxieties about each other. Finally, the story of Kashmir is the centerpiece of the relationship between India and Pakistan. Since their simultaneous coming into being in 1947, the two nations have fought two major wars in Kashmir, armed themselves with destructive and expensive weaponry, and more recently added to their arsenals the symbolic and imitative imprimatur of a vapid prowess—nuclear weapons. The conflict originally was over land, the presumed allegiance of the people, a nervous and indecisive Maharaja who claimed both, and the two new countries’ fragile sense of their own nationhood entangled with the history and ethnic and religious particularities of Kashmir. Like many other foundational narratives, the passage of time has buried many of the original grievances under a variety of new developments; they now live on only as rhetorical, though tenacious, pretenses. Perhaps even more tragically, by the persistence of their real and imagined hostilities both countries have primed and conditioned their militaries, governments, and people to accept war and its attendant Manichean mindset as a constitutive feature of everyday life and politics. Successive governments have used the mantra of a nation under threat to distort norms of governance, violate civil and human rights, entrench and justify a culture of military extravagance, and cast aspersions on the loyalty of dissenting opinions and groups. Whatever the dispute in Kashmir may have been to the relationship between India and Pakistan in 1947, today Kashmir is much more an effect rather than the cause of their fraught and tense interactions. The familiar claim made in both countries, though especially in Pakistan, that only the resolution of the dispute in Kashmir can normalize their relationship, obscures with an intransigent past the possibilities for reconfiguring the present. A symmetrical argument is frequently made in India: to show “weakness” on Kashmir is to subject the prized achievements of independence—democracy, secularism and national unity—to the contagion of social and political chaos. For both sides, the stand-off precludes a kind of flexibility that might allow each to take steps towards the full promise of independence. What is clear today, however, is that so long as the dispute in Kashmir is allowed to be the fulcrum for the bilateral relationship between these two countries, it will always confine India and Pakistan to the narrow and tired ambit of ritualized recriminations and exaggerated claims of threats to national identity and existence. In the subcontinent as elsewhere the hyperbole of protest is often the surest sign of an uneasy comfort with the status quo. II To understand the current standoff over Kashmir, one must retrace the story of India and Pakistan’s emergence as nations. For sixty-odd years before 1947 the struggle against British rule in the subcontinent had been largely organized around the banner of Indian independence. Its successful culmination, however, brought forth twins: independence and the partition of the country. The former had had a gestation period of decades; the latter had been publicly adumbrated only in the early 1940s and concretely imagined and effected in the three months preceding the actual transfer of power. Even without partition the first challenge of an independent India would have been to complete the unfinished task of stitching together six hundred-odd princely kingdoms. These were the assortment of Maharajas, Nawabs and other princelings that gave an exotic hue to the British Empire. The British had governed this vast and diverse array of “native states” through an admixture of force, awe, and fine distinctions. Some were wholly and directly under British rule, others were nominally independent puppets kept in check with coercion and flattery, and still others were allowed a measure of real power in the administrations of their states. With most of these “native states” the British had formal treaties that specified the terms and nature of their power and that directly established a feudatory link with the Crown of England. “India” didn’t exist in this imperial relationship with the native rulers. With independence it would have to be introduced, its hitherto civilizational associations forged into national ones supervened by democratic institutions. For the nationalists, whose main organ was the Indian National Congress, this meant preventing the lapse of British “paramountcy” from resulting in native princes exercising sovereignty in their states. The problem was not a merely legal or technical one; it involved nothing less than the prospective political and social identity of India. It was underwritten by the questions that haunt all postcolonial societies: What would their relationship be to their past? Which part of their past would they mold? And which would they attempt to excise through constitutional fiat? In the journal Foreign Affairs, commenting in 1938 on an early constitutional proposal (the 1935 Government of India Act), the future prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru wrote: The worst part of the Constitution is the proposed federal structure, for it makes the Indian States permanent and, in addition, gives them some power to interfere in the affairs of the rest of India. The whole conception of a union of imperialism, feudalism, and democracy is incapable of realization and can only mean the entrenchment of all the reactionary elements. . . . Every constitutional proposal for an independent India from the Nehru Report in 1928 onward was crucially preoccupied with this issue of the status of the native states. Although the Congress Party imagined a kind of Jeffersonian democracy that would sustain diversity and national unity though a commitment to certain broadly liberal principles, the British attitude had often been equivocal. By the early twentieth century they had institutionalized the religious differences of Indian society by accepting the principle of communal representation, thus allowing for separate electorates based on religious grounds. Following the Government of India Act of 1935, which represented one of the important efforts at transferring limited power to Indians, provincial elections were held in 1937 based on the notion of a communal representation. The Muslim League, which had become the main organ of Muslim political identity, fared poorly in the elections of 1937. Despite pockets of concentration in some areas, Muslims were geographically dispersed throughout India. This fact diluted their electoral potential. Moreover, the Congress Party was the principal organization around which both anti-imperial sentiments and nationalist hopes coalesced, and as such they had significant standing even among the Muslims. In a move that must in retrospect be seen as a watershed mistake, the victorious Congress refused to share power with the League (for example, it could have offered the League some positions in the cabinet) and include it as a coalition partner. Sir Penderel Moon, former British civil servant in India, rightly commented that “The Congress passionately desired to preserve the unity of India; they consistently acted to make its partition certain.”1 The provincial elections in 1937 instantly exposed the potential limitations of a system of individual rights and elected representatives in the protection of religions minorities. They explicitly led the League to champion what came to be known as the “two nations theory.” The basic thought was that there were two nations in India: one Muslim, of which the League was the rightful representative; the other, Hindu, of which the Congress was representative. Conceptually and, as it turned out, chronologically, it was a short distance from this thought to the idea that India had to be partitioned for its main religious minority to feel secure. In March 1940 the Muslim League formally announced the demand for an “Independent State.” The League had clearly understood that even a system of rights and elected representatives might well result in the semipermanent exclusion of Muslim interests and opinions. And its subsequent actions give expression to the general phenomenon that, in its initial stages at least, individual freedom often makes us conscious of the groups to which we belong and, paradoxically, in which we find our individuality secured. Something of this is at play in the history of Hindu and Muslim relations in modern India. The political consolidation of group identities, especially religious identities, roughly tracks the granting of individual rights. In the demand for an independent state, Muhammed Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League wagered that Pakistan’s future nationhood could in fact be built on a narrow religious foundation and, once secured, could somehow be opened up to the heterogeneous populations it would have to incorporate. After all, in no viable plan would the future Pakistan not have its own religious, ethnic, and regional fissures to mend. Jinnah saw no tension in placing a secular democratic state on the foundation of a Muslim nation. As he said in 1947: You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan . . . and you will find in the course of time that Hindus shall cease to be Hindus and Muslims shall cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.2 The passage of time has clearly not vindicated what was expected of it. All too often over the course of its history Pakistan has found that to hold on to its religious nationhood as well as its diversity requires the emollient of authoritarianism. The Muslim League had called for “direct action” on 16 August to achieve the goal of Pakistan. It was the day on which, Jinnah later recalled, “we bid good-bye to constitutional methods.” The violence that ensued in Calcutta on that day left an estimated five thousand dead, fifteen thousand injured, and well over one hundred thousand homeless. Soon after, murderous riots erupted in East Bengal before the arrival of Gandhi somewhat quelled the situation. The two-nation theory seemed to be vindicated in the mayhem of everyday life. By the spring of 1947 partition seemed inevitable. The Labour government in Britain, still reeling from the effects of world war, was in a hurry to streamline its responsibilities. Lord Mountbatten, the last British viceroy, sent to India to transfer power and consider alternatives to partition, was also in a hurry. Instead of negotiating for the ten months that his brief permitted, he announced the date for the transfer of power and for partition a mere two months after his arrival on the scene. Relations between Hindus and Muslims were in the grip of escalating mob violence. Few if any constitutional and peaceful methods appeared to have a hold on the situation. Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who had been given the job of determining the precise boundaries of the two nations, had indicated that the provinces of Bengal and Punjab would be divided. On 3 June 1947 Mountbatten announced the decision to partition. Power would be transferred to the two dominions of India and Pakistan on the 14th and 15th of August. After the decision to transfer power had been settled, British Prime Minister Clement Atlee’s Labour government, with an eye to the future stability of the Commonwealth and a sense of the direction of modern reality, was inclined toward the nationalist view put forward by the Congress Party that India had to be unified and the power of the native princes limited. The Conservative Party argued in opposition for the native rulers’ right to assert their independence and if desired retain their link with the British Crown. Meanwhile, Lord Mountbatten, along with leading members of the Congress Party, was busy lobbying the princes to accept the emerging two-nation dispensation. By the end of July the Instruments of Accession had been finalized between the princes and the government of India; each prince was given the formal choice of joining the Dominion of India or that of Pakistan, or remaining independent. With the cartography of partition in place it was hoped that those princely states located within the areas designated for each of the two countries would choose to join the corresponding country. There were compelling realities for the princes to do so. Many of the states were too small or awkwardly located to survive as independent countries. None of them were sufficiently distinct from their adjacent neighbors to claim a national identity. None had clear linguistic boundaries. The British Empire had integrated the economy to such a degree that separation would be either impossible or highly expensive in the short term. Finally, apart from the real patriotism of some princes, there was the fact of popular opinion: people had been molded by the nationalist struggle and most had a clear preference to be citizens of modern nation-states rather than subjects of princely overlords. In spite of enormous complexities and occasional grievances the integration of the native states mapped into the emerging reality of partitioned India in all but three cases (Kashmir would be one of them). The smallest of the dissenting states was Junagadh in western India, a state with a Muslim ruler and an overwhelmingly Hindu population. After initially equivocating, the ruler finally expressed on 15 August 1947 a preference to join Pakistan. By November, following threats from India and clear discontent from the populace, he reversed his decision and the government of India took over the administration of the state. A referendum at the end of February 1948 ratified this change with an almost unanimous majority. Pakistan of course strongly protested the reversal and would claim an analogy with what was to happen in Kashmir. However, Pakistan’s grievance was superficial and defiant of important geographical realities in this case: Junagadh was relatively small; it was all but completely surrounded by India; and there was no question that the people wished to be part of India. None of this could be presumed in the case of Kashmir. The second state that resisted accession was Hyderabad, in central India. The complicating factors were more acute than in Junagadh. Close to ninety percent of the population was Hindu and, as in Junagadh, the ruler (the Nizam) was Muslim. But as the largest state in India it had a substantial economy. During the later stages of British rule it had exercised considerable administrative independence. Now, in August 1947, the Nizam expressed a desire for Hyderabad to be an independent country, acceding to neither India nor Pakistan. The story of Hyderabad’s ultimate incorporation into India is a complex one. It includes the Nizam’s sense of his own and his state’s grandeur, the rising threat of Muslim vigilantes in the state, the pro-Indian sentiments of the Hindu populace, the Indian state’s commitment to national unity and its unwillingness to have its geographical unity broken. With an increasingly precarious situation on the ground and a simmering awareness of the improbability of Hyderabad’s future as a state, the government of India took police action in September 1948. In a matter of a few days the opposition to the government collapsed and Hyderabad joined the Union of India. The resolutions of the incipient subnational tensions in both Junagadh and Hyderabad have been vindicated by the largely peaceful story that followed their incorporation into India. This would not be the case in Kashmir after its Maharaja elected to be independent in August 1947. For some years before partition the League had encouraged the native rulers to assert their independence in the hope that this would unsettle the integration of India. Once India’s unity was in the main secure, Kashmir became crucial for Pakistan and the Muslim League. In addition to Kashmir’s Muslim majority, Pakistan correctly claimed that its border with Kashmir was longer than its border with India, that most of the important roads from Kashmir led to Pakistan, and that most of Kashmir’s trade was carried out through Pakistan and not India. Liaquat Ali Khan, the first prime minister of Pakistan, stated as much to the Constituent Assembly: Geographically, economically, culturally and religiously, Kashmir is a part of Pakistan. The overwhelming Muslim character of its population, its strategic position in relation to Pakistan, the flow of its rivers, the direction of its roads, the channels of its trade, the continual intimate association which binds it to the people of Pakistan from time immemorial, link Kashmir indissolubly with Pakistan.3 For the Indian leaders who had resisted the two-nation theory none of this carried the compulsion of geographical or political logic. India itself was large. Moreover, it was not merely diverse; it was deeply diverse. Communal attachments to some of the major languages, regions, and ethnic groups were fertile ground for alternative nationalisms. Similarly, caste identities, though they could not have sustained an alternative nationalist vision because of their dispersed existence, could nevertheless by their tenacious hold on people have significantly eviscerated national unity and the ideal of a republican political culture. To keep this deep diversity from permanently weakening national unity, the leaders believed India had to be a democratic secular republic. But this was a project, a hope, an ideal, one that had been widely disseminated through the course of the nationalist struggle; not a given. In the late autumn of 1947 well-armed Pathan tribesmen invaded the valley of Kashmir. The Maharaja of Kashmir found the weakness of his claim to independence suddenly exposed by his inability to defend the state. The Indian government believed the invaders were backed by Pakistan. Pakistan claimed they were independent tribesmen spontaneously acting out of grievance at the way their kinfolk and Muslims in general were being treated in India. With the imminent prospect of his capital, Srinagar, being overwhelmed by the invaders, and the offer of Indian military support contingent on his acceding to India, the desperate Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession on 26 October 1947. While the Indian government demanded that he first accede to India, it was, in the words of prime minister Nehru, prepared, when peace and law and order have been established, to have a referendum held under international auspices like the United Nations. We want it to be a fair and just reference to the people, and we shall accept their verdict. I can imagine no fairer and juster (sic) offer.4 This offer has remained unfulfilled in the subsequent fifty-five years. The fact that no referendum has been held is the single biggest moral and political infirmity in the Indian claim to Kashmir. The Indians have defended this infirmity by resorting to the political and constitutional technicality that the integration of the native states was governed by the Instrument of Accession and was not dependent on popular ratification. But with growing evidence to suggest that the central government in India might not have support in a popular vote the claim is simply technical. On 27 October 1947, one day after Kashmir’s accession to India, Indian troops arrived in the valley just in time to save the airport. The invading tribesmen were rebuffed and turned back. During the course of the next year there was more conflict with the tribals and a referral made by India to the United Nations on 1 January 1948. By 1 January 1949, when a U.N.–supervised cease-fire came into effect, roughly a third of Kashmir was under Pakistan’s control. On that day a cease-fire line called the Line of Control (LoC) was established. Despite minor changes following subsequent wars, that line has been the de facto boundary between the two countries since 1949. It has served alternatively as a flashpoint for tensions and a quiet demarcation between two countries, much like any other international boundary. As the former, it reminds us that the legacy of partition has not been the natural and coherent separation of two countries, or the “lesser of two evils,” but rather a botched amputation with horrifying and persisting phantom pains. As the latter, the line redirects attention from two irreconcilable theories of national identity—the Congress Party’s Jeffersonian conception and the League’s two-nation theory—to India and Pakistan’s profound commonalities of culture and history, and most importantly, their geographical contiguity and the abiding basis for functional cooperation. Either way, the LoC’s role has everything to do with motives and contexts beyond Kashmir itself. III In Kashmir, partition and the two-nation theory on which it was based found its first test. If one judges theories by the way they guide the reality to which they pertain, one must conclude that the two-nation theory has been a miserable failure. The examples of Ireland, Palestine, and Cyprus suggest a similar conclusion. It is true that the separation, the subsequent union, and then re-separation of Norway from Sweden, the demarcation of Belgium from Holland, and the independence of Finland from Sweden, are all more positive examples. But in those cases religion and ethnicity were not the sole grounds for separation. The effects of the partition of India and Pakistan were made more grave by the post–World War II context. Perhaps nothing hindered a possible resolution more than the fact that partition of the Indian subcontinent coincided with the Cold War. The most fateful decisions in both histories occur between February and September 1947, thus linking them from their very inception and transforming the agendas of the new nations. The events that led to what must be the most rapid deterioration of relations between allies in the Second World War are well known. On 21 February 1947 the British government, following Yalta, the problems in Eastern Europe and Germany, and developments in Iran and Turkey, finally appealed to the U.S. State Department to take over the burden of fighting communist insurgents in Greece and Turkey. That was one day after the Atlee government had announced its decision to transfer power to “responsible hands” in India. On 12 March of that year President Truman proclaimed the doctrine that bears his name, committing the United States to the assistance of free institutions and governments against minority violence. A year earlier Churchill had delivered his Iron Curtain speech in Fulton. The combined effect of the two speeches was a commitment to containing communism and to bolster noncommunist regimes everywhere. On 3 June 1947, two days before Secretary of State Marshall gave his Marshall Plan speech at Harvard, the Atlee government announced to the House of Commons that power would be transferred in India earlier than planned, not to one but rather to two Dominions—India and Pakistan. In September 1947 the Soviet theoretician Zhadnov answered the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan with the announcement of the formation of Cominform. The world, he claimed, was indeed facing a Manichean struggle between “imperialist and capitalist forces” on the one hand and the fraternity of “socialistic democratic and anti-imperialist” countries on the other. By early 1948 it was clear that in China the KMT would soon be defeated by the PLA, and the prospect of communist China turning toward the Soviet Union became real. In 1954 Pakistan, along with Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, become a Western ally through the Baghdad Pact (later the Central Treaty Organization, CENTO) of which Britain and the United States were associate members. These mutual security arrangements between the U.S. and Pakistan eventually led the Soviet Union to endorse India’s claim on Kashmir. From 1947 to 1953 the USSR had been scrupulously neutral in the UN Security Council debates on Kashmir and largely indifferent to Indian nationalist aspirations. Only in 1957 did it exercise its first veto in favor of the Indian position. The United States, which until 1946 had consistently expressed support for India’s nationalist aspirations, now began to focus on Nehru’s Fabian socialism and assumed it signaled India’s voluntary accession into the Soviet camp. The entanglement of the Cold War with the history of Indo-Pak relations is a story of mutual misperceptions. The United States did not anticipate that its security alliance with Pakistan would nudge India toward similar expectations from the USSR. Similarly, Pakistan did anticipate that such an alliance would make India more intransigent on the issue of a plebiscite in Kashmir. India in turn was naïvely surprised by the U.S. security arrangements with Pakistan. It assumed that the Americans would not arm a country against the largest functioning democracy in the world. The misperceptions continued into the 1960s. Despite its alleged anticommunist commitments, Pakistan in 1962 had no special difficulty in forging a rapprochement with China. This led to the ceding to China of some territory within the inherited boundaries of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Along with India’s 1962 war with China, the deal precipitated the first major escalation of military expenditure in the subcontinent as whole. Not only did Pakistan not find its liaison with China awkward, the Americans were strangely undisturbed by it. Indeed, the United States was largely indifferent when at the height of the Vietnam War (1964–68) both China and the Soviet Union supplied military assistance to Pakistan. In 1965, however, Pakistan was unpleasantly surprised that despite its standing as a U.S. “ally” it was denied military support at the time of Indo-Pak conflict. Indeed, both India and Pakistan were taken aback to discover that both superpowers were working together in the Security Council to bring about a cease-fire. Despite their own animosities the superpowers seldom were wholly partisan in their support of their alleged “clients.” They were not fully hypnotized by their own rhetoric of strict bipolarity. India and Pakistan took the rhetoric much more seriously. They did not countenance their own relative unimportance in America’s bipolar view of the world and did not understand that despite arms transfers and professions of loyalty both the Soviet Union and the United States were prepared to see a regional détente in South Asia. In 1965 and again following the Bangladesh conflict of 1971 both superpowers were supportive of the improved bilateral atmosphere that briefly characterized Indo-Pak relations in the late seventies and early eighties. The coincidence of the Cold War with decolonization distorted the domestic agendas of new nations, making military prowess an increasingly important priority. Domestic institutional structures were pushed to accommodate a strong and unitary central government (and often of strong and authoritarian men and women); federalism became the minor key of democratic experimentation in new nations. The Cold War displaced onto the plain of ceremonial rhetoric what should have been the obvious regional orientation of these countries—a search for functional cooperation among geographically embraced neighbors. Instead, their primary impulse was to be players on a global field in which their significance and their interests were subject to the vagaries of a battle they could not control. The consequences of the coincidence of the Cold War and decolonization throughout the world have been almost entirely detrimental, especially for poorer countries like India and Pakistan. Perhaps most importantly it resulted in ideas of national independence and sovereignty being tightly associated with power and the other preoccupations of the realist lexicon, such as national security, prestige, and influence. Sidelined was the Gandhian tradition that had understood independence and sovereignty in terms of autonomy and self-discipline, national security in terms of pacific restraints and the satisfaction of reasonable needs, and influence in terms of patience, moral example, and persuasion. Gandhi’s anti-imperialist vision had never rested on a defiant nationalism; as such, it at least held out the possibility of an alternative to its adversary in the moment of its triumph. It offered in thought, and in the largely nonviolent practice of India’s struggle for independence that Gandhi had guided, a vision of politics that rejected the stark distinction between friend and foe and the centralized state as the monitor of intra- and interstate violence. The coincidence of the Cold War and decolonization also added credence to the militarization of an emerging national consciousness and thus served as a precondition for the ultimate nuclearization of the subcontinent. It was an inducement to the weak to imitate those more powerful, under conditions in which such behavior could only result in the pathetic spectacle of false equality. This itself had a supremely ironic consequence: it in turn led the superpowers to repeatedly misread those who were resolutely trying to imitate them. It is certainly possible that even a nationalism not burdened by this coincidence might have played itself out in these ways, but the temporal parallax with the Cold War significantly accelerated this trajectory and amplified its dimensions. Nor have the effects of this coincidence ceased following the end of the Cold War, not least because it created a mind-set whose impulses endure even in the absence of the original cause and context. For the foreseeable future in the West the reckoning of the Cold War will be told in terms of the eschatology of moral and political rectitude, strategic sagacity, and military and economic triumph. The selective amnesia that does not need to recall the distortions of domestic social priorities in the West itself, on account of nearly five decades of its triumphal self-enfeeblement, are perhaps part of the spoils of victory. But in countries like India and Pakistan the story of those years must be acknowledged as one of missed opportunities, of a betrayal of enlightened domestic and international principles and a protracted postponement on the promissory note that nationalism had issued to the British Empire and, more importantly, to the common mass of people. These failures, like the leverage that Third World countries sought through their involvement in the Cold War, are evidence of how modern nationalism needs an outside foil to push against, of how the daunting task of nation-building requires an external object by which to direct its progress and justify its failure, and ultimately of how difficult it is to give credence to one’s own sovereignty and independence without leaning on the misplaced pride and vanity of reactive impulses. * * * For nations, as for individuals, claims about identity, though they typically take the form of assertions of historical fact, are at least as much indicators of the hopes they have for the future. The answer to the question of one’s identity—i.e., to the question “who are you?”—does not so much elicit a description of a matured and fully congealed self but rather involves placing a bet, as it were, on what one plans to become, and thus on the contexts and ways by which one expects to live and grow. Similarly, for nations claims about identity are deeply enmeshed with their prospective political and constitutional commitments and with the norms by which they hope to govern themselves. For nations (as for individuals) identities are never settled because they are constantly intertwined with the commitments that are being made as to how to deal with the future. In challenging the “two-nations theory” and the priority it gave to religion as the grounds for national unity, the Congress Party and more generally the Indian state were not merely offering an alternative view regarding the historical grounds of Indian unity; much more importantly they were wagering on India’s ability to sustain a particular political future. It was a future in which a commitment to federal and liberal democratic institutions and norms would bind deep diversity. The framers of the constitution and the Indian political elite were in effect contending that a federal democracy, with structures for political representation at the national and state level along with certain basic constitutionally mandated rights, would supply the requisite social glue to counteract the subnational tendencies. They were wagering that given the democratic right to choose their own representatives and have a say in their political future individuals, religious minorities, and ethnic and linguistic groups would all want to be part of such a national association, in part precisely because it assured them the right to represent themselves and have a stake in it. This was a daring and optimistic bet on what in the context was a largely new form of governance, coming to life and being tested under conditions that were hardly propitious. It was a wager in favor of democracy’s ability to both sustain diversity and supply integuments for national unity without having to be underwritten by sectarian or other forms of commonality. Nowhere was this wager more freighted than in Kashmir, and nowhere has the Indian state’s commitment to internal democracy been shown to lack confidence in its own purported convictions. Perhaps the offer to hold a plebiscite should never been made, because it should have been clear that it would not be honored; governments after all are loath to facilitate or even risk the amputation of a territorial limb. And in any case, once the Maharaja of Kashmir had signed the Instrument of Accession the Indian case was at least legally consistent. The results of a plebiscite in Kashmir in the best of circumstances would have held the risk of embarrassment for India, and since 1989 they would have assured it. Under modern conditions democratic consent is no doubt the best way of garnering the opinions and support of those within an established boundary, but it is far from clear that it has the same efficacy in establishing those boundaries in the first place. But even beyond the matter of the plebiscite the Indian state’s disregard and nervousness with respect to internal democracy in Kashmir has been woeful. Ever since its contested inclusion into India, on the grounds that such an inclusion could be sustained by democratic means, successive central governments from New Delhi have vitiated the possibility of democratic norms taking hold in Kashmir. Unlike most other parts of India, where elections for the state legislature began as early as 1952, none were held in Kashmir until 1962. Similarly, the first parliamentary elections in Kashmir were held in 1967, again a decade and a half after the rest of the country. It is commonly accepted that it was only in 1977 that Kashmir had its first fair and free elections for the state legislature, i.e., only after Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party lost power in the center. Prior to 1977 and since 1983 successive Indian governments routinely banned dissenting political parties; they often made transparently unscrupulous electoral alliances; they imprisoned popular leaders, including on various occasions the late Sheikh Abdullah—the most respected proponent of Kashmir’s identity and interests since the 1930s; they played the religion card to create dissension among rival communities; they rigged elections; they deployed constitutional caveats to dismiss duly elected governments and officials; and they demonized dissenters as being antinational. Ironically, though not at all surprisingly, this litany of irregular practices has succeeded in creating a ground-level reality that appears to justify the two-nations theory. Today religion, ethnicity, separatists’ feelings, and violence have a much firmer hold on the politics of Kashmir than they did before. But the evidence strongly suggests that the cause for this state of affairs is not the failure of India’s democracy to bind diversity but the limiting and abuse of democratic options. In imagining possible solutions to the problem in Kashmir it is crucial to recall the period from 1976 to 1979, when Indo-Pak relations were normalized almost entirely through bilateral diplomatic initiatives (1976), when surface and aviation links were reestablished, bilateral trade increased, military budgets decreased, and important negotiations regarding the Salal Dam were concluded. In effect it was a period when Kashmir was not the fulcrum on which Indo-Pak relations turned but rather one among many issues through which this complex bilateral relationship was conducted. In part for that very reason both sides respected the Line of Control during this period as if it were a legitimate international boundary. This was also a time when global and regional imperatives were substantially uncoupled, making room for bilateral initiatives and diplomacy. The superpowers, including China, were of course vigilant about the developments in the subcontinent and none would have countenanced either India or Pakistan slipping wholly into the orbit of a rival power. This did not happen. As it was, all three major powers welcomed the bilateral agreements that were reached between India and Pakistan in this period. There were no demands by the major powers for group or ideological fidelity. In this quiet sea change the superpowers along with India and Pakistan seemed to recognize that the problem in Kashmir could only be solved by reverting to the crucible of domestic politics and bilateral diplomacy. This was also the period during which the Indian government had the confidence to allow democratic institutions within Kashmir to function without invidious interference from New Delhi. From 1977 to1983 there was a basic regularity of elections, respect for constitutional political freedoms, recognition that the religious and ethnic plurality of the region did not have to be politically manipulated for “reasons of state,” and an atmosphere in which dissenting opinions could be aired within the framework of everyday politics. It is precisely during these years that ethnic and separatist politics along with the politics of everyday violence receded and lost much of its hold. There was a marked reduction in the number of terrorist incidents and cross-border episodes. In brief, it was a period in which democratic institutions created political options. Precipitated by 1987 state elections, commonly acknowledged as rigged, the escalation of violence and insurgency in Kashmir today dates from 1989. By the late eighties the atmosphere in the state was replete with the abuse of democratic norms and frustrated of economic hopes. In 1989 significant numbers of Muslim youth in Kashmir began to seek arms for the first time from Pakistan. They were given succor by the Pakistani intelligence establishment and by Jehadi veterans exhilarated by their victory over the Soviets in Afghanistan. The “liberation” of Kashmir became the new target for the Jehadis. During this period there was an increased stridency in separatists’ demands and an internationalization of the internal politics of Kashmir. For example, in the most recent Indo-Pak war in the summer of 1999 and in various recent “terrorist” incidents the combatants and perpetrators have often turned out to be Jehadis from Afghanistan, East Africa, and West Africa. It is estimated that since 1989 there have been over thirty thousand casualties in the conflict in Kashmir.5 Kashmir over the last sixty-odd years has been the ground on which many abstract visions of life and politics have sought to prove themselves. In their failure to achieve their purported goals and vanquish their rivals, the protagonists of these visions have further sought to cover their failures on the same ground; in the process Kashmir has been doubly scarred. For the Muslim League and later for successive governments in Pakistan, Kashmir was and is the excuse for a failed state undergirded by a flawed conception of religious unity and sectarian nationalism. The state in Pakistan has been unable to deliver on the basic economic and political expectations of its citizenry. Over the course of its history it has attempted to obscure that failure in many ways. Inflaming the problem in Kashmir has been the most sustained of these distractions. For India, Kashmir is the mirror in which the awkward tensions of its own identity and political will become evident. India has neither been true to the promise of plebiscite nor consistent in the practice of internal democracy in Kashmir. Starting with Nehru, successive Indian governments assumed that a unified India, with Kashmir included, had its ultimate ratification in the democratic will of the people; national unity and democracy were presumed to pull in the same direction. But when faced with the prospect of a reality in which there was no such easy correspondence and in which the conditions for national unity and democracy were mutually strained the Indian state has been prepared to sacrifice the latter to secure the former. Since 1989 separatist sentiments have been widespread in Kashmir. The sense of alienation from the central government in India is profound. Like most political sentiments these are in part the product of local and contextual provocations in which the Pakistani intelligence apparatus, “foreign” Jehadis, and India’s own disregard for local democratic norms have all played their parts. Whatever the causes, origins, and even the folly of these sentiments, it would now be foolish and wrong to deny them. It would be foolish because subnationalist movements, like nationalist ones, tend to be inspired by their enemies and even by their own failures; beyond a certain point the instruments that are deployed to police national unity are likely to provoke the opposite. It would be wrong because the expressed sentiments of a people must (again, beyond a certain point) be taken as their real and considered sentiments. Otherwise we are back in that world of false consciousness and imperial paternalism. Critics of separatist expression in Kashmir argue that such sentiment, if realized, could only lead to detrimental outcomes—a politically and economically unviable country or a situation in which the remaining Muslims in India would become a suspect minority. These may in fact come to pass. But despite the good intentions of critics of subnationalisms, any state that long denies those sentiments will likely be unstable and illegitimate. In Kashmir as elsewhere in the region hope resides in emphasizing the importance of process over outcomes. For the Bush administration this precept minimally translates into self-consciousness and restraint as it embraces a military dictatorship in Pakistan as its newfound friend and satrap in the global war on terrorism. For General Musharaff in Pakistan it means that his recent standing in Bush’s vision of the world is not a credible substitute for institutionalizing and accepting the verdict of democratic norms. As the most recent elections in Pakistan have made clear, much to the embarrassment of the General, public opinion in his country is more than just uncomfortable with Pakistan’s being made a foot soldier in the United States’ most recent bellicose obsession. For India, emphasizing process over outcomes means being prepared to live with the consequences inherent in the two constitutive conceptions of its identity, one democratic and the other historical. One such consequence is that India must be prepared to give up its historical claim to Kashmir so as to more fully live up to the claim of being democratic. Perhaps things will not come to that pass. The most recent state elections in Kashmir last October brought to power a party that accepts Kashmir’s standing as a part of India. Perhaps it is still possible to knit Kashmir into the fabric of India by democratic means. But should that turn out not to be the case, India should resolve the tension inherent in its birth by recommitting itself to its democratic identity. < Uday Singh Mehta, professor of political science at Amherst College, is a Carnegie Scholar and author most recently of Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought. Notes 1. Penderel Moon, Divide and Quit (University of California Press, 1961), 34. 2. M. A. Jinnah, Speech to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, 11 August 1947, quoted in Ian Talbot, Inventing the Nation: India and Pakistan (London: Arnold, 2000), 196. 3. Speech by Liaquat Ali Khan, Constituent Assembly (L), 19 January 1950. See Kashmir and Inter-Dominion Relations: Statement by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan (Publications Department, Government of Pakistan), 17. 4. Jawaharlal Nehru, Jammu and Kashmir: White Paper (New Delhi: Ministry of External Affairs Publications, 1948), 60. 5. Sten Widmalm, Kashmir in Comparative Perspective: Democracy and Violent Separatism in India (London: Curzon, 2002), 131. Originally published in the February/March 2003 issue of Boston Review From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Mon Mar 10 13:16:13 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 10 Mar 2003 07:46:13 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] From rediff.com: An analytical peace Message-ID: <20030310074613.28599.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030310/c17d191e/attachment.pl From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Thu Mar 6 15:48:54 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 6 Mar 2003 10:18:54 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Zizek lecture in New York Message-ID: <20030306101854.9382.qmail@webmail10.rediffmail.com> "Perhaps, there is no greater love than that of a revolutionary couple," writes Zizek, "where each of the two lovers is ready to abandon the other at any moment if revolution demands it. It is along these lines that one should look for the non-perverse reading of Christ’s sacrifice, of his message to Judas: ‘Prove to me that I am everything to you, SO BETRAY ME on behalf of the revolutionary mission of both of us!’" Zizek, the ever prolific writer, will expound on this theme and, as always, apply his dazzling thinking to current events and any number of other issues in a question-and-answer session after the lecture. Josefina Ayerza, the editor and publisher of Lacanian Ink, will read an introductory paper. Slavoj Zizek, the world-renowned philosopher and cultural theorist, will be holding his regular, biannual town meeting in New York City on March 10th at Deitch Projects (18 Wooster Street) in conjunction with the publication of Lacanian Ink 21. The subject of his lecture this time is "Love without Mercy." Event: SLAVOJ ZIZEK lecture: "LOVE WITHOUT MERCY" Date: MONDAY, MARCH 10th, 2003, 7:00pm (Free admission) Place: DEITCH PROJECTS 18 WOOSTER STREET (between Canal & Grand), NEW YORK, NY 10013 _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Wed Mar 12 12:43:49 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 12 Mar 2003 07:13:49 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Blanchot Message-ID: <20030312071349.3647.qmail@webmail7.rediffmail.com> What can one say about Blanchot? Nowhere are the difficulties of communication, the impossibility of community, more thoroughly present -- and confronted -- than in his writings. Ken Wark Radical Politics and the Writer Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) By NORMAN MADARASZ http://www.counterpunch.org/madarasz03082003.html French writer, essayist and novelist, Maurice Blanchot died on Thursday February 20 at the age of 95. In a fantasy world his death would have gone almost unnoticed. Only in a fantasy, nonetheless. For Blanchot was the most enigmatic writer of 20th century France. And, in an untypical sense, he was one of its greatest. After frenetic activity as a rightwing political journalist in his youth, Blanchot leaned toward the novel and nationalist revolution, only to join the French Resistance during WWII. In the ensuing decades, his galvanizing communism led him away from fiction and toward the essay idiom to forge one of the most profound oeuvres in French literature. He published little since the nineteen-eighties. Yet his literary presence draped an unfathomed cape of darkness over the course of what we call here: 'French poststructural thought'; and there: philosophy tout court. In the end, Blanchot's lesson is that one has to choose, and that one has no choice but to choose. A new breed of necessity is what others misrepresent as destiny. Few choices lead to effect. The greatness of Blanchot's work is that effects made choice itself a radical necessity for art. Far from the atheist saint his literary silhouette projects, Blanchot's memory prevails in its most accomplished form as a philosophical demon altering the terms on which communities may match the expectations and demands of crowds. __________________________________________________________ Great Travel Deals, Airfares, Hotels on http://www.journeymart.com/rediff/travel.asp From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Wed Mar 12 13:03:35 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 12 Mar 2003 07:33:35 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] The Interpassive Subject Message-ID: <20030312073335.6254.qmail@webmail8.rediffmail.com> The Interpassive Subject Slavoj Zizek Fetish between structure and humanism According to the classic Althusserian criticism of the Marxist problematic of commodity fetishism, this notion relies on the humanist ideological opposition of "human persons" versus "things." Is it not one of Marx's standard determinations of fetishism that, in it, we are dealing with "relations between things (commodities)" instead of direct "relations between people," i.e. that, in the fetishist universe, people (mis)perceive their social relations in the guise of relations between things? Althusserians are fully justified in emphasizing how, beneath this "ideological" problematic, there is another, entirely different — structural — concept of fetishism already at work in Marx: at this level, "fetishism" designates the short-circuit between the formal/differential structure (which is by definition "absent," i.e. it is never given "as such" in our experiential reality) and a positive element of this structure. When we are victims of the "fetishist" illusion, we (mis)perceive as the immediate/"natural" property of the object-fetish that which is conferred upon this object on account of its place within the structure. The fact that money enables us to buy things on the market, is not a direct property of the object-money, but results from the structural place of money within the complex structure of socio-economic relations; we do not relate to a certain person as to a "king" because this person is "in himself" (on account of his charismatic character or something similar) a king, but because he occupies the place of a king within the set of socio-symbolic relations; etc.etc. Our point, however, is that these two levels of the notion of fetishism are necessarily connected: they form the two constitutive sides of the very concept of fetishism; which is why one cannot simply devalue the first as ideological, in contrast to the second as properly theoretical (or "scientific"). To make this point clear, one should reformulate the first feature in a much more radical way. Beneath the apparently humanist-ideological opposition of "human beings" and "things," there lurks another, much more productive notion, that of the mystery of substitution and/or displacement: how is it ontologically possible that the innermost "relations between people" can be displaced onto (or substituted by) "relations between things"? That is to say, is it not a basic feature of the Marxian notion of commodity fetishism that "things believe instead of us, in the place of us"? The point worth repeating again and again is that, in Marx's notion of fetishism, the place of the fetishist inversion is not in what people think they are doing, but in their social activity itself: a typical bourgeois subject is, in terms of his conscious attitude, an utilitarian nominalist — it is in his social activity, in exchange on the market, that he acts as if commodities were not simple objects, but objects endowed with special powers, full of "theological whimsies." In other words, people are well aware how things really stand, they know very well that the commodity-money is nothing but a reified form of the appearance of social relations, i.e. that, beneath the "relations between things," there are "relations between people" — the paradox is that, in their social activity, they act as if they do not know this, and follow the fetishist illusion. The fetishist belief, the fetishist inversion, is displaced onto things, it is embodied in what Marx calls "social relations between things." And the crucial mistake to be avoided here, is the properly "humanist" notion that this belief, embodied in things, displaced onto things, is nothing but a reified form of direct human belief: the task of the phenomenological reconstitution of the genesis of "reification," is then to demonstrate how original human belief was transposed onto things... The paradox to be maintained is that displacement is original and constitutive: there is no immediate, self-present living subjectivity to whom the belief embodied in "social things" can be attributed, and who is then dispossesed of it. There are some beliefs, the most fundamental ones, which are from the very outset "decentered," beliefs of the Other; the phenomenon of the "subject supposed to believe," is thus universal and structurally necessary. From the very outset, the speaking subject displaces his belief onto the big Other qua the order of pure semblance, so that the subject never "really believed in it"; from the very beginning, the subject refers to some decentered other to whom he imputes this belief. All concrete versions of this "subject supposed to believe" (from small children for whose sake parents pretend to believe in Santa Claus, to the "ordinary working people" for whose sake Communist intellectuals pretend to believe in Socialism) are stand-ins for the big Other. So, what one should answer to the conservative platitude according to which every honest man has a profound need to believe in something, is that every honest man has a profound need to find another subject who would believe in his place... The subject supposed to believe In order to properly determine the scope of this notion of the subject supposed to believe as the fundamental, constitutive feature of the symbolic order, one should oppose it to another, better known, notion, that of the subject supposed to know: when Lacan speaks of the subject supposed to know, one usually fails to notice how this notion is not the standard, but the exception, which gains its value in contrast to the subject supposed to believe as the standard feature of the symbolic order. So, what is the "subject supposed to know"? In the TV-series Columbo, the crime (the act of murder) is shown in detail in advance, so that the enigma to be resolved is not that of "whodunit?", but of how the detective will establish the link between the deceitful surface (the "manifest content" of the crime scene) and the truth about the crime (its "latent thought"), how he will prove to the culprit his or her guilt. The success of Columbo thus attests to the fact that the true source of interest in the detective's work, is the process of deciphering itself, not its result (the triumphant final revelation "And the murderer is..." is completely lacking here, since we know this from the very outset). Even more crucial than this feature is the fact that not only do we, the spectators, know in advance who did it (since we directly see it), but, inexplicably, the detective Columbo himself immediately knows it: the moment he visits the scene of the crime and encounters the culprit, he is absolutely certain, he simply knows that the culprit did it. His subsequent effort thus concerns, not the enigma "who did it?", but how should he prove this to the culprit. This reversal of the "normal" order has clear theological connotations: the same as in true religion where I first believe in God and then, on the ground of my belief, become susceptible to the proofs of the truth of my faith; here also, Columbo first knows with a mysterious, but nonetheless absolutely infallible certainty, who did it, and then, on the basis of this inexplicable knowledge, proceeds to gather proofs... And, in a slightly different way, this is what the analyst qua "subject supposed to know" is about: when the analysand enters into a transferential relationship with the analyst, he has the same absolute certainty that the analyst knows his secret (which only means that the patient is a priori "guilty", that there is a secret meaning to be drawn from his acts). The analyst is thus not an empiricist, probing the patient with different hypotheses, searching for proofs, etc.; he embodies the absolute certainty (which Lacan compares with the certainty of Descartes' cogito ergo sum) of the analysand's "guilt," i.e. of his unconscious desire. The two notions, that of the subject supposed to believe and that of the subject supposed to know, are not symmetrical since belief and knowledge themselves are not symmetrical: at its most radical, the status of the (Lacanian) big Other qua symbolic institution, is that of belief (trust), not that of knowledge, since belief is symbolic and knowledge is real (the big Other involves, and relies on, a fundamental "trust"). The two subjects are thus not symmetrical since belief and knowledge themselves are not symmetrical: belief is always minimally "reflective," a "belief in the belief of the other" ("I still believe in Communism" is the equivalent of saying "I believe there are still people who believe in Communism"), while knowledge is precisely not knowledge about the fact that there is another who knows. For this reason, I can BELIEVE through the other, but I cannot KNOW through the other. That is to say, due to the inherent reflectivity of belief, when another believes in my place, I myself believe through him; knowledge is not reflective in the same way, i.e. when the other is supposed to know, I do not know through him. According to a well-known anthropological anecdote, the "primitives" to whom one attributed certain "superstitious beliefs," when directly asked about them, answered that "some people believe...", immediately displacing their belief, transferring it onto another. And, again, are we not doing the same with our children: we go through the ritual of Santa Claus, since our children (are supposed to) believe in it and we do not want to disappoint them. Is this not also the usual excuse of the mythical crooked or cynical politician who turns honest? — "I cannot disappoint them (the mythical "ordinary people") who believe in it (or in me)." And, furthermore, is this need to find another who "really believes," also not that which propels us in our need to stigmatize the Other as a (religious or ethnic) "fundamentalist"? In an uncanny way, belief always seems to function in the guise of such a "belief at a distance": in order for the belief to function, there has to be some ultimate guarantor of it, yet this guarantor is always deferred, displaced, never present in persona. How, then, is belief possible? How is this vicious cycle of deferred belief cut short? The point, of course, is that the subject who directly believes, needs not exist for the belief to be operative: it is enough precisely to presuppose its existence, i.e. to believe in it, either in the guise of the mythological founding figure who is not part of our experiential reality, or in the guise of the impersonal "one" ("one believes..."). The crucial mistake to be avoided here is, again, the properly "humanist" notion that this belief embodied in things, displaced onto things, is nothing but a reified form of a direct human belief, in which case the task of the phenomenological reconstitution of the genesis of "reification" would be to demonstrate how the original human belief was transposed onto things... The paradox to be maintained, in contrast to such attempts at phenomenological genesis, is that displacement is original and constitutive: there is no immediate, self-present living subjectivity to whom the belief embodied in "social things" can be attributed and who is then dispossessed of it. Je sais bien, mais quand meme... /I believe/: therein resides the dilemma — either we play the Jungian obscurantist game of "let's not focus on our superficial rational knowledge, let's embrace the profound archetypal beliefs which form the foundation of our being," or we embark on a difficult road to give an account of these beliefs in knowledge. It was already Kierkegaard who rendered the ultimate paradox of belief: he emphasized that the apostle preaches the need to believe and asks that we accept his belief upon his word; he never offers "hard proofs" destined to convince non-believers. For this reason, the reluctance of the Church in facing material which may prove or disprove its claims, is more ambiguous than it may appear. In the case of the Turin shroud which allegedly contains the contours of the crucified Jesus, and thus his almost photographic portrait, it is too simple to read the Church's reluctance as expressing the fear that the shroud will turn out to be a fake from a later period — perhaps, it would be even more horrifying if the shroud were proven to be authentic, since this positivist "verification" of the belief would undermine its status and deprive it of its charisma. Belief can only thrive in the shadowy domain between outright falsity and positive truth. The Jansenist notion of miracle bears witness to the fact that they were fully aware of this paradox: for them, miracle is an event which has the quality of a miracle only in the eyes of the believer — to the commonsense eyes of an infidel, it appears as a purely natural coincidence. It is thus far too simple to read this reluctance of the Church as an attempt to avoid the objective testing of the truth of a miracle: the point is rather that the miracle is inherently linked to the fact of belief — there is no neutral miracle to convince cynical infidels. Or, to put it in another way, the fact that the miracle appears as such only to believers, is a sign of God's power, not of His impotence... The primordial substitution This relationship of substitution is not limited to beliefs: the same goes for every one of the subject's innermost feelings and attitudes, inclusive of crying and laughing. Suffice it to recall the old enigma of transposed/displaced emotions at work from the so-called "weepers" (women hired to cry at funerals) in "primitive" societies, to the "canned laughter" on a TV-screen, and to adopting a screen persona in cyberspace. When I construct a "false" image of myself which stands for me in a virtual community in which I participate (in sexual games, for example, a shy man often assumes the screen persona of an attractive promiscuous woman), the emotions I feel and "feign" as part of my screen persona are not simply false: although (what I experience as) my "true self" does not feel them, they are nonetheless in a sense "true" — the same as with watching a TV mini-series with canned laughter where, even if I do not laugh, but simply stare at the screen, tired after a hard days work, I nonetheless feel relieved after the show... This is what the Lacanian notion of "decentrement," of the decentered subject, aims at: my most intimate feelings can be radically externalized, I can literally "laugh and cry through another." And is the primordial version of this substitution by means of which "somebody else does it for me," not the very substitution of a signifier for the subject? In such a substitution resides the basic, constitutive feature of the symbolic order: a signifier is precisely an object-thing which substitutes me, which acts in my place. The so-called primitive religions in which another human being can take upon himself my suffering, my punishment (but also my laughter, my enjoyment...), i.e. in which one can suffer and pay the price for a sin through the Other (up to prayer wheels which do the praying for you), are not as stupid and "primitive" as they may seem — they harbor a momentous liberating potential. By way of surrendering my innermost content, inclusive of my dreams and anxieties, to the Other, a space opens up in which I am free to breathe: when the Other laughs for me, I am free to take a rest; when the Other is sacrificed instead of me, I am free to go on living with the awareness that I did pay for my guilt; etc.etc. The efficiency of this operation of substitution resides in the Hegelian reflective reversal: when the Other is sacrificed for me, I sacrifice myself through the Other; when the Other acts for me, I myself act through the Other; when the Other enjoys for me, I myself enjoy through the Other. Like, in the good old joke about the difference between Soviet-style bureaucratic Socialism and the Yugoslav self-management Socialism: in Russia, members of the nomenklatura, the representatives of the ordinary people, drive themselves in expensive limousines, while in Yugoslavia, ordinary people themselves ride in limousines through their representatives. This liberating potential of mechanical rituals is also clearly discernible in our modern experience: every intellectual knows of the redeeming value of being temporarily subjected to the military drill, to the requirements of a "primitive" physical job, or to some similar externally regulated labour — the very awareness that the Other regulates the process in which I participate, sets my mind free to roam, since I know I am not involved. The Foucauldian motif of the interconnection between discipline and subjective freedom thus appears in a different light: by submitting myself to some disciplinatory machine, I, as it were, transfer to the Other the responsibility to maintain the smooth run of things, and thus gain the precious space in which to exercise my freedom... The one who originally "does it for me" is the signifier itself in its external materiality, from the "canned prayer" in the Tibetan prayer wheel to the "canned laughter" on our TV: the basic feature of the symbolic order qua "big Other," is that it is never simply a tool or means of communication, since it "decenters" the subject from within, in the sense of accomplishing his act for him. This gap between the subject and the signifier which "does it for him," is clearly discernible in common everyday experience: when a person slips, another person standing next to him and merely observing the accident, can accompany it with "Oops!" or something similar. The mystery of this everyday occurrence is that, when the other does it for me, instead of me, the symbolic efficiency of it is exactly the same as in the case of my doing it directly. Therein resides the paradox of the notion of the "performative," or speech act: in the very gesture of accomplishing an act by way of uttering words, I am deprived of authorship, the "big Other" (the symbolic institution) speaks through me. It is no wonder then, that there is something puppet-like about the persons whose professional function is tessentially performative (judges, kings...): they are reduced to a living embodiment of the symbolic institution, i.e. their sole duty is to "dot the i's" mechanically, to confer on some content elaborated by others, the institutional cachet. The later Lacan is fully justified in reserving the term "act" for something much more suicidal and real than a speech act. This mystery of the symbolic order is exemplified by the enigmatic status of what we call "politeness": when, upon meeting an acquaintance, I say "Glad to see you! How are you today?", it is clear to both of us that, in a way, I "do not mean it seriously" (if my partner suspects that I am really interested, he may even be unpleasantly surprised, as though I were aiming at something too intimate and of no concern to me — or, to paraphrase the old Freudian joke, "Why are you saying you're glad to see me, when you're really glad to see me!?"). However, it would nonetheless be wrong to designate my act as simply "hypocritical," since, in another way, I do mean it: the polite exchange does establish a kind of pact between the two of us; in the same sense as I do "sincerely" laugh through the canned laughter (the proof of it being the fact that I effectively do "feel relieved" afterwards). If we radicalize in this way the relationship of substitution (i.e. the first aspect of the notion of fetishism), then the connection between the two aspects, the opposition "persons versus things," their relation of substitution ("things instead of people," or one person instead of another, or a signifier instead of the signified...), and the opposition "structure versus one of its elements," becomes clear: the differential/formal structure occluded by the element-fetish, can only emerge if the gesture of substitution has already occurred. In other words, the structure is always, by definition, a signifying structure, a structure of signifiers which are substituted for the signified content, not a structure of the signified. For the differential/formal structure to emerge, the real has to redouble itself in the symbolic register; a reduplicatio has to occur, on account of which things no longer count as what they directly "are," but only with regard to their symbolic place. This primordial substitution of the big Other, the Symbolic Order, for the Real of the immediate life-substance (in Lacanian terms: of A — le grand Autre — for J — jouissance), gives rise to $, to the "barred subject" who is then "represented" by the signifiers, i.e. on whose behalf signifiers "act," who acts through signifiers... Interpassivity Against this background, one is tempted to supplement the fashionable notion of "interactivity," with its shadowy and much more uncanny supplement/double, the notion of "interpassivity." That is to say, it is commonplace to emphasize how, with new electronic media, the passive consumption of a text or a work of art is over: I no longer merely stare at the screen, I increasingly interact with it, entering into a dialogic relationship with it (from choosing the programs, through participating in debates in a Virtual Community, to directly determining the outcome of the plot in so-called "interactive narratives"). Those who praise the democratic potential of new media, generally focus on precisely these features: on how cyberspace opens up the possibility for the large majority of people to break out of the role of the passive observer following the spectacle staged by others, and to participate actively not only in the spectacle, but more and more in establishing the very rules of the spectacle... Is, however, the other side of this interactivity not interpassivity? Is the necessary obverse of my interacting with the object instead of just passively following the show, not the situation in which the object itself takes from me, deprives me of, my own passive reaction of satisfaction (or mourning or laughter), so that is is the object itself which "enjoys the show" instead of me, relieving me of the superego duty to enjoy myself... Do we not witness "interpassivity" in a great number of today's publicity spots or posters which, as it were, passively enjoy the product instead of us ? (Coke cans containing the inscription "Ooh!Ooh! What taste!", emulate in advance the ideal customer's reaction.) Another strange phenomenon brings us closer to the heart of the matter: almost every VCR aficionado who compulsively records hundreds of movies (myself among them), is well aware that the immediate effect of owning a VCR, is that one effectively watches less films than in the good old days of a simple TV set without a VCR; one never has time for TV, so, instead of losing a precious evening, one simply tapes the film and stores it for a future viewing (for which, of course, there is almost never time...). So, although I do not actually watch films, the very awareness that the films I love are stored in my video library gives me a profound satisfaction and, occasionally, enables me to simply relax and indulge in the exquisite art of far'niente — as if the VCR is in a way watching them for me, in my place... VCR stands here for the "big Other," for the medium of symbolic registration. Is the Western liberal academic's obsession with the suffering in Bosnia not the outstanding recent example of interpassive suffering? One can authentically suffer through reports on rapes and mass killings in Bosnia, while calmly pursuing one's academic career... Another standard example of interpassivity is provided by the role of the "madman" within a pathologically distorted intersubjective link (say, a family whose repressed traumas explode in the mental breakdown of one of its members): when a group produces a madman, do they not shift upon him the necessity to passively endure the suffering which belongs to all of them? Furthermore, is the ultimate example of interpassivity not the "absolute example" (Hegel) itself, that of Christ who took upon himself the (deserved) suffering of humanity? Christ redeemed us all not by acting for us, but by assuming the burden of the ultimate passive experience. (The difference between activity and passivity, of course, is often blurred: weeping as an act of public mourning is not simply passive, it is passivity transformed into an active ritualized symbolic practice.) In the political domain, one of the recent outstanding examples of "interpassivity," is the multiculturalist Leftist intellectual's "apprehension" about how even the Muslims, the great victims of the Yugoslav war, are now renouncing the multi-ethnic pluralist vision of Bosnia and conceding to the fact that, if Serbs and Croats want their clearly defined ethnic units, they too want an ethnic space of their own. This Leftist's "regret" is multiculturalist racism at its worst: as if Bosnians were not literally pushed into creating their own ethnic enclave by the way that the "liberal" West has threated them in the last five years. However, what interests us here is how the "multi-ethnic Bosnia" is only the latest in the series of mythical figures of the Other through which Western Leftist intellectuals have acted out their ideological fantasies: this intellectual is "multi-ethnic" through Bosnians, breaks out of the Cartesian paradigm by admiring Native American wisdom, etc., the same way as in past decades, when they were revolutionaries by admiring Cuba, or "democratic socialists" by endorsing the myth of Yugoslav "self-management" socialist as "something special," a genuine democratic breakthrough... In all of these cases, they have continued to lead their undisturbed upper-middle-class academic existence, while doing their progressive duty through the Other. — This paradox of interpassivity, of believing or enjoying through the other, also opens up a new approach to aggressivity: what sets aggressivity in motion in a subject, is when the other subject, through which the first subject believed or enjoyed, does something which disturbs the functioning of this transference. See, for example, the attitude of some Western Leftist academics towards the disintegration of Yugoslavia: since the fact that the people of ex-Yugoslavia rejected ("betrayed") Socialism disturbed the belief of these academics, i.e. prevented them from persisting in their belief in "authentic" self-management Socialism through the Other which realizes it, everyone who does not share their Yugo-nostalgic attitude was dismissed as a proto-Fascist nationalist. The subject supposed to enjoy Did we not, however, confuse different phenomena under the same title of interpassivity? Is there not a crucial distinction between the Other taking over from me the "dull" mechanical aspect of routine duties, and the Other taking over from me and thus depriving me of enjoyment? Is "to be relieved of one's enjoyment" not a meaningless paradox, at best a euphemisn for simply being deprived of it? Is enjoyment not something that, precisely, cannot be done through the Other? Already at the level of elementary psychological observation, one can answer to this by recalling the deep satisfaction a subject (a parent, for example) can obtain from the awareness that his or her beloved daughter or son is really enjoying something; a loving parent can literally enjoy through the Other's enjoyment... However, there is a much more uncanny phenomenon at work here: the only way really to account for the satisfaction and liberating potential of being able to enjoy through the Other, i.e. of being relieved of one's enjoyment and displacing it onto the Other, is to accept that enjoyment itself is not an immediate spontaneous state, but is sustained by a superego-imperative: as Lacan emphasized again and again, the ultimate content of the superego-injunction is "Enjoy!". In order to properly grasp this paradox, one should first elucidate the opposition between the (public symbolic) Law and the superego. The public Law "between the lines" silently tolerates, incites even, what its explicit text prohibits (say, adultery), while the superego injunction which ordains jouissance, through the very directness of its order, hinders the subject's access to it much more efficiently than any prohibition. Let us recall the figure of the father who advises his son on sexual exploits: if the father warns him against it, formally prohibits him from dating girls, etc., he, of course, between the lines only propels the son to do it, i.e. to find satisfaction in violating the paternal prohibition; if, on the contrary, the father in an obscene way directly pushes him to "behave like a man" and seduce girls, the actual effect of this will probably be the opposite (the son's withdrawal, shame of the obscene father, impotence even...). Perhaps, the briefest way to render the superego paradox is the injunction "Like it or not, enjoy yourself!". Suffice it to recall a father who works hard to organize a family holiday and, after a series of postponements, tired of it all, shouts at his children: "Now you better enjoy it!" On a holiday trip, it is quite common to feel a superego compulsion to enjoy, one "must have fun" — one feels guilty if one doesn't enjoy it. (In the Eisenhower era of "happy 50's," this compulsion was elevated to the everyday patriotic duty, or, as one of the public ideologues put it: "Not to be happy today is un-American.") The Japanese have perhaps found a unique way out of this deadlock of the superego: to bravely confront the paradox by way of directly organizing "fun" as part of your everyday duty, so that, when the official, organized fun activity is over, you are relieved of your duty and are finally free to really have fun, to really relax and enjoy... Another attempt to resolve this same deadlock is the typical hysterical strategy of changing (suspending) the symbolic link while pretending that nothing has changed in reality: a husband, say, who divorces his wife and then continues to regularly visit her house and kids as if nothing had happened, feeling not only as at home as before, but even more relaxed; since the symbolic obligation to the family is undone, now he can really take it easy and enjoy it... like the Japanese who can enjoy once the injunction to enjoy is over. Against this background, it is easy to discern the liberating potential of being relieved of enjoyment: in this way, one is relieved of the monstruous duty to enjoy. — In a closer analysis, one would thus have to distinguish between two types of "the Other doing (or, rather, enduring) it for me": — in the case of commodity fetishism, our belief is deposed onto the Other: I think I do not believe, but I believe through the Other. The gesture of criticism here consists in the assertion of identity: no, it is YOU who believes through the Other (in the theological whimsies of commodities, in Santa Claus...). — in the case of a video-recorder viewing and enjoying a film for me (or of the canned laughter, or of the weepers who cry and mourn for you, or of the Tibetan prayer wheel) the situation is the obverse: you think you enjoyed the show, but the Other did it for you. The gesture of criticism here is that, no, it was NOT YOU who laughed, it was the Other (the TV set) who did it. Is the key to this distinction not that we are dealing here with the opposition between belief and jouissance, between the Symbolic and the Real? In the case of (symbolic) belief, you disavow the identity (you do not recognize yourself in the belief which is yours); in the case of (real) jouissance, you misrecognize the decenterment in what you (mis)perceive as "your own" jouissance. — Perhaps, the fundamental attitude which defines the subject is neither that of passivity nor that of autonomous activity, but precisely that of interpassivity. This interpassivity is to be opposed to the Hegelian List der Vernunft ("cunning of Reason"): in the case of the "cunning of Reason," I am active through the other, i.e. I can remain passive, while the Other does it for me (like the Hegelian Idea which remains outside of the conflict, letting human passions do the work for it); in the case of interpassivity, I am passive through the other, i.e. I accede to the other the passive aspect (of enjoying), while I can remain actively engaged (I can continue to work in the evening, while the VCR passively enjoys for me; I can make financial arrangements for the deceased's fortune while the weepers mourn for me). This allows us to propose the notion of false activity: you think you are active, while your true position, as it is embodied in the fetish, is passive... Do we not encounter something akin to this false activity in the paradox of Predestination (the very fact that things are decided in advance, i.e. that our attitude to Fate is that of a passive victim, instigates us to engage ourselves in incessant frenetic activity), as well as in the typical strategy of the obsessional neurotic which also involves a "false activity": he is frantically active in order to prevent the real thing from happening (in a group situation in which some tension threatens to explode, the obsessional talks all the time, tells jokes, etc., in order to prevent the awkward moment of silence which would make the participants aware of the underlying tension). The object which gives body to the surplus-enjoyment fascinates the subject, it reduces him to a passive gaze impotently gaping at the object; this relationship, of course, is experienced by the subject as something shameful, unworthy. Being directly transfixed by the object, passively submitting to its power of fascination, is something ultimately unbearable: the open display of the passive attitude of "enjoying it," somehow deprives the subject of his dignity. Interpassivity is therefore to be conceived as the primordial form of the subject's defense against jouissance: I defer jouissance to the Other who passively endures it (laughs, suffers, enjoys...) on my behalf. In this precise sense, the effect of the subject supposed to enjoy, i.e. the gesture of transposing one's jouissance to the Other, is perhaps even more primordial than that of the "subject supposed to know," or the "subject supposed to believe." Therein resides the libidinal strategy of a pervert who assumes the position of the pure instrument of the Other's jouissance: for the (male) pervert, the sexual act (coitus) involves a clear division of labour in which he reduces himself to a pure tool of her enjoyment; he is doing the hard work, accomplishing the active gestures, while the woman, transported in ecstasy, passively endures it and stares into the air... In the course of the psychoanalytic treatment, the subject has to learn to assume directly his relationship to the object which gives body to his jouissance, bypassing the proxy who enjoys at his place, instead of him. The disavowed fundamental passivity of my being is structured in the fundamental fantasy which, although a priori inaccessible to me, regulates the way I relate to jouissance. For that precise reason, it is impossible for the subject to assume his fundamental fantasy without undergoing the radical experience of "subjective destitution": in assuming my fundamental fantasy, I take upon myself the passive kernel of my being, i.e. the kernel the distance towards which sustains my subjective activity. The substitution of the object for the subject is thus in a way even more primordial than the substitution of the signifier for the subject: if the signifier is the form of "being active through another," the object is the form of "being passive through another," i.e. the object is primordially that which suffers, endures it, for me, in my place — in short, that which enjoys for me. So what is unbearable in my encounter with the object is that in it, I see myself in the guise of a suffering object: what reduces me to a fascinated passive observer is the scene of myself passively enduring it... Far from being an excessive phenomenon which occurs only in extreme "pathological" situations, interpassivity, in its opposition to interactivity (not in the standard sense of interacting with the medium, but in the sense of another doing it for me, in my place), is thus the feature which defines the most elementary level, the necessary minimum, of subjectivity: in order to be an active subject, I have to get rid of — and transpose onto the other — the inert passivity which contains the density of my substantial being. In this precise sense, the opposition signifier/object overlaps with the opposition interactivity/interpassivity: signifier is interactive, it is active on my behalf, at my place, while object is interpassive, it suffers for me. Transposing onto another my very passive experience is a much more uncanny phenomenon than that of being active through another: in interpassivity, I am decentered in a much more radical way than in interactivity, since interpassivity deprives me of the very kernel of my substantial identity. Consequently, the basic matrix of interpassivity follows from the very notion of subject as the pure activity of (self)positing, as the fluidity of pure Becoming, devoid of any positive, firm Being: if I am to function as pure activity, I have to externalize my (passive) Being — in short: I have to be passive through another. This inert object which "is" my Being, in which my inert Being is externalized, is the Lacanian objet petit a. Insofar as the elementary, constitutive structure of subjectivity is hysterical, i.e. insofar as hysteria is defined by the question "What am I for an object (in the eyes of the Other, for the Other's desire)?", it confronts us with interpassivity at its purest: what the hysterical subject is unable to accept, what gives rise to an unbearable anxiety in him, is the presentiment that the Other(s) perceive him in the passivity of his Being, as an object to be exchanged, enjoyed or otherwise "manipulated." Therein lies the "ontological axiom" of Lacanian subjectivity: the more I am active, the more I must be passive at another place, i.e. the more there must be another object which is passive in my place, on my behalf. (This axiom is realized in its utmost simplicity in the proverbial high manager who, from time to time, feels compelled to visit prostitutes to be exposed to masochist rituals and "treated as a mere object.") The theoretical problem which arises here, is the one formulated long ago by Adorno (and to which he proposed his solution of "angstlose Passivitaet /passivity without anxiety/": is it possible for the subject to be passive towards the domain of objects, to acknowledge the "primacy of the object," without falling prey to fetishism? In Lacanian terms, the same problem should be reformulated as: does objet petit a always and necessarily function as a fetishist object, as the object whose fascinating presence covers up the lack of castration (the small a over minus phi of castration, in Lacan's mathemes)? Sexual difference Crucial here is the reflective reversal of "the Other does it for me, instead of me, in the place of me," into "I myself am doing it through the Other": this reversal renders the minimal condition of subjectivity, i.e. the attitude which constitutes subjectivity is not "I am the active autonomous agent who is doing it," but "when another is doing it for me, I myself am doing it through him" (a woman who is doing it through her man, etc.). This reversal is repeatedly at work in the Hegelian dialectical process, in the guise of the reversal of determining reflection into reflective determination. As is known, determining reflection is the dialectical unity of positing and external reflection. At the level of the subject's activity, "positing reflection" occurs when I am directly active; in "external reflection," the Other is active and I merely passively observe it. When the Other does it for me, instead of me, when he acts as my proxy, my relationship towards him becomes that of determining reflection, i.e. external and positing reflection already overlap in it (the very act of observing the Other doing it for me, the moment of external reflection, makes me aware that he is doing it for me, that, in this sense, I myself "posited" his activity, that his activity is "mediated" by my subjective position); it is only when I posit direct identity between the Other's and my activity, i.e. when I conceive of myself as the truly active party, as the one who is doing it through the Other, that we pass from determining reflection to reflective determination (since, at this level, the Other' activity is not only determined by my reflection, but directly posited as my reflective determination). Or, to refer again to the Yugoslav joke: we are dealing here with the shift from "representatives of the people who drive limousines in the place of the ordinary people" to "ordinary people themselves who drive limousines through their representatives"... In the domain of jouissance, this shift is a shift from the Other enjoying it instead of me, at my place, to myself enjoying it through the Other. This paradox also allows us to throw some new light on sexual difference. When, at the outset of his argumentation for distributive justice, John Rawls states that his hypothesis excludes the presence of envy in rational subjects, he thereby excludes desire itself in its constitutive mediation with the Other's desire. However, the logic of "envy" is not the same for both sexes. How, then, does "desire is the desire of the Other" differ in the case of men and women? The masculine version is, to put it simply, that of competition/envy: "I want it because you want it, insofar as you want it," i.e. what confers the value of desirability on an object is that it is already desired by another. The aim here is the ultimate destruction of the Other, which, of course, then renders the object worthless — therein resides the paradox of the male dialectic of desire. The feminine version, on the contrary, is that of "I desire through the Other," in both senses of "let the Other do it (possess and enjoy the object, etc.) for me" (let my husband, my son... succeed for me), as well as "I only desire what he desires, I only want to fulfill his desire" (Antigone who only wants to fulfill the desire of the Other in accomplishing the proper burial of her brother). The thesis that a man tends to act directly and to assume his act, while a woman prefers to act by proxy, letting another (or manipulating another into) doing it for her, may sound like the worst cliche, which gives rise to the notorious image of the woman as a natural schemer hiding behind man's back. However, what if this cliche nevertheless points towards the feminine status of the subject? What if the "original" subjective gesture, the gesture constitutive of subjectivity, is not that of autonomously "doing something," but rather that of the primordial substitution, of withdrawing and letting another do it for me, in my place. Women, much more than men, are able to enjoy by proxy, to find deep satisfaction in the awareness that their beloved partner enjoys (or succeeds or in any other way has attained his or her goal). In this precise sense, the Hegelian "Cunning of Reason" bears witness to the resolutely feminine nature of what Hegel calls "Reason": "Look for the hidden Reason (which realizes itself in the apparent confusion of egotistic direct motifs and acts)!", is Hegel's version of the notorious Cherchez la femme!. This, then, is how reference to interpassivity allows us to complicate the standard opposition of man versus woman as active versus passive: sexual difference is inscribed into the very core of the relationship of substitution — woman can remain passive while being active through her other, man can be active while suffering through his other. The "objectively subjective" The ontological paradox, scandal even, of these phenomena (whose psychoanalytic name, of course, is fantasy) resides in the fact that they subvert the standard opposition of "subjective" and "objective": of course, fantasy is by definition not "objective" (in the naive sense of "existing independently of the subject's perceptions); however, it is also not "subjective" (in the sense of being reducible to the subject's consciously experienced intuitions). Fantasy rather belongs to the "bizarre category of the objectively subjective — the way things actually, objectively seem to you even if they don't seem that way to you." When for example, the subject actually experiences a series of fantasmatic formations which interrelate as so many permutations of each other, this series is never complete: it is always as if the actually experienced series presents so many variations of some underlying "fundamental" fantasy which is never actually experienced by the subject. (In Freud's "A Child Is Being Beaten", the two consciously experienced fantasies presuppose and thus relate to a third one, "My father is beating me," which was never actually experienced and can only be retroactively reconstructed as the presupposed reference of — or, in this case, the intermediate term between — the other two fantasies.) One can even go further and claim that, in this sense, the Freudian unconscious itself is "objectively subjective": when, for example, we claim that someone who is consciously well disposed towards Jews, nonetheless harbors profound anti-Semitic prejudices he is not consciously aware of, do we not claim that (insofar as these prejudices do not render the way Jews really are, but the way they appear to him) he is not aware how Jews really seem to him? — And this brings us back to the mystery of "fetishism": when, by means of a fetish, the subject "believes through the other" (i.e. when the fetish-thing believes for him, in the place of him), we also encounter this "bizarre category of the objectively subjective": what the fetish objectivizes is "my true belief," the way things "truly seem to me," although I never effectively experience them this way; apropos of commodity fetishism, Marx himself uses the term "objectively-necessary appearance". So, when a critical Marxist encounters a bourgeois subject immersed in commodity fetishism, the Marxist's reproach to him is not "Commodity may seem to you a magical object endowed with special powers, but it really is just a reified expression of relations between people"; the actual Marxist's reproach is rather "You may think that the commodity appears to you as a simple embodiment of social relations (that, for example, money is just a kind of voucher entitling you to a part of the social product), but this is not how things really seem to you — in your social reality, by means of your participation in social exchange, you bear witness to the uncanny fact that a commodity really appears to you as a magical object endowed with special powers"... And, at a more general level, is this not a characteristic of the symbolic order as such? When I encounter a bearer of symbolic authority (a father, a judge...), my subjective experience of him can be that of a corrupted weakling, yet I nonetheless treat him with due respect because this is how he "objectively appears to me." Another example: in Communist regimes, the semblance according to which people supported the Party and enthusiastically constructed socialism, was not a simple subjective semblance (nobody really believed in it), but rather a kind of "objective semblance," a semblance materialized in the actual social functioning of the regime, in the way the ruling ideology was materialized in ideological rituals and apparatuses. Or, to put it in Hegelian terms: the notion of the "objectively subjective," of the semblance conceived in the "objective" sense, designates the moment when the difference between objective reality and subjective semblance is reflected within the domain of the subjective semblance itself. What we obtain in this reflection-into-semblance of the opposition between reality and semblance is precisely the paradoxical notion of objective semblance, of "how things really seem to me." Therein resides the dialectical synthesis between the realm of the Objective and the realm of the Subjective: not simply in the notion of subjective appearance as the mediated expression of objective reality, but in the notion of a semblance which objectivizes itself and starts to function as a "real semblance" (the semblance sustained by the big Other, the symbolic institution) against the mere subjective semblance of actual individuals. This is also one of the ways in which to specify the meaning of Lacan's assertion of the subject's constitutive "decenterment": its point is not that my subjective experience is regulated by objective unconscious mechanisms which are "decentered" with regard to my self-experience and, as such, beyond my control (a point asserted by every materialist), but rather something much more unsettling — I am deprived of even my most intimate "subjective" experience, the way things "really seem to me," that of the fundamental fantasy which constitutes and guarantees the kernel of my being, since I can never consciously experience it and assume it... According to the standard view, the dimension which is constitutive of subjectivity is that of the phenomenal (self)experience — I am a subject the moment I can say to myself: "No matter what unknown mechanism governs my acts, perceptions and thoughts, nobody can take from me what I see and feel now." Lacan turns around this standard view: the "subject of the signifier" emerges only when a key aspect of the subject's phenomenal (self)experience (his "fundamental fantasy"), becomes inaccessible to him, i.e. is "primordially repressed". At its most radical, the Unconscious is the inaccessible phenomenon, not the objective mechanism which regulates my phenomenal experience. The prima facie philosophical observation apropos of this paradox, of course, would be that modern philosophy long ago elaborated such a notion of "objectively subjective." Therein resides the whole point of the Kantian notion of the "transcendental" which precisely designates objectivity, insofar as it is "subjectively" mediated/constituted: Kant again and again emphasizes that his transcendental idealism has nothing to do with the simple subjective phenomenalism, i.e. his point is not that there is no objective reality, that only subjective appearances are accessible to us. There definitely is a line which separates objective reality from mere subjective impressions, and Kant's problem is precisely, how do we pass from the mere multitude of subjective impressions to objective reality: his answer, of course, is through transcendental constitution, i.e. through the subject's synthetic activity. The difference between objective reality and mere subjective impressions, is thus internal to subjectivity, it is the difference between merely subjective and objectively subjective... This, however, is not what the Lacanian notion of fantasy aims at. To grasp this difference, one should introduce here the seemingly hair-splitting, but nonetheless crucial distinction between "subjectively objective" and "objectively subjective": the Kantian transcendentally constituted reality is subjectively objective (it stands for objectivity which is subjectively constituted/mediated), while fantasy is objectively subjective (it designates an innermost subjective content, a product of fantasizing, which, paradoxically, is "desubjectivized," rendered inaccessible to the subject's immediate experience). However, it would be a crucial misunderstanding to read this radical decentrement involved in the notion of fetishism (I am deprived of my innermost beliefs, fantasies, etc.) as "the end of Cartesian subjectivity." What this deprivation (i.e. the fact that a phenomenological reconstitution which would generate "reified" belief out of the presupposed "first-person" belief necessarily fails, the fact that substitution is original, the fact that even in the cases of the most intimate beliefs, fantasies, etc., the big Other can "do it for me") effectively undermines, is the standard notion of the so-called "Cartesian Theater," the notion of a central Screen of Consciousness which forms the focus of subjectivity, and where (at a phenomenal level) "things really happen." In clear contrast to it, the Lacanian subject qua $, the void of self-referential negativity, is strictly correlative to the primordial decentrement: the very fact that I can be deprived of even my innermost psychic ("mental") content, that the big Other (or fetish) can laugh for me, believe for me, etc., is what makes me $, the "barred" subject, the pure void with no positive substantial content. The Lacanian subject is thus empty in the radical sense of being deprived of even the minimal phenomenological support: there is no wealth of experiences to fill in its void. And Lacan's wager is that the Cartesian reduction of the subject to pure cogito already implies such a reduction of every substantial content, inclusive of my innermost "mental" attitudes — the notion of "Cartesian Theater" as the original locus of subjectivity is already a "reification" of the subject qua $, the pure void of negativity. __________________________________________________________ Great Travel Deals, Airfares, Hotels on http://www.journeymart.com/rediff/travel.asp From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Wed Mar 12 13:07:10 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 12 Mar 2003 07:37:10 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Christianity is terribly revolutionary Message-ID: <20030312073710.10637.qmail@webmail6.rediffmail.com> SLAVOJ ZIZEK [...] Chesterton is fully aware that it is not enough for God to separate man from Himself so that mankind will love Him — this separation HAS to be reflected back into God Himself, so that God is abandoned BY HIMSELF: When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.2 Because of this overlapping between man's isolation from God and God's isolation FROM HIMSELF, Christianity is "terribly revolutionary. That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king."3 Chesterton is fully aware that we are thereby approaching "a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss /.../ a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt."4 In the standard form of atheism, God dies for men who stop believing in Him; in Christianity, God dies for himself. [...] 2 Chesterton, G. K, Orthodoxy, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1995, p. 139. 3 ibid 4 ibid __________________________________________________________ Great Travel Deals, Airfares, Hotels on http://www.journeymart.com/rediff/travel.asp From mriduchandra at hotmail.com Thu Mar 13 06:12:53 2003 From: mriduchandra at hotmail.com (Mridu Chandra) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 19:42:53 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Info on South Asian film festivals Message-ID: Dear Friends, I recently finished producing a feature length documentary that we would like to send to film festivals in South Asia. It�s difficult to find information about some of these festivals and their deadlines, so I thought I�d ask the community. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on film festivals we should apply to, such as gay and lesbian film festivals, or human rights film festivals, and simply international film festivals that take documentaries. I was particularly looking for the correct email address for the Bombay �Sexual and Gender Minority Film and Video Festival,� and any information (i.e. web site or contact, deadline for entry, etc.) on international film festivals in India. I once attended the International film festival in Bombay but can�t find any contact info on the web. BROTHER OUTSIDER is a feature-length documentary portrait of Bayard Rustin -- a lifelong crusader for justice, a disciple of Gandhi, a mentor to Martin Luther King, and a gay man who paid a remarkably steep price for daring to be open about his sexual identity during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. This award-winning film was broadcast nationally on PBS here in the U.S. and was featured at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. It has been invited to lesbian and gay festivals in London, Turin, Toronto, Boston and other cities and will be part of the upcoming Amnesty International Film Festival. I thought this film would be of particular interest to Indian festival audiences because our film demonstrates clearly how Gandhi influenced the American civil rights movement. Rustin studied Gandhian principles of nonviolence as they were demonstrated in the 1930s and 1940s by reading articles in the African American minority newspapers. Moreover, Rustin visited India in 1948 to study Gandhian protest and met Nehru and other prominent writers and scholars at the 1948 Jaipur Congress session. Rustin then developed an American version of nonviolent protest�including sit-ins in restaurants which would not serve black people� and later advised Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on how to lead a nonviolent movement which spanned 30 years and led to the establishment of civil rights legislation in 1965. This is all part of the film. Hope to hear from you, Mridu Chandra Producer, BROTHER OUTSIDER: THE LIFE OF BAYARD RUSTIN Question Why Films 32 Union Square East - Suite 1005 New York, NY 10003 voice: 646.602.2375 fax: 646.602.2571 www.pbs.org/pov/brotheroutsider www.rustin.org CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR "BROTHER OUTSIDER": "Vividly brings back to life a man who deeply and brilliantly influenced the course of the civil rights and peace movements ... a thoroughly honest portrait of Bayard and his tumultuous times." --Nat Hentoff, The Village Voice "Poignant ... Rustin came to see his struggle as a homosexual as inextricable from his struggle as a black man in America. But neither mainstream society nor even the civil rights leadership could cope with his honesty." --TIME Magazine "Like Rustin, the film is alive with ideas, fast-paced and surprising, and rich in humanity. It�s beautiful like him � and it�s got rhythm." --Kate Tuttle, Africana.com "Evokes with poignancy the many trials of Rustin -- a beautiful man, a gifted singer, a dynamic speaker, and a successful civil rights leader -- who never attained the stature of King, Ralph Abernathy, or Jesse Jackson, primarily because he was gay at a time when homosexuality was fodder for blackmail." --The Boston Globe "Outstanding." --Associated Press "Marvelous." --Wall Street Journal "Well-crafted and even-handed ... first-rate." --Variety "Illuminating." --Chicago Tribune "Powerful ... startling." --The Advocate _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From arunlists at softhome.net Tue Mar 11 10:07:00 2003 From: arunlists at softhome.net (Arun Mehta) Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 10:07:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] ISPs: that bad? Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20030311095339.02c7f6b0@mail.holisticit.com> Two lakh surrendered their connections since Jan? Talk about fiddling while Rome was burning... There are clear measures that the ISPs can take to cut costs, and increase sales: 1. Offer Net access through WiFi, so that they have an attractive, affordable solution for large clients. 2. Encourage interlinking of ISPs in every town where there is more than one. Right now, the routing of packets from Indian senders to Indian receivers in absurd -- typically, via the US. There is talk of setting up large regional bandwidth exchanges. I have nothing against those, but much easier and quicker to start is the decentralized interconnection of ISPs. 3. Stop this mutual blockage of Net telephony, look to grow the market for everyone. If Net usage increases, ISPs will be the ones to immediately benefit. 4. Cut down spam. Make sure nobody sends spam from Indian networks, and do the best you can for filtering the incoming. There should be an address to send spam to, where someone quickly looks at it, and if this is about enlarging body parts, delete it from everyone's mailbox. And of course, the ISP should take whatever action it can, against the spammer. Reducing spam would be a huge saving for ISPs. Readers are invited to add to this list... Arun http://www.hinduonnet.com/bline/stories/2003031102550100.htm >Fall in Net subscribers turns ISPs jittery >Vipin V. Nair >ISPs have been demanding that there be a separate tariff for dial-up >Internet access. They also want a share of revenues from basic telephone >operators for helping generate significant volume of traffic through >dial-up access. >NEW DELHI, March 10 >SENDING alarming signals to the country's Internet service providers >(ISPs), nearly two lakh subscribers have logged off since January this >year, even as the industry fears worse in the coming months due to an >increase in dial-up access charges. >"We had about 40 lakh subscribers in December 2002. But informal feedback >from our members suggests that there has been a drop of about two lakh >since then," said Mr Amitabh Singhal, Secretary, ISP Association of India >(ISPAI). From suresh at hserus.net Tue Mar 11 18:12:11 2003 From: suresh at hserus.net (Suresh Ramasubramanian) Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 18:12:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: [india-gii] ISPs: that bad? In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.2.20030311095339.02c7f6b0@mail.holisticit.com> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20030311180930.01fae140@frodo.hserus.net> At 10:07 AM 3/11/2003 +0530, you wrote: >2. Encourage interlinking of ISPs in every town where there is more than >one. Right now, the routing of packets from Indian senders to Indian >receivers in absurd -- typically, via the US. There is talk of setting up >large regional bandwidth exchanges. I have nothing against those, but much >easier and quicker to start is the decentralized interconnection of ISPs. this one - there's prof jhunjhunuwala spearheading this effort. unfortunately he has a set of ideas which I and a few others think are totally wrong / counterproductive :( let's see if he listens to reason ... :( I just met him yesterday, raised a few q's about what he told me. >4. Cut down spam. Make sure nobody sends spam from Indian networks, and do >the best you can for filtering the incoming. There should be an address to >send spam to, where someone quickly looks at it, and if this is about >enlarging body parts, delete it from everyone's mailbox. And of course, >the ISP should take whatever action it can, against the spammer. Reducing >spam would be a huge saving for ISPs. There are abuse at isp and postmaster at isp for receiving spam complaints about their users then there are spamtrap accounts which an ISP can maintain to keep track of incoming spam then there are IP and domain level blocks which ISPs should maintain to block spammers. but "deleting from people's inboxes" is not a good thing at all. suresh From kundankaushav at indiatimes.com Wed Mar 12 18:55:39 2003 From: kundankaushav at indiatimes.com (kundankaushav) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 18:55:39 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] upanyason ka shahar- second posting Message-ID: <200303121310.SAA25089@WS0005.indiatimes.com> Dear friends, This my second posting on Upanyason ka shahar: its images and its economy. I started my field study from Burari, a place in outer Delhi to meet publishers like Manoj and Radha. Since it was my first attempt to do any kind of field study, I was nervous. So nervous that I alighted from the auto at Sant nagar, a place which is 2-3 stops before Burari. I had to walk a considerable distance to reach Burari. It was not very difficult to find the office of Manoj publishers. With dried throat I whispered in the ears of the watchman that I wanted to meet the owner of the publishing house. Watchman was a nice guy. He infiromed the publisher, some Mr Binod. I was called in. Mr Binod didnot show any interest in me. Without looking at me he asked the reason for my visit. I said that I am working on the project related to hindi pulp fiction and wanted to talk to him in this regard. He was little amused. He looked at my face and with a very conspicous smile and said that he cant help me as he was very busy and suggested me to talk to the writers as they are the one! "who are responsible for these upanyas". I begged him to give me some time but my prayer fell on deaf ears. I came out. My nervousness was gone. I said to myself lets face radha too. when I reached at Radha publishers office a huge gate , obviously closed, greeted me. I asked the watchman to tell the Malik that I want to meet him as I am doing research on upanyas. The watchman got suspicious. He said " aaj tak to nahi soona hai ki koi upanyas pe bhi research karta hai. Jaaeye, jaaeye Malik saab sabse nahi milte". I asked him to give me an appointement with his malik saab. He refused. I said " bhai kam se kam unka nam to bata do". He said" sabko nahi batate". And he ran away. So I was not even permitted to enter the office. The seclusion is well maintained. It seems tough to break the shell. But lets hope for the best. Now I am concentrating on readers and sellers of these books. I would like to share my experiances with them in the next posting. Till then Cheers. Note: Those who dislike these fictions, especially detective fiction would find a friend in Edward Wilson who wrote " who cares who killed Rodger Akyard". Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com Buy the best in Movies at http://www.videos.indiatimes.com Bid for Air Tickets @ Re.1 on Air Sahara Flights. 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/20030312/814622b4/attachment.html From monica at sarai.net Thu Mar 13 19:13:38 2003 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 19:13:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Sarai Reader 03 - Shaping Technologies Message-ID: Sarai Reader 03 : Shaping Technologies Paperback, 392 pages, Rs. 295, US $ 15, Euro 15 ISBN 81-901429-3-3 Sarai, CSDS and the Waag Society for Old and New Media announce the publication of Sarai Reader 03 : Shaping Technologies. The book will be released on the 14th of March 2003 at Sarai, CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi. "Shaping Technologies " sets out to ratchet our engagement with the contemporary moment a notch higher, in directions that are sober, exhilarating and discomfiting all at once. The book brings to the fore a series of situations and predicaments that mark the encounter between people and machines, between nature and culture, and between knowledge and power. The issues covered span a wide range - from the cognitive and ethical dilemmas that beset the engineer, to the legal and cultural implications of copying in a digital realm, from software as art to the history of science fiction, from wireless manifestoes to the domestication of photography, from kitchen utensils to airplanes, from mobile phones to kerosene lamps, from body nets to biotech, from reproductive technologies to technologies of reproduction, from computers to radios and from coal mines to call centres. A cutting edge collection of original writing and images by theorists, critics, photographers, philosophers, engineers, activists, artists, designers media practitioners and programmers from many parts of the world. Editorial Collective : Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Ravi Sundaram, Ravi Vasudevan and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Sarai) Geert Lovink and Marleen Stikker (Waag Society) Contributors include : Arun Mehta, Biella Coleman, Ana Viseu, Raqs Media Collective, Rabindranath Tagore, Sabina Gadihoke, Steve Dietz, Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Rana Dasgupta, Debjani Sengupta, Siddhartha Ghosh, McKenzie Wark, Andrew Feenberg, Eugene Thacker, Joanne Richardson, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, subRosa, Rupsa Mallik & Veena Das Interviews with : Arash Zeini, Janos Sugar, Hildegard Westerkamp Photo Essays by : Shahid Datawala, Monica Narula, Srinivas Kuruganti Published by Sarai/CSDS, Delhi and the Waag Society/for Old and New Media, Amsterdam for enquiries contact publications at sarai.net An online edition of the book is available at http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader3.html paperback, 392 pages, Rs. 295, US $ 15, Euro 15 ISBN 81-901429-3-3 For enquiries, contact: publications at sarai.net or write to Publications Sarai, CSDS 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110 054 India -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From aiindex at mnet.fr Thu Mar 13 22:57:29 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 18:27:29 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Asian peace mission flies to Iraq in last-ditch effort to stop war Message-ID: Hague Appeal for Peace Web-site: www.haguepeace.org Hague Appeal for Peace International Advisory Board Members, Admiral Ramu Ramdas, and Dr. Walden Bello go to Baghdad. P R E S S R E L E A S E 11 March 2003 Asian peace mission flies to Iraq in last-ditch effort to stop war WHILE EMBASSY STAFF, migrant workers, and other international non-government organizations are packing up to leave Iraq, a group of prominent Asian intellectuals, parliamentarians, civil society leaders, and activists are flying to Baghdad in a desperate last-ditch effort to avert the war. Composed of delegates from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Pakistan, the team will be in Iraq from March 14 to 18. The peace mission hopes to express a powerful last-minute appeal to prevent war through a strong symbolic action at a critical time. It will serve as a live message of solidarity from fellow Asians to the Iraqi people in their hour of need. While in Baghdad, the team will visit hospitals, orphanages, schools, and interact with Iraqi civilians who will likely be killed as "collateral damage" when the bombs start to rain down on their city. US war plans call for the launching of 3,000 cruise missiles for Baghdad in the first 48 hours and US generals have been quoted as saying that civilian casualties will be inevitable consequences of the looming war. According to the military officer who drew up the strategy, the effect would be "rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima." The mission members will also hold dialogues with officials from UN agencies and other humanitarian organizations who have warned that a war on Iraq will have catastrophic consequences for the Iraqi people. The peace mission will link up with a number of other contingents who are also currently in Baghdad. This includes a Thai parliamentary and civil society delegation, an international peace delegation from Europe headed by Austrian activist Leo Gabriel, and the Iraqi Peace Teams organized by the American organization Voices in the Wilderness. "The clouds of war may now be about to burst, but so long as there is the slightest sliver of hope for peace, we must be prepared to seize it or history will never forgive us. This is the desperate dream that animates this mission," says Prof. Walden Bello, one of Asia's most recognized progressive intellectuals and executive director of Focus on the Global South. Leading the mission is Congressman Loretta Ann Rosales, who was among those who fought the Marcos dictatorship and is now the Akbayan! party-list representative in the Philippine Congress. The composition of the peace mission reflects the growing anxiety about escalating tension and hostilities in a number of countries in Asia. Among its members include Hussin Amin, a parliamentarian from the Philippine province of Sulu, who opposes the scheduled deployment of US combat troops to wage war against the extremist Abu Sayaff group. The mission also includes two former high-ranking military officers from a potential flashpoint of war, India and Pakistan, and who have since become committed and outspoken peace activists. Zulfiqar Gondal is a retired Major and is now a Member of Parliament of Pakistan. Retired Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas' was former chief of the Indian Navy and is now very active in anti-war organizations. In Baghdad, the mission will link up with members of the Nonviolent Peace force from South Korea, which is now getting more and more worried about the heightening conflict between North Korea and the United States. Another member of the team, Dita Sari, is a prominent labor leader from Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country. Jaran Ditapichai is National Human Rights Commissioner of Thailand. Among those who will be affected adversely by this war will be migrant contract workers in the Middle East from countries like Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, and the Philippines. After the mission, the members of the delegation are expected to issue a report and conduct speaking tours in their respective countries, in Asia, and other parts of the world to share their experiences. In addition, a documentary report to be prepared by a professional television team that will be accompanying the mission will be broadcast and distributed around the region End LIST OF MISSION MEMBERS 1. Congressman Hussin Amin, Philippine House of Representatives 2. Dr Walden Bello, Executive Director, Focus on the Global South 3. Jaran Ditapichai, National Human Rights Commissioner (Thailand) 4. Zulfiqar Gondal, Member of Parliament, Pakistan 5. Admiral (Ret.) Laxminarayan Ramdas, former chief of the Indian Navy 6. Congresswoman Loretta Rosales, Akbayan! party-list representative and head of the Committee on Human Rights, Philippine House of Representatives 7. Dita Sari, respected labor leader from Indonesia From aiindex at mnet.fr Fri Mar 14 04:20:11 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 23:50:11 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Hitchens on Partition and other British legacies Message-ID: The Atlantic Monthly March 2003 Books & Critics http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/03/hitchens.htm. The Perils of Partition Our author examines the political--and literary--legacy of Britain's policy of "divide and quit" by Christopher Hitchens The public, or "political," poems of W. H. Auden, which stretch from his beautiful elegy for Spain and his imperishable reflections on September 1939 and conclude with a magnificent eight-line snarl about the Soviet assault on Czechoslovakia in 1968, are usually considered with only scant reference to his verses about the shameful end of empire in 1947. Edward Mendelson's otherwise meticulous and sensitive biography allots one sentence to Auden's "Partition." Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission, Having never set eyes on this land he was called to partition Between two peoples fanatically at odds, With their different diets and incompatible gods. "Time," they had briefed him in London, "is short. It's too late For mutual reconciliation or rational debate: The only solution now lies in separation ..." Dutifully pulling open my New York Times one day last December, I saw that most of page three was given over to an article on a possible solution to the Cyprus "problem." The physical division of this tiny Mediterranean island has become a migraine simultaneously for the European Union (which cannot well allow the abridgment of free movement of people and capital within the borders of a potential member state), for NATO (which would look distinctly foolish if it underwent a huge expansion only to see two of its early members, Greece and Turkey, go to war), for the United Nations (whose own blue-helmeted soldiery has "mediated" the Cyprus dispute since 1964), and for the United States (which is the senior partner and chief armorer of Greece and Turkey, and which would prefer them to concentrate on other, more pressing regional matters). Flapping through the rest of the press that day, I found the usual references to the Israeli-Palestinian quarrel, to the state of near war between India and Pakistan (and the state of actual if proxy war that obtains between them in the province of Kashmir), and to the febrile conditions that underlie the truce between Loyalists and Republicans—or "Protestants" and "Catholics" —in Northern Ireland. Casting aside the papers and switching on my e-mail, I received further bulletins from specialist Web sites that monitor the precarious state of affairs along the border between Iraq and Kuwait, between the hostile factions in Sri Lanka, and even among the citizens of Hong Kong, who were anxiously debating a further attempt by Beijing to bring the former colony under closer control. There wasn't much happening that day to call a reader's attention to the Falkland Islands, to the resentment between Guatemala and Belize, to the internal quarrels and collapses in Somalia and Eritrea, or to the parlous state of the kingdom of Jordan. However, there was some news concerning the defiance of the citizens of Gibraltar, who had embarrassed their patron or parent British government by in effect refusing the very idea of negotiations with Spain on the future of their tiny and enclaved territory. I have saved the word "British" for as long as I decently can. In the modern world the "fault lines" and "flash points" of journalistic shorthand are astonishingly often the consequence of frontiers created ad hoc by British imperialism. In her own 1959 poem Marya Mannes wrote, Borders are scratched across the hearts of men By strangers with a calm, judicial pen, And when the borders bleed we watch with dread The lines of ink across the map turn red. Her somewhat trite sanguinary image is considerably modified when one remembers that most of the lines or gashes would not have been there if the map hadn't been colored red in the first place. No sooner had the wider world discovered the Pashtun question, after September 11, 2001, than it became both natural and urgent to inquire why the Pashtun people appeared to live half in Afghanistan and half in Pakistan. Sir Henry Mortimer Durand had decreed so in 1893 with an imperious gesture, and his arbitrary demarcation is still known as the Durand Line. Sir Mark Sykes (with his French counterpart, Georges Picot) in 1916 concocted an apportionment of the Middle East that would separate Lebanon from Syria and Palestine from Jordan. Sir Percy Cox in 1922 fatefully determined that a portion of what had hitherto been notionally Iraqi territory would henceforth be known as Kuwait. The English half spy and half archaeologist Gertrude Bell in her letters described walking through the desert sands after World War I, tracing the new boundary of Iraq and Saudi Arabia with her walking stick. The congested, hypertense crossing point of the River Jordan, between Jordan "proper" and the Israeli-held West Bank, is to this day known as the Allenby Bridge, after T. E. Lawrence's commander. And it fell to Sir Cyril Radcliffe to fix the frontiers of India and Pakistan—or, rather, to carve a Pakistani state out of what had formerly been known as India. Auden again: "The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter, That the less you are seen in his company the better, So we've arranged to provide you with other accommodation. We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu, To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you." Probably the best-known literary account of this grand historic irony is Midnight's Children, the panoptic novel that introduced Salman Rushdie to a global audience. One should never employ the word "irony" cheaply. But the Subcontinent attained self-government, and also suffered a deep and lasting wound, at precisely the moment that separated August 14 and 15 of 1947. Rushdie's conceit—of a nation as a child simultaneously born, disputed, and sundered—has Solomonic roots. Parturition and partition become almost synonymous. Was partition the price of independence, or was independence the price of partition? It is this question, I believe, that lends the issue its enduring and agonizing fascination. Many important nations achieved their liberation, if we agree to use the terminology of the post-Woodrow Wilson era (or their statehood, to put it more neutrally), on what one might call gunpoint conditions. Thus the Irish, who were the first since 1776 to break out of the British Empire, were told in 1921 that they could have an independent state or a united state but not both. A few years earlier Arthur Balfour had made a declaration concerning Palestine that in effect promised its territory to two competing nationalities. In 1960 the British government informed the people of Cyprus that they must accept a conditional postcolonial independence or face an outright division of their island between Greece and Turkey (not, it is worth emphasizing, between the indigenous Greek and Turkish Cypriots). They sullenly signed the treaty, handing over a chunk of Cyprus to permanent and sovereign British bases, which made it a potentially tripartite partition but also inscribed all the future intercommunal misery in one instrument: a treaty to which no party had acceded in good faith. But it seemed to be enough, at the time, to cover an inglorious British retreat. And here another irony forces itself upon us. The whole ostensible plan behind empire was long-term, and centripetal. From the eighteenth to the twentieth century the British sent out lawyers, architects, designers, doctors, and civil servants, not merely to help collect the revenues of exploitation but to embark on nation-building. Yet at the moment of crux it was suddenly remembered that the proud and patient mother country had more-urgent business at home. To complete the Auden version: Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day Patrolling the gardens to keep the assassins away, He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect, But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect. The true term for this is "betrayal," as Auden so strongly suggests, because the only thinkable justification for the occupation of someone else's territory and the displacement of someone else's culture is the testable, honorable intention of applying an impartial justice, a disinterested administration, and an even hand as regards bandits and sectarians. In the absence of such ambitions, or the resolve to complete them, the British would have done better to stay on their fog-girt island and not make such high-toned claims for themselves. The peoples of India would have found their own way, without tutelage and on a different timetable. Yet Marx and Mill and Macaulay, in their different fashions, felt that the encounter between England and India was fertile and dynamic and revolutionary, and now we have an entire Anglo-Indian literature and cuisine and social fusion that seem to testify to the point. (Rushdie prefers the phrase "Indo-Anglian," to express the tremendous influence of the English language on Indian authorship, and who would want to argue? There may well be almost as many adult speakers of English in India as there are in the United Kingdom, and at the upper and even middle levels they seem to speak and write it rather better.) The element of tragedy here is arguably implicit in the whole imperial project. Ever since Rome conquered and partitioned Gaul, the best-known colonial precept has been divide et impera—"divide and rule." Yet after the initial subjugation the name of the task soon becomes the more soothing "civilizing mission," and a high value is placed on lofty, balanced, unifying administration. Later comes the point at which the colonized outgrow the rule of the remote and chilly exploiters, and then it will often be found convenient for the governor or the district commissioner to play upon the tribal or confessional differences among his subjects. From proclaiming that withdrawal, let alone partition, is the very last thing they will do, the colonial authorities move to ensure that these are the very last things they do do. The contradiction is perfectly captured in the memoir of the marvelously named Sir Penderel Moon, one of the last British administrators in India, who mordantly titled his book Divide and Quit. The events he records occurred beyond half a century ago. But in the more immediate past it was Lords Carrington and Owen—both senior graduates of the British Foreign Office—who advanced the ethnic cantonization of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was Lord Carrington who (just before Nelson Mandela was released from prison) proposed that South Africa be split into a white Afrikaner reservation, a Zulu area, and a free-for-all among various other peoples. It was Sir Anthony Eden who helpfully suggested in 1954 that the United States might consider a division of Vietnam into "North" and "South" at the close of the French colonial fiasco. Cold War partitions or geopolitical partitions, such as those imposed in Germany, Vietnam, and Korea, are to be distinguished from those arising from the preconditions of empire. But there is a degree of overlap even here (especially in the case of Vietnam and also, later, of Cyprus). As a general rule it can be stated that all partitions except that of Germany have led to war or another partition or both. Or that they threaten to do so. Pakistan had been an independent state for only a quarter century when its restive Bengali "east wing" broke away to become Bangladesh. And in the process of that separation a Muslim army put a Muslim people to the sword—rather discrediting and degrading the original concept of a "faith-based" nationality. Cyprus was attacked by Greece and invaded by Turkey within fourteen years of its quasi-partitioned independence, and a huge and costly international effort is now under way to redraw the resulting frontiers so that they bear some relation to local ethnic proportions. Every day brings tidings of a fresh effort to revise the 1947-1948 cease-fire lines in Palestine (sometimes known as the 1967 borders), which were originally the result of a clumsy partition of the initial British Mandate. In Northern Ireland the number of Catholic citizens now approaches the number of Protestant ones, so that the terms "minority" and "majority" will soon take on new meaning. When that time arrives, we can be sure that demands will be renewed for a redivision of the Six Counties, roughly east and west of the Bann River. As for Kashmir, where local politics have been almost petrified since the arbitrary 1947 decision to become India's only Muslim-majority state, it is openly suggested that the outcome will be a three-way split into the part of Kashmir already occupied by Pakistan, the non-Muslim regions dominated by India, and the central valley where most Kashmiris actually dwell. In all the above cases there has been continuous strife, often spreading to neighboring countries, of the sort that partition was supposedly designed to prevent or solve. Harry Coomer (Hari Kumar), the Anglo-Indian protagonist of Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, sees it all coming when he writes to an English friend in 1940, I think that there's no doubt that in the last twenty years—whether intentionally or not—the English have succeeded in dividing and ruling, and the kind of conversation I hear ... makes me realise the extent to which the English now seem to depend upon the divisions in Indian political opinion perpetuating their own rule at least until after the war, if not for some time beyond it. They are saying openly that it is "no good leaving the bloody country because there's no Indian party representative to hand it over to." They prefer Muslims to Hindus (because of the closer affinity that exists between God and Allah than exists between God and the Brahma), are constitutionally predisposed to Indian princes, emotionally affected by the thought of untouchables, and mad keen about the peasants who look upon any Raj as God ... This is the fictional equivalent of Anita Inder Singh's diagnosis, in The Origins of the Partition of India 1936-1947: The Labour government's directive to the Cabinet Mission in March 1946 stressed that power would only be transferred to Indians if they agreed to a settlement which would safeguard British military and economic interests in India. But in February 1947, the Labour government announced that it would wind up the Raj by June 1948, even if no agreement had emerged. Less than four months later, Lord Mountbatten announced that the British would transfer power on 15 August 1947, suggesting that much happened before this interval which persuaded the British to bring forward the date for terminating the empire by almost one year. Also, the British have often claimed that they had to partition because the Indian parties failed to agree. But until the early 1940s the differences between them had been a pretext for the British to reject the Congress demand for independence ... Sigmund Freud once wrote an essay concerning "the narcissism of the minor differences." He pointed out that the most vicious and irreconcilable quarrels often arise between peoples who are to most outward appearances nearly identical. In Sri Lanka the distinction between Tamils and Sinhalese is barely noticeable to the visitor. But the Sinhalese can tell the difference, and the indigenous Tamils know as well the difference between themselves and the Tamils later imported from South India by the British to pick the tea. It is precisely the intimacy and inwardness of the partition impulse that makes it so tempting to demagogues and opportunists. The 1921 partition of Ireland was not just a division of the island but a division of the northeastern province of Ulster. Historically this province contained nine counties. But only four—Antrim, Armagh, Derry, and Down—had anything like a stable Protestant majority. Three others—Monaghan, Cavan, and Donegal—were overwhelmingly Catholic. The line of pro-British partition attempted to annex the maximum amount of territory with the minimum number of Catholic and nationalist voters. Two largely Catholic counties, Fermanagh and Tyrone, petitioned to be excluded from the "Unionist" project. But a mere four counties were thought to be incompatible with a separate state; so the partition of Ireland, into twenty-six counties versus six, was also the fracturing of Ulster. In a similar manner, the partition of India involved the subdivision of the ancient territories of Punjab and Bengal. The peoples here spoke the same language, shared the same ancestry, and had long inhabited the same territory. But they were abruptly forced to choose between one side of a frontier and the other, on the basis of religion alone. And then, with this durable scar of division fully established between them, they could fall to quarreling further about religion among themselves. The infinite and punishing consequences of this can be seen to the present day, through the secession of Bangladesh, the Sunni-Shia fratricide in Pakistan, the intra-Pashtun rivalry, and the sinister and dangerous recent attempt to define India (which still has more Muslims on its soil than Pakistan does) as a Hindu state. To say nothing of Kashmir. This "solution," with its enormous military wastage and potentially catastrophic nuclear potential, must count as one of the great moral and political failures in recent human history. One of Paul Scott's most admirable minor characters is Lady Ethel Manners, the widow of a former British governor, who exclaims about the "midnight" of 1947, The creation of Pakistan is our crowning failure. I can't bear it ... Our only justification for two hundred years of power was unification. But we've divided one composite nation into two and everyone at home goes round saying what a swell the new Viceroy is for getting it sorted out so quickly. The year 1947 was obviously an unpropitious one for laying down your "confessional state" or "post-colonial partition" vintage. The Arabs of Palestine, who gave place to a half-promised British-sponsored state for Jews at the same time, are now subdivided into Israeli Arabs, West Bankers, Gazans, Jerusalemites, Jordanians, and the wider Palestinian-refugee diaspora. If at any moment a settlement looks possible between any one of these factions and the Israelis, the claims of another, more afflicted faction promptly arise to neutralize or negate the process. Anton Shammas and David Grossman have both written lucidly, from Arab-Israeli and Jewish-Israeli perspectives respectively, about this balkanization of a society that was fissile enough to begin with. And perhaps that splintering is why Osama bin Laden's fantasy of a restored caliphate—an undivided Muslim empire, organic and hierarchic and centralized—now exerts its appeal (as did the Nasserite and later the Baath Party dream of a single Arab nation in which the old borders would be subsumed by one glorious whole). In the preface to his 1904 play John Bull's Other Island, George Bernard Shaw made highly vivid use of the metaphor of fracture or amputation. A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a nation's nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again. It will listen to no reformer, to no philosopher, to no preacher, until the demand of the Nationalist is granted. It will attend to no business, however vital, except the business of unification and liberation. This, mark you, was seventeen years before the issue of Irish "liberation" was forcibly counterposed to that of "unification." "Unionist," in British terminology, means someone who favors the "union" of the Six Counties of Northern Ireland with the United Kingdom—in other words, someone who favors the disunion of Ireland. Among Greeks the word "unionist" is rendered as "enotist" —someone who supports enosis, or union, between Greece and John Bull's other European colony, Cyprus. (This is why the Ulster Unionists in Parliament today are among the staunchest supporters of the ultra-nationalist Rauf Denktash's breakaway Turkish colony on the island.) And Shaw might have done well to add that preachers can indeed get attention for their views, while the national question is being debated, as long as they take decided and fervent nationalist positions. Even he would have been startled, if he visited any of these territories today, to find how right he was—and how people discuss their injuries as if they had been inflicted yesterday. It is the admixture of religion with the national question that has made the problem of partition so toxic. Whether consciously or not, British colonial authorities usually preferred to define and categorize their subjects according to confession. The whole concept of British dominion in Ireland was based on a Protestant ascendancy. In the Subcontinent the empire tended to classify people as Muslim or non-Muslim, partly because the Muslims had been the last conquerors of the region and also because—as Paul Scott cleverly noticed—it found Islam to be at least recognizable in Christian-missionary terms (as opposed to the heathenish polytheism of the Hindus). In Palestine and Cyprus, both of which it took over from the Ottomans, London wrote similar categories into law. As a partially intended consequence, any secular or nonsectarian politician was at a peculiar disadvantage. Many historians tend to forget that the stoutest supporters of Irish independence, at least after the rebellion of 1798, were Protestants or agnostics, from Edward Fitzgerald and Wolfe Tone to Charles Stewart Parnell and James Connolly. The leadership of the Indian Congress Party was avowedly nonconfessional, and a prominent part in the struggle for independence was played by Marxist forces that repudiated any definition of nationality by religion. Likewise in Cyprus: the largest political party on the island was Communist, with integrated trade unions and municipalities, and most Turkish Cypriots were secular in temper. The availability of a religious "wedge," added to the innate or latent appeal of chauvinism and tribalism, was always a godsend to the masters of divide and rule. Among other things, it allowed the authorities to pose as overworked mediators between irreconcilable passions. Indeed, part of the trouble with partition is that it relies for its implementation on local partitionists. It may also rely on an unspoken symbiosis between them—a covert handshake between apparent enemies. The grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was in many ways unrepresentative of the Palestinian peasantry of the 1930s and 1940s (and it does not do to forget that perhaps 20 percent of Palestinians are Christian). But his clerical authority made him a useful (if somewhat distasteful) "notable" from the viewpoint of the colonial power, and his virulent sectarianism was invaluable to the harder-line Zionists, who needed only to reprint his speeches. Many Indian Muslims refused their support to Mohammed Ali Jinnah, but once Britain became bent on partition, it automatically conferred authority on his Muslim League as being the "realistic" expression of the community. British policy also helped the emergence of Rauf Denktash, whose violence was principally directed at those Turkish Cypriots who did not want an apartheid solution. More recently, in Bosnia, the West (encouraged by Lords Carrington and Owen) made the fatal error of assuming that the hardest-line demagogues were the most authentic representatives of their communities. Thus men who could never win a truly democratic election—and have not won one since—were given the immense prestige of being invited as recognized delegates to the negotiating table. Interviewing the Serbian Orthodox fanatics who had proclaimed an artificial "Republica Srpska" on stolen and cleansed Bosnian soil, John Burns of The New York Times was surprised to find them citing the example of Denktash's separate state in Cyprus as a precedent. (The usual colloquial curse word for "Muslim," in Serb circles, is "Turk." But there is such a thing as brotherhood under the skin, and even xenophobes can practice their own perverse form of internationalism.) Most of these men are now either in prison or on the run, but they lasted long enough to see Bosnia-Herzegovina subjected to an almost terminal experience of partition and subpartition, splitting like an amoeba among Serb, Croat, and (in the Bihac enclave) Muslim bandits. Now, under the paternal wing of Lord Ashdown, the governorship of Bosnia is based on centripetal rather than centrifugal principles. But his stewardship as commissioner originates with the European Union. The straight capitalist and socialist rationality of the EU—where "Union" means what it says and where frontiers are bad for business as well as a reproach to the old left-internationalist ideal—is in bizarre contrast to the lived experience of partition. The time-zone difference between India and Pakistan, for example, is half an hour. That's a nicely irrational and arbitrary slice out of daily life. In Cyprus, the difference between the clocks in the Greek and Turkish sectors is an hour—but it's the only in-country north-south time change that I am aware of, and it operates on two sides of the same capital city. In my "time," I have traversed the border post at the old Ledra Palace hotel in the center of Nicosia, where a whole stretch of the city is frozen at the precise moment of "cease-fire" in 1974, when everything went into suspended animation. I have been frisked at the Allenby Bridge and at the Gaza crossing between Israel and the "Palestinian authority." I have looked at the Korean DMZ from both sides, been ordered from a car by British soldiers on the Donegal border of Northern Ireland, been pushed around at Checkpoint Charlie on the old Berlin Wall, and been held up for bribes by soldiers at the Atari crossing on Kipling's old "Grand Trunk Road" between Lahore and Amritsar—the only stage at which the Indo-Pakistan frontier can be legally negotiated on land. In no case was it possible to lose a sense of the surreal, as if the border was actually carved into the air rather than the roadway. Rushdie succeeds in weaving magical realism out of this in Midnight's Children: "Mr Kemal, who wanted nothing to do with Partition, was fond of saying, 'Here's proof of the folly of the scheme! Those [Muslim] Leaguers plan to abscond with a whole thirty minutes! Time Without Partitions,' Mr Kemal cried, 'That's the ticket!'" There is a good deal of easy analysis on offer these days, to the effect that Islam was the big loser from colonialism, and is entitled to a measure of self-pity in consequence. The evidence doesn't quite bear this out. In India the British were openly partial to the Muslim side, and helped to midwife the first modern state consecrated to Islam. In Cyprus they favored the Turks. In the Middle East the Muslim Hashemite and Saudi dynasties—rivals for the guardianship of the holy places—benefited as much as anyone from the imperial carve-up. Had there been a British partition of Eritrea after 1945, as was proposed, the Muslims would have been the beneficiaries of it. No, the Muslim claim is better stated as resentment over the loss of the Islamic empire: an entirely distinct grievance. There were Muslim losers in Palestine and elsewhere, mostly among the powerless and landless, but the big losers were those of all creeds and of none who believed in modernity and had transcended tribalism. The largely secular Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo were, however, the main victims of the cave-in to partition in the former Yugoslavia, and are now the chief beneficiaries of that policy's reversal. They were also among the first to test the improvised but increasingly systematic world order, in which rescue operations are undertaken from the developed world, assisted by a nexus of nongovernmental organizations, and then mutate into semi-permanent administrations. "Empire" is the word employed by some hubristic American intellectuals for this new dominion. A series of uncovenanted mandates, for failed states or former abattoir regimes, is more likely to be the real picture. And the relevant boundaries still descend from Sir Percy, Sir Henry, and Sir Cyril, who, as Auden phrased it, "quickly forgot the case, as a good lawyer must." However we confront this inheritance of responsibility (should it be called the global man's burden?), the British past is replete with lessons on how not to discharge it. The URL for this page is http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/03/hitchens.htm. From paul at waag.org Fri Mar 14 17:17:42 2003 From: paul at waag.org (Paul Keller) Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 12:47:42 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Dutch social democrats demand end to help for gujarat Message-ID: Hi all, Just found an article in today's issue of the Dutch newspaper 'Trouw' that I thought might interest you. Apparently the PvdA (Dutch social democratic party) members of parliament have demanded that the government stops its development aid to Gujarat. The Dutch ministry of development cooperation spend 12,5 million euros in Gujarat last year mainly for the (re)construction of schools, drinking water facilities and hospitals. In Holland awarding development cooperation money is made conditional on a number of criteria, on of them being the 'quality of governance'. The events of last year and the juridical aftermath have raised questions within the PvdA fraction if the quality of governance in Gujarat still justifies the millions spend there... Unfortunately the article is not available online. But if someone is really interested I can scan and mail it. /paul From aiindex at mnet.fr Fri Mar 14 18:31:55 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 14:01:55 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Dutch social democrats demand end to help for gujarat In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Some back ground material to what Paul just posted: #1. The following questions have been asked in the Dutch parliament March 10, 2003, The Hague, The Netherlands Questions of the members Dijksma, Eijsink and Koenders (Labour Party) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Development Co-operation on 'Gujarat' 1. Could you provide the Parliament with an overview of the events since mid-2002 that are connected to the persecution of and massacre on Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat, focussing in particular on : - the criminal prosecution of the guilty; - the relief to the victims; - the position of the Muslim minority in the state in a more general sense; - reports of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Indian National Human Rights Commission, including the way in which their recommendations have been implemented - the efforts of the Dutch government, NGO's and the European Commission and its results; - the involvement of the Indian federal government. 2. What is, in this context, the opinion of the [Dutch] government about the quality of 'governance' in the state of Gujarat and its consequences for the development co-operation relations? 3. Are you prepared to suspend the [Dutch] bilateral development co-operation (totally or partially) until the marginalization of the Muslim minority is being stopped and the recommendations of the National Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are implemented? 4. Are you prepared to work on a similar approach of the European Union? o o o #2. India Committee of the Netherlands Utrecht, March 11th 2003 PRESS RELEASE 'European Union and Netherlands should suspend official aid to Gujarat' Both the European Union (EU) and The Netherlands have thus far continued their official development co-operation with the state government of Gujarat (India), also after Chief Minister Modi of the ruling BJP won the elections in December 2002 after a hate campaign against the Muslim minority. Since June 2002 the EU and The Netherlands have not publicly raised their voice again about the massacre supported by the Modi-government on more than 2000 Muslims in Gujarat, even though it is becoming clear that surviving victims have no access to justice and are hardly being rehabilitated and compensated. The position of The Netherlands and the EU calls for an explanation in the light of 'good governance' criteria, including respect for human rights, that especially The Netherlands considers to be thé cornerstone for government to government development co-operation. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have end of February 2003 send out press releases making statements that those guilty of the violence in Gujarat still go unpunished and that there has hardly been any relief and rehabilitation for the victims. According to Amnesty International 'the right to equality before the law is also routinely violated in Gujarat' and the recommendations of the official National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) have so far been ignored. The NHRC has published some very critical reports on the issue in the first half of 2002 but had to stop its activities after the election victory of Narendra Modi. Modi is the new hero of the Hindu nationalist BJP party (which is in power in Gujarat and also leading a national coalition government - and in Gujarat), but also a number of strongly related mass organisations of Hindu fundamentalists that are working to create a 'Hindu Nation'. Both The Netherlands and the EU financially support programmes of the government of Gujarat in the areas of primary education, health care, drinking water and rehabilitation of the victims of the earthquake that hit Gujarat in 2001. In 2002 The Netherlands supported the government of Gujarat with ¤12,5 million. Through non-governmental organisations the Dutch also supported a programme for victims of the massacre. The EU supports the government of Gujarat in 2002 and 2003 with ¤40 million for a health sector reform programme and post earthquake re-development. In addition the EU supports non-governmental organisations in Gujarat with an amount of ¤55 million. However, neither the European Union nor The Netherlands have taken a public position on the question if official development co-operation with the government of Gujarat is still justified, and if so why, in a situation which can certainly not be characterised by 'good governance'. Two questions seem to be crucial here: - is the continued co-operation with the government of Gujarat not a justification of a government that is co-responsible for mass murder, does not punish those that are responsible, ignores the victims and discriminates the Muslim minority? - are the programmes supported by The Netherlands and the EU being negatively effected by a government that discriminates Muslims? The India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN) is of the opinion that the official development co-operation with the government of Gujarat should be suspended until these questions are answered and until the recommendations of the National Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are satisfactorily implemented. The statements of both Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch are supported by the conclusions of a recent visit (27-29 January) of a team consisting of, among others, the directors of Action Aid (New Delhi) and the Confederation of Voluntary Agencies (COVA) from Hyderabad. According a report from the COVA director Ali Asghar about this visit, the police is pressurising victims to withdraw cases and complaints they have filed and several of them are still living in makeshift camps and rented rooms in small towns because they cannot return to their village. The reason is 'the economic boycott imposed by the Hindu right wing parties'. Asghar also writes: 'There are a number of welfare schemes of the government that could benefit the victims. Bu they have not been able to access these because of non-cooperation from the officials and also because of rampant corruption'. Asghar further describes a recent case of setting on fire 31 houses of Muslims in the city of Dahod 'with the police as a bystander all the time'. The main accused, including a BJP leader, are still roaming free. Instead the police arrested 40 young Muslim men, part of whom are still in police custody. Around 600 people are now living in a relief camp and they have not received any assistance from the administration so far. Previous history On February 27th a train coach with mainly Hindu pilgrims was set on fire and 59 person were burned to death. It is still not clear who the perpetrators of this horrible act are. Right after this 'violence of unprecedented brutality targeting the Muslim community spread in the state and continued in the next three months, leaving more than 2000 people killed. The state government, administration and police took insufficient action to protect civilians and in many cases may have colluded with the attackers and actively participated in the violence'. (Amnesty International in press release on 26 February 2003). In a systematic manner, pre-planned according to a large number of independent reports, properties of Muslims - houses, shops, mosques etc. worth roughly ¤700 million - were looted and burned. Many women were raped on a large scale by mobs and often killed thereafter. According to the same independent investigations, the government of Gujarat - especially in the first few days after the attack on the train in Godhra - did not interfere in the orchestrated violence while ample evidence has been provided that the police, other officials and politicians have in fact actively participated in the violence and protected the guilty. On 23rd of April the Indian Ambassador in Madrid was officially summoned by the Spanish chairmanship of the European Union on the issue of Gujarat. Furthermore on the 2nd of May the European Union, during a official meeting high-level meeting between India and the EU in New Delhi, expressed its deep concern about the situation in Gujarat to the Indian authorities. During the same period an internal EU-report was leaked mentioning 'the clear evidence of complicity by state ministers [of the Modi government] in the Gujarat killings' (The Week, May 12 2002). Another leaked Netherlands report also referred to the targeting of Muslims and indicted Gujarat Chief Minister Modi for his failure to protect the minorities (The Week). The government of India, 'loosing its diplomatic cool .. responding in a tone of unseemly anger' (tehelka.com, 24 April 2002), accused the EU of playing 'a partisan role which could affect the friendly relations between India and the European Union, as well as with the European countries (The Hindu, April 26 2002). This didn't stop the European Parliament to adopt a resolution on May 16th 2002 asking the government of India and Gujarat to 'continue their investigations Š independently and impartially and to bring those responsible to justice, irrespective of their positions, religion, identity of political belief'. The resolution also stated that 'numerous independent inquiries by human rights organisations confirm that state officials and police of Gujarat were involved in the clashes'. At the end of June 2002 the Dutch Minister of Development Co-operation, Mrs. Eveline Herfkens, wrote in a letter to ICCO, the India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN) and six other NGO's that 'the governance situation has come under considerable pressure because of what happened'. Furthermore she wrote: 'I assure you that I will continue to follow up on the developments in Gujarat. It is of great importance to follow up to what extent the Indian central and Gujarati state government will match deeds with words, will take preventive measures to stop repetition of violence, will undertake action to bring the perpetrators of violence to court, take care of an adequate rehabilitation of the victims and implement measures to counter discrimination of religious minorities (in particular in programmes that are financed with Dutch funds). I have requested Her Majesty's Ambassador in New Delhi to continue to report about this to me.' ------------------------------------------------------------------- For the press reports of both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch about Gujarat see: - www.indianet.nl/pb030226.html - www.indianet.nl/pb030227.html For six recent stories by Navaz Kotwal of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) about individual victims of the violence and impunity in Gujarat see: www.indianet.nl/gujarat.html Further information mail to Gerard Oonk, co-ordinator India Committee of The Netherlands Website: www.indianet.nl At 12:47 PM +0100 14/3/03, Paul Keller wrote: >Hi all, > >Just found an article in today's issue of the Dutch newspaper 'Trouw' that I >thought might interest you. Apparently the PvdA (Dutch social democratic >party) members of parliament have demanded that the government stops its >development aid to Gujarat. The Dutch ministry of development cooperation >spend 12,5 million euros in Gujarat last year mainly for the >(re)construction of schools, drinking water facilities and hospitals. In >Holland awarding development cooperation money is made conditional on a >number of criteria, on of them being the 'quality of governance'. The events >of last year and the juridical aftermath have raised questions within the >PvdA fraction if the quality of governance in Gujarat still justifies the >millions spend there... > >Unfortunately the article is not available online. But if someone is really >interested I can scan and mail it. > >/paul > >_________________________________________ >reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >Critiques & Collaborations >To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with >subscribe in the subject header. >List archive: -- From aiindex at mnet.fr Fri Mar 14 20:02:08 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 15:32:08 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Formation of Pakistan Social Forum Message-ID: South Asia Citizens Web | 13 March 2003 http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/2002/PSFMarch03.html o o o Statement of the Coordination Committee of the Pakistan Social Forum Lahore, 13th March 2003 We the assembly of political and social activists, trade unionists, students, teachers, people's movements, are gathered here today as part of the burgeoning global movement against neo-liberalism and militarism, symbolized by the process known as the World Social Forum (WSF). On February 15th, this global movement came of age and highlighted that it does represent the interests and beliefs of people across the world based on peace and justice for all. We pledge allegiance to the goals of this movement and aspire to further the cause of this movement here in Pakistan. We have met here in Lahore over the past two days to take this process forward in anticipation of the next WSF in India in 2004. A coordination committee has been formed for this purpose and the South-Asia Partnership-PK (SAP-Pk) will act as the secretariat. Today the threat of militarism and neo-liberalism is greater than ever, given the imperialist advance of the US in Afghanistan and the now imminent invasion of Iraq. We reject the neo-imperialist order that is being framed by the US, and call upon all peace-loving people to articulate their opposition to US aggression. The military strategy of the US is simply an extension of the neo-liberal capitalist order that has been imposed on poor people of the world incessantly since the fall of the Berlin Wall. We consider the impending attack on Iraq an attack on all people of the world, and not the clash of civilizations that has been depicted both by the hawks in the Bush administration or the extremist elements who are engaging in sloganeering of a similar character. It is very likely that US aggression will not stop at Iraq. The international system that has evolved since WWII faces a serious crisis of legitimacy if the US does go ahead with its plan to attack Iraq regardless of world opinion. In particular, the United Nations mandate will be forever damaged if the US attacks in spite of opposition in the Security Council and across the globe. It is imperative that the UN is not further discredited. In particular, we demand that the government of Pakistan unequivocally vote against war in the SC. We also welcome the stance of the governments of France, Germany, Russia, and China who have clearly heeded the public uproar in these countries against war. We refuse to believe that the people of the world should be left at the mercy of the market and the whims of corporate globalization. Should international law be sacrificed at the altar of US hegemony, institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and regimes such as the World Trade Organisation will be left to dictate the future of the vast majority of people across the world. We will resist this slide toward oppression at all levels. We demand that the government of Pakistan get military bases currently under US control, vacated forthwith and that the same takes place in all countries of the world where the US has maintained a military presence. We also stand for global disarmament of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. In addition regional tensions in South Asia remain high and a threat to over one billion people in the sub-continent. We demand that the governments of India and Pakistan resume dialogue on all outstanding issues particularly nuclear weapons and Kashmir, and remove restrictions on movement of common people. The WSF process stands for democratization at all levels. We too here in Pakistan want democratization of state and society. The global hegemonic order is based on the ability of the national elite in countries such as Pakistan to manipulate decision-making processes and monopolise resource allocation. We strongly condemn the manner in which the state continues to suppress the rights of those who are resisting the advance of neo-liberalism including the urban and rural landless, students, workers, and all other groups seeking to secure basic livelihoods. We stand clearly for democratic practice at all levels and in particular demand complete withdrawal of the military from the political sphere. We oppose violence and war at all levels, and oppose the propagation of ideologies founded on violent principles. We cannot condone the onslaught of communalism, religious extremism and parochialism at any level and stand for principles of diversity, tolerance, and co-existence. If the US war march continues, we fear that such principles will be condemned to oblivion. We will build a movement here in Pakistan in accordance will all of these principles. We will engage in direct and political action. We appeal to all citizens, political parties, and civil society organizations to join this struggle against neo-liberalism and militarism. Issued by, Secretariat Pakistan Social Forum (PSF) From aiindex at mnet.fr Sat Mar 15 01:59:42 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 21:29:42 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Write letters to the Dutch Govt. & the European Commission re Gujarat Message-ID: Excerpts from a letter by India Committee of the Netherlands requesting that people write to the Dutch Govt. and to European Commission: It would indeed be very important if you could write to e.g. the Dutch government and the European Commission on the issue. With regard to the Dutch government you could write to: Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mr. J. de Hoop Scheffer, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Mrs. A. van Aardenne, Minister for Development Co-operation Postbox 20061 2500 EB Den Haag The Netherlands An e-mail version of the letter could be send to: Mr. Wilfred Mohr, Head Southern Asia Division Asia and Oceania Department; e-mail: wt.mohr at minbuza.nl But do address the letter officially to the Ministers. That obliges them to give a formal reply. It would be useful if you couid write within a week from now, as they have to give answers to the parliamentary questions in about two weeks. They might then take up your information. With regard to the European Commission you could write to both: European Commission Mr. Chris Patten Commissioner for External Relations Rue de Loi B-1049 Brussels Belgium Head of the Section for India, Bhutan and Nepal is Mrs. Laurence Argimon-Pistre; e-mail: laurence.argimon-pistre at cec.eu.int and to: European Commission Mr. Poul Nielson European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid G-12 8/48 Rue de GenËve 12 1140 Brussels Belgium tel. 32-2-2981000 E-mail: poul.nielson at cec.eu.int -- From yazadjal at vsnl.net Thu Mar 13 13:26:39 2003 From: yazadjal at vsnl.net (Yazad Jal) Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 13:26:39 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] CopyRight, CopyLeft, CopyConsent Message-ID: Centre for Civil Society Invites you to a Dialogue on CopyRight, CopyLeft, CopyConsent: IPR in the Information Age Panel: Swaminathan Aiyar, Times of India Ajay Shah, IGIDR & Ministry of Finance Moderator: Parth J Shah, Centre for Civil Society Venue: Conference Room 4, India International Centre Annexe Date & Time: 5:30pm, March 15, 2003 Please join us for Tea at 5 pm. Readings on IPR are at www.ccsindia.org/ipr.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Mark your calendar! March 24: Water under Community Management Casuarina Hall, India Habitat Centre March 28-29: Keepers of Forests: Judiciary, Ministry, or Community? Jacaranda Hall II, India Habitat Centre For more information, please visit www.ccsindia.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Please note our new address given below. @@@@@@@@ Parth J Shah President Centre for Civil Society K-36, Hauz Khas Enclave, New Delhi 110 016 Tel: 2653 7456/ 2652 1882 Fax: 2651 2347 Website: www.ccsindia.org Email: parth at ccsindia.org _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From announcer at pukar.org.in Fri Mar 14 11:01:51 2003 From: announcer at pukar.org.in (PUKAR @ The Paperie) Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:01:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Excavating Cinema and the City Message-ID: Dear Friends: PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) cordially invites you to a discussion on cinema and the city, with VIRCHAND DHARAMSEY, archaeologist and film scholar, discussing the travails of documenting the cinematic history of Mumbai, with critic and scholar ASHISH RAJADHYAKSHA. We popularly imagine Mumbai to be a 'cinematic city'. Like all cities whose representation in the cinema becomes a part of their very identity as a place, the history of the city becomes intertwined with the history of the cinema made in it. As the archive of the city in some ways becomes the cinema, so the archive of the cinema is to only be found in the crevices of the city. How do we research the cinema in Mumbai? Where would we find our data? Why do public libraries and major archives store so little of cinema history? How do you compile a filmography of the earliest history of the cinema? Why are private collections so important? How did they come about? What happens when precious film material including publicity booklets and posters are being bought by collectors and sold in auctions? VIRCHAND DHARAMSEY (b. 1935) is an archaeologist and a leading authority on early Indian cinema. As an archaeologist, he has been part of a number of field excavations and was a member of a collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania and the Department of Archaeology, Gujarat. He has edited Gujarat Gatha (1993), and has assembled the definitive filmography of Indian silent cinema, Light of Asia, (edited by Suresh Chhabria, 1994), contributed the sections on silent cinema for the Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen, 1999) and co-written with Amrit Gangar the book Indian Cinema: A Visual Voyage. ASHISH RAJADHYAKSHA (b. 1957) is Senior Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Culture & Society (CSCS), Bangalore, and was the editor of the Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (1999). He is an active member of the editorial collective of the Journal of Arts and Ideas, and is a regular contributor to Framework and to Sight & Sound. He has written the book Ritwik Ghatak: A Return to the Epic (1983), was Editor, The Sad and Glad of Kishore Kumar (Research Centre for Cinema Studies, 1988); was Editor, with Amrit Gangar, of Ghatak : Arguments/Stories (Screen Unit/Research Centre for Cinema Studies, 1987). He is currently coordinating the CSCS Media Archive. He was co-curator, with Geeta Kapur, of the exhibition Bombay/Mumbai 1992-2001, part of the exhibition Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis, at the Tate Modern, London, 2001. Date: SATURDAY 15 MARCH 2002 6.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m. At: The BOMBAY PAPERIE Mezzanine Floor, Soonawalla Building 59, Bombay Samachar Marg Opposite the Stock Exchange Fort, Bombay 400001 R.S.V.P. Phone Shekhar Krishnan or Rahul Srivastava at 2207 7779 E-Mail About PUKAR @ The Paperie: These discussions is part of a monthly programme organised by PUKAR for friends and guests at The Bombay Paperie, Fort. These gatherings are usually held on the third or fourth Saturday of every month at 6.00 p.m. PUKAR thanks Neeta Premchand and Navaz Kotwal of The Bombay Paperie for hosting this monthly public discussion. We look forward to your attendance and participation, and suggesting names of people and organisations to add to our mailing list. _____ 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 abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Sat Mar 15 12:59:03 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 15 Mar 2003 07:29:03 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Brecht and the Soviet Tanks Message-ID: <20030315072903.24003.qmail@webmail7.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030315/30518ef7/attachment.pl From ritika at sarai.net Sat Mar 15 21:07:29 2003 From: ritika at sarai.net (ritika at sarai.net) Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 15:37:29 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] WAR plans and strategies? Message-ID: <200303151537.h2FFbTI3019621@mail.waag.org> Hi people!! Perhaps, most of you have already seen this website, but i was quite taken aback when i chanced upon it. http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030317/map/index.html From narender224 at rediffmail.com Sat Mar 15 18:26:15 2003 From: narender224 at rediffmail.com (narender kumar thakur) Date: 15 Mar 2003 12:56:15 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Daliy Labour Market-Draft for Critical comments Message-ID: <20030315125615.22654.qmail@webmail15.rediffmail.com> Dear friends, This is a draft for comments related to a study of Daily Labour Market, Labour Chowk in Delhi. I would like to collect data for my study. There are different outlines on the basis of research questions, hypotheses, and objectives. Therefore I need your critical comments which would really enrich my and CSDS resources. With Regards Narender Thakur _________________ Daily Labour Market (Labour Chowk) in Delhi- Narender Thakur (Draft for Comments) Introduction The economic reforms in India were initiated in 1991, response to economic crisis and to improve the economic situation. There has been a debate whether the reform measures have adverse effects on poverty and employment. According to some researchers, reforms would benefit the poor in the medium and long run, although they may have adverse effect in the short-run (Bhagvati and Srinivasan 1993; Tendulkar 1998, Joshi and Little1997). Some others argue that the reform package has contradictions and it might have adverse effect on the poor in both short and long run (Nayyar 1993; Ghosh; Bhaduri 1996). In the phase of LPG (liberalization, privatization, globalization), the labourers are adversely affected by the implemented policies. The workers in Indian public sector are severely affected by the recent retrenchment policies in labour market of Indian economy. There are two classified categories of labour market in India, viz., informal sector and formal sector. Public sector undertakings like Delhi Vidut Board, MTNL, and Railway etc. are examples of formal sector however labourers working in household activities and other unorganised sector activities are related to informal sector of labour market. Both sectors have impact of LPG. But informal sector workers are severely hit by the policies related to LPG. However many workers of informal sector are pushed by retrenchment policies of formal sectors. Therefore it is a continuing process of market forces intervention in both sectors of labour market. The daily labour market in Delhi is also an example of informal sector. A large number of unorganised workers are gathered at different “labour chowks” in the morning. These workers are ready to selling their physical labour/skill either directly to employer or indirectly to employer through mediator (Thekedar). The numbers of workers are being increased since 1990s, as I noticed from my staying in Delhi since 1985. On the basis of pilot-survey of ‘Daily Labour-Chowk’, Munrika “Labor Chowk” near Jawaharlal Nehru University, South Delhi, the objectives, hypotheses and questionnaire are framed for the study. Objectives Information related 1.To find out the source of information about work/square opportunities in Delhi, (when laborers were living in their native place and after coming in Delhi). 2.To find out the source of information of derived demand for labor (to Thekedar) 3.To find out the source of information about their native place. Communication Related 4.To find out the communication process between mediator, labourer and employer. 5.To find out the role of Thekedar between laborers and employer. 6.To find out the source of communication with native place. 7.To find out the workers’ preference for media. (Radio, Television, newspapers, etc.) 8.To find out the means of enjoyment and means of celebration of festivals. Work, Wage-Rate, Working-Hours 9.To find out the pattern of workers’ mobility for work among labour chowks.(estimate probability of getting of work per day per month) 10.To find out the consumption, saving, investment and remittances pattern of labourer. 11.To estimate the level of earnings and working hours. Hypotheses Information related 1)Family member(s) is/are the major source of information about work/square opportunities in Delhi, (when laborers were living in their native place and after coming in Delhi). 2)Advertisement in newspapers is the prime source of information of derived demand for labor (to Thekedar) 3)Relatives and family members are the important source of information about their native place. Communication Related 4)Thekedar is the key factor in the communication process between mediator, labourer and employer. 5)The exploiter role of Thekedar between laborers and employer. 6)Letters exchange by mail is main source of communication with native place. 7)Radio is first preference of labourers for media. 8)Group dances and songs are means of enjoyment and means of celebration of festivals. Work, Wage-Rate, Working-Hours 9)Higher chance of work is the determining factor for selection of Labour- Chowk(s) 10)Major proportion of wage is being spent on consumption and negligible on remittances. 11)There is a lot of fluctuation of wage-rate and working hours. Draft for Comments Questionnaire 1.Personal Profile of Respondent 1)Name of respondent :_________________( optional) 2)Gender: M/F 3)Age:___________ 4)Highest degree of educational qualification: 5Have you got any formal training for your profession? YES/NO, If Yes, specify______ 6)Marital Status: Married/Single, If married, work status of wife: House-wife/working in your profession/any other_______________ 7)Number of children:_____________ 8)Domicile State:_________ 9)Place of Birth (State):___________ 2.Means of Transport information and communication of respondent 1)Nature/Type of work: 2)What was your earlier profession: 3)Name of Square: 4)Are you stuck either with one labour square or change the square(s)? one/more than one, If more than one, explain the name(s) of other squares: 5)How you go to work place (labour-square)? (Mean of Transport) a)By foot b)Cycle c)Scooter d)Bus e)Other, specify_________ 6)How are you getting knowledge about work? a)By yourself, b)Employer, c)Mediator, d)Labourer, e)Other___ 7)What is your average duration of work? a)Average Days in a Month_______ b)Average Months in a Year________ (Give clue in terms of class interval of days and Months) 8)What is average earnings: a)Average earning Rs. _________ per month b)Average earning Rs. _________ per annum 9)Is your family staying with you? YES/NO 10)Are you sending remittances in your hometown/village? YES/No, If YES explain: a)Average amount of remittances Rs. _____________per month b)Average amount of remittances Rs. _____________per annum 11) What is your of gadget and sources of communication, information and entertainment (Tick the appropriate options) a)Telephone b)Radio c)Tape-recorder d)TV e)Newspaper f)Other______________ 12) Are you celebrating your rituals and festivals in Delhi? YES/NO, If YES please specify the name of main festivals and rituals: _____________________________ 13) Are you faced any means of exploitation by either mediator or employer? YES/NO, if YES, please explain ____________________________ 14) Are you familiar/known with some labour trade union? YES/NO, if YES, please specify the name(s) of labour trade Union(s): ________________________________ 15) Are you member of trade union? YES/NO, if YES, please specify the name(s) of labour trade Union(s):__________________ ___________ _______________________________________________________________________ Odomos - the only mosquito protection outside 4 walls - Click here to know more! http://r.rediff.com/r?http://clients.rediff.com/odomos/Odomos.htm&&odomos&&wn From shuddha at sarai.net Sat Mar 15 21:50:22 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 21:50:22 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] A Report of the Crisis/Media Workshop at Sarai/CSDS Message-ID: <03031521502201.01528@sweety.sarai.kit> Crisis/Media : The Uncertain States of Reportage A Report on the Recently Concluded Workshop at Sarai, CSDS, Delhi by Shuddhabrata Sengupta The Sarai Programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, (CSDS) Delhi together with the Waag Society/for Old and New Media, Amsterdam, recently organized a workshop titled "Crisis/Media : The Uncertain States of Reportage". The workshop was hosted at Sarai-CSDS, Delhi. "Crisis/Media" brought together media practitioners, journalists, critics, activists, writers and students for an intense three days of reflection, dialogue and debate on the act of bearing witness, in and through the media on a world at crisis. The workshop opened with a provocation that stated "The crises in the media are the crises of the media." The Concept Note, Programme and Profiles of Participants for the workshop can be found at the Sarai website at http://www.sarai.net/events/crisis_media/crisis_media.htm. A comprehensive webjournal for the event, together with detailed reports for each session, and photographs, can be found (linked to the Waag Society's website) at http://swj.waag.org/crisis This event, which took place on the 3rd. 4th and 5th of March, 2003, brought together critical voices from Kashmir, Gujarat, Manipur, Delhi, Mumbai, Argentina, the ex-Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, Australia, South Africa and the United States. It had human rights activists, anti war campaigners, and legal practitioners dialogue with reporters who have covered intensive crisis and conflict situations, It featured talks by writers, critics and academics, a round table in which independent media activists discussed strategies for the future,an impromptu exhibition of photographs depicting the situation in Argentina today and screenings of films and videos relevant to the themes of the workshop. The workshop was very well attended, with people staying on after long days for the screenings, and conversations continuing well into the night, on each of the three days. A group of M.A. Final year students from the Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia University. Delhi also attended the workshop along with the many who had pre registered to be able to attend.The seminar room at CSDS was packed to capacity, for much of the three days, and arrangements were made for live video transmissions of the panel in order to accommodate an additional thirty or forty people in the 'Sarai Interface Zone' in the basement of the new building at CSDS on Rajpur Road. What follows is a few vignettes and memories of some of what I found to be the most engaging encounters and presentations that occurred during the event. As one of the people who organized and co ordinated the event (together with Geert Lovink from the Waag, and Rachel Magnusson, intern at Sarai)I found that my expectations of what we had hoped to achieve with this conference exceeded to a great extent by the depth and intensity of the discussions, and by the excellent presentations made by the invited speakers that prompted these wide ranging discussions. In a south asian context, where a variety of economic, cultural and political factors enforce what is often a crippling silence about many key issues, even as the impression of a free media is sought to be sustained by the clamour of a sophisticated media and news industry, this workshop had an added significance. It was able to generate a climate that welcomed candour and free speech, and at the same time set and maintained a high standard of discourse about crisis reportage. It was able to be an event that could focus on very concrete issues of media practice, without losing sight of what it means, in a philosophical and ethical sense to bear witness to difficult times. In our intorductiory statements, Geert Lovink and I stated that The 'Crisis/Media' Workshop at Sarai opened framed by the memory of one crisis, and the anticipation of another. Exactly a year ago, at the end of February and the beginning of March 2002, we witnessed a pogrom in Gujarat, in western India. Today, the world stands a hair’s trigger away from a war in Iraq, the consequences of which, on a global scale seem too difficult to even imagine. These are times for sober reflection, and that, precisely, is what we often find missing, as we open the newspaper, listen to the radio, or continue to be lobotomised by television. Yet, a variety of different, dissident, passionate and sane voices are also making themselves heard, through combinations of new and old media, as never before. The 'Paid For' news of the mainstream media is often exposed for what it is, even before it appears, by an increasingly vigilant network of independent local-global media initiatives. The numbers that turn out on the streets of the world’s major capitals to protest against the plans for war against Iraq seem to suggest that despite huge propaganda efforts, 'the spin' isn't working, at least not all of the time. We live, as the Chinese curse, has it, in 'interesting times'. The workshop opened with a keynote presentation by Danny Muller, from the Iraq Peace Team, who spoke eloquently of the way in which the rising tide of protest worldwide against the plans for war against Iraq, showed how the spin doctors in the media don't always get it right. He spoke of the necessity of tactical intelligence, in order to ensure that alternative voices get heard. He also emphasized the fact that we need to see each of ourselves not just as passive recipients of media, but as active agents, using conversations, letters, and other means of personal communication as effective "viral" agents of making it possible different points of view get a hearing. He spoke fo his experiences of talking about his trips to Iraq, and civil disobedience through non payment of taxes, as well as his interventions on prime time live TV shows, such as Oprah Winfrey, where he could confront President Bush with the sheer absurdity of the drive for war. Danny Miller's presentation was a testatment to the way in which ordinary people with limited resources can make a difference to the media representation of any issue. The tension between mainstream media and other ways of bearing witness to our times remained a consistent theme through the days of the workshop. It surfaced for instance in the plenary that bracketed the end of the workshop, which featured an address by Arundhati Roy, the well known dissident writer based in delhi. Arundhati Roy, compared the mainstream media to a buffalo, surrounded by a swarm of bees that were all the alternative and independent voices emerging from within a politicized new media culture - she spoke of how the "paid for" news of the networks and newspapers needs to be vigilantly combatted. Her exposition of news as 'collateral damage' looked at how the indigenous forest dwelling people of north kerala could be dubbed easily as 'terrorists', at the way in which the movement against the damming of the river Narmada has fared at the hands of the mainstream media, and the easy acceptance of official press releases as 'objective' truth as an unfortunate part of the so called "war against terror". At the same time, she sounded an important note of caution when she stated that peoples movements need to work had to create an alternative political culture that cannot be easily packaged into the familiar patterns of the "leaders and the led", and the images of martyrs/victims and extremists that the mainstream media is so adept at using to represent them with. Arundhati Roy , through her presentation, made an eloquent case for the "peace correspondent" as opposed to "war correspondent" as someone who reports not only the wars that are manufactured and unleashed on to people by powerful interests, but as someone who listens to and is sensitive to all the struggles for dignity, peace and liberty that do not necessarily make the news in the din of war. In concluding the discussion after her presentation Arundhati underlined the need to be wary of a "Lazyness in Language" and of the need to remain alive to the task of making the connections that needed to be made, and to the imperative of a fidelity to what people experienced in the world today. Ranjit Hoskote, (Deputy Editor, The Hindu) in another plenary spoke of the responsibilities that come with the act of speaking in a resistant voice, the imperative not to take on the mantle of victimhood as a catcha all and not to mirror the "repeatage" that substitutes for reportage. He emphasized the need not to simplify, to reproduce existing inadequate categories, and the urge to jump to conclusions, pointing out that in a conflict, very often it is unncessary to allow oneself to be pushed into the corner of choosing one or the other side, because, as he said, the "Truth may have more than two sides to it" Subarno Chatterjee (Delhi University) dissected the role of the media in the build up of war frenzy during the Kargil conflict, and discussed in detail the questionable way in which reportage of "atrocities" by Pakistani forces would occupy the headlines, while different standards where applied while talking of the behavious of the Indian military. A panel in Hindi featured a exploration by the eminent Hindi essayist, writer and critic, Rajendra Yadav of the crisis of free speech in the Hindi language. His presentation, which took the form of an autobiographical exegesis of the many attacks he has faced from the right, left and the centre as a result of his willingness to say things that made people uncomfortable was marked by with and candour, but also revealed a deep discomfort with the prevailing culture of "playing safe" that has the Hindi reading public within its grip. His presentation was followed by an anecdote laced intervention by Abhay Dube (fellow, CSDS and former journalist) of the "crisis' that gripped the newsroom of a major Hindi daily (about what to say and what not to say) on the day that the Babri Masjid was demolished by the forces of the Hindu Right in 1992. In two other significant panels, one on the media reports of the Gujarat violence, and the other on reporting situations of conflict in South Asia, (which discussed ethnic conflicts in Sri Lanka, insurgency and state terror in Kashmir and the north east of India) working journalists based in Kashmir and Gujarat, spoke with depth and passion of the travails of trying to stay close to the truth. Darshan Desai, (Outlook, Ahmedabad) ) spoke of the way in which the political forces who orchestrated the violence in Gujarat (the ruling BJP party) was able to successfully manipulate the English language media's reporting of the truth about what was going on - into a discorse of 'the demonization of Gujaratis by a section of the media'. This in turn helped turn the image of the aggressor into that of the aggreived, and was pumped for mileage, quite successfully in the elections that followed some months after the violence. Siddharth Varadarajan (Times of India, Delhi) spoke of how the English language media did perform a responsible role by not shying away from naming the victims of the violence that engulfed Gujarat, but he also spoke of the "Anarchy" of the newspaper office, and the pressures of daily production, by way of explanation for the many slippages that occur in the media's presentation of key issues of conflict. This explanation was contested actively in the discussion that followed. Gurpal Singh (independent filmmaker, Mumbai) spoke of the efforts of a coalition of media workers and activists towards creating a body of video documentation in the aftermath of the violence, that they were willing to share with all those who were committed to speaking out against what had happenned, Arvind Narain (Alternative Legal Forum) spoke of the ways in which the term "genocide" could or could not be deployed in describing what had occurred in Gujarat, in the light of the existing paradigm of international law. He spoke of the need for engaged and creative legal and human rights activism in coming up with adequate responses to exceptional situations like Gujarat. Muzammil Jaleel (Indian Express, Srinagar) spoke of a daily routine of fear, of dealing with getting inured to violence, until the death of journalist colleagues in bomb attacks would shake one out of the inertia of witnessing violence. Muzammil emphasized the necessity to abide by a professional ethic and a commitment to telling what one sees, even if the things that you see do not add up to a coherent picture that is comforting to either of the parties in a conflict like Kashmir. This, he said, means everyone is out to get you, in one sense, both the insurgents as well as the forces of state power, because the truth is inconvenient to everyone. Manoranjan Selliah, (independent journalist and human rights activist, Colombo) talked about the way in which the plight of Tamil Muslims, caught in the cross fire between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan State had been completely ignored by the media, which chooses to ignore the victims of those it has already designated as 'victims'. A Bimol Akoijam (visiting fellow, CSDS, Delhi) spoke of the way in which the North East of India, functions in a sense as the marginal, repressed 'other' , yielded by the obsessive "Rastra chetna (national consciousness)" of the mainstram media in India. This he said, was symptomatic of a residual colonialist consciousness that still animated the mainstream of Indian civil society and the state - the media could hardly be an expected to be an exception to it. Abir Bazaz (independent filmmaker, Delhi/Srinagar) who was featured as a discussant, spoke of the media's many silences, especially with regard to the beginning of the nineties, in Kashmir, when a massive climate of fear and repression led to an increased sense of alienation within the Kashmir valley. He also pointed out the tendency to be selective about the "victims" whose cause one chooses to champion, pointing out for instance how the Kashmiri Pandit minority became selective victims, depending on who was doing the reporting, within and outside Kashmir. In another very interesting panel, called "The Encounter : Truth as a Casualty" Syed Iftekhar Gilani, (Kashmir Times, Delhi) a journalist recently released from prison in Delhi, spoke eloquently of the kafkaesque ordeal that journalists and others face when faced with the "Official Secrets Act". Anjali Mody, on the same panel, spoke of how journalists have become habituated to reproduce official (police) versions in the case of so called "encounter" deaths, because of the vice like grip of the notion of "national security" and the "national interest" on the media as a whole. She pointed out that though there were a few honorable exceptions of cases where reporters did scratch the surface of the hand out stories about "terrorists' slain in encounters, there was still little by way of an understanding of what could be done so that all the nuances of a particular "encounter' were adequately explored. Arun Mehta ( telecommunications engineer and human rights activist) spoke at the same panel on the need for a strict scrutiny and adequate 'forensic' standards in cases where the media highlights what is considered to be 'electronic evidence'. He quoted a series of examples, ranging from the Tehelka Arms Kickback Scandal to the trial proceedings in the "Attack on the Indian Parliament" case, where the state, media organizations, and reporters have all been slipshod in the way in which they have dealt with what has been called 'Electronic Evidence'. Vijay Nagaraj (Amnesty International, Delhi) who spoke as a discussant on this panel spoke of the necessity of carefully examining simple things like police FIRs (first information reports) to unravel patterns of violence and repression at an everyday level. He also cautioned us against the new found global respectability for severely repressive laws that were violative of basic human rights as a corollary of the so called "War against Terror". The focus of the workshop was markedly global, and we heard from Marilina Winik (Indymedia Argentina, Buenos Aires) about the way in which independent media initiatives were confronting the collapse of everyday life in Argentina today. Marni Cordell (The Paper and Small Voices.org, Melbourne) spoke of experiences of working with independent and alternative media practitioners in Indosnesia and Australia We heard testimonies of women in the South African Media from Crystal Orderson, (Young Africa Television, Johannesburg) and also of how radio, and the internet became essential tools in the struggle for a free space, in the ex Yugoslavia, from Katerina Zivanovic (Cyber Rex and Radio B 92, Belgrade) , and Adrienne van Heteren (Press Now/Glasnost Foundation, Moscow/Amsterdam). The Crises of Everyday Life were also examined in a south asian context in by Dipika Nath (Prism, Delhi) spoke of the media's representation of sexual minorities while Chitra Ahanthem (Imphal Free Press, Manipur) looked at how the HIV/Aids situation, complicated by a backdrop of ethnic violence and state repression creates a warped media picture of Manipur. The afternoon of the third day began with a panel titled Confrontations in Cyberspace. Harsh Kapur, (South Asia Citizens Web) took everyone on a tour of the global far right in cyberspace, with an extended detours on the large territory occupied by the Hindu Far Right, in India, and in the global south asian diaspora. He also highlighted efforts at online resistance to the far right, and spoke of the urgency to launch concerted online campaigns against the far right's sophisticated and extensive web presence. Aditya Nigam (Autonomous Media Network and CSDS, Delhi)spoke of the different political culture that could now become possible because of the decentralized, potentially non hierarchical structure of the web. He mentioned the crucial role that mailing lists had played, in the wake of the Indo - Pak nuclear tests in 1998, during the Kargil war and in the aftermath of the Gujarat violence. These, he said were necessary and crucial to broaden and deepen, especially when the mainstream newspaper can report mass protests as mere 'traffic jams' as had happenned recently in Delhi, even as they engineered false 'media events' to suit particular political interests. Asha Varadarajan, (Queens University, Kingston, Ontario) In the final panel on the reportage of ecological crises, Darryl D'Monte (president of the International Fedaration of Environmental Journalists, Mumbai)spoke of the crisis within environmental journalism, as a result of the backlash against discussion of ecological issues within mainstream media. He spoke of how column inches of in depth and analyrical reportage on environmental matters had actually declined, even though issues like "Global Warming" did have high visibility. Sanjay Kak (independent film maker, Delhi) spoke about the necessity of putting politics back into environmental reportage, and of dealing adequately with the time scales that are important in the politics of environmental issues, which the mainstream media's obsession with "events" is generally unable to accommodate or grasp. Pradip Saha (Down to Earth Magazine, Delhi) gave a verywitty but sharply critical analysis of the nittiy gritty of the reportage of an issue like "water" in the mainstream media. Complete with graphs of frequency distributions of seasonal patters of reportage in newspapers of water related themes, Saha drove home the point that the media generally followed the patterns of thought laid out by the state and by corporations when it came to the reportage of basic issues. He made a strong appeal for a systematic analysis of the political economy of media ownership and control patterns and the way in which these patterns impinged on the reportage of environmental issues. Ravi Agarwal (Environmental Activist, Toxics Link, Delhi) spoke of how the only environmental issues that get any real coverage in the media are those that can be presented as "disasters". This implies that the everyday issues, which are structural, which have to do with basic economic and political questions often get sidelined. He also spoke of the need for effective media strategies for envirnomental activists, not necessarily relying on the spectacular, as wealthy organizations such as Greenpeace are able to do, but relying instead on methodical and systematic investigation, analysis and innovative ways of presenting findings to a broader public. Apart from the discussions and plenaries, each days programme ended with a screening. The first evening featured "Before the Rain" by Milcho Manchevski, which was introduced and located within the context of the history of conflicts, and media representations of that conflict in the ex Yugolavia, by Costas Constantinou (University of Keele) The second evening featured a screening of "Paradise on the River of Hell" a personal reflection in video on the situation in Kashmir, by Abir Bazaz and Meenu Gaur, followed by a selection of short films by different groups from Argentina, which was introduced and presented by Marilina Winik. The final evening's film was "Words on Water" a film on the peoples resistance movement to the building of big dams on the river Narmada in Central India, by Sanjay Kak. Each of the screenings was followed by a lively and animated discussion with the filmmakers and presenters. The workshop also featured an informal round table on future strategies for alternative media inititatives, which saw the participation of inedpendent media activists such as Sanjay Bhangar (Indymedia Mumbai) , Marilina Winik (Indymedia Argentina), Marni Cordell (Small Voices, Melbourne), Katerina Zivanovic (Cyber Rex, Belgrade) and others. The atmosphere at the workshop bordered occasionally on the electric,with intense discussions following incisive presentations and plenaries. The workshop was for many of the participants, (as well as for all those who attended) an opportunity to talk about and listen to many issues of critical importance that had for a very long time been smothered by a suffocating, uncritical culture of silence in South Asia. If anything it did demonstrate that there is hope yet, within our societies, for the emergence of a consistent, critical and vigilant climate of examination of the media - as one more node in the matrix of power. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the workshop also laid for many who came to the attend, the seeds of thinking about "doing" media as a way of challenging the same matrix of power. We hope that the conversations that began during this workshop will play some part in the realization of a critical culture of media practice, that instead of lurching from one crisis to another, is able to do some justice to the times that we live in today. ------------------------------------------------------- From avinash332 at rediffmail.com Sat Mar 15 22:29:10 2003 From: avinash332 at rediffmail.com (avinash kumar) Date: 15 Mar 2003 16:59:10 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: <20030315165910.1114.qmail@webmail6.rediffmail.com> Friends, This is my third posting on my research topic ‘Des-pardes ka Dvandva aur Dilli’. Plee..ase comment and do tell me more of these sources. Looking at the diverse nature of the sources which I have been getting of late, I needed to re-orient myself to broaden things a bit under a larger rubric called Urdu-Hindi literary experiences around the city called ‘Delhi’. But the nomenclature itself is problematic, as what I get in my sources is not ‘Delhi’ but either ‘Dehali’ or ‘Dilli’ and this perhaps most significantly demarcates the ‘native’ perceptions of the city. Now after this axiomatic statement (with an element of truth, no doubt), let me get back to a statement about the problems of beginning to perceive an enclosed, demarcated space, ‘What is it to describe a world? How would we reduce our own surroundings to writing, if we felt the urge and had the energy? Would we begin with a bird’s eye-view and then narrow the focus as we descended to a key intersection, the local version of Main and Vine? Or would we enter the city like a stranger, passing from countryside to suburbs to some imposing cluster of buildings at the heart of the urban space—a town hall or church or department store? Perhaps we would organise our description sociologically, beginning with the municipal power elite or working upward from the workers. We could even strike a spiritual note, The possibilities seem infinite, or at least extensive enough to be paralysing. For how can one put “the true idea of a city” on paper, especially if one cares about the city and the supply of paper is endless?’ (Robert Darnton, ‘A Bourgeois Puts His World in Order: The City As a Text’ in The Great Cat Massacre and other Episodes in French Cultural History, Penguin, London, 1984, p.108) Well, in my case the supply definitely is not endless, at least in terms of kilobytes, so I make my departure from one set of metonymic representations of the city as witnessed in the writings of the early twentieth century, viz., Delhi as the city of crime and sleaze, in a way announcing the coming of age of the city as a modern metropole, a city at the centre of a crisscross by the other dotted cities like Calcutta and Benares in the east, Lahore in the north-west, commercial towns like Amritsar and Ludhiana in the north and Bombay in the west. At least this is what one witnesses in a popular Urdu novel (later translated into Hindi) titled ‘Dehali ka Thug’: a story documented in detail (with the help of newspaper cuttings) with various crimes of the nature of petty cheating to large-scale thugee prevalent in the city. Hence a person doing a sari business from Benares or the one with shoe business from Ludhiana or the one in the publishing from Lahore find a common platform to do their business with Delhi and get looted in the process. In the melee of all this, places like Chawri Bazar, Chandni Chowk, Civil Lines, Jamuna Par, Mehrauli etc. emerge as if to authenticate these happening within these identified locales. But then the documentary part (more than a half of it is recounted in the form of summarized FIRs) changes and the heroes come and villains too with their vamps next to them appear in a most fantastic manner, the chase scenes a la Hunterwali variety begin. The story ends in a very hurried manner as if the writer suddenly lost interest after documenting the variety of crimes committed in the city. Interestingly, the novel, written by one Nadeem Sahabai, was translated and published in Hindi (1933) and immediately the stark change becomes apparent. Hence, all the characters become automatically Hindus, eg. Miyanji becomes Upadhyayji, and the novel begins to acquire a larger identity, i.e. an identity based not on the grounds of being the habitants of the same city but on the basis of religion. In other Hindi texts like ‘Dilli ka Vyabhichar’ (1928), even while the locations again appear as quite rooted, eg. Chawri bazaar, Mehrauli, Thandhi Sadak etc., the novel grows out of this local identity (while terming the city as the most corrupt one) by raising the question of crimes committed by the Muslim men on Hindu women as well as addressing a literary problem current in the Hindi debates at that time, i.e. whether or not to follow the principle of ‘stark realism’ in literary pursuits. Some of the other ones again create fantastic ‘fables’ as it were to raise problems of the larger variety like that of Hindu widows and in the process once again vilify the Muslims e.g. in titles like ‘Dilli ka Khunkhwar Maula’ (early 1920s, my source sixth edition 1931) and ‘Dilli ki Gundeshahi’ (1930). Evidently, the number of sources found of this variety is still little to draw larger conclusions, but at least some trends could be discerned as outlined above. Now let’s again move to 1950s (since my work does involve a major sweep temporally as well as thematically even if the ‘nomenclature’ apparently is the same). Hence a sketch of the city by Mohan Rakesh ‘Dilli: Raat ki Bahon Mein’, appears where as if taking a cue form the above mentioned quote from Robert Darnton, the writer sketches one night of the city in a reflective mood with a bird’s eye view, a moving taxi with fighting lovers, a girl knocking the doors of her hostel and calling the chowkidar, people unsuccessfully trying to sleep outside the narrow by lanes of what is now emerging as ‘old Delhi’etc. In surveying all this, the writer envelopes these sketches with his own loneliness, almost wrapping them with his melancholic mood and eventually producing an utterly romantic image of the large metropolis. It is a theme to which the writer returns in his most ambitious fictional work in the 60s ‘Andhere Band Kamre’. But by then the Nai Kahani movement centred predominantly around Delhi has taken a more concrete shape. _______________________________________________________________________ Odomos - the only mosquito protection outside 4 walls - Click here to know more! http://r.rediff.com/r?http://clients.rediff.com/odomos/Odomos.htm&&odomos&&wn From avinash332 at rediffmail.com Sat Mar 15 22:28:58 2003 From: avinash332 at rediffmail.com (avinash kumar) Date: 15 Mar 2003 16:58:58 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Delhi and Urdu-Hindi Literature Message-ID: <20030315165858.32491.qmail@webmail8.rediffmail.com> Friends, This is my third posting on my research topic ‘Des-pardes ka Dvandva aur Dilli’. Plee..ase comment and do tell me more of these sources. Looking at the diverse nature of the sources which I have been getting of late, I needed to re-orient myself to broaden things a bit under a larger rubric called Urdu-Hindi literary experiences around the city called ‘Delhi’. But the nomenclature itself is problematic, as what I get in my sources is not ‘Delhi’ but either ‘Dehali’ or ‘Dilli’ and this perhaps most significantly demarcates the ‘native’ perceptions of the city. Now after this axiomatic statement (with an element of truth, no doubt), let me get back to a statement about the problems of beginning to perceive an enclosed, demarcated space, ‘What is it to describe a world? How would we reduce our own surroundings to writing, if we felt the urge and had the energy? Would we begin with a bird’s eye-view and then narrow the focus as we descended to a key intersection, the local version of Main and Vine? Or would we enter the city like a stranger, passing from countryside to suburbs to some imposing cluster of buildings at the heart of the urban space—a town hall or church or department store? Perhaps we would organise our description sociologically, beginning with the municipal power elite or working upward from the workers. We could even strike a spiritual note, The possibilities seem infinite, or at least extensive enough to be paralysing. For how can one put “the true idea of a city” on paper, especially if one cares about the city and the supply of paper is endless?’ (Robert Darnton, ‘A Bourgeois Puts His World in Order: The City As a Text’ in The Great Cat Massacre and other Episodes in French Cultural History, Penguin, London, 1984, p.108) Well, in my case the supply definitely is not endless, at least in terms of kilobytes, so I make my departure from one set of metonymic representations of the city as witnessed in the writings of the early twentieth century, viz., Delhi as the city of crime and sleaze, in a way announcing the coming of age of the city as a modern metropole, a city at the centre of a crisscross by the other dotted cities like Calcutta and Benares in the east, Lahore in the north-west, commercial towns like Amritsar and Ludhiana in the north and Bombay in the west. At least this is what one witnesses in a popular Urdu novel (later translated into Hindi) titled ‘Dehali ka Thug’: a story documented in detail (with the help of newspaper cuttings) with various crimes of the nature of petty cheating to large-scale thugee prevalent in the city. Hence a person doing a sari business from Benares or the one with shoe business from Ludhiana or the one in the publishing from Lahore find a common platform to do their business with Delhi and get looted in the process. In the melee of all this, places like Chawri Bazar, Chandni Chowk, Civil Lines, Jamuna Par, Mehrauli etc. emerge as if to authenticate these happening within these identified locales. But then the documentary part (more than a half of it is recounted in the form of summarized FIRs) changes and the heroes come and villains too with their vamps next to them appear in a most fantastic manner, the chase scenes a la Hunterwali variety begin. The story ends in a very hurried manner as if the writer suddenly lost interest after documenting the variety of crimes committed in the city. Interestingly, the novel, written by one Nadeem Sahabai, was translated and published in Hindi (1933) and immediately the stark change becomes apparent. Hence, all the characters become automatically Hindus, eg. Miyanji becomes Upadhyayji, and the novel begins to acquire a larger identity, i.e. an identity based not on the grounds of being the habitants of the same city but on the basis of religion. In other Hindi texts like ‘Dilli ka Vyabhichar’ (1928), even while the locations again appear as quite rooted, eg. Chawri bazaar, Mehrauli, Thandhi Sadak etc., the novel grows out of this local identity (while terming the city as the most corrupt one) by raising the question of crimes committed by the Muslim men on Hindu women as well as addressing a literary problem current in the Hindi debates at that time, i.e. whether or not to follow the principle of ‘stark realism’ in literary pursuits. Some of the other ones again create fantastic ‘fables’ as it were to raise problems of the larger variety like that of Hindu widows and in the process once again vilify the Muslims e.g. in titles like ‘Dilli ka Khunkhwar Maula’ (early 1920s, my source sixth edition 1931) and ‘Dilli ki Gundeshahi’ (1930). Evidently, the number of sources found of this variety is still little to draw larger conclusions, but at least some trends could be discerned as outlined above. Now let’s again move to 1950s (since my work does involve a major sweep temporally as well as thematically even if the ‘nomenclature’ apparently is the same). Hence a sketch of the city by Mohan Rakesh ‘Dilli: Raat ki Bahon Mein’, appears where as if taking a cue form the above mentioned quote from Robert Darnton, the writer sketches one night of the city in a reflective mood with a bird’s eye view, a moving taxi with fighting lovers, a girl knocking the doors of her hostel and calling the chowkidar, people unsuccessfully trying to sleep outside the narrow by lanes of what is now emerging as ‘old Delhi’etc. In surveying all this, the writer envelopes these sketches with his own loneliness, almost wrapping them with his melancholic mood and eventually producing an utterly romantic image of the large metropolis. It is a theme to which the writer returns in his most ambitious fictional work in the 60s ‘Andhere Band Kamre’. But by then the Nai Kahani movement centred predominantly around Delhi has taken a more concrete shape. _______________________________________________________________________ Odomos - the only mosquito protection outside 4 walls - Click here to know more! http://r.rediff.com/r?http://clients.rediff.com/odomos/Odomos.htm&&odomos&&wn From aiindex at mnet.fr Sun Mar 16 05:32:36 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 01:02:36 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Umbilical chords and family ideologies: 4 generations of Indian women in Kenya and Britain Message-ID: Himal March 2003 http://www.himalmag.com/2003/march/review.htm REVIEW Umbilical chords and family ideologies Four generations of Indian women in Kenya and Britain, in a history of mixed genres and shifting emotional registers which hums like a wire stretched taut reviewed by Rajeswari Sunder Rajan Shards of Memory: Woven Lives in Four Generations by Parita Mukta Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 2002 £16.99, pp 214 Over the past decade, in fiction and autobiography, South Asian women have begun to explore the stories of their pasts in an efflorescence of writings. Among others, Mrinal Pande, Manju Kapur and Suguna Iyer have accomplished this through the medium of fiction, while Sara Suleri, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Mira Kamdar stand out for their memoirs. This proliferation has to do, in part at least, with such authors' complex historical situation. Tied to the Subcontinent either by birth or ancestry, many South Asian women, particularly those of the middle class, have moved so far beyond traditional gender roles that their present-day 'liberation' and achievement lies in sharp contrast with the lives of struggle and confinement led by their mothers and grandmothers. This produces not only the lived contradictions of their lives but also the burden of an intimate knowledge of a past through the lives of the women they have known and loved, women from whom they have derived their beings, no less. It is this situation that provokes their search for understanding, both of the self and of history. Parita Mukta's memoir derives, at one level, from the wish we have all known at some point in our lives to ask: in what way am I a part of history? Indeed, am I, obscure, alone, driven along by circumstances, of any consequence in the larger movement of forces? It is in the intricate weave of individual lives with the community's, the precise placement of human beings within larger events, the acute sense of the shaping of people's everyday choices by historical forces - without leeching their lives of agency - that the rich narrative texture of this book is produced. But Shards of Memory is, as well, the work of a historian, though it wears the marks of that affiliation lightly. Parita Mukta's emphasis on family, on women in the family, and on a genealogy that is traced via the female line (Mukta is her grandmother's given name), means that it is also, specifically, a feminist history. And indeed Mukta belongs to a notable company of feminist historians of India who have expended considerable scholarly energy on recovering the lives of women. She owes an equal debt to contemporary British feminist historians on the left such as Carolyn Steedman, for whom autobiography is an intricately wrought product of social (class) history and psychoanalytically inflected understanding of gender relations within the family. Work of this kind performs not only the necessary and never wholly-achieved task of 'adding women' to the historical account, but produces a paradigm shift in historiography by re-evaluating the criteria for what counts in the historical record. Thus the ordinary, whether describing events or people, achieves significance because the gendered perspective is, if arguably, necessarily personal, subjective, representative and inclusive. Generically, family histories occupy the terrain of the novel, and methodologically they mine myth and folk-tale as productively as they do the archives. A tale of the ordinary Now, a quick summary of this particular 'ordinary' story. The four parts of the memoir are focussed on four individuals: Ba, the author's paternal grandmother; Harshad, her father; Rajni, her uncle; and Sonpari, her daughter. Thus, this is the story of four generations (the last part includes the account of Mukta's own life). Beginning in the 1920s, when her grandparents arrived in Nairobi from Kathiawar in Gujarat to start their married life together, the narrative takes in events momentous and small, the defining one being her grandfather's death in 1948, leaving Ba a widow at the age of 33 with nine children to support, the youngest six months old, the eldest still in school. It then traces the slow trickle of the family to Britain through the 1960s and 1970s, and ends with the present, the generation of Ba's grandchildren, dispersed in many parts of the world. Mukta's daughter, now 12, is partly British by birth and culture. Mukta herself was an active participant in the turbulent struggles of race and gender politics in Thatcherite Britain (one of the founders of Southall Black Sisters), moving away from the political scene in the mid-1980s out of sheer heartsickness. It was at that juncture that she entered the career of historical research and writing. Parita Mukta Mukta makes her family's ordinariness - a description and judgement that she frequently reiterates - serve several functions. One is that of truth-telling, a simple objectivity that is made to prevail over any desire to boast. The blazoning of success is a temptation that family narratives, particularly of the immigrant variety, are prone to. The men in Mukta's family followed ordinary professions with either ordinary success or outright failure - her father was a clerk in the Kenyan railways, her uncle Rajni owned a pharmacy in Britain which ended bankrupt - the women remained tied to domesticity. (By way of scornful contrast, Mukta drops an intriguing hint about a "philanthropist" who is now among the "top twenty Asian millionaires in Britain" who had appeared as a creditor in Ba's house soon after her husband died and "stripped it of all its possessions".) But a different and larger purpose is also served in recording the family's unexceptional qualities, which is to insist on the fact of survival: its survival as a family for over 70 years, in the course of which its members have dispersed over four continents; but also sheer survival, especially in the early years, the overcoming of starvation over seven years on a diet of bhakhri ("thick, crumbly chapatti", in the glossary). Hunger is the very leitmotif of this book, a topic to which we will have to return to, in order to do justice to its extraordinary forcefulness. Thus, success has been displaced in the telling of these life-stories because survival is the primary and more urgent account to render. There is more at stake here, though: Mukta's is a family that made an ethical choice of living as they did. Their principle is one that Mukta, quoting Stuart Hall, states as follows: do not go out and eat this world. Hall's impassioned plea, made at a conference on children's education that the author attended, is recalled in an epiphanic moment in this book, a moment of "acute and intense recognition". Hall's words called attention to the "profligate use of both human beings and material resources" which Mukta views as a "central feature of history since the Columbian expansion". This is how the principle links to hunger, the focus of the second part of this book. Varied appetites It is the author's conviction that hunger leaves its indelible psychic imprint, whether as principle (her grandmother's austerity) or as pathology (her aunt Tara's shopaholism), on the people who have known what it is. Hunger appears at/as the origins (in India, Africa) of this family's history, which then moves towards plenty (in Britain, the United States) - it is not reified into a condition of perpetuity. But what it leaves nonetheless is its traces, not the less poignant for being borne as memory. "Š[T]he disjuncture between the plenty found in the present and the memory of hunger lingers onŠ Unable to view themselves in the social universe, my father, aunts and uncles have imploded, the fissures leaving deep grooves on their faces". Within the larger perspective of global political economy, hunger structures the geography of the world into a South and a North. One of the offshoots of this division is that some people in the world are spectacles, and the others spectators, of hunger. But Mukta insists on exploring the phenomenon that disturbs this neat divide: she explores the difficult ethics of witnessing hunger. "You cannot just look. The act of witnessing is fraught with difficult tensions, and at times trauma. There are shocking nightmares, sometimes death by suicide". Without this understanding of the costs of affluence (even if only for some, let us admit), fasting-feasting as a way of conceptualising difference might have produced a merely vulgar polemic. Hunger is susceptible to easy tropological metamorphoses into 'hunger for' - into a metaphor for desire, sexual appetite, driving ambition, immortality itself. But Mukta keeps the focus simply and literally on food: its lack, and its consequences. This integrity is reinforced by her careful marking of the gradations of hunger in order not to sensationalise her after-all-middle class family's experience. What they knew was endemic hunger, not the starvation found in times of famine. Of the latter, "May no one ever experience this", she writes, and the fervency of that prayer says more than the rest of her writing on the subject. As much, then, as family memoir as historical document, this is a reflective book driven by a clear political and ethical agenda. Understandably, the narratorial tone is not always stable, moving from the deliberately sought-after historical understanding of, for example, the reform movements around widowhood in 19th century India ('Archive Odyssey', 'Voices that rise from the Past'), to the passionate pity for her grandmother's privations following her husband's death: We [her daughters and granddaughters] hover around her, like anxious butterflies around a precious flower. We are chary of drinking of her sweetness, fearful of depleting this, intent always to say: 'Oh, but you are beautiful.' And swift comes the reply: 'Your eyes have made me so.' This is as naked a love as one can find written in literature. Sacrificial loves The mixed genres and shifting emotional registers create a palpable tension within this book, producing a hum as on a wire stretched taut. Inevitably, given that an account of this kind must negotiate generational and cultural differences in beliefs and values, there are other kinds of tensions as well. There is, to begin with, the idealisation of the extended family - of the love and closeness it nurtures in an alien and hostile world - that must contend with (indeed, is asserted against) not only the fact of the actual dispersal of the family, but also the exclusions it performs, the costs it extracts. Only briefly, for instance, does Mukta reflect on her mother's situation in the family she marries into, the eldest daughter-in-law in a household where all resources had to be shared (her wedding trousseau, for example, was passed on to her sisters-in-law); and in which she 'lost' her daughters' love to a mother- and sisters-in-law. As well, the hard labour of keeping the extended family together in a single household, first in Nairobi and then in Wembley - the large meals that had to be cooked and served all the time, if nothing else - was without a doubt performed by the women, her mother and the other daughters-in-law of the family. The family romance is preserved by the problematic, surely even dubious, assumption that domestic love lightens domestic labour. Family romance is preserved by the assumption that domestic love lightens domestic labour 'Sacrifice' - for this is one of its forms - is, indeed, the ideology and practice that proves most troublesome in writing about this family. "My father, mother, aunts and uncles became adept at crushing the expansion of their needs, stamping down on novel ideas and tastes". This expresses the grimness of (a necessarily sacrificial) family ideology. Mukta's father dropped out of school at 16 to go to work to support the family. Her uncle Rajni ('Haba' is his niece's nickname for him) "gave and gave and gave; he asked for nothing". He and another uncle, Pushker, died, she writes, "having borne the burden of settling a very large migratory family in the very heart of Britain". She adds, with bitterness, "While none of us has gone out to eat this world - we ate him up". Mukta's condemnation, arising from a modern individualist ethic as much as stricken personal guilt, is kept in check by her personal admiration and gratitude towards the sacrificers. Her dispassionate, somewhat remote, historical understanding also diagnoses within this the persistence of a "rural peasant household" ideology conditioned by a "subsistence ethic". Sacrifice is accompanied by other religious values, passivity, exalted spirituality, acceptance, which are also both admirable and problematic. Mukta will not allow herself to be critical of her grandmother. "What if she had shown more courage", she begins to ask, but checks herself, "Stop, Pari. Stop this". Instead, she dwells on her strength, her calm, her transcendence of bitterness, her seeming oblivion even of suffering, her entry into the "dense yet luminous world" of religious faith, bhakti. Her grandmother's asceticism, which limits her to one meal a day, links her story to the thematic of hunger. Fasting is ordained as one of Hindu widowhood's ritual prescriptions, though for Ba obedience is a voluntary exercise in spiritual self-discipline. (Gandhi deliberately adopted and adapted this female religious ritual as an ethical and political praxis.) Thus, ascetic widowhood brings together (voluntary) sacrifice and (involuntary) hunger within a specific problematic of gender ideology to which I shall return. Here is another of the tensions that informs the book. I use the word 'tensions' rather than 'contradictions', which these moments could otherwise be taken for, in order to indicate that these crucial questions are consciously marked and allowed to remain as questions. The dilemma in judging the religious faith of others is one that I share (as a reader able to identify with the author in several respects). Between practising or at least accepting widespread and culturally 'authentic' ways on the one hand, and on the other making a commitment to a secular modernity that must function as an antidote to Hindu fundamentalism in India today, the Indian intellectual finds herself in muddy and deeply troubled political waters. Ladli I share another of Mukta's political and theoretical commitments, that of feminism. I have suggested already that I believe Mukta to be disingenuous in not fully acknowledging women's problematic position in the (idealised) family. But in other places, the question of gender is addressed in powerful and original ways. One of these is the examination of the "actual father", as Carolyn Steedman has described the contradiction of patriarchy in 20th century Britain. In Mukta's family patriarchy is posed not so much against the lack of stature of the actual fathers (for the patriarchs are indisputably the breadwinners in the family), but against normative cultural definitions of masculinity. These gentle unassertive men, her father and uncles, how could they fulfil male roles which demanded success and authority above all things? Haba was thought to be a "bit of a simpleton", "anyone could walk all over him"; his goodness was "interpreted as weakness, as a lack of manliness". Mukta re-evaluates these qualities in paying homage to them. More interestingly (and characteristically), she also finds a genealogy for the weak man in the romanticism of a certain kind of historical male type, the colonial Bengali babu. The icon of this type is Sarat Chandra Chatterjee's eponymous hero, Devdas, and especially his cinematic personification in the actor KL Saigal opens up a rich seam in the cultural terrain that Mukta mines. Mukta opens up another site of gendering in the culture through her extended meditation on the figure of the ladli, the beloved daughter. Drawing on the legend of Sonbai, as well as memories of her own growing-up years - the fine education her father scrimped and saved to give her, the out-of-school treats he organised for her, the sheltering love of her grandmother, the companionship of sister and aunts - Mukta shows how the ladli becomes a particularly vulnerable social being, not only victim but also an agent of conflict in this culture. 'Beloved daughter' is a paradox that should be of particular interest to those pondering the murderous misogyny expressed in India as femicide (the killing of female foetuses, infants, young brides, or women's reduced life expectancy as a result of simple neglect in childhood), reflected in a national sex ratio that points to 37 million "missing females", in the words of the economist Amartya Sen. 'Beloved daughter' is a paradox that should be of interest to those pondering the murderous misogyny expressed in India as femicide Mukta does not attempt an answer to the puzzle of why daughters so beloved are yet destroyed. But that simple misogyny cannot be the answer points to the need to pursue the question within, if need be, psychic spaces in the culture (which need not be Oedipal stories). Analysis must venture into the structures and practices of the exchange of women, the rivalries of love, the complicated (il)logic of its expressions, and the confused psychology of filial fears, frustrations, anger. Mukta remains content with suggesting, as reason for her father's estrangement from her following her decision to choose an Englishman as a life partner, the likelihood that he was "raw" from "the injuries inflicted on him by a privileged race". No outsider, not even a reviewer, is authorised to probe such profound family events without presumption, especially since what Mukta reveals of the pain of a ladli's rejection by her father and community could not have been easy to write. When she tentatively advances an explanation, it is in terms of the choices a daughter must make in this culture, between being a baapkarmi ("to be bound to the fortunes of the father"), and an aapkarmi ("to cut one's own path in life"). And having chosen to be the latter, she must pay the price in pain and isolation - but also must have the wisdom to seek reconciliation. But I cannot help thinking that explanations must go beyond ascribing sole agency to the daughter, into exploring the dynamics of father-daughter relationships in the culture more fully. If the framing of the choices in this particular, over-determined way is not questioned, the closure of this moral fable can seem too pat. (I must also admit that I found Mukta's device of narrating her own story in the third person in this section, in the persona of the mythical "Sonbai", irritatingly coy.) Pause, exhortation In writing of religion, masculinity, childhood, Mukta draws upon the resources of everyday popular culture, the devotional Bhakti songs, the films and film songs, and the folk-tales and myths, which are to be found on everybody's lips in South Asia and its diaspora. In this way, the author finds a language - really a strategic shorthand - in which to write a history and autobiography that might otherwise have been too vast, as well as too personal, to handle. It is a very successful device for the most part. Sometimes, however, the references to too diverse a range of European and Indian sources (Pinocchio and Narsinh Mehta at the same time, for example), can seem random and eclectic, though admittedly this does describe the Western-educated South Asian's actual hybrid cultural knowledge quite accurately. This book's thematics of diaspora and cultural hybridity, the invocation of 'magical' stories, the fragmented narrative structure, the privileging of memory: a recitation of these features would appear to add up to a recipe for the typical postcolonial/post-modern contemporary text. What I have tried to suggest, through a greater immersion into its form and politics in this review, is that this is a book that also resists such incorporation. As a feminist historical account it transforms our understanding of both stay-at-home nationalism and of diaspora, both of which have tended to be largely gendered male in the most influential accounts and theories of these phenomena in the Subcontinent so far. The title's mixed metaphor of "shards" of memory that depict the "woven" lives of four generations, points to the contrary pulls of severe (though not contingent) selection on the one hand, and the desire to make (comprehensive) meaning of one's life on the other. Above all, Shards of Memory is a deliberately didactic work, reflected in the bibliographies and reading-lists, the frequent pauses for self-reflexive takes, and the self-righteous exhortations to the reader on political issues. Its gravitas places it at a distance - generic as well as political - from the exuberant tones and the playful historical licenses of, say, Rushdie's fiction and its ilk. The didacticism is likely to be hard to take for some readers, but for others it will serve as a sign of the integrity of the self that speaks in these pages. At the very least its difference should mark the heterogeneity of contemporary South Asian writing. From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Mon Mar 17 12:10:54 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 17 Mar 2003 06:40:54 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Who is to produce detainees in courts? Message-ID: <20030317064054.27608.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> Who is to produce detainees in courts? GK Zahir-ud-Din Srinagar, Mar 15: Who is to produce the detainees in the courts? The local police or their counterparts in other states where the detainees are lodged? As the debate lingers on, the release of many a detainee has been delayed. The cases of Masarrat Alam, Muhammad Yousuf Mujahid, Muhammad Yusuf Islahi, Qazi Ahadullah, Ashraf Sehrai, Hakim Abdul Rashid, Ghulam Nabi Lone, Showket Ahmad Shah were listed for hearing on March 13. But none was produced. The cases will again come up for hearing on March 28. But the chances of their presence seem quite bleak as the police in Rajasthan, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where the detainees are lodged are reluctant to provide the escort. The ministry of home affairs at New Delhi way back in 1987 issued an order No V-16014/2/87-CPA.IV dated December 8, 1987 directing the state governments/ UTs "that requisite guards would need to be provided by the local police of the state /UT in whose jurisdiction the court making such an order is situated". The states/UTs were directed to implement the order in letter and in spirit. By virtue of this order, the state police was supposed to provide the necessary escort to the detainees on hearing days. However, the state police chose to ignore the order much to the discomfort of the languishing detainees and their worried relatives. The matter was raised with the secretary home affairs by the parents of the detainees in 1997. The home ministry after examining the problem held, "The presence of an excessive number of under trials, remand and other un-convicted prisoners in jails has created an increasing public and professional concern about the non-observance of human rights in these institutions. The protracted detention during the pendency of investigation and trial has resulted in the overcrowding in jails. Many a time, the under trial prisoners have to languish in prison due to lukewarm response of the state/UT to provide the police escort for production of the prisoners in other state in whose jurisdiction the court has made such an order". Accordingly, the earlier order was amended and a fresh order No V-16014/1/91-GPA.IV was issued on May 8,1997. The order reads, "The government of India, in modification to the earlier instructions on the subject has therefore decided that henceforth the police escort for transportation of the prisoners for production in the court making such order situated in another state shall be provided by the state police in whose jail the prisoner is lodged". Notwithstanding these clear instructions of the home ministry, the states holding the detainees have failed to produce them in the courts on hearing days. Some parents annexed the order with the court direction seeking the prisoner’s production but this did not work as well. An aggrieved parent accused the state government of sleeping over the matter. "They promised release of prisoners but backed out later. The courts would have released many prisoners had the state government ensured their production in time. But, the non-production of the prisoners is serving the interests of the state government", he said. Pertinent to mention, the legislative assembly in its budget session last year passed a legislation banning lodgement of state subjects in outside jails. The legislation, however, could not bring the much needed respite to hundreds of detainees lodged in Jodhpur, Punjab, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, New Delhi and Uttar Pradesh as the government chose to ignore it. _______________________________________________________________________ Odomos - the only mosquito protection outside 4 walls - Click here to know more! http://r.rediff.com/r?http://clients.rediff.com/odomos/Odomos.htm&&odomos&&wn From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Mon Mar 17 12:29:00 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 17 Mar 2003 06:59:00 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Controversial "revelations" Message-ID: <20030317065900.7439.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030317/3fce09ca/attachment.pl From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Mon Mar 17 12:29:09 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 17 Mar 2003 06:59:09 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Controversial "revelations" Message-ID: <20030317065909.7749.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030317/aab9d492/attachment.pl From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Mon Mar 17 21:12:42 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 15:42:42 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Lies of Iraq Message-ID: <20030317154242.69060.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> ZNet | Iraq Blair's Lies by John Pilger; Daily Mirror; March 14, 2003 THE Blair Government has known, almost from the day it came to office in 1997, that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were almost certainly destroyed following the Gulf War. Of all the pro-war propaganda of Blair and Bush, and their current threats giving Saddam Hussein yet another deadline to disarm, what may be their biggest lie is exposed by this revelation. Two weeks ago, a transcript of a United Nations debriefing of Iraqi general Hussein Kamel was obtained by the American magazine, Newsweek, and by Cambridge University analyst, Glen Rangwala (who last month revealed that Blair's "intelligence dossier" on Iraq was lifted, word for word, from an American student's thesis).General Kamel was the West's "star witness" in its case against Saddam Hussein. He was no ordinary defector. A son-in-law of the Iraqi dictator, he had immense power in Iraq; and when he defected, he took with him crates of secret documents on Iraq's weapons programme. These secrets have been repeatedly cited by George W Bush and his officials as "evidence" that Iraq still has large quantities of deadly weapons of mass destruction, and that only war can disarm it. Bush, his officials and leading American commentators, have frequently lauded General Kamel as the most reliable source of information on Iraq's weapons. The Blair government has echoed this. In 1995, General Kamel was debriefed by senior officials of the United Nations inspections team, then known as UNSCOM, and by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The complete transcript, now disclosed for the first time, contradicts almost everything Bush and Blair have said about the threat of Iraqi weapons. For example, General Kamel says categorically: "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological,chemical, missile, nuclear - were destroyed." All that remains, he says, are the blueprints, computer disks and microfiches. Newsweek says that the CIA and Britain's MI6 were told this; and Blair and Bush must have been told the truth. In other words, it is likely that Iraq has been substantially disarmed for at least eight years. With General Kamel now out of the way (he was killed when he returned to Iraq in 1996), his "evidence" was selectively made public by Washington and London. In his dramatic presentation to the UN Security Council on February 5, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the truth about Iraq's nerve gas weapons "only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's late son in law". What Powell neglected to mention was that his star witness had told them all the weapons had been destroyed. GENERAL Kamel's sensational admission has been corroborated by the former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter who says that when he left Iraq in 1998, disarmament was "90 to 95 per cent". A United Nations verifying panel set up by the Security Council, confirmed that "the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated". This has seldom been reported. Of course, none of these facts will deter the American and British security agencies from inventing and planting "evidence" of "Saddam's secret weapons" once Anglo-American forces take over Baghdad. When America and Britain crush Iraq, a new phase of their black propaganda will emerge - for which the British public ought to be prepared. This new range of deceptions will be designed to justify attacking a sovereign state and killing innocent people: a crime under international law, with or without a second UN resolution. Black propaganda of this kind has a long history. My own experience of it was the American invasion of Vietnam. In 1964, the US State Department published a White Paper with pages of "conclusive proof" of North Vietnam's preparations to invade the south. This "proof" stemmed from the "discovery" of a stockpile of weapons found floating in a junk off the coast of South Vietnam. The White Paper, which provided a quasi-legal justification for the American invasion, was known as a "master illusion". The whole episode was fake, a set-up. Master illusion was the CIA's term for master lie. In 1982, I interviewed Ralph McGehee, a senior CIA officer who documented the planting of the fake evidence. He told me: "The CIA loaded up a junk, a North Vietnamese junk, with communist weapons ... They floated this junk off the coast of Central Vietnam. Then they shot it up and made it look like a fire fight had taken place. They then brought in the American press and the international press and said, 'Here's the evidence that the North Vietnamese are invading South Vietnam.' Based on this 'evidence', the US Marines went in, and the American air force began regular bombing of North Vietnam." As a result of this fakery, which included the elaborate fiction that an American destroyer had been attacked by a North Vietnamese gunboat, the United States dispatched its greatest ever land army to Vietnam, and dropped the greatest tonnage of bombs in the history of warfare, and forced millions of people to abandon their homes, and used chemical weapons that profoundly damaged the environment and human genes, leaving a once beautiful land petrified. AT least two million people were killed, and many more were maimed and otherwise ruined. Now replace "Vietnam" with "Iraq" in this story of lies; and you have the essentials of the same justification for another great criminal act. Watch how the propaganda unfolds once the bombing is over and the Americans are running Baghdad and their spin machine. There will be the "discovery of Saddam's secret arsenal," probably in the basement of one his palaces. This will be accompanied by the "discovery" of gruesome evidence of Saddam's oppression. This will not come as news to the many dedicated anti-war campaigners, who for years tried to stop the American and British governments from supplying Saddam with the tools of his oppression. They include many Iraqis exiled in Britain, such as Khalid Sahi, who was tortured by the regime and opposes an attack "will bring nothing but more bloodshed, more misery"; and the anti-war Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, who has protested about the Iraqi dictator for more than twenty years and demanded that the British government prosecute British companies that sustained the Iraqi torturers.Two years ago, Peter Hain, then a Foreign Office minister, blocked a parliamentary request to publish the full list of British companies that had illegally traded with Saddam Hussein. The reason why became clear last week when the Guardian newspaper disclosed that the Blair government had secretly paid out more than £33 million in taxpayers' money to British companies claiming non-payment on the weapons they sold Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. The total loss to the taxpayer on sales to Iraq now exceeds £1billion. Add this to the £3.5billion that Gordon Brown has "put aside" for an attack on Iraq. Add this to the £1billion that the bombing of Iraq has already cost - the rarely reported bombing by British and American aircraft in the so-called "no fly zones", which now cover most of Iraqi airspace and were set up, according to Blair, to "protect Iraq's minorities". Who believes this now? This week, the Ministry of Defence said: "We never target civilians [in the no-fly zones]... there's no evidence of civilian casualties." The lie of this statement would be breathtaking were it not routine. In northern Kurdish Iraq, I interviewed members of one family who had lost their grandfather, their father and four brothers and sisters when a "coalition" aircraft (British or American)dive-bombed them and the sheep they were tending. It was open desert, a moonscape with not a sign of other life, let alone a military installation. Amid the carcasses of blasted sheep were pieces of clothing and a single shoe. The attack was investigated and verified by the chief United Nations representative in Iraq at the time, Hans Von Sponeck, who drove there especially from Baghdad. His findings are listed among dozens of similar attacks - on shepherds, farmers, fishermen - in a document prepared by the United Nations Security Section. At a windswept cemetery near the town of Mosul, I caught sight of the shepherd's widow as she grieved for her husband and four children. "I want to see the pilot who did this," she shouted. LAST week, "coalition" aircraft killed another six people in the southern city of Basra. Nothing unusual there. When I was last in Basra, an American missile killed six children when it "mistakenly" hit Al Jumohria, a very poor section of Basra's residential area. I walked down the street where the missile had struck in the early hours; it had followed the line of houses, destroying one after the other. I met the father of two sisters, aged eight and 10, who were photographed by a local weddings photographer, Nabil al-Jerani, shortly after the attack. Their bodies were unlike the other four children, who were blown to bits, their limbs and flesh in the overhead wires. These two little girls were left intact. In Nabil's photographs,they are in their nightdresses, one with a bow in her hair, their bodies perfectly engraved in the rubble of their homes, where they had been bombed to death, murdered, in their beds. Look closely at their images on these pages; they are the faces of a stricken nation of whom 42 per cent are children. When Blair speaks about the "moral case" for sending hundreds of missiles against this nation of so many children, as well as new types of cluster bombs and bunker bombs and microwave bombs, and shells tipped with pure uranium, a form of nuclear weapon, the images of the two sisters provide an eloquent commentary on the Prime Minister's Christian "morality". And when pictures of exhausted Iraqis greeting their "liberation" are flashed around the world, remember the faces that will be missing in the crowds - not only those of the children bombed and disposed of as "collateral damage", but more than a million faces declared expendable by the American-driven and British-backed economic embargo. Remember the vaccines, cancer-treatment equipment, pain-killers,plasma bags, food treatment equipment and much else denied over fourteen years: $5.4 billion worth as of last July,to be precise,blocked by the US government, backed by the Blair government. Remember the words of President Clinton's then representative at the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, when she was asked if the price of 500,000 Iraqi children was a price worth paying for the embargo. "We think the price is worth it," she said. AND when you next hear Bush or Blair or Straw or Hoon talk about "the tyrant who gassed his own people", remember those American officials and British ministers who competed with each other to excuse and effectively reward Saddam Hussein for gassing 5,000 Kurds in the town of Halabja. Barely one month after the atrocity in 1988, Tony Newton, Margaret Thatcher's Trade Secretary, flew to Baghdad to offer Saddam £340million of taxpapers' money in export credits. Three months later, the smiling Newton was back, this time to celebrate with Saddam the joyous news that Iraq was now Britain's third-largest market for machine tools, from which a range of Iraqi weapons was forged - some of them used against British troops in the Gulf War. Newton was followed by Assistant US Secretary of State John Kelly who flew to Baghdad to tell Saddam that "you are a source for moderation in the region, and the United States wants to broaden her relationship with Iraq". When the "liberation" of Baghdad is on the front page, remember the warmongering newspapers whose editorials defended Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s by promoting the lie that his use of chemical weapons against Iran was purely defensive. Remember, too, Blair's long silence. There is no record of Blair saying anything worthwhile about Saddam's "excesses" (as his crimes used to be known by British ministers when he was "one of us") until after September 11, 2001 when the Americans, frustrated at having failed to catch Osama bin Laden, declared the Iraqi dictator their number one enemy. Like a discredited East European autocrat, attended only by his court of supplicants and propagandists, Blair has few left to deceive. He even claimed the other day that "no Iraqis marched" in the great demonstration of February 15. In fact, as many as 7,000 Iraqis and Kurds marched. Iraqi families stood on the roadside holding up home-made placards: "Thank you for supporting my people." None, it can be assumed, has any time for Saddam Hussein; but none want their country strangled, attacked, poisoned and occupied by another variety of dictator. ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From threads at pce.net Mon Mar 17 21:15:08 2003 From: threads at pce.net (Barbara Lattanzi) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 10:45:08 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] "I am allowed to go see the ocean" Rachel Corrie In-Reply-To: <03031521502201.01528@sweety.sarai.kit> Message-ID: <5.0.0.25.2.20030317082210.02aac5a0@pce.net> Greetings. The useful and helpful Crisis/Media Workshop report by Shuddha is part of what moves me to forward the following email. It is a statement by Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old student from the U.S., who died yesterday (March 16) from injuries sustained while defending a Palestinian home from demolition by an Israeli military bulldozer in the Gaza Strip. The event of Rachel Corrie's death would seem to be just one more life ended in a "message" from the Israeli government - a message sent by means of slow-motion physical violence breaking real bodies every day. Rachel Corrie's words are not the words of those living (and suffering Israeli occupation) in Gaza. Her email to her parents is not unique in the reports on the situation of occupation. It is a report from a very particular perspective. She writes from an acknowleged position of relative priviledge. However, Rachel Corrie died having had the chance to witness and report on what she saw to those outside. The following email, along with Rachel Corrie's extraordinary work as a member of the International Solidarity Movement, used the practice of witnessing to counteract the intensifying attempts by those exercising military power-without-accountability to brutalize into timidity the minds of global citizens. ...Note that, at least in the U.S., minds are also about to be brutalized big-time with the U.S. big stick brought to us "live" by mainstream media in Iraq, an epic Hollywood snuff movie starring an unelected U.S. president - that should keep us in line... In contrast to "shock and awe" media, I see the practice of witnessing, exemplified in Rachel's email to her parents, as a form of reportage that understands deeply what Manuel deLanda expressed when he wrote that "power exists only to the extent that it is exercised over real bodies." It is the dailiness of the exercise of power, a temporality that is invisible to Spectacular media yet constitute one of its conditions of possibility (and that "shock and awe" military operations seek to underpin), that witnessing makes visible. It is the countering of brutalizing assaults to the mind and spirit that practices of witnessing effect, releasing one to press ahead, make change, make world. Barbara Lattanzi ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)" Subject: (Fwd) "I am allowed to go see the ocean" Rachel Corrie to her family List-Archive: Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 14:27:44 +0200 ///////////////// Gush Shalom ///////////////////////// International release, March 17, 2003 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "I am allowed to go see the ocean" Rachel Corrie wrote to her family xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [We forward the sad but courageous statement of the parents of Rachel Corrie, followed by a moving "letter from Palestine" which she sent them on Feb. 7, 2003, two weeks after her arrival in the Gaza Strip.] ------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 01:27:48 +0000 (GMT) From: ism rafah Subject: Statement from Rachel Corrie's parents March 16, 2003 "We are now in a period of grieving and still finding out the details behind the death of Rachel in the Gaza Strip. We have raised all our children to appreciate the beauty of the global community and family and are proud that Rachel was able to live her convictions. Rachel was filled with love and a sense of duty to her fellow man, wherever they lived. And, she gave her life trying to protect those that are unable to protect themselves. Rachel wrote to us from the Gaza Strip and we would like to release to the media her experience in her own words at this time. Thank you. Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie -- Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel on February 7, 2003. I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States--something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me, “Ali”--or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me "Kaif Sharon?" "Kaif Bush?" and they laugh when I say "Bush Majnoon" "Sharon Majnoon" back in my limited Arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn't quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: Bush mish Majnoon... Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say "Bush is a tool", but I don't think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago--at least regarding Israel. Nevertheless, I think about the fact that no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are always well aware that your experience is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli Army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and, of course, the fact that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. Ostensibly it is still quite difficult for me to be held for months or years on end without a trial (this because I am a white US citizen, as opposed to so many others). When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting half way between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint—a soldier with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I'm done. So, if I feel outrage at arriving and entering briefly and incompletely into the world in which these children exist, I wonder conversely about how it would be for them to arrive in my world. They know that children in the United States don't usually have their parents shot and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But once you have seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water is taken for granted and not stolen in the night by bulldozers, and once you have spent an evening when you haven’t wondered if the walls of your home might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and once you’ve met people who have never lost anyone-- once you have experienced the reality of a world that isn't surrounded by murderous towers, tanks, armed "settlements" and now a giant metal wall, I wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years of your childhood spent existing--just existing--in resistance to the constant stranglehold of the world’s fourth largest military--backed by the world’s only superpower--in it’s attempt to erase you from your home. That is something I wonder about these children. I wonder what would happen if they really knew. As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah, a city of about 140,000 people, approximately 60 percent of whom are refugees--many of whom are twice or three times refugees. Rafah existed prior to 1948, but most of the people here are themselves or are descendants of people who were relocated here from their homes in historic Palestine--now Israel. Rafah was split in half when the Sinai returned to Egypt. Currently, the Israeli army is building a fourteen-meter-high wall between Rafah in Palestine and the border, carving a no-mans land from the houses along the border. Six hundred and two homes have been completely bulldozed according to the Rafah Popular Refugee Committee. The number of homes that have been partially destroyed is greater. Today as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, "Go! Go!" because a tank was coming. Followed by waving and "what's your name?". There is something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids: Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peak out from behind walls to see what's going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously, occasionally shouting-- and also occasionally waving-- many forced to be here, many just aggressive, shooting into the houses as we wander away. In addition to the constant presence of tanks along the border and in the western region between Rafah and settlements along the coast, there are more IDF towers here than I can count--along the horizon,at the end of streets. Some just army green metal. Others these strange spiral staircases draped in some kind of netting to make the activity within anonymous. Some hidden,just beneath the horizon of buildings. A new one went up the other day in the time it took us to do laundry and to cross town twice to hang banners. Despite the fact that some of the areas nearest the border are the original Rafah with families who have lived on this land for at least a century, only the 1948 camps in the center of the city are Palestinian controlled areas under Oslo. But as far as I can tell, there are few if any places that are not within the sights of some tower or another. Certainly there is no place invulnerable to apache helicopters or to the cameras of invisible drones we hear buzzing over the city for hours at a time. I've been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a great deal of concern here about the "reoccupation of Gaza." Gaza is reoccupied every day to various extents, but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here, instead of entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people aren't already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope they will start. I also hope you'll come here. We've been wavering between five and six internationals. The neighborhoods that have asked us for some form of presence are Yibna, Tel El Sultan, Hi Salam, Brazil, Block J, Zorob, and Block O. There is also need for constant night-time presence at a well on the outskirts of Rafah since the Israeli army destroyed the two largest wells. According to the municipal water office the wells destroyed last week provided half of Rafah’s water supply. Many of the communities have requested internationals to be present at night to attempt to shield houses from further demolition. After about ten p.m. it is very difficult to move at night because the Israeli army treats anyone in the streets as resistance and shoots at them. So clearly we are too few. I continue to believe that my home, Olympia, could gain a lot and offer a lot by deciding to make a commitment to Rafah in the form of a sister- community relationship. Some teachers and children's groups have expressed interest in e-mail exchanges, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of solidarity work that might be done. Many people want their voices to be heard, and I think we need to use some of our privilege as internationals to get those voices heard directly in the US, rather than through the filter of well-meaning internationals such as myself. I am just beginning to learn, from what I expect to be a very intense tutelage, about the ability of people to organize against all odds, and to resist against all odds. _______________________________________________ From smitashu at vsnl.com Sun Mar 16 11:10:24 2003 From: smitashu at vsnl.com (s.choudhary) Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 11:10:24 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Sandeep Pandey arrested Message-ID: <025e01c2eb89$f55c29a0$1ce141db@n4r8e2> Sandeep Pandey was arrested in Faizabad y'day ( 15/3) on charges 153, 153A, B ( disturbing communal harmony) & 505B, 295A. Details with Arundhati Dhuru 09415022772 ( on her way to Faizabad) Shubhranshu Choudhary 312, Patrakar Parisar Vasundhara sector 5 Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India Ph - 0091 120 288 3351 mobile - 0091 98110 66749 e mail -smitashu at vsnl.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030316/d1956700/attachment.html From 113312.2106 at compuserve.com Mon Mar 17 10:00:27 2003 From: 113312.2106 at compuserve.com (Barbara Vanderlinden) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 05:30:27 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] FW: 'The people vs. 'Total War INCorporated' In-Reply-To: <00c101c2ebc9$405a2a80$7e7cc850@skynet.be> Message-ID: Dear Reader, Here is a very interesting voice from Europe. Barbara ------ Forwarded Message From: "Lieven Test" Reply-To: "Lieven Test" Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 15:35:04 +0100 To: "Goran PROOT" , <113312.2106 at compuserve.com>, "Frank Albers" , "Leander De Cauter" , , "Koen Gisen" , "r.w.boomkens" , "rudi laermans" , , "Bart Claes" , "Jean-Pierre Rondas" , "Jef Cornelis" , "Walterhus" , "Walter Verdin" , "Anton Derks" , "Ana Felicitas Lopez" , "David Vanderburgh" , "Julia Clever" , "Marc De Kesel" , "Marianne Buyck" , "theo van rompay" , "Ivan D'hondt" , , , , "Erik Todts" , "Eric Goeman" , Daniël & Joke Willems-De Cauter , "Moritz Kung" , "Dieter Lesage" , "Kelly Shannon" , "Helen Saelman" , "marijs boulogne" Subject: 'The people vs. 'Total War INCorporated' (Dear all, please read this letter and forward it, if you like it, worldwide. [if you received it before, this is a more definitive version] If you have serious suggestions to help this peace action go forward, mail me.) The people vs. 'Total War INCorporated' (an Open Letter to Jacques Derrida and the intellectuals, artists and students around the globe, and to whom it may concern) Dear Prof Derrida, and dear prof. Wallerstein, dear prof Chomsky, dear prof Agamben, dear prof Kristeva, dear prof. Haraway, dear prof. Badiou, dear Prof. Said, dear prof. Zizek, dear prof. Sloterdijk, dear prof. Castells, dear Prof Petrella, dear prof Jameson, dear Isabel Allende, dear Vaclav Havel, dear prof Amin Malouf, dear dr. honoris causa Salman Rusdie, and all the intellectuals, artists and students of planet earth...., I have send this open letter - about the fact that (in one word) 'The Project for a New American Century', the master think thank behind this war, is preaching and planning crimes against humanity - already to the all the people mentioned underneath (- I still miss the e-mail address of Jacques Derrida and a few others). The idea is to start a sort of Russell tribunal, or indeed a 'Derrida-Tribunal' against the PNAC (more specifically the authors of the (in)famous report 'Rebuilding America's Defenses', published by the PNAC in September 2000. This could be completed by a real (pre emptive) complaint against the authors and their organisation for "openly planning and preaching crimes against humanity. (to be laid down at The High Court for Human Rights in Geneva, Belgium and in Israel, where apparently there is also a law to prosecute crimes against humanity at an international scale). Even according to specialists, a pre-emptive complaint could be laid down at the international tribunal in the Hague against Bush, Blair and Aznar for planning a "aggressive war" in strict violation of International Law. If they go with UN-mandate. If Ircq had no right to invade Kuwait without permission of the UN, then the USA or any other state has the right to invade Iracq without permission if the UN. It's as simple as that, and everybody knows it. Even they know it. Please read the articles underneath and, if possible, react. Any reaction is welcome. I have already telephonic reaction from Giorgio Agamben and Riccardo Petrella, who favour action, and a written, rather critical reaction from prof. Martin Jay, who severally warms me for anti-semitism. This is a spontaneaus reaction from Richard Plunz (not meant for publication no doubt, but then he will laugh about it when he finds out. He is a professor of Urban Design at Columbia): "Lieven:Yes, it is all true. We are being commandeered by the fascists - now is the first time I begin to understand what it was to be on the Italian left in 1933. Here the things you write about are known, but we are in a shambles. We have been destroyed. They intend their war no matter what. Keep screaming! Richard" Thank you very much for your time. I hope that, after reading the three articles included, you won't regret the time it took. Feel free to forward this message to all those (great minds and lesser gods) I forgot. with deep respect Lieven De Cauter -----Original Message----- From: Decauter, Lieven To: 'Giorgio Agamben'; 'Riccardo.Petrella at cec.eu.int'; 'Manuel Castells'; 'Fred Jameson'; 'Mark C. Taylor'; 'HARVEY at JHUVMS.HCF.JHU.EDU'; 'Martin Jay'; 'Irving Wohlfarth, Emmanuel Wallerstein, Slavay Zizek, Julia kristeva, .. Sent: 10/03/03 3:04 Subject: The people vs Total War Inc Open Letter to: Jacques Derrida¨*, Emmanuel Wallerstein, David Harvey, Giorgio Agamben, Riccardo Petrella, Manuel Castells, Mark C. Taylor, Amin Malouf*, Nadine Gordimer*, Frederick Jameson, Alain Finkielkraut*, Peter Sloterdijk*, Reinhart Kosselleck*, Marcel Gauchet*, Edward Said, Alain Badiou, Slazvoy Zizek, (and why not :Salman Rusdie* and Antonio Negri*), Isabel Allende*, Ricardo Boff*, Julia Kristeva, Martin Jay, Irving Wohlfarth, Donna Haraway, Noam Chomsky, and all the others .. Dear Great Minds of Planet Earth, Dear Intellectuals, Students and Artists around the globe, It is not often that I will write to you, and certainly not to all at once. But this is a case (I would almost say a state) of emergency. The 3 - short - articles in I include underneath contain, I humbly think, the key to this war. The Project for a new American Century (PNAC) is the not only the key to this war but to many more wars to come and it is a road map to 'Empire' (both in the sense of the book and of the film). Article 1 presents the PNAC on the level of discourse. Article 2 tries to give a glimpse of the practice behind the discourse. The third sketches a vision of action, as a key to peace. Or at least: resistance. All you names are mentioned in the third article. Well, maybe not all your names, but a representative sample of them (the 'ensemble' of one could call, with or without irony, the great minds of planet earth: philosophers, historians, writers, etc. ). For what I ask of you is moral support for and if possible real participation in a sort of Russell (or Derrida) Tribunal. Please take the time to read these three texts (only a few pages each). I know they are just an attempt (and a hybrid one: between newsgathering, column and pamphlet), but please give me your reaction. Any reaction. If possible reply via the function 'to all', so it is a public conversation from the start: an event. Thank you very much, really, for your attention. With deepest respect. Yours truly Prof.dr. Lieven De Cauter PS1: The articles are send to The Standaard (local Belgian quality Paper), The Independent, The New Statesman, so far only the Standaard accepted to publish a summary of the three articles. But so far didn't for some reason. One radiostation (www.Klara.be see under 'Rondas') supports the action - but unfortunately its all in Dutch. PS2: As I don't have the e-mail addresses of all the Great Minds of planet Earth - even not all the once mentioned above, star indicates which ones I don't have - , please forward this letter if you happen to have some of these or other big shots - pardon my French - proudly hidden in your digital 'adressbook'. ---------------------- (I) The key to this war: The educational war plans of the PNAC The acronym PNAC is the key to GWII (the second Gulf War). Did you know? I didn't. In the spring of 1997 neo-conservatives Robert Kagan and William Kristol of The Weekly Standard founded 'The Project for a New American Century' (PNAC). Richard Perle appears to be another founding member. Other distinguished founding members in the early days were: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Jeb Bush, brother of Bush II. Then there are also Richard Armitage, currently 'Deputy Secretary of State'; Robert Zoellick, currently Secretary of State for Foreign Trade; I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's right hand man as well as Zalmay Khalilzad, special envoy for Afghanistan. Paul Wolfowitz, previously Professor in International Politics and Dean of the Johns Hopkins University was initially director but left the position to become Defence Advisor to Bush Jr. The current director is Gary Schmitt. The PNAC describes itself as "an non-profit, educational organisation whose goal it is tot to promote American global leadership". Their mission statement is clear: "The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership." Because American leaders (Clinton in the first place) failed to comprehend this mission of world leadership, the Project for a New American Century was launched. The PNAC's drew up an agenda to achieve its mission. Item one is to achieve a massive increase of the defence budget and is a lever to achieve items 2 and 3: to challenge regimes hostile towards our interests and values and to accept the responsibility for America's unique role in the preservation and expansion of an international climate conducive to our safety, prosperity and principles. The first action of the PNAC consisted of an attempt to convince Clinton, then president, to attack Iraq immediately. They wrote him a letter in 1998. But Clinton was not to be convinced. A letter of may 1998 to likeminded chums such as extremely conservative Newt Gingrich and senator Trent Lott is even more explicit: "We should establish and maintain a strong U.S. military presence in the region, and be prepared to use that force to protect our vital interests in the Gulf - and, if necessary, to help remove Saddam from power". Mark the hierarchy of importance: first the permanent presence for 'vital interests' and then, when necessary, taking Saddam as a case. What are these vital interests? Although specialists never tire to tell us that oil is not at stake here, there is an obvious connection between those 'vital interests' and the fact that most of those involved are, often very directly (like Cheney or Condoleeza Rice), linked to the weapon and oil industries. In September 2000, before Bush won the election, the PNAC published the crucial report "Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century", in which they state clearly that to attack Saddam is but an alibi for American supremacy. It was written by Thomas Donnelly with the help of Donald Kagan of Yale University and Gary Schmitt, but a whole list of people contributed to the thought processes that lead to the report, amongst them some of the above founders like William Kristol and I. Lewis Libby, and beside them: Alvin Bernstein of National Defense Univeristy, Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University, David Epstein working at that time for the office of the Secretary of Defense, Abram Schulsky of RAND corporation, James Lasswell of GAMA Corporation Dov Zakheim of System Planning Corporation and others. One name I want to add, who is probably now the most important of all of them: Paul Wolfowitz, now a crucial member of Bush jr.'s so called "War Cabinet". I quote some striking ideas of this report: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein". (p.14) In other words, the fact that Saddam is only an alibi is not a figment of the imagination of the protesters against this war, it is stated explicitly by its master minds. (And: as early as 2000). The report argued for a large-scale upgrade of the army and estimated a budgetary increase of 15 to 20 billion dollars per year would be required to transform the army into a kind of imperial super force, keeping the lead in "the revolution in military affairs". However, PNAC was well aware that this would not be plain sailing: "The process of transformation, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor." (p. 51) This is a genuine quote. Need I say more? However, there is more. One of the core tasks of the transformed American army is "to fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars". (p. IV. find the complete text of this report on www.newamericancentury.org - ). How about that for a shining and truly educational programme, worthy of an educational non-profit organisation? Truly unbelievable, but really true. This PNAC report is nothing less then a roadmap to Empire - both the book and the science fiction series. In any case, following such a brilliant report the 'Project for a New American Century' could only prosper. With Bush in power, Dick Cheney as Vice President and Donald Rumsfeld as Minister of External Affairs, the PNAC became lord and master of the foreign politics of the White House. And then there was nine eleven. Suddenly the New American Century had arrived: the long and eagerly awaited "catastrophic and catalysing" event had occurred. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Co must have considered it a real God sent. It was an immediate justification for agenda item 1: a massive increase in the defence budget. Ian Lustick, professor in foreign politics and Middle-East-specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, stated: "9/11, which had nothing to do with Iraq, produced a gigantic political capital that allowed the government to do whatever they saw fit, as long as they could connect it with national security and the Middle East". According to a report from NBS television, an enthusiastic Rumsfeld scribbled down in telegram style, the definitive plan from the still smoking Pentagon as follows: "best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. at the same time. Not only UBL. .. Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not." For S.H. read Saddam Hoessein, and for UBL read Usama Bin Laden and the message becomes exceedingly clear: "all we need now is the right information to find an alibi for a massive attack on Saddam". The real purpose is (according to the mission statement en report van de PNAC, cited above): to reinforce the American military and industrial world supremacy through a 'total war' (an expression of co-founder Richard Perle), such as The war on terrorism, the cleansing of Afghanistan and now the cleansing of the Gulf (and soon of Columbia). "Multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars" with as motto: ".. Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not." That is painfully clear. It is the real briefing for the troops, as they will shout in the near future 'Hell breaks loose'. Professor Lustick is of the view that the Jewish lobby, rather than oil, is behind the war schemes of the PNAC. The 'Jewish' logic appears to be that a forceful attack on Saddam would destroy the resolve of the Palestinians and tempt them into signing a peace deal the terms of which can be completely dictated by Israel. A logic Lustic considers deeply flawed. He views 'this war plan as a triumph of simple ideology over the messy realities of global politics'. His conclusion is blunt: "This is not a war against fanatics, but a war of fanatics - our fanatics". (with thanks to William Bunch, writing for 'Philadelphia Daily News', and to Kurt Nimmo writing for Counter Punch, November 2002 and Christopher Bollyn, writing for American Free Press) (II) Meet the Master Minds: Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United . Oil, Military and Drugs Industry To document the practice behind the PNAC-theory we pick a case study: Dick Cheney. He is, beside being Vice President of the United States of America and founding member of the 'Project for a New American Century'(PNAC), the main individual shareholder of the giant transnational Halliburton, one of the flagships of the American industry. Brown & Root is an important corporation of the Halliburton group. In a hair raising article, Michael C. Rupert, ex LAPD agent, writes the following: "Of all the American companies dealing directly with the US military and providing cover for CIA operations, few firms can match the global presence of this giant construction powerhouse which employs 20,000 people in more than 100 countries. Through its sister companies or joint ventures, Brown & Root can build offshore oil rigs, drill wells and construct and operate everything from harbours and pipelines to highways and nuclear reactors. It can train and arm security forces and it can now also feed, supply and house armies." What one calls an all round firm. Brown & Root is one of the largest partners of the American army. It builds and provides logistics wherever the American army is present. In addition to dealing in pipelines and military logistics it specialises in arms deals (e.g. with Iran in the late seventies). On top of that it is apparently also an expert provider of drug pipelines. Currently it appears engaged in a Colombian-American joint venture, called Corfinsura, consisting of large building works for the Colombian Antioquia drug syndicate, with headquarters in Meddellin. Brown & Root purchased and leased gigantic amounts of land in Colombia (estimated to be in the order of one billion square meters), which can be transformed into military camps at the stroke of a pen, in case of an invasion by the American army - an invasion that, according to the newspapers, has started surreptitiously. Dick Cheney is a specialist in al sorts of fields. "As the Bush Secretary of Defense during Desert Shield/Desert Storm (1990-91), Cheney also directed special operations involving Kurdish rebels in northern Iran. The Kurds' primary source of income for more than 50 years has been heroin smuggling from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran, Iraq and Turkey." (ibid.). Brown & Root picked its share, as it did in Kosovo, where Cheney's company earned hundreds of millions of dollars building facilities for the America army and where it still has a presence. And as the Kosovo Liberation Army controlled 70% of the European heroin import. In 2000 the Centre for Public Integrity (CPI) (2000) published a report entitled "Cheney Led Halliburton to Feast at Federal Trough". According to this report Halliburton, under Cheney's leadership, received 3.8 billion dollars in federal contracts and government loans, mainly via Brown & Root. The loans were transferred via two banks, Exim and Opic. According to reliable sources those banks are CIA infiltrated and regularly distribute NOC (Non Official Cover, the code for drugs) to their officers. Etc. etc. Group Alpha, a Russian banking conglomerate, traffics in oil and drugs. Via loans to Brown & Root it managed to launder this money, which in turn enabled Brown & Root to extend its oil drillings in Russia. (I present the key lines only, based on a report of the CPI, and the above mentioned article of Michael Rupert, since it would take ten volumes to unravel the intricate schemes involved). The Alpha Group is also in cahoots with Gilberto Rodriguez, currently in prison and the boss of the Kali drug cartel. Most importantly, much of this laundered money was subsequently used to finance Bush's election campaign. And then there is Richard Armitage, also a member of the idealistic educational organisation PNAC, involved in drug trafficking in Laos. Besides war, drugs, military logistics and the weapon industry, oil plays a key role. Whatever else can be said, the connection between the Bush dynasty, the oil industry and Halliburton, where Bush sr. started his career, appears to be conveniently forgotten nowadays. Perhaps Bush and Cheney intend to rebuild the Iraqi oilfields via Brown & Root, or exploit them via (via via) Halliburton. Or via Chevron Oil, which counts Condooleza Rice amongst its board members. Turkey however, does not agree with that strategy where it concerns Northern Iraq. Or perhaps they just intend to destroy the Iraqi oilfields, that is another way to compete. Did Machiavelli not advocate to "Destroy your enemies"? Even if there were no oil profits to be gained, this war would prove to be a goldmine for Brown & Root, as the key logistics company of the American army. As a captain of Industry and politician Cheney and his companions will always win, either way. 'Vested interests' is putting it very mildly indeed. To cut a long story short, the destruction as well as the regeneration of Iraq would provide a golden opportunity for Brown & Root, and hence for Halliburton and therefore also for Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States. One wonders why the press does not or only marginally covers this sort of crucial information. It beggars belief on two fronts: that this is happening and that we don't seem to know about it. You can read all about it in Michael C. Rupert's article: The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire (2001), Nexus Magazine, 8, 2 or on the following web site: www.nexusmagazine.com. But, as the saying goes: "Who wants to know". Schemes from Medellin to Moscow. and time and time again Brown & Root. How come we don't know any of this? Even if only half of it was true (although I rather suspect it is only the tip of the iceberg), doesn't this really change the whole picture? Now it really does make sense why Bush, Cheney and co are hell bent on this war. It is just golden business opportunity. In the New American Century politics, military logic, economics and organised crime have become a seamless continuum, one large global casino. Of course you can shrug your shoulders and say wearily: "Nothing ever changes, same as it ever was". However, armed with such information we can at least debunk the sickly rhetorics of those poker players and the pathetic arguments of so called trustworthy politicians such as Blair, as well as the superficial small talk of most newspaper articles. And we can become aware that Cheney and his chums are true "World history personalities" (a term coined by Hegel to describe figures such as Napoleon). They are competent professionals: Many Birds with One Stone. That is the key to the great "Project for a New American Century". Hence it better be a very large stone. A bazooka in the bowling game of the Middle East. (III) A Key to Peace : 'The People vs. Total War INCorpotated.'? I could continue this series about the PNAC , The Project for a New American Century, and it's tentacles endlessly. It is a genuine Hydra. There is: the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), displaying its vested interests proudly in its name, the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG), they are de precussors of the PNAC and a group of which I assume to be another 'self help group for idealists' and the Iracqui National Congress (INC), which aims to organise the opposition and hence the next Iraqi government, under the watchful supervision of General Wayne Downing. Not to mention "The committee for the liberation of Iracq", a sister or daughter organisation of the PNAC. Its president is Bruce Jackson, a major contractor for Lockheed Martin. It beggars belief. The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq is nothing less than an NGO for the weapons industry. Named Bruce Jackson is also the person behind the letter of the 'Ten of Vilnius', the ten Baltic Nations that signed up for the war (who knows under what pressure of blackmail or promises from our Lockheed boy). At least now we know why. Jackson favours the liberation of Iraq in order to sell as many weapons as possible. It really is that simple, and that cynical. Why does the press not expose that Mr. Jackson works (behind the scenes) for the Bush administration but also for Lockheed Martin? It certainly sheds an interesting light on the situation. This man is obviously a true idealist, that much is clear. God have mercy on America, that is should be led by this outfit (I can't really find a suitable name for them) to a New American Century. It appears wise to attack this section of the Bush administration preemptively (isn't that currently all the rage?) by accusing them of crimes against humanity. One can't fail. The grand wisdom, the deep insights and the broad vision of the European 'Atlantists' (politicians, scholars, journalists) become immortal, and especially painfully risible, if one begins to explore those figureheads and their machinations. It only takes a careful reading of the report "Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century". But time is of the essence. We know enough. The Project for a New American Century is the real design team and master-mind behind this war. The situation defies belief on two levels: that this Project for a New American Century truly exists, and that I and millions of others with me, had no knowledge of its existence. Of course the reply of journalists and other specialists is bound to be: "But everybody knew", the implication being that I am a mere amateur meddling in affairs of experts. Granted. But the world is too important to leave it in the capable hands of specialists and so called experts. So much is clear, once again. So accept my sincere apologies for my ignorance. What I would like to know is why all knowing journalists are so silent on the subject of the comings and goings of the PNAC. PNAC is not good news, but it does provide an opportunity for good journalism. So whence this respectful silence? I really would like to have an answer to that question. So what's the conclusion? This war is a conspiracy of the PNAC, despite your and my aversion of conspiracy theories. It appears to be true, the only truth to be found about this disgusting war. There are of course supplementary conspiracy theories to be explored, like the one about Rupert Murdoch and his media empire, with tens of newspapers (e.g. the Sun), supporting this war with a vengeance. That Chirac sold his soul to Elf, or that Louis Michel, the Belgian minister of Foreign Affairs, is a lackey of France - just because he stated not to be a lackey of the United States - makes no difference: this war is a world wide conspiracy of scavengers. Heavy terminology, I know. But one would have a hard time convincing me that people such as Bruce Jackson, one of the most innocuous ones of the lot, are not scavengers? Do try. The evidence against Cheney is so overwhelming I would not begin to consider withdrawing my accusation. Mister President, you are surrounded not by hawks, but by scavengers. I implore you to publicly condemn the cynical idea of "Total War", as Richard Perle(mann) neatly summarises the basic tenet of the PNAC, before it is too late. Because total war leads to the demise of hundreds of thousands of human beings, and perhaps even to your own political demise. History will condemn you. Repent. Listen to the appeal of the highest representatives of your own church community, the United Methodist Church. This war is in contradiction with the bible and the message of Jesus Christ. I have no time for theological debates here, but I suspect they are right. As you well know. But, then Mister President, how could I bring you to change your mind. However, let's not surrender to the inevitability of the war schemes of the PNAC (soon to be exported to Colombia). Journalists and intellectuals of the world pick up your pen and declare war to despicable organisations such as the Project for a New American Century and The Committee for the liberation of Iraq. Now is the time for a holy anger: a fronde of intellectuals, artists and students, a 'crusade against the Evil Force at work in Empire', a true 'Jihad of Enlightenment': 'Écrasez L'infame désinformation' (let us destroy the infamous misinformation, to paraphrase Voltaire), under the eternal motto of Kant: 'Sapere aude', dare to know. Reading the report of the PNAC sheds a bright light on the dark and murky basis for this war. They want "to fight and decively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars". We need to imprint this phrase, which was coined already in 2000 (I can't emphasise this often enough), in the consciousness of humanity, because it is the truth, the only and veritable truth behind this war. Because time is running out, I dream of the following action plan. First step: we establish a Russell Tribunal. As jurors I propose people such as Frederick Jameson, Manuel Castells, Giorgio Agamben, Ricardo Petrella, Ricardo Boff, Eward Said, Emanuel Wallerstein, Alain Finkielkraut, Amin Malouf, Edward Said, Woody Allen, you name it. I would choose Jacques Derrida to preside. Antonio Negri could be the chief prosecutor (although that might be tricky, he'd be refused). But then Noam Chomsky would even be better for the job. For the defence council. well, up to them really, although I would recommend Paul Wolfowitz himself, member of the PNAC and previously vice chancellor of John Hopkins University, and now a key figure in the Bush II War cabinet. A heavyweight as Wolfowitz would surely do justice to the cause of the defence. The second: headed by Amnesty International, Lawyers without frontiers, and joined by Medicin Sans Frontieres, Voluntary Services Overseas, Greenpeace, Oxfam, and all other independent NGOs, a completed report should be presented : an estimation of the humaninatarian, social, economical and ecological 'cost' and consequences of the PNAC-report. The conclusion would consist of depositing an emergency 'pre enptive' complaint at the International Court of Den Hague, or any where else (Belgian has such a 'genocide law', but Israel has such a law aswell, specialists say) . The PNAC is to be accused of open and repeated incitement and planning of crimes against humanity. A media covered monster trial. J'accuse! The third action is legal action against Bush, Blair and Aznar: a pre emptive complaint for intending to violate international law by planning an "aggressive war" as stipulated in all the conventions and threaties since WWII. If they go with UN-mandate. If Iracq had no right to invade Kuwait without permission of the UN, then the USA or any other state has the right to invade Iracq without permission if the UN. It's as simple as that, and everybody knows it. Even they know it. A fourth action should be to convince the American students, academics, artists and intellectuals to open their eyes before the PNAC closes them. And many have their eyes wide open. To them we say to them, we mail from all over: stand up. It is your fucking duty. We, all of us, will support you. And why not: The fourth step is to be an international call for a worldwide day of strike and prayers. Like the vigil of Moveon.org under the aegis of Desmond Tutu. We ask the Pope, the chief Rabbi, the arch bisshops of the Episcopelean church (church of Bush sr.), the head of United Methodist Church (church of Bush jr.), and of course a whole selection of Ayatollahs and Patriarchs, to call a day of deafening silence and prayer for peace. We call upon all the trade unions to follow the example and to all the NGO's to support the action. The action could be code-named: Operation Desert Voice: The People (of Planet Earth) vs. 'Total War Inc(orporated)'. Let's make this appointment now: If war breaks out in the days or hours to come, we all go unto the street or home, or to the mosk or to the church, or to the pub to look at CCN or AL Jazeera. We just quit. The day the people of this earth declared a worldwide protest- Shabbat. People tell me it's all utopian. Of course it is utopian. "Where danger grows, grows the redemptive too" wrote Holderlin..But, alas, who am I? All this is just a wet dream, I know. All too well. But please tell me then that the PNAC and its machinations is just a dream too. Just a nightmare. Pulp fiction. Or is this New Entropic Imperial Order (as one could call it) - really real? But then again, there is this desert voice of anger and resolution that speaks in me and that I hear around me and it whispers: "We, David, the People of Planet Earth can and . will defeat you, Goliath, 'Total War INCorporated'" (It is to us to make that voice be heard. Even in the Desert. As Kennedy said 'Ich binn ein Berliner', we will say: 'We are born in Bagdad'. And that could be the best action of all: we move to Bagdad. The most famous and the best of us. I for instance would proudly support the pope himself before he kisses the ground of Bagdad Airport He could whisper in all the Babylonian languages of this earth:"We, David, the People of Planet Earth can and . will defeat you, Goliath, 'Total War INCorporated'" ) Prof dr. L. F.M. De Cauter (he is independant writer and philosopher, he teaches at several institutions in Belgium and the Netherlands. He published several books on art, architecture, and critical theory. He wrote a study of the Jewish theology in the work of Walter Benjamin.) ----- Original Message ----- From: Goran PROOT To: Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 1:43 PM Subject: In verband met Irak Geachte professor, Ik luisterde naar de uitzending van Rondas gisteren, en ik vroeg me af wat we konden doen. Behalve de acties die worden voorgesteld op www.geenoorlog.be ontbreekt het aan iemand die in België het voortouw neemt om actie te ondernemen, indien vanavond het verdict valt. M.i. ontbreekt het aan charismatische figuren die de acties leiden. Dat het heel moeilijk is om bv. mensen op straat te krijgen, mocht ik de afgelopen weken aan den lijve ondervinden. Hebt u voorstellen in dit verband? Persoonlijk zou ik het toejuichen indien u -in wie ik vertrouwen stel- mee actie zou ondernemen en helpen leiden. Met vriendelijke groeten, Goran Proot ************************************************ Goran Proot Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent Rozier 9 B-9000 Gent Tel.: +32 9 2647940 Fax: +32 9 2643852 e-mail: goran.proot at ufsia.ac.be www.stcv.be ------ End of Forwarded Message From sunil at mahiti.org Tue Mar 18 01:19:07 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 19:49:07 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] File-sharing and piracy linked to terrorism? Message-ID: <1047930547.3e7626b342ba7@imeme.net> Article: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/3/14/234939/956 Testimony of Jack Valenti President and CEO Motion picture association of america before the SubCommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property Committee on the Judiciary U.S. House of Representatives “international Copyright Piracy:Links to Organized Crime and Terrorism” March 13, 2003 America’s crown jewels -- its intellectual property -- are being looted. Organized, violent, international criminal groups are getting rich from the high gain/low risk business of stealing America’s copyrighted works. We don’t know to what end the profits from these criminal enterprises are put. US industry alone will never have the tools to penetrate these groups or to trace the nefarious paths to which those profits are put. For these reasons it is entirely suitable and necessary that the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property of the House of Representative’s Committee on the Judiciary hold this hearing and illuminate the nature of the problems and the effect on the copyright industries (consisting of movies, TV programs, home videos, books, music, computer games and software). The Economic Worth of the Copyright Industries The copyright industries were responsible in 2001 for some five percent of the GDP of the nation. Over the past quarter century, these industries’ share of GDP grew more than twice as fast as the remainder of the economy. They earn more international revenues than automobiles and auto parts, more than aircraft, more than agriculture. The copyright industries are creating new jobs at three times the rate of the rest of the economy. The movie industry alone has a surplus balance of trade with every single country in the world. No other American industry can make that statement. And all this comes at a time when the U.S. is suffering from some $400 billion in trade deficits. Digital Piracy: The Delivery Dream, the Piracy Nightmare It would be a serious mistake to take our past successes for granted. While piracy has been a sad fact illuminating our lives since the blossoming of the home video entertainment business a quarter century ago, the forms of digital piracy we now face raise serious, new challenges that we need your help in addressing. I must admit, with all appropriate modesty, that we had become fairly good at combating the old forms of analog video tape piracy. With the help of our government and international trade agreements, such as the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property, most countries have adopted modern copyright laws. We had been seeing declining loss rates in many of the traditional centers of piracy. Despite our successes, we were losing close to $3 billion dollars a year. And then the world changed. Digital technologies, which offer so much in terms of enhanced clarity of image and sound, and exciting new ways to deliver high quality entertainment directly to people’s homes, also gave birth to serious new forms of piracy. By now, I presume that all of you have heard of our concerns about Internet piracy – and I assure you, that dialogue will continue. The mysterious magic of being able, with a simple click of a mouse, to send a full-length movie hurtling with the speed of light to any part of the planet, is a marketing dream and an anti-piracy nightmare. Ask the music industry how Internet piracy can devastate an industry’s bottom line. As computer modem speeds accelerate and broadband access spreads across the United States and around the world, more people are gaining the ability to download full length motion pictures quickly. The threat to the motion picture industry from Internet piracy is growing. Internet piracy is not the only digital threat we face. Today, I’d like to focus on another form of digital piracy – widespread piracy of optical discs – CDs, Video CDs, DVDs, and recordable versions like CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. The piracy of DVDs and other optical media products is dominated by organized crime and increasingly threatens our international markets, which account for 40 percent of revenues earned by the filmed entertainment industry. Indeed, all industries that rely on intellectual property protection, including the music and video game industries, are facing huge losses from optical disc piracy, especially in international markets. Microsoft products are another favorite target for the pirates. The motion picture industry seized over 7 million pirate DVDs worldwide last year. DVD piracy didn’t exist for our industry as recently as 1999. “Die Another Day:” An Example of Pirates in Action The damage from pirated DVDs is enormous. DVD piracy erodes our home video revenues, but also corrodes revenues from our international theatrical business. Pirate DVDs often enter the market months before the release of legitimate DVDs – often before a movie is released into the theaters. Let me give you just one example. MGM’s latest James Bond film, Die Another Day, was released theatrically in major cinemas in the United States on November 22. The first pirate copy, camcorded from a press screening in the United States, showed up in pirated DVD format in Malaysia on November 21. By the 28th, only six days after its US theatrical release, every major market in Asia was already infected with pirate copies of Die Another Day. In Taiwan, theatrical release wasn’t scheduled until February 1 to coincide with Chinese New Years holidays – normally a big period for cinema sales in that part of the world. The pirates had nine full weeks to sell our products in pirated form before the film was legitimately released in theaters. A Snapshot of Optical Disc Piracy Around the World The problem of large-scale pirate optical disc production began in China in the mid-90s. When China cut off the export of piratical discs in the late 1990s, the pirates packed up their equipment and relocated to more hospitable areas where enforcement was lax or absent. Now we are seeing major problems with DVD production in Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Philippines, and Indonesia. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ukraine, and elsewhere in Central Europe are host to factories replicating pirate copies of music CDs. The music industry’s problems today are always a danger sign for us, since pirates often start with music and then move on to movies, video games and other products. In the past year, we have also witnessed a major surge of large-scale factory production of DVDs in Russia. Today there are at least 26 optical plants in Russia, including at least five that specialize in the production of DVDs. The number and overall capacity of these plants has more than doubled in the past two years. Nine of these plants are located on property owned by the Russian Government. Pirate DVDs have devastated the local market in Russia. Pirate DVDs have so saturated the Russian market that the pirates have resorted to selling them on the streets by the kilo. Pirate DVDs are sold everywhere – at street markets, in kiosks, in retail stores and over the Internet. Those 26 plants in Russia currently have capacity to replicate about 300 million DVDs and CDs a year; legitimate demand in Russia is approximately 18 million units. This excess capacity points to the fact that the Russian pirates are targeting export markets – OUR export markets. Piracy in Russia poses a major threat to revenues across Europe. In 2002 MPA’s anti-piracy operations seized pirate Russian DVDs in markets across Central and Eastern Europe. In July a raid at a retail market in Poland turned up over 4000 copies of pirate discs from Russia. Those discs contained 15 different language tracks – from Finnish and Swedish to Greek and Turkish, Dutch, Danish, to Indian and Arabic. If bold actions aren’t taken quickly to shut down this piracy, American sales of copyrighted works to Western Europe - our most lucrative market in the world - will be demolished by these pirated imports from Russia. The time to act is now before these criminals further build out their distribution networks and alliances throughout Central and Western Europe. Even before large-scale factory production has been brought under control, we are now seeing the rapid growth of local burning of movies and other forms of copyrighted content onto blank recordable media – CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. This kind of piracy is more dispersed geographically, since the piracy takes place in medium to small “labs” with banks of CD burners, but is often still highly organized. The retail markets in Taiwan are filled with this kind of pirate product; not coincidentally, Taiwan is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of blank optical discs, fueling this problem around the world. The Organized Crime Connection Several U.S. government agencies are bringing attention to the link between organized crime and copyright piracy. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s website home page states the following: “Unlike criminals who engage in other types of criminal activity, those who commit IP crimes can not easily be categorized. Counterfeiters, software pirates, and trade secret thieves are as different as the intellectual property they counterfeit, steal, and sell. In general, software pirates have an acute interest in computers and by extension, the Internet. Many counterfeiters hail from foreign countries, such as South Korea, Vietnam, or Russia. They are frequently organized in a loosely knit network of importers and distributors who use connections in China, Southeast Asia, or Latin America to have their counterfeit and imitation products made inexpensively by grossly underpaid laborers. There is also strong evidence that organized criminal groups have moved into IP crime and that they are using the profits generated from these crimes to facilitate other illegal activities. There are a number of reasons for the dramatic increase in IP crime in recent years. First, many forms of IP can be produced with minimal start-up costs making IP crimes accessible to large numbers of people; second international enforcement of IP laws is virtually nonexistent; and finally, domestic enforcement of IP laws has been inadequate and consequently the level of deterrence has been inadequate.” The link between piracy and organized crime has been widely accepted by the European Commission, which recently organized a forum to address the prevention of organized crime and included a discussion of piracy and counterfeiting. Interpol has also acknowledged the link with organized crime and established the Interpol Intellectual Property Crime Action Group. Many national enforcement authorities, from the United Kingdom to Australia have recognized that piracy and organized crime go hand in hand. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Rt. Hon. Dr. John REID, last year announced the Serious & Organised Crime Threat Assessment & Strategy. He identified as immediate priority areas of criminality: (1) Armed Robbery; (2) Counterfeit Goods – Intellectual Property Crime; (3) Tobacco and fuel smuggling; and (4) Drug Dealing. Case Examples of Organized Crime Pirate factories go to great lengths to conceal and harden their operations. One raid in October 2001, near Bangkok, revealed an underground tunnel linking a factory to a residential house. Pirate products were moved out of the factory on a meter-wide, specially installed electric rail system that ended under the kitchen sink of a near-by home. The products were trucked away from the back of the house, effectively hiding the movement of pirated goods out of the factory. The pirates employ sophisticated security systems, such as hardened front doors and surveillance cameras, to delay entry by enforcement officials into the factories. These security devices give the pirates the 10-15 minutes they need to destroy the evidence of their crimes in vats of acid kept specifically for this purpose. Local police have been forced to adopt equally sophisticated responses. In the raid on a factory in Thailand the police, accompanied by our anti-piracy enforcement team, broke through the roof of the factory and rappelled down ropes in order to maintain the element of surprise. Sophisticated Smuggling The pirates also use highly sophisticated smuggling methods. Macau Marine Police, working with Hong Kong Customs, intercepted two submerged, un-powered, purpose-built “submarines” in two, separate raids in April and May 1999. These submarines were towed behind fishing boats and had ballast and compressed air tanks that enabled the sub to be raised and lowered. If enforcement officials intercepted the fishing vessel, the tow line could be cut, the barge’s location marked with GPS positioning, and later recovered when the coast was clear. In these cases, however, the authorities, relying on sophisticated intelligence, knew what they were looking for and were able to recover 174,000 pirate optical discs in one seizure and 73,000 in the second. These cases demonstrate the scale and level of sophistication that criminal syndicates employ to evade detection. Traditionally, such methods have been reserved for the smuggling of drugs and other contraband, including firearms. Pirates use other ingenious methods to smuggle their products. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industries, in a raid with Polish Customs last year, intercepted a car suspected of transporting pirate CDs from Russia. When the authorities removed the car’s fender, they found a hidden compartment full of pirated CDs. MPA has found hidden compartments in shipping containers, stacks of DVDs concealed in bags of asphalt, and ingenious concealed cavities in what appeared to be stacks of flattened cardboard boxes. Sometimes the pirates try to ship pirated products by disguising them as legal products. A law enforcement official in Australia thought he had a shipment of blank DVDs – until he pealed back the label on one of the copies – and uncovered a shipment of pirated copies of the film “Ali.” With the cooperation of major express mail delivery services, we have made progress in cutting down the shipment of pirated DVDs from Malaysia. In a major raid last July in Penang, Malaysia, we discovered 418 separate parcels containing about 10,000 pirate DVDS destined for Australia, the Middle East, Europe and even the United States. Violence and Intimidation Pirates also employ violence and intimidation. A raid on a street market in Malaysia last summer turned into a riot. A vehicle driven by the pirates rammed the van transporting the Malaysian enforcement officials and MPA’s anti-piracy investigators to the raid. Bat wielding pirates attacked the enforcement team. Only after the Malaysian enforcement officials fired their weapons into the air did the crowd disperse. Pirates have directly threatened Government leaders. Last year, the President of the Municipal Council in a city in Malaysia received a personal death threat along with a threat that his daughter would be raped if the crackdown on illegal VCD traders continued. The Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs in Malaysia also received a personal death threat. In the Netherlands two years ago, our local program helped smash a sophisticated and violent criminal organization that was distributing compilation pirate optical discs under the HiteXplosion and MovieBox labels. The discs contained monthly compilations of interactive games, movies and music. Two of the pirates had organized the torture of two associates for under-reporting their sales of pirated CDs and DVDs. The two were subsequently sentenced to four and a half year prison terms on charges of extortion and accessory to kidnapping and attempted assault. In the UK, there is increasing evidence that Chinese crime gangs control much of the pirate DVD business in London and the South East. Illegal immigrants have, it appears, been pressed into selling pirate DVDs by Chinese human traffickers (known as Snakeheads) to pay off family debts to the gangs. Governments Note Links to Terrorism Mr. Chairman, let me commend to your attention an article by Kathleen Millar in the November 2002 issue of US Customs Today entitled “Financing Terror: Profits from Counterfeit Goods Pay for Attacks.” With your permission, I would like to enter this article into the record. The article outlines the “close connections between transnational crime and terrorism.” It states that the participants at the 1st International Conference on IPR hosted by Interpol in Lyon, France in 2001 “all agreed the evidence was indisputable: a lucrative trafficking in counterfeit and pirate products – music, movies, seed patents, software, tee-shirts, Nikes, knock-off CDs and ‘fake drugs’ accounts for much of the money the international terrorist network depends on to feed its operations.” The article concludes that “The new link between commercial-scale piracy and counterfeiting has redirected public attention in 2002, and law enforcement agencies like Customs and Interpol are going after the organized crime syndicates in charge of what was too often viewed as a “victimless crime.” September 11 changed the way Americans look at the world. It also changed the way American law enforcement looks at Intellectual Property crimes.” The Police Service of Northern Ireland’s (PSNI) Anti-Counterfeiting and Racketeering Unit also reports that paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland regard counterfeiting as their preferred fund-raising option. According to the PSNI, these paramilitary groups last year made specific threats against officers involved in anti-piracy raids at Newtownards Market after PSNI officers had seized over £50,000 worth of counterfeit goods, including DVDs. An Appeal for Assistance To deal with this kind of organized crime, MPAA and our fellow copyright associations, need the help of governments – both here and abroad. It is simply not possible for a private sector organization to penetrate this kind of organized, criminal endeavor without the help of governments. Governments need to dedicate the same kinds of legal tools to fighting piracy that they bring to other kinds of organized crime: money laundering statutes, surveillance techniques, and organized crime laws. We also need your help to let foreign government officials whom you meet here or when you are abroad, know that inaction is not an option in the fight against piracy. The continued vitality of the copyright industries, one of America’s signature industries, is at stake. We need our enforcement agencies to help train and work with foreign enforcement agencies to stem the flow of piracy across borders. We also need the continued assistance of all the agencies that make up the “country team” at American embassies abroad. Ambassadors and their staff from State and Commerce have done outstanding jobs in offices from Moscow to Taipei in helping press for better laws and better enforcement. They help deliver the message that failure to address these high levels of crime has consequences for our bilateral relationships. The traditional enforcement agencies – Customs and legal attaches – are also playing an important role in some countries in engaging their counterparts in dialogue, in improving coordination among enforcement agencies around the world, and in training foreign law enforcement in all aspects of fighting organized crime – including copyright theft. Recently negotiated trade agreements are playing a crucial role in raising the standards of copyright law and enforcement around the world. The Office of the US Trade Representative has done an excellent job in the newly negotiated FTAs with Chile and Singapore incorporating provisions that raise the standards for copyright protection to the level of US laws and help provide the tools we need to combat this menace. The agreements also help open markets – and the more open the market, the less the incentive for piracy. I hope I can encourage you to support these Free Trade Agreements when they come before Congress later this year. Entertainment Industry Coalition for Free Trade I’m pleased to announce that in recognition and support of the value of trade agreements in helping to move our international agenda forward, we will be launching at noon today an Entertainment Industry Coalition for Free Trade. This coalition brings together a wide range of entertainment industries and associations – films, music, entertainment software, theater owners, and television programmers. We hope that many of you can join us at noon today as we launch this Coalition whose main objective is to spread the word that trade matters to our industries. In Conclusion Large, violent, highly organized criminal groups are getting rich from the theft of America’s copyrighted products. Only when governments around the world effectively bring to bear the full powers of the state against these criminals can we expect to make progress. Only when industry and governments join forces to fight these organized groups will we succeed in protecting one of the jewels in America’s trade crown. A singular truth exists in the movie industry: “If you can’t protect what you own, you don’t own anything.” -- Sunil Abraham, CEO MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd. 'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98441 01150 sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org From Harwood at scotoma.org Tue Mar 18 04:45:08 2003 From: Harwood at scotoma.org (Harwood) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 23:15:08 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] war.pl Message-ID: A little something I came across recently It's a quine - a self replicating programme war.pl ######################################### #! /usr/bin/perl $s='$c = chr(39);$t = q^#! /usr/bin/perl $s=^.$c.$s.$c.q^;eval $s;^."\n";print $t ### execute-me ### # XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX # # XX XX XX XXXXX XXXXX XXXX # # XX XX XX XXXX XX XXXX XXXX XXX # # XX XX XX XXX XXXX XXX XXXX XXX # # XX XX XX XXX XXXX XXX XXXX XXX # # XX XX XX XX XX XXX # # XX XX XX XX XXXXXX XX XXXX XXX # # XX XX XXXXXX XX XXXXX XX # # XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX # ### code of war ### ';eval $s; ######################################### # cut out the code above - save it as - # war.pl and run it. ######################################### # The earth is a inch deep in frost. # # Hard; breaking ground to bury the dead# # The north is silent - Shadowed - # # waiting. # # # # The sun eclipsed - # # by eagle wings and lion heart. # # No one can plow or sow, type or code. # # Spring buds and blossoms retard. # # # # The sands of arabia grown. # # The reign of cruelty is begun. # # Disguised in charity & pity & peace. # # Pity excusing poverty. # # Charity excusing wealth. # # # # Peace an armistice of fear # # Reproducing the code for war. # # # # w.blake # ######################################### ######################################### #! /usr/bin/perl $s='$c = chr(39);$t = q^#! /usr/bin/perl $s=^.$c.$s.$c.q^;eval $s;^."\n";print $t #### execute-me #### # # # +--^----------,-----,----,------^-, # # | ||||||||| `----: | O # # `+---------------------^---------| # # `\_,---------,-----,-----------~ # # / XXXXXX / | / # # / XXXXXX / `\ / # # / XXXXXX /`-----~ # # / XXXXXX / # # / XXXXXX / # # (________( # # `------~ # ### #### ';eval $s; ######################################### # cut out the code above - save it as - # war.pl and run it. ######################################### From aiindex at mnet.fr Tue Mar 18 05:36:21 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 01:06:21 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcing A Writing Contest: Women's Voices In War Zones Message-ID: ANNOUNCING A WRITING CONTEST: WOMEN'S VOICES IN WAR ZONES Since Sept. 11, 2001 there has been constant public reference to concepts of terror, war, and security, but little debate about their meaning, which differs from place to place and person to person. And the voices of women and girls, both within the US and in the rest of the world, have been conspicuously absent from the discussion. To bring forward women's ideas on this subject, and enable them to be heard in the public arena, Women's WORLD, a global free speech network of feminist writers, is initiating a writing contest which will be co-sponsored by the The Nation Institute, whose mission is to defend freedom of expression and strengthen the independent media. The subject is Women's Voices in War Zones. Eligibility: All women are welcome to participate; age and citizenship are no barrier. We are particularly interested in seeing work from writers, activists, students, and immigrants or refugees. Rules: Submissions must be previously unpublished personal essays of 1000 words or less, in English, that address one or more of the following questions: What does the term "war zone" mean to you? Do you live in a war zone or state of terror? Is it personal or public? Who is or are the aggressors? How do you resist? What keeps you going? Where does your hope or security lie? How do you imagine bringing this terror to an end? Does your government or society or family provide you with security or is it a source of your unease? We will read only one entry per person. All entries must also include either a one page vita with contact information, or a short biographical statement with the writer's full name and contact information: mailing address, phone or fax numbers, and email address. Submissions can be sent by email to the following address: ratna @wworld.org; or by fax or post to Women' WORLD, 208 w. 30th St., #901, New York NY 10001. fax 212-947-2973. Email submissions are preferred. Deadline: Submissions must be received by 5 p.m (Eastern Standard Time) on May 1, 2003. Winners will be announced in early June. Prizes: Prizes will be given to women in three categories: 1) residents of the US; 2) residents of other countries; 3) immigrants or refugees in any country. There will be three first prizes of $250, and three second prizes of $100. Winning essays will be published on the The Nation website and the websites of Women's WORLD and its affiliates; announced to the press; and circulated to global email lists. Copyright: By sending us an essay, contestants automatically give Women's WORLD the right to publish it in any form and to license others to do so, whether or not the essay wins a prize. Judges: The judges will be a diverse panel of three established writers. --Meredith Tax, President Women's WORLD 208 W. 30th St., #901New York NY 10001 Tel. 212-947-2915 Fax: 212-947-2973 Email: wworld at igc.org or meredith.tax at verizon.net http://www.wworld.org -- From aiindex at mnet.fr Tue Mar 18 05:46:25 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 01:16:25 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Civic hacking: a new agenda for e-democracy Message-ID: http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-8-85-1025.jsp Civic hacking: a new agenda for e-democracy James Crabtree 6 - 3 - 2003 The political potential of the internet lies not in connecting people to politicians, still less in online voting; it lies in the possibility of bringing citizens together to help themselves, argues a veteran of online politics. Representative democracy seems troubled. People are ignoring it. It is not exactly hip with the kids. A little like the unfortunate uncle who gate crashed the party, it hangs around trying to convince people that its magic tricks are interesting. Electronic democracy (e-democracy) is viewed squarely within the remit of representative democracy. 'The Internet' is the new trick. This amazing device - full of youth, verve, and energy - might just be The Answer to its problems. This, give or take, is the UK government's current strategy. It recognises that our democratic system, while not exactly broken, needs pepping up. In particular, it recognises that young people, who tend to be keen on all things wired, frankly do not see the point of politics. It reflects the fact that the political classes are hunkered down under a big tent marked 'disengagement'. The Blair government thinks the internet, this marvel of the modern age, can help. At best, this view is half right. Networked technology can help representative democracy a little, but it is unlikely to be able to help a lot. It comes down to a basic problem: if someone isn't interested in politics, and they don't see the point in taking part, doing it online is not going to help much. The good news is that there may be a better way. The internet can help to improve the civic lives of ordinary people, but only if it is based on a different principle. E-democracy should not be primarily about representation, participation, or direct access to decision makers. First and foremost, it should be about self-help. Public investment in e-democracy should be about allowing people to help themselves, their communities, and others who are interested in the same things as them. As I will explain, the centre of such a strategy should be state support for what I call 'civic hacking', or the development of applications to allow mutual aid among citizens rather than through the state. If you are not interested in politics, electronic politics will not help The current British government has got the right question, but the wrong answer. Its question is: how can we use the internet to help people get the most out of civic life, politics, and the way in which they are governed? This is based on a fairly sound analysis of the current problems of democracy. Steven Coleman and John Gotze, in their pamphlet Bowling Together, put this analysis rather well: "There is a pervasive contemporary estrangement between representative and those they represent, manifested in almost every western country by falling voter turnout; lower levels of public participation in civic life; public cynicism towards political institutions and parties; and a collapse in once-strong political loyalties." So far so good. But Coleman and Gotze, and by extension the British government, come up with the wrong conclusion. They seem to think that people are in some way held back from participation. If we made it easier - step forward 'the internet' - they might decide to get involved. If we made participation in traditional processes a little less tedious, the punters would come back. There would be greater citizen involvement in policy making. The assumption seems to be that if we make the entry route a little sexier (electronic voting not ballots, online consultation not paper consultation) it will make the system work. To be fair, it might make a difference. The excellent British website Fax Your MP, for instance, notes that "67% of our users report that they have never contacted their MP before" suggesting that new ways of access can bring "mostly new participants to the debate". But this is by no means the only avenue open to government. Reciprocity online The opportunity is the construction of a civic space in where citizens talk to each other, rather than to the state. An analogy will help explain this. If you are stuck in a computer game, what do you do? Gamers today - and remember around three in ten people play computer games - will go to a gaming community online, and ask others for advice. They will almost always find someone willing to help them overcome the challenge. Other gamers will help for a variety of reasons: they may get respect for their knowledge; their standing in the community will improve; or they may simply be in a good mood that day. But mostly they do it on the principle of reciprocity. Common in social capital literature, reciprocity means nothing less than you scratch my back, I will scratch yours. This principle is limited if there are only two people, and only two backs. It works better if reciprocity is distributed: I will scratch your back, because this will create a system in which back scratching is the norm, and when I need my back scratched, someone will do it for me. In politics, as in computer games, reciprocity means helping someone because, at some unspecified point in the future, you will need someone else to help you out too. It is the rational realisation of 'do unto others as you would have done to yourself'. What you definitely do not do when stuck in a computer game (or how to load it, or how to make it work better) is e-mail the software designer and ask them to make the game easier or better. Yet this is precisely the current British government's strategy for e-democracy. Got a problem? Go take part in an impenetrable consultation exercise that might, in some distant way, improve the system. Not exactly a hot selling proposition. The game analogy holds because, for most people, politics is like being stuck in a really difficult computer game. Government bureaucracy - the software designer - is a total irrelevance to their daily lives. Citizens rub up against the state in numerous complicated ways: bins need to be taken out, unemployment benefits collected, and doctors visited. But the process of deliberative politics is not part of everyday life. This is why we have a pluralist theory of democracy. Interest groups, the media, and other functional groups represent the interests of people in a battle of ideas. The basic foundation of democracy - that I should be able to have a fair shot at influencing a decision that affects me (if I can be bothered to) - sits within this framework. In everyday life, however, most people encounter problems. Some of these problems are caused, not solved, by the action of the state. By this I do not mean theoretical concepts such as regulatory capture, inefficient use of public money, or government disconnection from the views of ordinary people. I mean that tax forms are a real pain. I mean that paying council tax is complicated, and finding a good school for your daughter is time consuming. Starting a new business is a nightmare, and trying to work out how much of a pension contribution you should be making is difficult. These are everyday problems that government is pretty good at creating, but not very good at fixing. These problems are exactly the same as getting stuck in a computer game. They are life problems - obstacles to be overcome. The best way to overcome them is to find someone else who has done it before, and get them to help you. And this is where the internet can really help. The democracy application Network technology is very good at bringing people together, if they have a reason for getting together in the first place. It is, as anyone who has surfed will know, a veritable haven for cranks and obsessives of all varieties. But it is also the most incredible fund of distributed intelligence ever conceived. It allows the aggregation of distributed and networked knowledge, and makes it accessible to pretty much anyone with a bit of skill and a modem. For computer games players, or financial investors, or stamp collectors, it is a dream come true. It can also be for citizens. The question is: how can you translate this self-evident quality of the network into an application which can help people overcome life problems, or participate in civic communications with others interested in the same issue? At present, this is the problem: you can't. Why not? Because no one has developed the application. Application is another way of saying programme or software. It is a thing that uses the power of the internet in a relevant and useful way. Internet Explorer is an 'application' which allows users to see HTML code as web pages. More famously, Napster, the music file sharing system, was an application that allowed you to download music. It was developed by a 19-year-old called Shawn Fanning. Fanning's story is internet folklore. A young techy gets an idea. After a considerable amount of time spent in his bedroom, he developed an application that would allow others like him, albeit illegally, to swap compressed music files. It took off, and the music industry will never be the same again. Other applications have since been written which do the same thing, but better or faster or with less central control. But it needed an application to work in the first place. The point is that it required someone to develop the application. Napster was useable, cool, and fulfilled a previously unavailable function. It introduced file sharing - or peer-to-peer (P2P) technology - to a mass audience. Andrew Schapiro, author of The Control Revolution, thinks that Napster remains the defining lesson in how the internet changes static systems: "when you are thinking about this always ask 'Napster is to music as X is to Y'." So: Napster is to music as what is to politics? Who is developing Citizster, or Polster? The problem is, we do not know yet. But, somewhere, someone should be developing it. My contention is that the role for the state should be to fund people to do this. They should be giving money to civic-minded groups, or 19-year-old kids, to develop applications that will help meet social goals. This is exactly what happens in broadcasting, where the state (and by extension all of us) ladles out millions every year to develop socially beneficial television and radio programmes. This is done, quite rightly, because it is socially useful. The same should be true with software. I call this idea 'civic hacking'. Hacking in this case does not mean computer piracy, or breaking into computer systems. Instead I take the original meaning, a process of designing software in an open collaborative way. It is defined as: "The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible." A Hacker is someone who follows these principles in the development of software, not someone who tries to electronically break into Fort Knox. Click for more 'Hacker-information' Funding civic hacking The website Meetup is a good example of civic hacking. It is not an application as such, but it is based on much the same idea. The site allows people with common interests to meet up with each other. Let us imagine that Mr Kennedy moved to a new town, and wanted to meet other people who were interested in the works of J S Mill, the principles of social justice, and popular news quiz shows. But Mr Kennedy does not know anyone like that. He could go on to Meetup, and register his interests. When enough other people have done the same, the site sends you an e-mail and suggests you meet for a drink. Equally, the British website UpMyStreet recently launched a site called Conversations, in which people from a local area can initiate discussions about topics of interest in their street or local area. Both are a simple idea. They will not make anyone a gazillion dollars, but they could become useful tools for the social capitalist and ways of making social connections. And both required someone to develop software to make it happen. A civic hacking fund could help develop similar ideas. At the moment there is a market failure, in as much as people tend not to make money off these types of application, no matter how socially useful they are. The applications that can help people help each other need state funding to get going. I stress this is not the total answer. It will not end disengagement as we know it. It will be completely useless for people who are not online. It will also not be any help to people who cannot be bothered with politics full stop. But then these are the sorts of people who, for the foreseeable future, are not going to go anywhere near a political website anyway. But, in a decade or so, everyone in the country will be online. Most people will have made the internet part of their everyday life. By this time we need to have developed useful programmes - Napsters for civic life, Meetups for democracy - which people will want to use. And that means we need to start doing so now. The e-democracy ethic The question is simple: what is the ethic of e-democracy? What is the underlying principle that should guide us in this process of development? The current consensus is that money and time should be spent developing new ways of allowing citizens to interact with parliament and the state. It claims that representation is the ethic of e-democracy. I disagree. Marshal McLuhan's dictum was: "The medium is the message". At base, this means that certain media, or mediums, are good at doing different things. The internet is peculiarly effective at connecting groups of people together. In fact, this is what it does best. So, a sensible strategy would start on this principle. But the people it should be connecting are not citizens and parliamentarians, or voters and civil servants. It should be connecting ordinary people with other ordinary people. And there should be applications that help these people to help each other. A programme supporting civic hacking can do this. This should become the ethic of e-democracy: mutual-aid and self-help among citizens, helping to overcome civic problems. It would encourage a market in application development. It would encourage self-reliance, or community-reliance, rather than reliance on the state. Such a system would be about helping people to help themselves. It would create electronic spaces in which the communicative power of the internet can be used to help citizens help each other overcome life's challenges. Most importantly, by making useful applications, it would help make participatory democracy seem useful too. Bottom line: it is a political project. It needs backers. Any champion of e-democracy should take up the fight. Copyright © James Crabtree, 2003. Published by openDemocracy. From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Tue Mar 18 09:04:43 2003 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 19:34:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Speech by Tom Hayden about state of democracy Message-ID: <20030318033443.87135.qmail@web41111.mail.yahoo.com> This Is What History Feels Like by Tom Hayden This is the text of a speech given by Tom Hayden in Los Angeles on March 15. (Former California State Senator Tom Hayden, the Nation Institute's Carey McWilliams Fellow, has played an active role in American politics and history for over three decades. Described as "the conscience of the Senate", he is author of more than 175 Congressional measures and eleven books, including Irish Hunger and his autobiography, Reunion. He is the editor of The Zapatista Reader (Nation Books).) Repeat after me: This is what democracy looks like! Repeat after me: This is what history feels like! A movement the think tanks thought unthinkable. A movement that corporations cannot brand. That the entertainers cannot distract. And the politicians cannot avoid. Empire versus democracy is the choice. What's left of the empire meets tomorrow in the isolated Azores while democracy meets in the streets. Think of it--the pretenders to empire cannot meet on the European continent. Only an island protects them from the humiliating opposition of millions of citizens of Europe. George Bush is more isolated than we realize. Six recent surveys show that support for his re-election is below 50 percent, and this month for the first time a national poll shows him trailing a Democratic alternative by 48-44 percent. In case you don't know that, it appeared on page 29 of the LA Times just one week ago. The nature of the state itself is at stake as these three unpopular leaders make their plans: Is the state really democratic, accountable to the people who elect its politicians, or has it been hijacked by permanent special interests and turned into a facade that really belongs to the corporate and military masters of globalization? Not textbook theories, but our actions in the days ahead, will answer that question. The Bush Administration has provoked this global reaction by its belligerent bullying of the UN Security Council, as if its members could be pushed around like Florida election officials or intimidated like the Dixie Chicks. And now, by its overreach, it risks its fall. But long before this day, the movement was already stirring in the cracks and crevices of the world. A movement that was expressing the dignity of No and the joy of Yes. No to fundamentalism and yes to human rights. No to slavery and sweatshops, yes to the living wage. No to war and yes to the Mideast peace process. No to pollution and yes to renewable energy. No to WTO, IMF, World Bank and Halliburton, and yes to another world is possible. No to Code Yellow, yes to Code Pink. We're gathering again today to say, "Mr. Bush, what is it about NO you don't understand??? "Mr. Bush, is this what you mean by a faith-based initiative? "Mr. Bush, if you don't listen to our no, if you keep bashing the Europeans, if you keep joking about French fries, your white bread is gonna be French toast." We will know soon enough if democracy is powerful enough to stop this war. While we hope for peace we must now prepare for war. We must be prepared for a long confrontation. As yesterday's statement by Mr. Bush reveals, this conflict is not only about Iraq, it is about the whole Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The occupation of Iraq will mean prolonged conflict, casualties, tens of thousands of troops and will cost in the billions. The economic consequences of fighting an open-ended war with an open checkbook means billions lost for healthcare, education and investment in our inner cities. The empire's plan is bold: winning the war, rewriting the map of the Middle East, killing Osama bin Laden and coming home with flags flying to push the Republican agenda on tax cuts, healthcare and Social Security. Bush's fundamentalist coalition of Christian evangelicals and Jewish neoconservatives seems to anticipate the second term as the Second Coming. Our movement must be bolder: we must multiply our voices and numbers, empower people like never before, engage in creative civil disobedience, link the war to its effects at home and create a political climate that threatens George Bush with a one-term presidency like his father. We must turn our exuberance into the hard work of outreach. We must respect our differences. Everyone has a role to play. Our goal must be to reach a majority. We must hold our unity as precious and deflate the forces who will discredit our views, attack our patriotism and sow divisions in our ranks. In a time of war, we must send a message to our servicemen and women: We want you safely home. Our conflict is with our government's policy, not with you. We ask you to remember that thousands of Gulf War and Vietnam vets were exposed to uranium tailings and Agent Orange by governments that lied to them. We don't know about others, but we will be fighting for your educational benefits, healthcare and veterans' rights upon your return home. In a time of war, we must send a message to our media: You need to take seriously the maxim that in war, truth is the first casualty and patriotism turns easily to prejudice. Your loyalty should be to the truth, not to the Murdochs or Molochs or moguls that monopolize and sensationalize what we see and hear. You may be embedded with our troops, but you must not be in bed with the White House and Pentagon. In a time of war, we must send a message to our political class: Where have you been hiding? Why has there been no debate on the floors of Congress while the dogs of war are barking? Has politics become all checks and no balances? There has never been a greater political climate for peace candidates. The gap between rank-and-file Democrats and party leaders has never been greater in this generation. Among Democrats three weeks ago, the numbers were 79 percent to 18 percent against taking military action soon, and for giving UN weapons inspectors more time. It was 63 percent to 30 percent among Democrats against a war that would inflict substantial American or Iraqi civilian casualties. We must encourage those few precious voices that are emerging and tell the Democratic Party that we want profiles in courage, not compromise. We must encourage those few precious voices that are emerging among the candidates, for their message can reach millions. But building this movement, like building peace, is too important to be left to politicians. This movement has already forced George Bush to go to the United Nations; this movement has delayed the march to war; this movement has made it possible for leaders around the world to stand up against American pressure. This movement has burst onto the stage of history. If we continue building this movement, a politics of peace will follow. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com From ravis at sarai.net Tue Mar 18 14:14:47 2003 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 14:14:47 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The real war and the info war Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20030318141142.0224b590@pop3.norton.antivirus> Fisk wrote this before the actual drive to war, but its a pretty good analysis of the info-war model, so efficiently tested in the first gulf war... The war of misinformation has begun By Robert Fisk 16 March 2003 All across the Middle East, they are deploying by the thousand. In the deserts of Kuwait, in Amman, in northern Iraq, in Turkey, in Israel and in Baghdad itself. There must be 7,000 journalists and crews "in theatre", as the more jingoistic of them like to say. In Qatar, a massive press centre has been erected for journalists who will not see the war. How many times General Tommy Franks will spin his story to the press at the nine o'clock follies, no one knows. He doesn't even like talking to journalists. But the journalistic resources being laid down in the region are enormous. The BBC alone has 35 reporters in the Middle East, 17 of them "embedded" along with hundreds of reporters from the American networks and other channels in military units. Once the invasion starts, they will lose their freedom to write what they want. There will be censorship. And, I'll hazard a guess right now, we shall see many of the British and American journalists back to their old trick of playing toy soldiers, dressing themselves up in military costumes for their nightly theatrical performances on television. Incredibly, several of the American networks have set up shop in the Kurdish north of Iraq with orders not to file a single story until war begins in case this provokes the Iraqis to expel their network reporters from Baghdad. The orchestration will be everything, the pictures often posed, the angles chosen by "minders", much as the Iraqis will try to do the same thing in Baghdad. Take yesterday's front-page pictures of massed British troops in Kuwait, complete with arranged tanks and perfectly formatted helicopters. This was the perfectly planned photo-op. Of course, it won't last. Here's a few guesses about our coverage of the war to come. American and British forces use thousands of depleted uranium (DU) shells widely regarded by 1991 veterans as the cause of Gulf War syndrome as well as thousands of child cancers in present day Iraq to batter their way across the Kuwaiti-Iraqi frontier. Within hours, they will enter the city of Basra, to be greeted by its Shia Muslim inhabitants as liberators. US and British troops will be given roses and pelted with rice a traditional Arab greeting as they drive "victoriously" through the streets. The first news pictures of the war will warm the hearts of Messrs Bush and Blair. There will be virtually no mention by reporters of the use of DU munitions. But in Baghdad, reporters will be covering the bombing raids that are killing civilians by the score and then by the hundred. These journalists, as usual, will be accused of giving "comfort to the enemy while British troops are fighting for their lives". By now, in Basra and other "liberated" cities south of the capital, Iraqis are taking their fearful revenge on Saddam Hussein's Baath party officials. Men are hanged from lamp-posts. Much television footage of these scenes will have to be cut to sanitise the extent of the violence. Far better for the US and British governments will be the macabre discovery of torture chambers and "rape-rooms" and prisoners with personal accounts of the most terrible suffering at the hands of Saddam's secret police. This will "prove" how right "we" are to liberate these poor people. Then the US will have to find the "weapons of mass destruction" that supposedly provoked this bloody war. In the journalistic hunt for these weapons, any old rocket will do for the moment. Bunkers allegedly containing chemical weapons will be cordoned off too dangerous for any journalist to approach, of course. Perhaps they actually do contain VX or anthrax. But for the moment, the all-important thing for Washington and London is to convince the world that the casus belli was true and reporters, in or out of military costume, will be on hand to say just that. Baghdad is surrounded and its defenders ordered to surrender. There will be fighting between Shias and Sunnis around the slums of the city, the beginning of a ferocious civil conflict for which the invading armies are totally unprepared. US forces will sweep past Baghdad to his home city of Tikrit in their hunt for Saddam Hussein. Bush and Blair will appear on television to speak of their great "victories". But as they are boasting, the real story will begin to be told: the break-up of Iraqi society, the return of thousands of Basra refugees from Iran, many of them with guns, all refusing to live under western occupation. In the north, Kurdish guerrillas will try to enter Kirkuk, where they will kill or "ethnically cleanse" many of the city's Arab inhabitants. Across Iraq, the invading armies will witness terrible scenes of revenge which can no longer be kept off television screens. The collapse of the Iraqi nation is now under way ... Of course, the Americans and British just might get into Baghdad in three days for their roses and rice water. That's what the British did in 1917. And from there, it was all downhill. Weasel words to watch for 'Inevitable revenge' for the executions of Saddam's Baath party officials which no one actually said were inevitable. 'Stubborn' or 'suicidal' to be used when Iraqi forces fight rather than retreat. 'Allegedly' for all carnage caused by Western forces. 'At last, the damning evidence' used when reporters enter old torture chambers. 'Officials here are not giving us much access' a clear sign that reporters in Baghdad are confined to their hotels. 'Life goes on' for any pictures of Iraq's poor making tea. 'Remnants' allegedly 'diehard' Iraqi troops still shooting at the Americans but actually the first signs of a resistance movement dedicated to the 'liberation' of Iraq from its new western occupiers. 'Newly liberated' for territory and cities newly occupied by the Americans or British. 'What went wrong?' to accompany pictures illustrating the growing anarchy in Iraq as if it were not predicted. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030318/d725a788/attachment.html From shuddha at sarai.net Wed Mar 19 07:49:59 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 02:19:59 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Regime Change in Iraq, some years ago Message-ID: <200303190219.h2J2JxOl030638@mail.sarai.net> Dear all on the Reader List, As the world prepares for war on Iraq, I thought that it might be interesting to note the last time the United States sought a regime change in Iraq. An interesting episode from the early life of Mr. Hussein, and his close links with the gentlemen of the Central Intelligence Agency - as chronciled by Roger Morris in the New York Times. Pattern Recognition is an interesting game, and just as the Osama Bin Laden CIA link was an interesting pattern that morphed as time went by, here is another parrallel narrative.The pattern is the same. I found this on the New York Times website on the op ed page for the 14th of March, 2003 ________________________________ A tyrant 40 years in the making By Roger Morris, The New York Times, 14 March 2003 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/14/opinion/14MORR.html On the brink of war, both supporters and critics of US policy on Iraq agree on the origins, at least, of the haunted relations that have brought us to this pass: America's dealings with Saddam Hussein, justifiable or not, began some two decades ago with its shadowy, expedient support of his regime in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s. Both sides are mistaken. Washington's policy traces an even longer, more shrouded and fateful history. Forty years ago, the CIA, under president John F Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi leader seen as a grave threat in 1963 was Abdel Karim Kassem, a general who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. Washington's role in the coup went unreported at the time and has been little noted since. America's anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely substantiated, however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and in the work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the CIA From gabrown at axionet.com Wed Mar 19 00:43:07 2003 From: gabrown at axionet.com (graham a brown) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 11:13:07 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] International Call To Creative Action Message-ID: Hi I would like to bring to this list the International Call To Creative Action, creative competition. The theme is to explore your post 9€11 experience. All the winning and finalists entries will be published September 2003, on the 9€11 International Call to Creative Action, a digital storytelling interactive DVD, to be presented to the United Nations Library, and Canadian Parliamentary Library and the American Library of Congress. Categories: Writer, Visual Artist, Photography, Multimedia, and a separate family or school entry. Detailed information is on the web site or email info at netcomediainteractive.com. Entry fee: fifteen ($15) US money order with one (1) entry or twenty five dollars ($25) US money order for three (3) entries.1st Prize: $250, 2nd Prize: $150, all in US currency. Winners will receive a copy of the published DVD. Deadline post marked May 1, 2003 c/o netcoMedia Interactive 1027 Davie Street, Suite 532 Vancouver, BC, Canada V6E 4L2 http://www.netcomediainteractive.com Info at netcomediainteractive.com From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Wed Mar 19 13:14:44 2003 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 23:44:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] ethics of journalism Message-ID: <20030319074444.30716.qmail@web41107.mail.yahoo.com> further to some of the discussions at the recent crisis media conference, this is interesting. sucheta dalal is an eminent financial journalist working for the express. R Selling news or buying silence? Sucheta Dalal. March 05, 2003 The newspaper world has been cast into turmoil over the last few weeks. First, there was the furore, within media circles, over The Times of India group deploying 'paid content' -- or what in plain words means -- selling news. The group has a division called Medianet (see www.indiatimes.medianet.com), complete with a rate card for the sale of news. For lay readers, it must be clarified that the sale of news is different and distinct from paid advertisements, advertorials or special supplements, all of which are clearly identified as 'sponsored features,' while paid news is not. Such spurious news has included gushing endorsements of flop movies, fashion and lifestyle products and the promotion of hotels and restaurants that enter into a payment arrangement with the organisation. The reader has no clue that the adulatory report is nothing but a paid advertisement masquerading as objective reportage or opinion. Even while the debate over the ethics of a newspaper 'selling news' was hotting up into a regular war of words between two of the country's top-selling English dailies, journalism was dealt another stunning blow. Last week, the Mumbai police arrested Rishi Chopra of The Economic Times along with an accomplice (a former journalist with another business daily) in an alleged extortion attempt. The duo was trapped accepting a Rs 700,000 bribe which was the second installment of a Rs 2.5 million payoff to kill a report about the shenanigans of one Poonamchand Malu of Malu Financial Services. Worse, the pay-off itself had apparently been haggled down from an initial demand of Rs 10 million to Rs 2.5 million. Although corruption in the media is no longer news, the actual arrest of two scribes and the sums involved, marked a new low in this once honourable profession. The two issues are not unconnected -- and not merely because they involve the same media group. A little before Chopra's arrest, Ravi Dhariwal, an executive director of Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd, which owns The Times of India and The Economic Times had pointed out in a signed article on the edit page of The Economic Times that -- 'all those shouting from the roof-tops admonishing sponsored stories have also turned a blind eye to the fact that some stories get into their newspapers, after veiled deals between public relations agencies and large sections of the media.' This may be true. Indeed, some TOI journalists believe that blatant 'planting' of news and photographs by journalists acting in cahoots with PR agencies had triggered off the Medianet initiative. Dhariwal's article labels Medianet an attempt to �bring about more transparency and disclosure to the entertainment and lifestyle supplements' of the group. But Rishi Chopra's arrest would suggest the problem is not restricted to the entertainment and lifestyle segments. Chopra was a business journalist that too connected to the research bureau. Also, he is the third ET scribe under a cloud for shady links with speculators in the last two years. Two others were asked to go after investigations by the market regulator revealed substantial allotment of cheap 'preferential' shares at the behest of tainted market operator Ketan Parekh. This suggests that the answer to corruption is not the official sale of news, but a serious attempt to tackle and eradicate corruption. Let us look at the issue from another perspective. TOI is the world's largest selling English language newspaper and sells more copies per day than The New York Times or USA Today. It has also been at the forefront of breaching the 'walls' that separate advertising, management and editorial in a newspaper organisation. The group has frequently shuffled senior employees on either side of the 'wall.' For instance, Chopra, the recently arrested journalist was designated 'Deputy Manager' in the ET Intelligence Bureau. A couple of days later Pradeep Guha, a senior director of the company and its top marketing executive, had turned 'reporter' and covered the Filmfare Awards for the TOI. The group believes the newspaper business is no different from any other business and likes to refer to its various publications as brands or products. However, this logic should work both ways. A reader, as the consumer of these media products should have the same rights and expectations. While readers know that advertisements keep the product cost low, they still buy a newspaper for its editorial content and not for its advertisements. This means the reader has a right to expect that advertisements and news are distinct and segregated. The Times Group claims each of its paid news items carries the words 'Medianet promotions' at the bottom. But without proper disclosure to the reader about what the word Medianet implies, the disclosure is meaningless. In the absence of such clarity, the reader ought to be outraged at the attempt to pass off paid news as the real thing. But readers either don't care, or newspapers are so habit-forming that they refuse to dump the product despite their irritation. In such a situation, the consumer, far from being king, is totally irrelevant. The entire debate over the ethics of 'selling' news has revolved around this simple fact. Every senior journalist writing on the subject has lamented the readers' apathy. Even in private e-mail groups, it is journalists who seem outraged, anguished and disheartened at what has been described as the 'prostitution' of news; the reader response is always lukewarm. Some discerning readers have written to the newspaper in protest, others gripe privately about the degeneration of the media, but neither category is willing to go so far as to stop buying the newspaper. It is this reader apathy that allows Ravi Dhariwal of The Times of India to dismiss the debate in The Hindustan Times and other publications as the reaction of 'disgruntled rivals who have failed to compete every step of the way' and are �maligning The Times of India by their ideological rhetoric.' Dhariwal's frenzied defence is rather telling: 'If anyone is committing rape, it is publications that are doing it (probably refers to sponsorship of editorial pages and reports) under the cover of darkness. For The Times of India, it's but a torrid affair with the advertiser, one that can only culminate in a happily ever after,' he writes. Clearly, the reader, who pays less than the price of a cigarette, a cup of tea or a paan, is totally and completely irrelevant and the group probably expects him to be suitably appreciative. When the reader is not discerning, his/her loyalty can always be bought through low 'invitation pricing' of the publications or cross promotions, titillating photographs and stage-managed events. The paper's self-confessed love affair is with the advertiser and its flourishing bottom line gives it the power to desecrate editorial space and express the confident view that all other media houses will soon follow its example. Did someone say the leader guards the reader? __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Wed Mar 19 01:44:08 2003 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 20:14:08 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Haeppie Holi Message-ID: <20030318201408.65089.qmail@web8206.mail.in.yahoo.com> Dear All, Wish you a happy cliché, that is to say Haeppie Holi. No, no. That's not cynicism. Fact is I am, right now, extremely disappointed. It is the day before Holi (although, as the auto-driver pointed out today while trundling me home, nowadays all festivals are beginning to get spread over 2 days). Yet no bomb has gone off in any bogey of any train anywhere in the country, as it did the day before Muharram. Disappointing. I wonder if I should call up LK and rebuke him. I mean, give him deputy gaali. I won't. The man's too busy, I know. Consider the day before Muharram, itself. It is late at night, and the man sits at his bureau in his study. On the meticulously clean glass surface phones gleam, as religiously as the shine on his pate. Not pulling at his affectedly miniscully sheared moustache, LK cons a lengthy document. The phone rings, the blue one. LK: Tell me? Unidentified Person (henceforth UP): Sir. LK: Hanh! UP: Sir, the President is awake. LK consults his watch. It is 11:23. LK: Tell me. UP: Sir, he is walking up and down. LK: Up and down? UP: Yes sir. LK: Not down and up, like that slimy, cowchild-eating bastard muslim Dracula who used to crawl down and up walls as recorded by Veer Stoker? UP (after a pause): No sir. Up and down. (Another pause) Sir, he's stroking! LK: What? What is he stroking? UP: His hair, sir. Again and again. LK: O. UP: Yes, sir. LK: Yes. Good. Keep it up. The presidential bedroom is softly, but also ominously, lamp-lit. APJ Abdul Kalam strides up and down. In his right hand, he has a tiny toy whip. As he walks, he flicks the whip on the index finger of his left hand, jumps and goes "oooh!" It is obvious to all (watching and not watching) he is extremely disturbed. The heavy curtain on one of the presidential bedroom windows rustles. APJ, being a scientist and not feeling any breeze whatsoever, immediately turns towards it. "Call Him," the heavy curtain whispers. "Missile, da!" says APJ in genuine admiration, completely off protocol. The phone rings, the yellow one. LK: Tell me. APJ: Is it Him? LK (tone changing): Sir, it is! How do you do? APJ: Not so fine. The missiles are firing tonight. LK: Unh? What? Please hold on! LK presses buttons on the purple, red and magenta phones, converses alertly. Then he goes back to the yellow phone. LK: Sir! No missiles! APJ: In my mind, LK LK (after a pause): That's a de jure thought, Sir! APJ (pause): Yes? The phone rings, the blue one. LK: Sir, hold on! He cradles the bulky blue receiver in the palm of his smooth unlined hand. LK (confidently): Tell me. UP: Sir, he's talking on the phone. LK (alarmed): What? Who? UP (after a lengthy pause, punctuated by many beeps): Who what, sir? LK (tensely, losing his temper): Who the chodum chodey chodani is he talking to? UP (after another lengthy pause — punctuated by many more beeps — hesitatingly): Sir. You. Er Sir. LK (breathes out heavily): Okkay. I thought it was my bete noire, that fuckabhyam Osama. Or that One I could never be. That ultra-rich babe-fucking mafia Muslim who still manipulates Bal Thackeray and therefore me: Dawood Ibrahim. UP: Sir? LK: (Pause; is himself again). Good. Keep it up. Are you sure he's talking to me? UP (confused): Sir? Yes, sir. LK: Good! Keep it up! He turns to the yellow receiver. LK (all honey): Sir, have you held on? APJ (all sulk): Yes. But I have taken time off to stroke my hair, and think about the global space programme for peace. LK (honeyer): Yes, sir. I loved that Science Congress speech APJ (all excited): You did? Then you endorse it? A global system of satellites watching over all humans, for peace? I have been dreaming about it! Just imagine! Swarish! A satellite goes! Swarosh! It knows everything! Swarajish! I control it all! LK (sympathetically): You called me, sir? APJ (suddenly sober): Yes, yes. This train blast LK (interrupting matter-of-factly): Muslims, sir. APJ (after a pause): But a day before LK (interrupting indignantly): Godhra, sir! APJ (now alert): No, that's LK (interrupting with finality): Terrorists, sir! APJ (after a pause): Are you LK (triumphantly interrupting): Tell me sir, what is common to small farmers, polio and Muslims? APJ (completely foxed): What? LK (triumphantly triumphant): Total extermination of the virus, sir! Happy Holi! LK bangs the phone down. Educated chootiya, he mutters. He folds his specs and places them on the gleaming glass bureau table-top, and leaves the room FINIS? Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030318/c904072e/attachment.html From shashiarun at yahoo.com Wed Mar 19 10:33:43 2003 From: shashiarun at yahoo.com (Shashi Gupta) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 21:03:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] an act towards peace Message-ID: <20030319050343.43880.qmail@web40511.mail.yahoo.com> Lets hope that with a small action we are successful in avoiding greater calamities that touch humanity. Shashi Dear friend, Please join me in taking a simple action for peace. Together with thousands of folks around the world, I'm putting a light in my window. If enough of us do the same, we can send a strong message of continued opposition to war and continued hope for peace. It could be a Christmas string or candle, a light bulb, or a lantern. It's an easy way to keep the light of reason and hope burning, to let others know that they are not alone, and to show the way home to the young men and women who are on their way to Iraq. MoveOn's keeping a count of the people who are joining in this simple act, from places all over the globe. Please sign up now at: http://www.moveon.org/windowlight/ Thank you. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Wed Mar 19 16:23:05 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 19 Mar 2003 10:53:05 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Where is the true danger? Message-ID: <20030319105305.26516.qmail@webmail30.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030319/9dcd101b/attachment.pl From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Thu Mar 20 00:26:34 2003 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 13:56:34 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] an act towards peace Message-ID: dear shashi, we arent successful. but what else can we do? i'll sit with a little diya in my window, feeling peacful and warm, but its really all bullshit. so so frustrated!!!! zehra. >From: Shashi Gupta To: reader-list at sarai.net >Subject: [Reader-list] an act towards peace >Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 21:03:43 -0800 (PST) > >Lets hope that with a small action we are successful >in avoiding greater calamities that touch humanity. > >Shashi > >Dear friend, > >Please join me in taking a simple action for peace. > >Together with thousands of folks around the world, I'm >putting >a light in my window. If enough of us do the same, we >can send >a strong message of continued opposition to war and >continued >hope for peace. It could be a Christmas string or >candle, a >light bulb, or a lantern. It's an easy way to keep >the light of >reason and hope burning, to let others know that they >are not >alone, and to show the way home to the young men and >women who >are on their way to Iraq. > >MoveOn's keeping a count of the people who are joining >in this >simple act, from places all over the globe. Please >sign up now >at: > > http://www.moveon.org/windowlight/ > >Thank you. > > > >__________________________________________________ >Do you Yahoo!? >Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! >http://platinum.yahoo.com >_________________________________________ >reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >Critiques & Collaborations >To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe >in the subject header. >List archive: _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Thu Mar 20 01:02:55 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 19:32:55 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] List of US vetoes in the last 30 yrs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030319193255.67469.qmail@web8007.mail.in.yahoo.com> Interesting. . . _______________________________ ZNet | Iraq Vetos A list of resolutions vetoed by the USA 1972-2002 by Anonymous; March 15, 2003 [NOTE to readers: This list came to us by email, and although we are unsure who collected the information, it appears accurate to us on a quick check. -- ZNet.] List of resolutions vetoed by the USA 1972 - 2002 (Russia has used their veto TWICE) Year Resolution Vetoed by the USA 1972 Condemns Israel for killing hundreds of people in Syria and Lebanon in air raids. 1973 Afirms the rights of the Palestinians and calls on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. 1976 Condemns Israel for attacking Lebanese civilians. 1976 Condemns Israel for building settlements in the occupied territories. 1976 Calls for self determination for the Palestinians. 1976 Afirms the rights of the Palestinians. 1978 Urges the permanent members (USA, USSR, UK, France, China) to insure United Nations decisions on the maintenance of international peace and security. 1978 Criticises the living conditions of the Palestinians. 1978 Condemns the Israeli human rights record in occupied territories. 1978 Calls for developed countries to increase the quantity and quality of development assistance to underdeveloped countries. 1979 Calls for an end to all military and nuclear collaboration with the apartheid South Africa. 1979 Strengthens the arms embargo against South Africa. 1979 Offers assistance to all the oppressed people of South Africa and their liberation movement. 1979 Concerns negotiations on disarmament and cessation of the nuclear arms race. 1979 Calls for the return of all inhabitants expelled by Israel. 1979 Demands that Israel desist from human rights violations. 1979 Requests a report on the living conditions of Palestinians in occupied Arab countries. 1979 Offers assistance to the Palestinian people. 1979 Discusses sovereignty over national resources in occupied Arab territories. 1979 Calls for protection of developing counties' exports. 1979 Calls for alternative approaches within the United Nations system for improving the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms. 1979 Opposes support for intervention in the internal or external affairs ofstates. 1979 For a United Nations Conference on Women. 1979 To include Palestinian women in the United Nations Conference on Women. 1979 Safeguards rights of developing countries in multinational trade negotiations. 1980 Requests Israel to return displaced persons. 1980 Condemns Israeli policy regarding the living conditions of the Palestinian people. 1980 Condemns Israeli human rights practices in occupied territories. 3 resolutions. 1980 Afirms the right of self determination for the Palestinians. 1980 Offers assistance to the oppressed people of South Africa and their national liberation movement. 1980 Attempts to establish a New International Economic Order to promote the growth of underdeveloped countries and international economic co- operation. 1980 Endorses the Program of Action for Second Half of United Nations Decade for Women. 1980 Declaration of non-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. 1980 Emphasises that the development of nations and individuals is a human right. 1980 Calls for the cessation of all nuclear test explosions. 1980 Calls for the implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. 1981 Promotes co-operative movements in developing countries. 1981 Affirms the right of every state to choose its economic and social system in accord with the will of its people, without outside interference in whatever form it takes. 1981 Condemns activities of foreign economic interests in colonial territories. 1981 Calls for the cessation of all test explosions of nuclear weapons. 1981 Calls for action in support of measures to prevent nuclear war, curb the arms race and promote disarmament. 1981 Urges negotiations on prohibition of chemical and biological weapons. 1981 Declares that education, work, health care, proper nourishment, national development, etc are human rights. 1981 Condemns South Africa for attacks on neighbouring states, condemns apartheid and attempts to strengthen sanctions. 7 resolutions. 1981 Condemns an attempted coup by South Africa on the Seychelles. 1981 Condemns Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, human rights policies, and the bombing of Iraq. 18 resolutions. 1982 Condemns the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. 6 resolutions (1982 to 1983). 1982 Condemns the shooting of 11 Muslims at a shrine in Jerusalem by an Israeli soldier. 1982 Calls on Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights occupied in 1967. 1982 Condemns apartheid and calls for the cessation of economic aid to South Africa. 4 resolutions. 1982 Calls for the setting up of a World Charter for the protection of the ecology. 1982 Sets up a United Nations conference on succession of states in respect to state property, archives and debts. 1982 Nuclear test bans and negotiations and nuclear free outer space. 3 resolutions. 1982 Supports a new world information and communications order. 1982 Prohibition of chemical and bacteriological weapons. 1982 Development of international law. 1982 Protects against products harmful to health and the environment . 1982 Declares that education, work, health care, property nourishment, national development are human rights. 1982 Protects against products harmful to health and the environment 1982 Development of the energy resources of developing countries. 1983 Resolutions about apartheid, nuclear arms, economics, and international law. 15 resolutions. 1984 Condemns support of South Africa in its Namibian and other policies. 1984 International action to eliminate apartheid. 1984 Condemns Israel for occupying and attacking southern Lebanon. 1984 Resolutions about apartheid, nuclear arms, economics, and international law. 18 resolutions. 1985 Condemns Israel for occupying and attacking southern Lebanon. 1985 Condemns Israel for using excessive force in the occupied territories. 1985 Resolutions about cooperation, human rights, trade and development. 3 resolutions. 1985 Measures to be taken against Nazi, Fascist and neo-Fascist activities . 1986 Calls on all governments (including the USA) to observe international law. 1986 Imposes economic and military sanctions against South Africa. 1986 Condemns Israel for its actions against Lebanese civilians. 1986 Calls on Israel to respect Muslim holy places. 1986 Condemns Israel for sky-jacking a Libyan airliner. 1986 Resolutions about cooperation, security, human rights, trade, media bias, the environment and development. 8 resolutions. 1987 Calls on Israel to abide by the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of the Palestinians. 1987 Calls on Israel to stop deporting Palestinians. 1987 Condemns Israel for its actions in Lebanon. 2 resolutions. 1987 Calls on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon. 1987 Cooperation between the United Nations and the League of Arab States. 1987 Calls for compliance in the International Court of Justice concerning military and paramilitary activities against Nicaragua and a call to end the trade embargo against Nicaragua. 2 resolutions. 1987 Measures to prevent international terrorism, study the underlying political and economic causes of terrorism, convene a conference to define terrorism and to differentiate it from the struggle of people from national liberation. 1987 Resolutions concerning journalism, international debt and trade. 3 resolutions. 1987 Opposition to the build up of weapons in space. 1987 Opposition to the development of new weapons of mass destruction. 1987 Opposition to nuclear testing. 2 resolutions. 1987 Proposal to set up South Atlantic "Zone of Peace". 1988 Condemns Israeli practices against Palestinians in the occupied territories. 5 resolutions (1988 and 1989). 1989 Condemns USA invasion of Panama. 1989 Condemns USA troops for ransacking the residence of the Nicaraguan ambassador in Panama. 1989 Condemns USA support for the Contra army in Nicaragua. 1989 Condemns illegal USA embargo of Nicaragua. 1989 Opposing the acquisition of territory by force. 1989 Calling for a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict based on earlier UN resolutions. 1990 To send three UN Security Council observers to the occupied territories. 1995 Afirms that land in East Jerusalem annexed by Israel is occupied territory. 1997 Calls on Israel to cease building settlements in East Jerusalem and other occupied territories. 2 resolutions. 1999 Calls on the USA to end its trade embargo on Cuba. 8 resolutions (1992 to 1999). 2001 To send unarmed monitors to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. 2001 To set up the International Criminal Court. 2002 To renew the peace keeping mission in Bosnia. ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From ghoshvishwajyoti at rediffmail.com Thu Mar 20 01:26:47 2003 From: ghoshvishwajyoti at rediffmail.com (vishwajyoti ghosh) Date: 19 Mar 2003 19:56:47 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] a few hours away... Message-ID: <20030319195647.30553.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030319/ee0476f2/attachment.pl From geert at desk.nl Thu Mar 20 03:29:24 2003 From: geert at desk.nl (geert lovink) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 08:59:24 +1100 Subject: [Reader-list] Digital Partners SEL Preliminary Application References: <20030319193255.67469.qmail@web8007.mail.in.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1b7701c2ee6d$e2a07e10$12f065cb@geert> From: "Social Enterprise Laboratory" DIGITAL PARTNERS' SOCIAL ENTERPRISE LABORATORY (SEL) CALL FOR PRELIMINARY APPLICATIONS Please forward the following opportunity to entrepreneurs interested in utilizing information technology (IT) to benefit poor communities through enterprises designed to deliver social value. Digital Partners invites for-profit and non-profit social entrepreneurs and organizations using information and communication technology (ICT) to serve disenfranchised communities in developing countries to submit a Preliminary Application for participation in the 2003-2004 Social Enterprise Laboratory (SEL). Projects should benefit the poor and must be ICT-enabled, market-based, and self-sustaining. Preliminary Applications are available year-round at http://www.digitalpartners.org/sel_apply.html and must be made on-line. Applications for the 2003-2004 cycle must be submitted no later than THURSDAY, MAY 22, 2003. Digital Partners will evaluate the submissions and a select number of social entrepreneurs will be contacted by the END OF JUNE and asked to submit a full application. Examples of successful applicants can be viewed at http://www.digitalpartners.org/sel_progress.html and http://www.digitalpartners.org/sel_portfolio.html. The most promising projects will: 1. Receive Business and Technology mentoring assistance (assistance to design, incubate, deploy and scale innovative projects) and 2. Become eligible to receive initial equity investments from Digital Partners based on projected social benefit and capacity to achieve sustainability. Previous investments have ranged from $10,000 to $100,000. The SEL Program matches entrepreneurs with professionals and students from prestigious graduate schools to help them effectively incorporate information and communication technologies and market mechanisms into the enterprise, develop implementation strategies, and transform proposals into sustainable business plans. More details can be found at http://www.digitalpartners.org/sel.html. Questions may be directed to SEL Program Officer David Feige at SEL at digitalpartners.org. From aiindex at mnet.fr Thu Mar 20 05:12:58 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 00:42:58 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] The war as commodity Message-ID: The Daily Times March 20, 2003 Op-ed. The war as commodity M V Ramana As President George W Bush gets ready to give the final order for the anticipated carnage in Iraq, US media outlets, especially TV channels, have been having a field day with numerous reports and interviews on the upcoming war. Once the bombing starts, all major television channels in the US are expected to switch to covering the war. Mainstream channels like NBC and CBS have reportedly delayed scheduled comedy shows till April in anticipation of the war. The Pentagon, for its part, has tried to ensure that all this media coverage will be favourable by introducing a new process called embedding under which media personnel will be allowed to live and travel with the troops. As part of the bargain, journalists promise not to report certain categories of information and agree to honour news embargoes. About 500 journalists have chosen to get embedded. Already, prior to the start of war, the investment has paid off; these journalists have been filing the kind of "human interest" stories that the Pentagon likes. In effect, mainstream media has functioned and is functioning as a way to drum up support for the war. It does this in many ways. To start with the voices that are heard are overwhelmingly pro-war. This is not reflective of the general public sentiment. It is because when it comes to security issues, TV channels almost inevitably feature only retired military personnel, each one more conservative and hawkish than the other. Many are employees of these channels. Utilising brightly lit maps and fancy graphic capabilities, they engage the viewer in the arcane details of how an attack would likely proceed or outline alternate military strategies. The basic question of whether there should be a war at all is never discussed. Despite this bias, the worldwide anti-war movement has by its sheer size forced itself into the mainstream media. But US media, especially television, has sought to minimise its impact in various ways. One device is to follow up any report of an anti-war event with some commentator dismissing them as fifth columnists or simply ignorant or as completely ineffective. Another tactic that is used on the rare occasions when a speaker opposed to the war appears is to "balance" him or her with a super-hawk. Also working against those opposed to the war is the format used by TV channels - short sound bites. In such a milieu, only familiar thought, i.e., what is already offered by the mainstream media, has a chance of making an impact. Under such circumstances, to talk about the openness of the media in inviting a variety of viewpoints, is like freedom in the fast food industry: "you can serve the audience any variation of a burger with fries that you want, but you cannot try anything else," in the words of Andrew Lichterman. "This rules out most thought which is a departure from what people already know." The strongest argument against the war - the expected humanitarian consequences that will befall the Iraqi people from the bombing - has been almost completely blacked out by the mainstream media. This is not due to lack of material. Numerous humanitarian and relief agencies, as well as the United Nations itself, have issued urgent warnings about the impending crisis. If ever these are mentioned, they are portrayed as though the US has nothing to do with it, blaming it all on Saddam Hussein, who is, in any case, demonised by the media. Once the war starts, one can expect a continued blackout of the casualties on the Iraqi side. The language, instead, would involve antiseptic terms like surgical strikes and collateral damage that obfuscate a painful reality. In analysing how the TV networks present war, Kevin Robins observes, "The screen exposes the ordinary viewer to harsh realities, but it screens out the harshness of the realities. It has certain moral weightlessness: it grants sensation without demanding responsibility and it involves us in a spectacle without engaging us in the complexity of its reality." Hand in hand, the media has also implicitly justified any casualties in Iraq as the necessary price for ensuring that attacks like the ones of September 11, 2001 do not occur. The media has left unchallenged the Bush administration's baseless allegations about the relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraq. No wonder then that 57 per cent of Americans believe that Iraq was involved in those attacks, according to a survey published by the Pew Research Center. US mainstream media's skewed coverage and drummed up support for the war is not without reasons. One factor is the huge profits involved. As Robert McChesney points out, the US "media system is dominated by a dozen or so enormous media conglomerates, whose investors have no more intrinsic interest in journalism or democracy than they do in cigarette smoking or manufacturing anti-depressant pills or nuclear weapons. Their sole purpose is to use their semi-monopolistic market power to maximize profits, usually by doing whatever they can to please the advertising industry." The 1991 Gulf war, the first televised war in history, was hugely successful in terms of viewer ratings. CNN, in particular, made its mark during that war. This war is expected to be no different in terms of media profits. US mainstream media has over the years evolved into a wonderful propaganda tool. Its central feature is that though different media outlets diverge on a number of subjects, there are some core issues on which they essentially expound a common line. Differences, if any, are relegated to tactics, but the basic assumptions - the purported threat posed by Saddam Hussein and the necessity of getting rid of him, for example - are never questioned. The system works so well that the vast majority of the US public does not realise this role of the media, viewing it as independent and seeking the truth. The media, in the analysis of Noam Chomsky and Edward Hermann, attempts to manufacture a consensus. M V Ramana is a physicist and research staff member at Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream From aiindex at mnet.fr Thu Mar 20 05:59:36 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 01:29:36 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] In Kashmir, parents fear a witch-hunt Message-ID: The Indian Express March 19, 2003 In Kashmir, parents fear a witch-hunt Muzamil Jaleel Srinagar, March 18: They sold their land, spent family fortunes and travelled hundreds of kilometres, believing they had escaped the violence in the Valley. But the arrest of two Kashmiri agriculture students in Uttar Pradesh, on the charge of being Jaish-e-Mohammed activists, has returned fear to homes in the Valley as more and more parents are beginning to worry for the children they sent out. The state government too is shaken and CM Mufti Mohammed Sayeed plans to take up the matter with Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani and UP CM Mayawati. Sources say Sayeed is going to seek ''an immediate end to this police witch-hunt of Kashmiri students.'' His daughter and PDP vice-president Mehbooba Mufti will be visiting Muzaffarnagar and Shamli in western UP tomorrow to restore confidence among Kashmiri students there. National Conference president and MP Omar Abdullah has also urged Advani to intervene and stop ''harassment'' of Kashmiri students in UP. In a statement today, Omar said Kashmiri students in Meerut and Ghaziabad were living in constant fear of police. Over the years, almost 20,000 Kashmiri boys and girls have left the Valley for professional courses or jobs, especially in Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Delhi. Besides, there are several hundreds studying or working in hotels, small companies and call centres in Delhi. The arrests saw a surge after the attack on Red Fort and Parliament, when Kashmiris topped the security agencies' list of usual suspects. There were several instances where innocent youths were rounded up in the process. On March 12, Ajaz Hussain Jan of Bandipore - he's a B.Sc agriculture final year student at Rashtriya Kisan Post Graduate College, Shamli - was arrested along with his classmate, Mehraj-ud-din Sheikh of Handwara, from Muzzafarnagar in UP. Within a few days, two more Kashmiri students were arrested and expulsion notices issued by the college authorities to several others. Two of Ajaz's relatives, Khursheed Alam Jan and Hafizullah Jan, who went to see him in Shamli were also detained by police. While the family and police sources say they were arrested on Sunday, Muzaffarnagar SSP B R Meena claims the two were held on Monday morning for questioning to get details about the family, and released the same day. He admits they found nothing to link the two with the Jaish-e-Mohammed. ''Our father was killed by unidentified gunmen in 1995. For his safety, my mother wanted Ajaz to go away. How can he be a militant?'' questions Asif Jan, Ajaz's younger brother. ''He completed Class XI and XII there and then joined B.Sc. (Agriculture). He was here in December, preparing for his final exams on March 20. We were expecting him back with an agriculture degree in a few months.'' Khalid Muzzafar, Bandipore sub-divisional police officer, admits he cross-checked Azaj's credentials and that ''there is no information of his involvement with any militant group''. Indicating he is concerned at the spate of such arrests outside the state, Inspector General of Police, Kashmir range, K Rajendra says: ''I have personally written to the Director General of UP police, saying we should be informed about any such arrests so that the antecedents of the youths are checked here.'' The Resident Commissioner of the J-K government in New Delhi, Khursheed Ahmad Ganai, also met deputy commissioners of Muzzafarnagar, Meerut and Saharanpur recently and urged them to ensure that Kashmiri students there are not ostracised. Sitting far away in Kashmir, Ajaz's family isn't convinced by such assurances. ''We don't know how to prove him innocent,'' says Asif. ''Everybody believes when police arrest a Kashmiri outside. And there's no way to prove them wrong.'' Another publicised case was the arrest of four Kashmiri youths in Thane on October 23, 2001, who were paraded as Hizbul Mujahideen militants. They were charged with arms possession, accused of plotting to kill prominent Maharashtra politicians and handed over to J-K police. But the investigation that followed came up with little to prove that the four, who worked as security guards, were militants. The Thane police returned with more evidence and they were sentenced to life imprisonment recently. Then there was the Punjab case, where a group of Kashmiri youth from Shopian were intercepted by police near Amritsar and called ''dangerous terrorists.'' This seemed even more incredulous as these youngsters were actually Mirzayis on their way back from Qadiyan, a holy place for the sect. Says IGP Rajendra: ''We were also surprised when we heard about these arrests. There's no one from this community who has ever been involved with militancy.'' Kashmiri parents who had couged up hard-earned money to send their children outside the state are devastated at the turn of events. ''I sold family land to pay capitation fees for my sons. I wanted to keep them away from the trouble and uncertainty in Kashmir. But now that seems more dangerous,'' says Ali Mohammad Khanday, whose two teenaged sons are studying in Bangalore. Adil Manzoor, who studies computers in Delhi, says he can feel the distrust in the eyes of even his colleagues. ''Whenever there's an incident, they joke about our involvement. We know most of the time they mean it.'' -- From sanjayb at hotpop.com Thu Mar 20 09:11:08 2003 From: sanjayb at hotpop.com (Sanjay Bhangar) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 09:11:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] CNN - countdown to armageddon... Message-ID: <007a01c2ee92$90986ea0$870e0a0a@IDLI> Hey, Below is very, very scattered writing, written in two points while watching CNN last night... I basically was just watching t.v. and typing stream of thought as the images/propaganda went by... first bit is around 3 hours before "deadline" and second is CNN as the first bombs started falling... its unedited and unprofessional and all that, but ahh heck... crisis media reportage... sorry its long, thought it might interest some people.... take care, Sanjay Countdown to Armageddon - Live: Just sitting here, in front of my television... around 3 and a half hours to go before Bush's "deadline" expires... CNN spews propaganda... Its 12:21 AM in Baghdad says the ticker at the bottom of my screen and I start.... Iraqi weapons destroyed. Latest developments from Iraq - Iraq rejects Bahrain offer for Saddam exile - BAD Saddam. 17 Iraqi soldiers surrender to USA - 17!!!! Thats news!!! 17!!!! Now interview of some generral of 12 years ago... how nice. Saddam actually believes he can win this war - ahh, we have maps. Saddam is going to fortress Baghdad - Saddam is going to "force" civilian casualties through urban combat in Baghdad. Yea, thats why you'll see all those Iraqoids die. It ain't the daisy cutters fault. Yes, now, Chemical and Biological weapons that Saddam will probably use - of course, when they use them, they're "weapons of mass destruction", when the US uses them, they're ohh.. umm.. these cool graphics with nice names like flowers, no? Scud missiles against Israel - chance is high - oh no! Ahh, now we update to Business News - Nasdaq falls .84 percent... FTSE London gained .48% - how nice... Dollar is crawling back against the Euro - how nice again. Next, CNN looks at the effects of the war on the airline industry - past 2 hours, the amount of air-time spent on the airline industry - at least 20 minutes - amount of time spent on Iraqi children - not even 20 seconds - how nice. Ad - Barney Chang, big fashion designer, Michelle Yo, sexy dress - on TalkAsia, we interview big fashion designer - yoo ha! CNN ad - "Your News" We show people WHY things are happening, WHY a story is important to YOU - Your World Today, only on CNN - Be the First to Know... Stay in the know, stay at a CNN partner hotel... The threat of war, a volatile business world, and CNN is there, find out how the war effects your country, your economy, your money - hoo ya! We'll tell you that this war is going to make you money, and be happy - the dead people dont matter. This is World Business Today now.... how markets react to the threat of war. Hello and welcome to the program... a volatile day for the financial world... shit, this is just plain boring - I really dont want to know about the falling airline industry when my world is getting fucked in 4 hours. Ok, wait, major developments - Shit, still talking about the 17 soldiers surrendering... As a precaution, troops wear anti-chemical weapons suits. Germany to grand U.S. access to airspace and bases - how nice, we're anti war, but not that much. U.N. Security Council meets for last time before war - Hans Blix is sad that inspections couldn't find proof of weapons of mass destruction - fuck, I dont want to go into the ridiculousness of CNN saying that. Now man saying Iraq ha fulfilled all its obligations and not violated resolution - outbreak of force in middle east will only increase terrorism. Kofi Annan says war will be disaster for people of Iraq - the United Nations is now defunct - Security council meets without US and Britain - its also getting less and less coverage from CNN - how nice = those stupid people weren't needed anyway. Turkey stock market crashes as Government refuses to be bribed. Anti-war bad for markets. Markets rule. Over to Wall Street now... Man smiling - markets are up - he's not smiling when markets are down, but now they're up, because the price of oil is going to come down - because war is going to get over soon they expect - woo ha! Shit. Talking again about the dollar gaining - this is important - a huge reason for the war is the U.S. fear of a dollar collapse - the Iraq war is godsend for the valuation of the dollar. Oil prices going down down down - woooooha! We have cheap oil and shut up and be happy! The man is nearly drooling telling us about the oil prices, but shit, now he's all sad because the airline industry is fucked. shit. i feel for the airline industry. CNNarabic.com - be the first to know, in Arabic... and I can see the Iraqis laughing their asses off seeing that. Did you know, the first human fossil was found in Tanzania - recovered, old tools used by humans and prehistorians... thats kind've random by CNN... telling us about how human got bigger brains because they ate meat... no idea... Another ad - how to handle life when you're constantly on the move - on CNN Traveller - we'll show you the latet gadgets on how to keep in touch - wooha! Keep in touch, in our bunkers... fuck. In Focus now: The effects of war on the struggling airlines. Ok, now im going to do my own piece on the effects of war on Iraqi children, because this is pointless - Iraqi children are going to die. Ok, thats the end of my piece, but fuck, these guys are going on how airlines are going to have to file for bankruptcy - and shit, people aren't flying because they're scared of terrorism and war, and airlines and cutting flights - like, shit. lets read some of those blurbs at the bottom of the screen... Some tribal leaders in Congo sign a peace-fire agreements - prominent south african politicians and former guerrila leader tony yengeni sentences to 4 years in jail for fraud... shit, now theres a Business bar there, so its just irrittating.. They're still talking about the impact on Airlines! God!!!!! FUCK!!!!!!!! STOP!!!!!!!!!! I cant take this any more!!!!!! This is the pinnacle of western civilization!!!!! 3 hours before the biggest war we're going to see in a long time, and they're talking about how its effecting the airline industry and wallowing in sadness!!! Do they even know what war is? Do they know what death is? What are they smoking? How do they numb themselves like this? Even I want! Will we see more airline bankruptcies in Europe or the USA? What a question! So inciseful! Be the first to know! Stay out of airline stocks is our advice - yayy!! They keep saying "Breaking News" at the bottom of the screen for some reason... Oh wait, the ticker at the bottom is back... ya, coalition forces kill some Iraqi artillery in "no-fly zone", and yea, fuck, imagine that, how evil Iraqis - sending artillery to no-fly zone. shit. theres so many ads. during Sept. 11th coverage, there were no ads, because it was not respectful to the victims - before the U.S. bombs the hell out of the Iraqi people, its primetime ad space baby!! wooha!! Shit, more business news - i cant take this shit any more. Shit, you know, they're just saying the same things - this piece would get boring and you'd stop reading it if I kept repeating the same things - why do people keep watching CNN? This is ridiculous! Like our entire World, in 3 word headlines. Mahmoud Abbas appointed Palestinian Prime Minister... hmmm.. Turning now to Corporate news... head of Vivendi entertainment unit is stepping down... shit. Shit. this is just putting me to sleep. I thought it'll be at least interesting 3 hours before armageddon, but apparently we're going to go down in a splattering of market forces. shit. ok, when do we come to the impact of war on people? shit - we've got the impact on the airline industry, on london markets, on asian markets, on vivendi, shit!!!! haha - he just said that in asia, public has been against war, but then proudly saying how all governments are supporting iraq - how indicative of the democracies in which we live, and he doesn't even get the irony... on the next larry king live.... senator john mccain and old gulf war air commander... gonna tell us how beautiful and noble it is to bomb a peoples to bits... yayy!! keep watching, be the first to know! shit. i need a cigarette. this business news is killing me - now telling us how technology can be used to help all mankind - Global Challenges, this Sunday, on CNN.... Oil Prices fall nearly 20% - yayyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God, I'm so happy!!!! Ok shit, smoke. brb. Ok, back... No signs of "compliance" from Iraq says CNN - Compliance with what, you stupid dickheads? They complied with the U.N., its the U.S. thats not "complying". Stupid gits. Ok sorry, this just me blabbing because CNN is literally only saying the same things - 17 soldiers surrender, Airline industry going bad... Ahh, man from Doha telling us how more than 17 Iraqi soldiers surrender... US Central Command says so - they have been taken to an undisclosed location. How nice - can I please say propaganda? Ahh lovely, CNN has received their first video from the US Airforce - cool plane, F-something, green lights in sky, everything looks so nice and sexxy on T.V. like this. Top story of the night is 17 iraqi soldiers surrendering. TOP STORY!!!!! 17 SOLDIERS!!!!!!!!!!!! Am I the only person rolling on the floor laughing at this??? Tariq Aziz speaking - U.S. has power, but no brains, they know nothing about the nature of people and people's determination of their right to exist... ok, Tariq Aziz taken off... Shit, everything cutting too fast... U.S. preparing its own people for the body bags coming in.. Ari Fleischer talking - stuttering, unsure - Preident will be guided by the best military advice available... yea, right, and oil industry executives - no, he didn't say that. Italian Prime Minister was jeered in Parliament as he expressed support for U.S. war. Kofi Annan - this is a sad day for the U.N. and the World. Many people around the World are deeply alarmed by the threat of war. But dont be too sad, DOW Jones is up!!! Some stock-brokers clapping on screen. Shit. Markets again. Oil prices again. So let me digress... This is whats happening on our great media while we countdown to armageddon... wake up wake up... its time for us to take the media into our own hands... really, this is just insanity... its not even funny any more, well, maybe just a little bit.... Business Central on CNN.... woo ha! I dont like this idea of writing while CNN goes on any more - i thought it would be fun - its no fun. shit. how do people take this shit? Just under 3 hours left...... still talking about 17 soldiers..... Mood in Baghdad now - residents fully expect war... shops closed, most of the city at home or have fled - Govt. officials still defiant - pictures of Iraqi people chanting something like "Hail Saddam" - look, look, Bad Iraqi people. Iraqi Assembly sends letter of solidarity to Saddam Hussein. CNN man in Baghdad looks confused - poor man, has to actually look at the dead people and spew his shit. Countries around Iraq bracing themselves for refugees... Egypt's PM blames Iraq for bringing war to the region... but CNN twists that, his speech was actually against the war... ahh fuckit. Interview of American soldier - we're ready to rock n roll - just waiting for the order - CNN telling us how American soldiers calling home - how sweet... John King outside white house - War planning sessions twice a day - now we've got some cool music and shots cutting between u.s. military and saddam... Ari - if force is used, lives will be lost... Need help in defending homeland from terrorism - more money for homeland security - woo ha! John King - white house refuses to put time estimate on war - american people should be prepared for a long war - hoo ya! more prime time ads for cnn. what are the hopes that Iraqi soldiers will all surrender and not fight? they're reasonably sure that most of the army will surrender, BECAUSE OF READING US PAMPHLETS ASKING THEM TO!!!!!!!!!!! ARE THEY MAD???? 17 Surrendered!!!! Do they KNOW how much 17 is???? Its 17!!!!! Its laughable!!!!! Shit, next we're going to Japan's "soothing market measures" or some shit. I cant take it. Join Aaron Brown live from New York for inciseful news reports on CNN!!! Nice ad. Bullshit fuckin hell. One newscast - many voices - CNN. When weather information is absolutely crucial, why depend on anyone else? Weather forecasts that are accurate, blah blah... CNN Weather... shit. Do they foresee rising temperatures due to nuclear fall-out? Tokyo Stocks higher in the hope that Govt. will support markets (as opposed to "people", coz thats passe). Taiwan says long war could damage economy. Shit. I'm not interested. La la la la la. Disney Warns War Fears are Hurting Tourism - Oh shit! I Warn War Fears are Hurting a lot more, asshole! wait, i need something to eat... brb... ok, i gotta go, man, this is bullshit, i'll continue when we're closer to armageddon - this is just CNN's self absorbed ads and now they're flashing faces of muslim terrorists. Enough!! The Fight Against Terrorism - Watch What Happens Next - and the ad ends with Saddam firing a gun or something. Shit. Ok, i really cant take this any more - 2 and a half hours to go, its me signing out and stuff... Good morning, World - the war has begun. I rejoin CNN at the time Ari Fleischer comes on for 3 seconds and says "The disarmament of Iraq has begun. The president will addres the nation at 10:30" So. now, we as a World sit and watch our imminent destruction on our television screen. CNN - words - liberation of Iraq has begun, disarmament has begun - they dont call it an invasion any more - its impolite. Military jargon - forces are ready - second war planning meeting, time is optimum, we wait for armageddon... great drama - FUCKIN assholes - arguing wether fleischer said "disarmament" or "liberation" - what he MEANT was "dismemberment" anyways. camera on baghdad - dawn is hitting the city, as we stare at the sky... where has the war started? not clear... probably not full blown start of war. they're so concerned with wether its on or not... GOD! So happy... Christianne Ammanpour in Kuwait City.... forces moving into de-militarrized zone... already few kilometres into Iraq. Back to Pentagon - quick cut - cruise missile strike against Baghdad - against a target of opportunity - before full blown war - aha! target of opportunity - what did they bomb? did they bomb saddam? did they take out some chemical weapons? President's speech in 22 minutes. Cut back to Nic Robertson in Baghdad - no indication in Baghdad of anything... what has been hit? only anti-aircraft guns were fired... its a mystery... but its a fun mystery... CNN is having a field day... oooohh... new fun phrase - target of opportunity - it sounds cool, too. Loud noise in background from Baghdad... almost ghastly... sheesh... screen still showing dawn sky over Baghdad... When was the last time we know Saddam was in Baghdad... closing in on the question - did the USA just take out Saddam? Where is Saddam? Impossible to say.. Cut to reporter with the brave soldiers - 7th Cavalry at northern kuwaiti border - we are in formation, like 19th century american frontier some shit - some AA tanks, nice words, fancy weapons - soldiers are impatient to go - soldiers saying President has got to order this fast - yea yea, we wanna rock n roll... Man speaking interrupted with noise, Bombs over Baghdad ! Cut to quick image from Al Jazeera, cut out, back to man with military - indication of war beginning? We're still in attack position, army still waiting for orders to cross the border - soldiers more than ready to go - yoo ha! Do not expect a large amount of resistance from Iraqi's. Officer urged soldiers to fight hard - once you get into Iraq, there will be lots of Iraqis being friendly, who'll be happy to see you - ha ha, they're lying to the young again!! Back to White House man - CIA told President Saddam had not yet left Iraq, so bombing began. Still - what was the target of opportunity - was it Saddam? We wait with baited breath... back to studio - Saddam is sneaky bitch who hides well... There is prohibition against assassinating foreign leader, but once war begins, its allowed. Funny, no? Christiane Ammanpour talking to U.K. person - again, talking about "liberation" of Iraq - hahahahaha... and they call CNN "objective". Sky over Baghdad brightening up... still talk in the background - US trying to prove that it does not want to kill or maim Iraqis, want to show the Iraqi people that they come in peace, there will be a very heavy air raid, but their targetting will be very precise - only collaterals will die, not real people (mwahahaha). Update: Cruise missile strike against a target of opportunity. Back to Pentagon - still trying to figure target of opportunity - confirm it was a leadership target - more and more speculation - was it Saddam? Was it his son? We'll find out soon... stay tuned to CNN... mwahahahaha... Back to Kuwait - Christianne Ammanpour and Wolf Blitzer... Wolf - showing off CNN's live cameras on Baghdad and why they dont have cameras everywhere in Iraq... we cant tell you for sure if there are air-strikes in other places in Iraq... Still seeing pictures of Baghdad... its getting brighter, slower and slower... back to Nic Robertson in Baghdad... Anti-aircraft fire subsided... city is cloudy, we cant see that far... The city is very quiet right now... we're watching and waiting... Update from studio: All of this began around 2 hours ago after deadline passed - Saddam didn't leave, there was an offer from Bahrain, and still the bitch didn't leave... Anti-aircraft fire heard again over Baghdad... sound of Baghdad... just a soundscape over Baghdad with ghostly voice over saying Saddam is a bitch... Saddam has messianic visions of himself... a life in exile is not the image he has of himself... President addresses the nation in 7 minutes... The campaign is on - these months of negotiations have ended finally in orgiastic war. Target of opportunity still being debated... General Wesley Clark talking now - is this how you thought the war would play out? Could have gone with "big shock", might even be happening right now - we're so dominant, the darkness and such doesn't matter any more - when are ground troops going to move in? American forces are going to be reconassance led, they're going to have helicopters, all the technology - all this is going to have been extensively war gamed... Back to Target of Opportunity - something that suddenly appeared, and they sent a cruise missile - if it was a cruise missile, it had to have been launched a while ago... Osama Bin Laden escaped, they seized on this one - what brave people, they didn't waste time, and took the opportunity! Back to Pentagon - full scale campaign might not have begun - defense official said he wouldn't be at home eating a bowl of cheerios if the war had begun... Camera over Baghdad is lost... theres no images from there any more... President will address the White House in about a minute and now they're arguing which room of the White House he'll address from. Message on Iraq radio - God protect us from foreign aggressors, God protect our leader - read by Saddam's son, thats what people in Baghdad hear along with anti-aircraft fire... For the second time Bush telling his country they're at war Bush on T.V. 54321 - in the early stages of military attack - to disarm, liberate, to bring peace... on my order, they've started bombing to stop Saddam from waging war. more than 35 countries helping. hopes of an opressed people rest on you - the people you liberate will love you, american military. america faces an enemy that has no respect for rules of war. saddam has placed troops in civilian areas, to try and kill his own people. war could be long and difficult. helping iraqis build democracy will be long process. we come to iraq with respect for the iraqi people. we come with no ambition except to restore democracy and restore country to people. we pray for the american military - military has the gratitude and respect of its people. we enter this conflict reluctantly (!?!), but we will meet this threat... we meet this threat now so that we dont have to meet it later on the streets of our cities... this will not be a campaign of half measures, and we will accept only victory. we will pass through time of peril and carry on work of peace. we will defend freedom and bomb others into freedom too... we will prevail... it took Bush a little more than 4 minutes to say all of this. God bless America. Target of opportunity did target Saddam - they call it an attempted decapitation strike. Decapitation??? What the fuck word is that? DECAPITATION STRIKE???? Thats an official term??? DECAPITATION??? ok, sorry. I'm losing my mind again... time to go and turn off CNN... thats as much shit as I can take for a while... From shashibiswa at yahoo.com Thu Mar 20 09:06:24 2003 From: shashibiswa at yahoo.com (Shashi Gupta) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 19:36:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] an act towards peace Message-ID: <20030320033624.6232.qmail@web80408.mail.yahoo.com> dear zehra, i do understand and fully empathize with where you stand but unfortunately cynicism too cannot take as far, hope may still help keep sanity intact. shashi --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030319/22306b7b/attachment.html From shuddha at sarai.net Fri Mar 21 00:11:20 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 18:41:20 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] The War on Iraq IQ Test Message-ID: <200303201841.h2KIfKOl018245@mail.sarai.net> Dear all on the Reader List, I found Sanjay Bhangar's commentary on watching the TV coverage of the war on Iraq quite riveting. I hope that in the next few days, Sanjay will keep the commentary going. Also, perhaps Shri Pandey, who listens so avidly to a few blue telephones, might have something for us on what the telephones are saying to each other, as this war ripens. I thought that I would pass on some of the information that we are unlikely to get on CNN, BBC, NDTV, or Aaj Tak. This is the War on Iraq IQ Test, for which you will have to scroll to the end of this message. However, before we do that, I wanted to share with you something I found on the online edition of the Times of India this morning. The Times of India, which occasionally does tend to surprise us with flashes of sanity, (amidst a general tendency towards dementia in most of its other coverage) ran this editorial on its online edition, which I thought would be of interest to some. Incidentally, it is also devoting a section of its website to an online "anti war forum". That is good to know, I hope they keep this spirit alive, the next time the defenders of the Indian nation decide its time to have some more fun and games on the western border. Anyway, here it is "In other words, contrary to the US position, the case in favour of extending the time-frame of the inspections regime for a peaceful disarmament of Iraq is today stronger than ever. But what can all those around the world who oppose this mindless militarism do other than feel powerless? We believe that one easily accessible way for world citizens to protest against this war is literally a mouse click away. As inhabitants of an increasingly globalised and borderless world, they should use the ultimate instrument of supra-nationalism � the Internet � to register their opposition and say no to the war. Netizens of the world unite, you've nothing to lose but your chains of chauvinism." (To voice your views log on to no-war.indiatimes.com) And, now here it is, the War on Iraq IQ Test This was passed on to me by Ajmal Kamal, City Press, Karachi. I think it also makes an interesting complement to the list of vetoes by the United States in the UN Security Council that Avishek sent on to this list recently. cheers, (?) Shuddha ________________________________________________ 1. Q: What percentage of the world's population does the U.S. have? A: 6% 2. Q: What percentage of the world's wealth does the U.S. have? A: 50% 3. Q: Which country has the largest oil reserves? A: Saudi Arabia 4. Q: Which country has the second largest oil reserves? A: Iraq 5. Q: How much is spent on military budgets a year worldwide? A: $900+ billion 6. Q: How much of this is spent by the U.S.? A:50% 7. Q: What percent of US military spending would ensure the essentials of life to everyone in the world, according the the UN? A: 10% (that's about $40 billion, the amount of funding initially requested to fund our retaliatory attack on Afghanistan). 8. Q: How many people have died in wars since World War II? A: 86 million 9. Q: How long has Iraq had chemical and biological weapons? A: Since the early 1980's. 10. Q: Did Iraq develop these chemical and biological weapons on their own? A: No, the materials and technology were supplied by the US government, along with Britain and private corporations. 11. Q: Did the US government condemn the Iraqi use of gas warfare against Iran? A: No 12. Q: How many people did Saddam Hussein kill using gas in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988? A: 5,000 13. Q: How many western countries condemned this action at the time? A:0 14. Q: How many gallons of Agent Orange did America use in Vietnam? A: 17 million. 15. Q: Are there any proven links between Iraq and September 11th terrorist attack? A: No 16. Q: What is the estimated number of civilian casualties in the Gulf War? A: 35,000 17. Q: How many casualties did the Iraqi military inflict on the western forces during the Gulf War ? A: 0 18. Q: How many retreating Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by U.S. tanks with ploughs mounted on the front? A: 6,000 19. Q: How many tons of depleted uranium were left in Iraq and Kuwait after the Gulf War? A: 40 tons 20. Q: What according to the UN was the increase in cancer rates in Iraq between 1991 and 1994? A: 700% 21. Q: How much of Iraq's military capacity did America claim it had destroyed in 1991? A: 80% 22. Q: Is there any proof that Iraq plans to use its weapons for anything other than deterrence and self defense? A: No 23. Q: Does Iraq present more of a threat to world peace now than 10 years ago? A: No 24. Q: How many civilian deaths has the Pentagon predicted in the event of an attack on Iraq in 2002/3? A: 10,000 25. Q: What percentage of these will be children? A:Over 50% 26. Q: How many years has the U.S. engaged in air strikes on Iraq? A: 11 years 27. Q: Was the U.S and the UK at war with Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999? A: No 28. Q: How many pounds of explosives were dropped on Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999? A: 20 million 29. Q: How many years ago was UN Resolution 661 introduced, imposing strict sanctions on Iraq's imports and exports? A: 12 years 30. Q: What was the child death rate in Iraq in 1989 (per 1,000 births)? A: 38 31. Q: What was the estimated child death rate in Iraq in 1999 (per 1,000 births)? A: 131 (that's an increase of 345%) 32. Q: How many Iraqis are estimated to have died by October 1999 as a result of UN sanctions? A: 1.5 million 33. Q: How many Iraqi children are estimated to have died due to sanctions since 1997? A: 750,000 34. Q: Did Saddam order the inspectors out of Iraq? A:No 35. Q: How many inspections were there in November and December 1998? A:300 36. Q: How many of these inspections had problems? A:5 37. Q: Were the weapons inspectors allowed entry to the Ba'ath Party HQ? A: Yes 38. Q: Who said that by December 1998, Iraq had in fact, been disarmed to a level unprecedented in modern history. A: Scott Ritter, UNSCOM chief. 39. Q: In 1998 how much of Iraq's post 1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction did the UN weapons inspectors claim to have discovered and dismantled? A: 90% 40. Q: Is Iraq willing to allow the weapons inspectors back in? A:Yes 41. Q: How many UN resolutions did Israel violate by 1992? A: Over 65 42. Q: How many UN resolutions on Israel did America veto between 1972 and 1990? A: 30+ 43. Q: How much does the U.S. fund Israel a year? A: $5 billion 44. Q: How many countries are known to have nuclear weapons? A: 8 45. Q: How many nuclear warheads does Iraq have? A: 0 46. Q: How many nuclear warheads does US have? A: over 10,000 47. Q: Which is the only country to use nuclear weapons? A: the US 48. Q: How many nuclear warheads does Israel have? A:Over 400 49. Q: Has Israel ever allowed UN weapons inspections? A: No 50. Q: What percentage of the Palestinian territories are controlled by Israeli settlements? A: 42% 51. Q: Is Israel illegally occupying Palestinian land? A: Yes 52. Q: Which country do you think poses the greatest threat to global peace: Iraq or the U.S.? A: ? 53. Q: Who said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"? A: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr -- -- Shuddhabrata Sengupta SARAI Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 Phone 23960040 From shuddha at sarai.net Fri Mar 21 00:43:26 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 19:13:26 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Micheal Moore's Letter to Bush Message-ID: <200303201913.h2KJDQOl018622@mail.sarai.net> Dear all, Shohini Ghosh asked me to pass this on to the Reader List. It is a letter by the documentary filmmaker Micheal Moore to George W Bush Shuddha ________________________________________ Micheal Moore is the Documentary Filmmaker who made Roger and Me, The Big One and the more recent Bowling for Columbine. A Letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush on the Eve of War Monday, March 17th, 2003 George W. Bush 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington, DC Dear Governor Bush: So today is what you call "the moment of truth," the day that "France and the rest of world have to show their cards on the table." I'm glad to hear that this day has finally arrived. Because, I gotta tell ya, having survived 440 days of your lying and conniving, I wasn't sure if I could take much more. So I'm glad to hear that today is Truth Day, 'cause I got a few truths I would like to share with you: 1. There is virtually NO ONE in America (talk radio nutters and Fox News aside) who is gung-ho to go to war. Trust me on this one. Walk out of the White House and on to any street in America and try to find five people who are PASSIONATE about wanting to kill Iraqis. YOU WON'T FIND THEM! Why? 'Cause NO Iraqis have ever come here and killed any of us! No Iraqi has even threatened to do that. You see, this is how we average Americans think: If a certain so-and-so is not perceived as a threat to our lives, then, believe it or not, we don't want to kill him! Funny how that works! 2. The majority of Americans -- the ones who never elected you -- are not fooled by your weapons of mass distraction. We know what the real issues are that affect our daily lives -- and none of them begin with I or end in Q. Here's what threatens us: two and a half million jobs lost since you took office, the stock market having become a cruel joke, no one knowing if their retirement funds are going to be there, gas now costs two dollars a gallon -- the list goes on and on. Bombing Iraq will not make any of this go away. Only you need to go away for things to improve. 3. As Bill Maher said last week, how bad do you have to suck to lose a popularity contest with Saddam Hussein? The whole world is against you, Mr. Bush. Count your fellow Americans among them. 4. The Pope has said this war is wrong, that it is a SIN. The Pope! But even worse, the Dixie Chicks have now come out against you! How bad does it have to get before you realize that you are an army of one on this war? Of course, this is a war you personally won't have to fight. Just like when you went AWOL while the poor were shipped to Vietnam in your place. 5. Of the 535 members of Congress, only ONE (Sen. Johnson of South Dakota) has an enlisted son or daughter in the armed forces! If you really want to stand up for America, please send your twin daughters over to Kuwait right now and let them don their chemical warfare suits. And let's see every member of Congress with a child of military age also sacrifice their kids for this war effort. What's that you say? You don't THINK so? Well, hey, guess what -- we don't think so either! 6. Finally, we love France. Yes, they have pulled some royal screw-ups. Yes, some of them can be pretty damn annoying. But have you forgotten we wouldn't even have this country known as America if it weren't for the French? That it was their help in the Revolutionary War that won it for us? That it was France who gave us our Statue of Liberty, a Frenchman who built the Chevrolet, and a pair of French brothers who invented the movies? And now they are doing what only a good friend can do -- tell you the truth about yourself, straight, no b.s. Quit pissing on the French and thank them for getting it right for once. You know, you really should have travelled more (like once) before you took over. Your ignorance of the world has not only made you look stupid, it has painted you into a corner you can't get out of. Well, cheer up -- there IS good news. If you do go through with this war, more than likely it will be over soon because I'm guessing there aren't a lot of Iraqis willing to lay down their lives to protect Saddam Hussein. After you "win" the war, you will enjoy a huge bump in the popularity polls as everyone loves a winner -- and who doesn't like to see a good ass-whoopin' every now and then (especially when it 's some third world ass!). And just like with Afghanistan, we'll forget about what happens to a country after we bomb it 'cause that is just too complex! So try your best to ride this victory all the way to next year's election. Of course, that's still a long ways away, so we'll all get to have a good hardy-har-har while we watch the economy sink even further down the toilet! But, hey, who knows -- maybe you'll find Osama a few days before the election! See, start thinking like THAT! Keep hope alive! Kill Iraqis -- they got our oil!! Yours, Michael Moore -- Shuddhabrata Sengupta SARAI Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 Phone 23960040 From shuddha at sarai.net Fri Mar 21 03:12:30 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 21:42:30 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] March on Saturday in Delhi against War on Iraq Message-ID: <200303202142.h2KLgUOl019828@mail.sarai.net> Dear Friends, This was forwarded to me today, so I thought that it would be good to pass this on to all those on this list, especially those who are in Delhi It is the programme for the planned march in Delhi against the war on Iraq. best Shuddha ___________________________________ March 22, 2003 March to US Embassy in Delhi To Protest Against the Criminal War Against Iraq The United States has begun its war on Iraq. This is a war which is totally illegal and unjust. The United Nations has refused to sanction such a war. This is a war against the Iraqi people defying worldwide opinion. To protest against the war, the Committee Against War on Iraq is organising a March to the US Embassy at Chanakyapuri on March 22, 2003 (Saturday). The point of assembly will be the circle opposite the Teen Murti Bhavan at 11.00 a.m The march will convert into a day long sit-in protest from 11.30 a.m to 5.00 p.m There will be songs and cultural programmes against the war during the sit-in. Please circulate this to all concerned. Committee Against War On Iraq -- Shuddhabrata Sengupta SARAI Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 Phone 23960040 From aiindex at mnet.fr Fri Mar 21 05:56:58 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 01:26:58 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] In Bed With the Pentagon Message-ID: The Nation February 27, 2003 In Bed With the Pentagon by Carol Brightman It's a fascinating scheme, "this very ambitious and aggressive embed plan," as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Bryan Whitman calls it. But "embedding" journalists in selected military units is only part of the Pentagon's program for handling news organizations in the event of war in Iraq. More significant is the extraordinary reach of Pentagon planning. For months officials have been scanning the media--electronic and print, domestic and international--calculating markets and circulations and blending news shows with entertainment divisions to cover all fronts in a wartime media campaign as audacious as any ever attempted. Not just the American press but global media will be shaped by the Pentagon's deployment of reporters, photographers and TV crews in and out of the war zone. Of more than 500 journalists in the program, around 100 are from foreign news organizations, including Al Jazeera. Only Americans, 238 of them, have trained at media boot camps for slots inside military units (although such training is not a prerequisite). Other journalists will transmit their "products" from the Pentagon or foreign capitals, or "in theater" via mobile press pools and CPICs (combined press information centers). Instead of shutting the press out of the battle over public opinion, as the military did in the Gulf War and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has decided to enlist the media's vast resources. Some of its reasons are innocent enough, like CNN military analyst Gen. Wesley Clark's regret that censorship during the Gulf War kept the press from documenting "a First Armored Division tank battle that was just incredible, perhaps the biggest armored battle ever." Other motives are murkier. According to potential "embed" Dave Moniz of USA Today, "What is driving this [plan] is the fear that Iraq will win the propaganda war if reporters are not on the ground with troops." The Pentagon may hope to muffle the impact of substantial civilian casualties from the "shock and awe" attacks of US bombers, or from infantry assaults on Baghdad itself with the nightly adventures on ABC or CBS of your favorite platoon at war. "On the ground with troops" would be far from the scene of carnage--on the deck of an aircraft carrier maybe, or at Camp Doha in Kuwait. Reporters won't be free to follow the action on their own but must travel whenever and wherever the Pentagon directs them. Even Whitman admits a "cost" to embedding, which is "that you get a very narrow view of what's going on." The advantage, he told Washington bureau chiefs at a recent meeting, is "you get extremely deep, rich coverage of what's going on in a particular unit." But he reminded them that "you will not have an embed opportunity with every ground unit [or] at every airfield location [or] on every major carrier battle group." Reporting from CPICs or the Pentagon may fill the gaps. And news groups can pool their "feeds" to make a story, but the whole is drawn from parts the military has preselected for coverage. The Pentagon proposes, the press disposes--albeit within softer confines than prevailed in the Gulf War. Under then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Army Gen. Colin Powell, media were confined to a national press pool and ordered to submit all copy, photographs and film to military censors. Most TV footage was supplied by military crews. High-level briefings were orchestrated by Cheney and Powell themselves because, as Cheney later told an interviewer from the Freedom Forum, "The information function was extraordinarily important. I did not have a lot of confidence I could leave that to the press." As a result, according to Patrick Sloyan, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his war coverage for Newsday, pool reporters didn't produce a single eyewitness account of the clash between allied and Iraqi troops. Nor did images of dead bodies find their way into US media. By the time the press was taken to a battle scene, the Iraqi bodies were gone; buried in one case by giant plows mounted on Abrams battle tanks, followed by armored combat earth-movers that leveled the ground. "I don't mean to be flippant," said Whitman's Pentagon predecessor, Pete Williams, of that event, "but there's no nice way to kill somebody in war." (Williams is now a Washington correspondent for NBC.) In this war, journalists will carry their own transmission devices, but their use will depend on field commanders' approval. Pentagon rules of engagement dictate strict prohibitions on reporting live or continuing actions, as well as future or postponed operations. Dates, times and places can be described only in general terms. Not the facts, ma'am, but the feel--which is likely to be warm, a bit fuzzy, funny too, befitting the chronicles of a unit scribe. But any story or photograph can be squashed on the same grounds used in that other war: for operational security, success of the mission and the safety of the people involved. Plus ça change... From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Fri Mar 21 07:32:48 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 02:02:48 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] War protests in the UK In-Reply-To: <200303201913.h2KJDQOl018622@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20030321020248.16935.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> heartwarming! ______________________________________________________ War protests gather support Thousands of anti-war protesters have taken to the streets of Britain to show their opposition to the use of military action against Iraq. More than 5,000 young people brought central London to a standstill on what campaigners have branded a "day of shame". Banner waving groups shouted, chanted and blew whistles outside Parliament - hours before an organised demonstration by the Stop the War coalition got underway. Police have warned that such protests have been drawing them away from other duties at a sensitive time. In Brighton, police had to use CS sprays after a dozen protesters forced their way into the town hall. There were also protests in other UK cities including Glasgow, Leeds, Edinburgh, Bristol, Cambridge and Sheffield. Police had to seal off Bristol city centre and arrest two people after about 400 protesters - some of them schoolchildren - flooded on to streets. In pictures: UK war protests And in Newcastle upon Tyne a crowd of up to 250 trade unionists, council workers, and university students gathered in the city centre with anti-war demonstrators, bringing traffic to a halt. Protesters also gathered in Jersey's St Helier's Royal Square while students at schools in the West Country faced suspension for skipping lessons to attend anti-war protests. About 200 anti-war campaigners marched through Cardiff. A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said 17 people were arrested during the demonstration in Parliament Square for public order offences. They included a 13-year-old boy, 15 men and one woman. Most protesters remained calm but there were some involved in isolated clashes with Metropolitan Police. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens warned the protests "draw police away from their very important duties at this time in protecting vulnerable locations and those communities who may feel threatened and fearful. I still believe we should tell people that war is wrong Darius Zaerin, aged 15 "We are disappointed that today's protests included a significant number of young people playing truant from school. "We would urge parents to work in partnership with teachers and the police in dissuading young people from carrying out any further similar unorganised protests." Stop the War coalition chairman Andrew Murray said: "The war has started which is an outrage against world peace, against the population of Iraq and against law and democracy in Britain. "This is going ahead without the support of British people. This is a day of shame for Britain. Our country has been dragged into a ridiculous war by a US administration which has shown contempt." Blockade Anti-war groups organising a national demonstration in London on Saturday will be boosted by the numbers that turned out into the sunshine on Thursday. Demonstrators who gathered in Parliament Square spilled into Whitehall, forcing police to blockade the route to Downing Street with police vans. Some protesters climbed on railings and up traffic lights to secure a better view, or to scream orders to make friends sit down, causing a bigger obstacle for officers to move. One senior policeman used a loud-hailer to get a crowd trying to pass the vehicle blockade back into the Square, but his amplified voice was drowned out by the mêlée. Things were slightly more orderly in the square, where young people sat on grass strewn with litter, lager cans, bikes and dogs. Darius Zaerin, 15, and his cousin Alys, 14, donned the t-shirts and waved their colourful banner, stressing that they were representing the voices of many of their fellow pupils at Alexander Park School in Muswell Hill. "I don't think our protest will make much difference, but I still believe we should tell people that war is wrong," said Darius. CND said it was "appalled" by the start of the "illegal, immoral war against Iraq". "This war will, in all probability, kill and injure hundreds of thousands of innocent people and devastate the entire nation, weakened already by 12 years of economic sanctions," a spokesman said. "Mr Blair has made a grave error of judgment when he abandoned the UN route to follow the US road to war." Osama Saeed, spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, described Thursday's bombings as "dreadful". If America gave Iraq back to its people, "we would come back here and apologise to America", he said, but feared the hostilities will result in "many casualties". Labour rebel Alice Mahon told a news conference on Thursday: "This is the most one-sided war in the history of mankind." Labour left-winger Jeremy Corbyn said: "The ordinary people of this country are showing revulsion over what is going on." Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/2866921.stm Published: 2003/03/20 21:11:16 © BBC MMIII ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Fri Mar 21 09:16:46 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 03:46:46 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] anti-war protests in the US Message-ID: <20030321034646.62940.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> Hi here's some stuff on the anti-war activity in the US today...may be even sharing them with you all might be a vent for the desperate feeling of outrage and helplessness...but this is still only CNN (forget Fox News!)-- so that explains the possibly fudged anti-war figures and the carelessly strewn bits about how there have been an equal number of pro-war rallies too! peace Avishek ____________________________________________________ Protests swell in wake of war Largest anti-war activity in San Francisco (AP) --Galvanized by the American attack on Iraq, anti-war activists around the country set off their own barrage of street protests, chaining themselves together, blocking workers and traffic, walking out of classes, and parading in mock chemical suits. Hundreds were arrested from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. But the anti-war groundswell brought out thousands of counterdemonstrators. One in Mississippi carried a sign saying, "Support the U.S. or keep your mouth shut." Thursday was one of the heaviest days of anti-government protesting in years. "This is no ordinary day," said Jason Mark, a San Francisco activist. "America is different today: We've just launched an unprovoked, unjust war." One protester in a rope and harness committed suicide by letting himself fall from Golden Gate Bridge as police tried to coax him to safety. San Francisco had some of the largest anti-war activity, hobbling the morning commute. Thousands in roving bands temporarily took control of some downtown streets and closed several exits from the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Smaller splinter groups broke windows, heaved debris into streets and occasionally scuffled with police. Some protesters hurled rocks at trains, briefly halting service at a station in nearby Oakland. Police wearing helmets and carrying nightsticks made at least 350 arrests. "We don't want to alienate people. I hope people realize that political murder merits action that inconveniences them," said protester Quinn Miller, who took the day off from his job for a banking company. 'No blood for oil' In Washington, dozens of activists temporarily shut down inbound lanes of a Potomac River crossing, holding up the morning commute. Outside the White House, about 50 stood in chilly rain and shouted, "No blood for oil!" Anti-war activists in Philadelphia blocked entrances to the downtown federal building, forcing police to detour motorists away from the area. Police arrested 107 protesters. In New York, about 350 rallied at Union Square under a steady drizzle. About a dozen students lay down in black garbage bags. "We're expressing how the Iraqis are being killed for no reason," said Rachel Klepner, 14, who left class at Beacon High School for the protest. In Massachusetts, students and professors walked out of college classes around the state in protest of war. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, about 600 students converged on the student center, some chanting and wearing mock biochemical protective suits. In Austin, several hundred University of Texas students linked arms and sat down in a busy street. Police closed the area to traffic. Other demonstrations were more solemn, with the reciting of Christian, Jewish and Muslim prayers through a bullhorn at a federal building in Pittsburgh. A number of demonstrations reflected backing for the war effort or support for U.S. troops. Some 2,000 people gathered outside the state Capitol Thursday in Mississippi, a state that has seen 4,500 guardsmen and reservists activated during the buildup to war and where many families also have relatives in the military full time. Marlena Puckett, who is engaged to a Marine in the war zone, fought back tears as she watched people waving American flags and carrying handmade signs with slogans like "God bless our troops" and "Let's roll." "I'm proud of him. I'm just ready for him to be home," Puckett said of her fiance, Danny Myers. One sign in the Jackson crowd said "Thank God for Bush" on one side and "Support the U.S. or keep your mouth shut" on the other. After the rally, hundreds of people signed a banner to be sent to troops. In Lincoln, Nebraska, more than 200 people sang, cheered and prayed outside the state Capitol. Sheila Murphy, who works with families who have members in the Nebraska Air National Guard, said, "This is a time they need to know that everyone is behind the troops and supporting the troops." On the edge of a protest at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, a young man stood in a T-shirt that read "I am threatened by Iraq" in front and "Regime change now" in back. An anti-war group, West Virginia Patriots for Peace, placed candles and flowers outside a federal courthouse in Charleston. Members said they wanted both to protest the war and support U.S. troops. "We don't want our men and women over there to feel like they did in Vietnam," said Barbara Ferraro. Abroad, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched Thursday on American embassies in Athens, Paris, Manila in the Philippines, and other cities. In Cairo, police sprayed soapy water and used dogs to keep back thousands of protesters, including some who threw rocks and pounded on cars. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/20/sprj.irq.war.protests.ap/index.html ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From tkr at del6.vsnl.net.in Fri Mar 21 10:32:13 2003 From: tkr at del6.vsnl.net.in (Rajlakshmi) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 10:32:13 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] on war as a metaphor Message-ID: <3E7A9CD5.80EB1E78@ndf.vsnl.net.in> This is an article by a professor of linguistics on the metaphorical usage of war etc. Metaphor and War Metaphors can kill. That's how I began a piece on the first Gulf War back in 1990, just before the war began. Many of those metaphorical ideas are back, but within a very different and more dangerous context. Since Gulf War II is due to start any day, perhaps even tomorrow, it might be useful to take a look before the action begins at the metaphorical ideas being used to justify Gulf War II. One of the most central metaphors in our foreign policy is that A Nation Is A Person. It is used hundreds of times a day, every time the nation of Iraq is conceptualized in terms of a single person, Saddam Hussein. The war, we are told, is not being waged against the Iraqi people, but only against this one person. Ordinary American citizens are using this metaphor when they say things like, "Saddam is a tyrant. He must be stopped." What the metaphor hides, of course, is that the 3000 bombs to be dropped in the first two days will not be dropped on that one person. They will kill many thousands of the people hidden by the metaphor, people that according to the metaphor we are not going to war against. The Nation As Person metaphor is pervasive, powerful, and part of an elaborate metaphor system. It is part of an International Community metaphor, in which there are friendly nations, hostile nations, rogue states, and so on. This metaphor comes with a notion of the national interest: Just as it is in the interest of a person to be healthy and strong, so it is in the interest of a Nation-Person to be economically healthy and militarily strong. That is what is meant by the "national interest." In the International Community, peopled by Nation-Persons, there are Nation-adults and Nation-children, with Maturity metaphorically understood as Industrialization. The children are the "developing" nations of the Third World, in the process of industrializing, who need to be taught how to develop properly and to be disciplined (say, by the International Monetary Fund) when they fail to follow instructions. "Backward" nations are those that are "underdeveloped." Iraq, despite being the cradle of civilization, is seen via this metaphor as a kind of defiant armed teenage hoodlum who refuses to abide by the rules and must be "taught a lesson." The international relations community adds to the Nation As Person metaphor what is called the "Rational Actor Model." The idea here is that it is irrational to act against your interests and that nations act as if they were "rational actors" -- individual people trying to maximize their "gains' and "assets" and minimize their "costs" and "losses." In Gulf War I, the metaphor was applied so that a country's "assets" included its soldiers, materiel, and money. Since the US lost few of those "assets" in Gulf War I, the war was reported, just afterward in the NY Times Business section, as having been a "bargain." Since Iraqi civilians were not our assets, they could not be counted as among the "losses" and so there was no careful public accounting of civilian lives lost, people maimed, and children starved or made seriously ill by the war or the sanctions that followed it. Estimates vary from half a million to a million or more. However, public relations was seen to be a US asset: excessive slaughter reported on in the press would be bad PR, a possible loss. These metaphors are with us again. A short war with few US casualties would minimize costs. But the longer it goes on, the more Iraqi resistance and the more US casualties, the less the US would appear invulnerable and the more the war would appear as a war against the Iraqi people. That would be a high "cost." According to the Rational Actor Model, countries act naturally in their own best interests -- preserving their assets, that is, their own populations, their infrastructure, their wealth, their weaponry, and so on. That is what the US did in Gulf War I and what it is doing now. But Saddam Hussein, in Gulf War I, did not fit our government's Rational Actor model. He had goals like preserving his power in Iraq and being an Arab hero just for standing up to the Great Satan. Though such goals might have their own rationality, they are "irrational" from the model's perspective. One of the most frequent uses of the Nation As Person metaphor comes in the almost daily attempts to justify the war metaphorically as a "just war." The basic idea of a just war uses the Nation As Person metaphor plus two narratives that have the structure of classical fairy tales: The Self Defense Story and The Rescue Story. In each story, there is a Hero, a Crime, a Victim, and a Villain. In the Self-Defense story, the Hero and the Victim are the same. In both stories, the Villain is inherently evil and irrational: The Hero can't reason with the Villain; he has to fight him and defeat him or kill him. In both, the victim must be innocent and beyond reproach. In both, there is an initial crime by the Villain, and the Hero balances the moral books by defeating him. If all the parties are Nation-Persons, then self-defense and rescue stories become forms of a just war for the Hero-Nation. In Gulf War I, Bush I tried out a self-defense story: Saddam was "threatening our oil line-line." The American people didn't buy it. Then he found a winning story, a rescue story -- The Rape of Kuwait. It sold well, and is still the most popular account of that war. In Gulf War II, Bush II is pushing different versions of the same two story types, and this explains a great deal of what is going on in the American press and in speeches by Bush and Powell. If they can show that Saddam = Al Quaeda -- that he is helping or harboring Al Qaeda, then they can make a case for the Self-defense scenario, and hence for a just war on those grounds. Indeed, despite the lack of any positive evidence and the fact that the secular Saddam and the fundamentalist bin Laden despise each other, the Bush administration has managed to convince 40 per cent of the American public of the link, just by asserting it. The administration has told its soldiers the same thing, and so our military men see themselves as going to Iraq in defense of their country. In the Rescue Scenario, the victims are (1) the Iraqi people and (2) Saddam's neighbors, whom he has not attacked, but is seen as "threatening." That is why Bush and Powell keep on listing Saddam's crimes against the Iraqi people and the weapons he could use to harm his neighbors. Again, most of the American people have accepted the idea that Gulf War II is a rescue of the Iraqi people and a safeguarding of neighboring countries. Of course, the war threatens the safety and well-being of the Iraqi people and will inflict considerable damage on neighboring countries like Turkey and Kuwait. And why such enmity toward France and Germany? Via the Nation As Person metaphor, they are supposed to be our "friends" and friends are supposed to be supportive and jump in and help us when we need help. Friends are supposed to be loyal. That makes France and Germany fair-weather friends! Not there when you need them. This is how the war is being framed for the American people by the Administration and media. Millions of people around the world can see that the metaphors and fairy tales don't fit the current situation, that Gulf War II does not qualify as a just war -- a "legal" war. But if you accept all these metaphors, as Americans have been led to do by the administration, the press, and the lack of an effective Democratic opposition, then Gulf War II would indeed seem like a just war. But surely most Americans have been exposed to the facts -- the lack of a credible link between Saddam and al Quaeda and the idea that large numbers of innocent Iraqi civilians (estimates are around 500,000) will be killed or maimed by our bombs. Why don't they reach the rational conclusion? One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors -- conceptual structures like those we have been describing. The frames are in the synapses of our brains -- physically present in the form of neural circuitry. When the facts don't fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored. It is a common folk theory of progressives that "The facts will set you free!" If only you can get all the facts out there in the public eye, then every rational person will reach the right conclusion. It is a vain hope. Human brains just don't work that way. Framing matters. Frames once entrenched are hard to dispel. In the first Gulf War, Colin Powell began the testimony before Congress. He explained the rational actor model to the congressmen and gave a brief exposition of the views on war of Clausewitz, the Prussian general: War is business and politics carried out by other means. Nations naturally seek their self-interest, and when necessary, they use military force in the service of their self-interest. This is both natural and legitimate. To the Bush administration, this war furthers our self-interest: controlling the flow of oil from the world's second largest known reserve, and being in the position to control the flow of oil from central Asia as well. These would guarantee energy domination over a significant part of the world. The US could control oil sales around the world. And in the absence of alternative fuel development, whoever controls the distribution of oil throughout the world controls politics as well as economics. My 1990 paper did not stop Gulf War I. This paper will not stop Gulf War II. So why bother? I think it is crucially important to understand the cognitive dimensions of politics -- especially when most of our conceptual framing is unconscious and we may not be aware of our own metaphorical thought. I have been referred to as a "cognitive activist" and I think the label fits me well. As a professor, I do analyses of linguistic and conceptual issues in politics, and I do them as accurately as I can. But that analytic act is a political act: Awareness matters. Being able to articulate what is going on can change what is going on - at least in the long run. This war is a symptom of a larger disease. The war will start presently. The fighting will be over before long. Where will the anti-war movement be then? First, the anti-war movement, properly understood, is not just, or even primarily, a movement against the war. It is a movement against the overall direction that the Bush administration is moving in. Second, such a movement, to be effective, needs to say clearly what it is for, not just what it is against. Third, it must have a clearly articulated moral vision, with values rather than mere interests determining its political direction. As the war begins, we should look ahead to transforming the anti-war movement into a movement that powerfully articulates progressive values and changes the course of our nation to where those values take us. The war has begun a discussion about values. Let's continue it. George Lakoff is the author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," University of Chicago Press, Second edition, 2002. He is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a Senior Fellow of the Rockridge Institute. From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Fri Mar 21 11:53:51 2003 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 22:23:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] The War on Iraq IQ Test In-Reply-To: <200303201841.h2KIfKOl018245@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20030321062351.5319.qmail@web41114.mail.yahoo.com> > 17. Q: How many casualties did the Iraqi military > inflict on the western > forces > during the Gulf War ? > A: 0 This is not quite true. 148 americans and 16 brits died during the war. what is true, however, is that a higher percentage of these deaths than in any other modern war was accounted for by "friendly fire" - what the military calls "fratricide". Of the 16 British soldiers who died, nine were killed by Americans. 35 of the 148 americans were killed by friendly fire. (Iraqi deaths were estimated at 50,000, with 100,000 wounded.) a significant focus of military technology since that war has been how to identify friendly troops before firing. (of course there were makeshift solutions - if you turned your geiger counters on a smoking tank and found it emitting high levels of radiation it was probably iraqi because only the americans were firing depleted uranium.) but the pentagon thought a better system was needed and spent 10 years and $175 million on the Battlefield Combat Identification System. A tank equipped with this system would send an electronic signal toward its target before firing. If the target was "friendly," it would detect the signal and reply, preventing the first tank from firing. Enemy targets, as well as any vehicle not equipped with the system, would be unable to detect or respond to the signal. the system has been more or less abandoned because it was not good enough. soldiers are going into this war very frightened of fratricide. http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Mar/03092003/nation_w/36578.asp R __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com From tbyfield at panix.com Fri Mar 21 13:20:13 2003 From: tbyfield at panix.com (t byfield) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 02:50:13 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] The War on Iraq IQ Test In-Reply-To: <20030321062351.5319.qmail@web41114.mail.yahoo.com> References: <200303201841.h2KIfKOl018245@mail.sarai.net> <20030321062351.5319.qmail@web41114.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20030321075012.GA1913@panix.com> rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Thu 03/20/03 at 10:23 PM -0800): > This is not quite true. there are other things that aren't true about it. i'm too tired to kludge a cut-and-paste from a short response i sent to the 'hippies from hell' list (subscribers in common are welcome to forward it); but it's typical of these kinds of items that they're reductive in the extreme. anyway: > 148 americans and 16 brits died during the war. > > what is true, however, is that a higher percentage of > these deaths than in any other modern war was > accounted for by "friendly fire" - what the military > calls "fratricide". 'friendly fire' has been the dark secret of war following (a) the introduction of guns in combination with (b) the dissolution of strictly regimented deployment structures. put simply, when sol- diers scatter all over the place and shoot, they shoot their com- rades. this has been going on ever since the late 18th-C wars of revolution. i won't argue over terminology, but i will say that the extremely high ratio of friendly to unfriendly fire in the gulf war is a tes- tament -- a frightening testament -- to just how organized the US and (mainly) european armies have become. the fact that they can drive an invading army back with barely any casulaties incurred by enemy fire is mind-boggling. not that i *want* casualties: i don't. but nor do i want too see men conscripted by force or by despera- tion exterminated en masse. > (Iraqi deaths were estimated at 50,000, with 100,000 > wounded.) ugh. and many of these conscripts buried in an unmarked grave of the unknown soldier called 'the desert.' if they were american, the POW/MIA psychos would be going berserk 30+ years from now. > but the pentagon thought a better system was needed > and spent 10 years and $175 million on the Battlefield > Combat Identification System. you mean better than the duct-tape inverted Vs they used in the gulf war? > the system has been more or less abandoned because it > was not good enough. soldiers are going into this war > very frightened of fratricide. all the while forgetting 'the brotherhood of man' that transcends geo- graphy, ethnicity, religion, language, and just about any other parti- tion you could name. there's an american saying, which many of you may know, about 'wear- ing the pants in the family': it's what Dad Does and Son Doesn't. i'm getting really tired of watching GWB use the presidency -- to say no- thing of the rest of the world -- as a way to put a pair of pants on. he's desperately trying to compete with his father. and the more 'pro- found' he tries to be, the more he looks like a shriveled little boy. cheers, t From amitbasu55 at hotmail.com Fri Mar 21 13:34:01 2003 From: amitbasu55 at hotmail.com (Amit R Basu) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 08:04:01 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Report on Bhopal Disaster and Mental Health Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030321/46d8cfdd/attachment.html From jamie.dow at pobox.com Fri Mar 21 16:36:31 2003 From: jamie.dow at pobox.com (Jamie Dow) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 11:06:31 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Nation-as-Person, Structuralism and other War stories In-Reply-To: <3E7A9CD5.80EB1E78@ndf.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: A very interesting piece indeed. I have listened very carefully to the debate and have finally concluded that I am pro-war. I think it is the right thing to do. Having said that, I think that something has happened here which has - in some ways - rekindled our politics in the UK like nothing before. Some people have left behind the tired resignation and are talking about issues that affect people's lives. Of course, if you are anti-establishment, it's a whole lot easier to speak out (especially in an academic context, where to agree with someone is somehow to have lost your critical edge .... ??!! Academics are there to disagree/critique ... not AGREE, for heaven's sake!), but aside from the streets, people are talking politics, and that is thoroughly encouraging. Every one of the c600 MPs will have thought long and hard before voting, about the views of their constituents, and about the national interest. Roughly 3:1 in favour in the end, but all heavily considered. Maybe it's the latter point that is more significant. Anyway, that's what our representatives have decided. It doesn't settle the moral issue, of course, it's 600 opinions. But it does represent a key way we wish to take national decisions. The metaphors are equally pervasive on either side, and (apart from a spurious bit of neuroscience about synapses that is nothing more than scientific fantasy) this has been a very stimulating article. I think that the nation-as-person is an interesting one, and I'm not sure what to do with it. From my listening to the news adn the voices of politicians here in the UK, where we have a large population of Iraqis in exile (Hmmm. why?!!), there has been repeated distinction between the nation of Iraq with whom there is no quarrel, whose oil supplies ought to be being sold for food, whose future revenues are to be UN protected, and the leader and his immediate circle. This seems right - it is disambiguating the metaphor, collapsing it, I guess. Of course it is true that the bombs will not simply fall on the head of the one man. In war, innocents will die. That's why decisions to go to war are difficult and need strenuous reasons in favour. But talk of "daisy cutters" and "thousands of civilian casualties" don't seem to square with the facts. The nation-as-person seems to me to be more in use on the anti-war side. "War doesn't solve anything" gains its plausibility from a kind of playground logic. That's what we say to small children in getting them to share their toys and behave reasonably with each other. In international affairs, there is a similar argument, but it really is different in ways obscured by the metaphor. Nations don't reason with one mind, in the way that a person does, and therefore we should not be surprised when they act more selfishly, and are less open to altruistic reasons than a person would be. But what this metaphor really implies is that if we could all sit down together and talk nicely with each other, then all would be well. If you can believe this about Iraq, then you should be anti-war. I can't. I feel that the international community has been made to look foolish these last 12 years, and even now the French believe that inspections "are producing results". Again, if you can believe this, you should be anti-war. I can't. The chemical and biological weapons manufactured in Iraq during the 90's were made while the inspectors were still there! As Tony Blair pointed out, to believe that they have none now, is to believe that they have done voluntarily in the last 4 years what they refused to do under pressure from inspections. If you can believe they've done that, you should be anti-war. I can't. I just don't think that the approach of sitting around in a circle, like children in the story-corner, and learning to be nice to one another is viable here. It's been tried for more than a decade. This structuralist stuff is interesting. I'd be interested in how it would have been applied to Bosnia & the Balkans, or to WWII, where most now think that our mistake was not joining war soon enough. Perhaps a Sarai correspondent would like to attempt such a thing. Perhaps the outcome there would be that actually we should have left well alone with Hitler and Milosevic. Or sat around the table for a bit longer in the story-corner. Hmmm. But doesn't something like "rescue story" apply in these cases? or "self-defence story". I'm not really able to cash out the insinuation. What's supposed to be implied by the fact that - astonishingly - the reasons-stories we cite to justify actions have a similar shape to one another? That they are all false? There are many further points to consider, and as the article below points out implicitly, political and moral questions are about what to do. So to have a coherent position, you need to be recommending a course of action. I'll hope to write soon again about anti-war reasons that are "too strong". For now, I'm all ears, Jamie -----Original Message----- From: reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net [mailto:reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net]On Behalf Of Rajlakshmi Sent: 21 March 2003 05:02 To: reader-list at sarai.net Subject: [Reader-list] on war as a metaphor This is an article by a professor of linguistics on the metaphorical usage of war etc. Metaphor and War Metaphors can kill. That's how I began a piece on the first Gulf War back in 1990, just before the war began. Many of those metaphorical ideas are back, but within a very different and more dangerous context. Since Gulf War II is due to start any day, perhaps even tomorrow, it might be useful to take a look before the action begins at the metaphorical ideas being used to justify Gulf War II. One of the most central metaphors in our foreign policy is that A Nation Is A Person. It is used hundreds of times a day, every time the nation of Iraq is conceptualized in terms of a single person, Saddam Hussein. The war, we are told, is not being waged against the Iraqi people, but only against this one person. Ordinary American citizens are using this metaphor when they say things like, "Saddam is a tyrant. He must be stopped." What the metaphor hides, of course, is that the 3000 bombs to be dropped in the first two days will not be dropped on that one person. They will kill many thousands of the people hidden by the metaphor, people that according to the metaphor we are not going to war against. The Nation As Person metaphor is pervasive, powerful, and part of an elaborate metaphor system. It is part of an International Community metaphor, in which there are friendly nations, hostile nations, rogue states, and so on. This metaphor comes with a notion of the national interest: Just as it is in the interest of a person to be healthy and strong, so it is in the interest of a Nation-Person to be economically healthy and militarily strong. That is what is meant by the "national interest." In the International Community, peopled by Nation-Persons, there are Nation-adults and Nation-children, with Maturity metaphorically understood as Industrialization. The children are the "developing" nations of the Third World, in the process of industrializing, who need to be taught how to develop properly and to be disciplined (say, by the International Monetary Fund) when they fail to follow instructions. "Backward" nations are those that are "underdeveloped." Iraq, despite being the cradle of civilization, is seen via this metaphor as a kind of defiant armed teenage hoodlum who refuses to abide by the rules and must be "taught a lesson." The international relations community adds to the Nation As Person metaphor what is called the "Rational Actor Model." The idea here is that it is irrational to act against your interests and that nations act as if they were "rational actors" -- individual people trying to maximize their "gains' and "assets" and minimize their "costs" and "losses." In Gulf War I, the metaphor was applied so that a country's "assets" included its soldiers, materiel, and money. Since the US lost few of those "assets" in Gulf War I, the war was reported, just afterward in the NY Times Business section, as having been a "bargain." Since Iraqi civilians were not our assets, they could not be counted as among the "losses" and so there was no careful public accounting of civilian lives lost, people maimed, and children starved or made seriously ill by the war or the sanctions that followed it. Estimates vary from half a million to a million or more. However, public relations was seen to be a US asset: excessive slaughter reported on in the press would be bad PR, a possible loss. These metaphors are with us again. A short war with few US casualties would minimize costs. But the longer it goes on, the more Iraqi resistance and the more US casualties, the less the US would appear invulnerable and the more the war would appear as a war against the Iraqi people. That would be a high "cost." According to the Rational Actor Model, countries act naturally in their own best interests -- preserving their assets, that is, their own populations, their infrastructure, their wealth, their weaponry, and so on. That is what the US did in Gulf War I and what it is doing now. But Saddam Hussein, in Gulf War I, did not fit our government's Rational Actor model. He had goals like preserving his power in Iraq and being an Arab hero just for standing up to the Great Satan. Though such goals might have their own rationality, they are "irrational" from the model's perspective. One of the most frequent uses of the Nation As Person metaphor comes in the almost daily attempts to justify the war metaphorically as a "just war." The basic idea of a just war uses the Nation As Person metaphor plus two narratives that have the structure of classical fairy tales: The Self Defense Story and The Rescue Story. In each story, there is a Hero, a Crime, a Victim, and a Villain. In the Self-Defense story, the Hero and the Victim are the same. In both stories, the Villain is inherently evil and irrational: The Hero can't reason with the Villain; he has to fight him and defeat him or kill him. In both, the victim must be innocent and beyond reproach. In both, there is an initial crime by the Villain, and the Hero balances the moral books by defeating him. If all the parties are Nation-Persons, then self-defense and rescue stories become forms of a just war for the Hero-Nation. In Gulf War I, Bush I tried out a self-defense story: Saddam was "threatening our oil line-line." The American people didn't buy it. Then he found a winning story, a rescue story -- The Rape of Kuwait. It sold well, and is still the most popular account of that war. In Gulf War II, Bush II is pushing different versions of the same two story types, and this explains a great deal of what is going on in the American press and in speeches by Bush and Powell. If they can show that Saddam = Al Quaeda -- that he is helping or harboring Al Qaeda, then they can make a case for the Self-defense scenario, and hence for a just war on those grounds. Indeed, despite the lack of any positive evidence and the fact that the secular Saddam and the fundamentalist bin Laden despise each other, the Bush administration has managed to convince 40 per cent of the American public of the link, just by asserting it. The administration has told its soldiers the same thing, and so our military men see themselves as going to Iraq in defense of their country. In the Rescue Scenario, the victims are (1) the Iraqi people and (2) Saddam's neighbors, whom he has not attacked, but is seen as "threatening." That is why Bush and Powell keep on listing Saddam's crimes against the Iraqi people and the weapons he could use to harm his neighbors. Again, most of the American people have accepted the idea that Gulf War II is a rescue of the Iraqi people and a safeguarding of neighboring countries. Of course, the war threatens the safety and well-being of the Iraqi people and will inflict considerable damage on neighboring countries like Turkey and Kuwait. And why such enmity toward France and Germany? Via the Nation As Person metaphor, they are supposed to be our "friends" and friends are supposed to be supportive and jump in and help us when we need help. Friends are supposed to be loyal. That makes France and Germany fair-weather friends! Not there when you need them. This is how the war is being framed for the American people by the Administration and media. Millions of people around the world can see that the metaphors and fairy tales don't fit the current situation, that Gulf War II does not qualify as a just war -- a "legal" war. But if you accept all these metaphors, as Americans have been led to do by the administration, the press, and the lack of an effective Democratic opposition, then Gulf War II would indeed seem like a just war. But surely most Americans have been exposed to the facts -- the lack of a credible link between Saddam and al Quaeda and the idea that large numbers of innocent Iraqi civilians (estimates are around 500,000) will be killed or maimed by our bombs. Why don't they reach the rational conclusion? One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors -- conceptual structures like those we have been describing. The frames are in the synapses of our brains -- physically present in the form of neural circuitry. When the facts don't fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored. It is a common folk theory of progressives that "The facts will set you free!" If only you can get all the facts out there in the public eye, then every rational person will reach the right conclusion. It is a vain hope. Human brains just don't work that way. Framing matters. Frames once entrenched are hard to dispel. In the first Gulf War, Colin Powell began the testimony before Congress. He explained the rational actor model to the congressmen and gave a brief exposition of the views on war of Clausewitz, the Prussian general: War is business and politics carried out by other means. Nations naturally seek their self-interest, and when necessary, they use military force in the service of their self-interest. This is both natural and legitimate. To the Bush administration, this war furthers our self-interest: controlling the flow of oil from the world's second largest known reserve, and being in the position to control the flow of oil from central Asia as well. These would guarantee energy domination over a significant part of the world. The US could control oil sales around the world. And in the absence of alternative fuel development, whoever controls the distribution of oil throughout the world controls politics as well as economics. My 1990 paper did not stop Gulf War I. This paper will not stop Gulf War II. So why bother? I think it is crucially important to understand the cognitive dimensions of politics -- especially when most of our conceptual framing is unconscious and we may not be aware of our own metaphorical thought. I have been referred to as a "cognitive activist" and I think the label fits me well. As a professor, I do analyses of linguistic and conceptual issues in politics, and I do them as accurately as I can. But that analytic act is a political act: Awareness matters. Being able to articulate what is going on can change what is going on - at least in the long run. This war is a symptom of a larger disease. The war will start presently. The fighting will be over before long. Where will the anti-war movement be then? First, the anti-war movement, properly understood, is not just, or even primarily, a movement against the war. It is a movement against the overall direction that the Bush administration is moving in. Second, such a movement, to be effective, needs to say clearly what it is for, not just what it is against. Third, it must have a clearly articulated moral vision, with values rather than mere interests determining its political direction. As the war begins, we should look ahead to transforming the anti-war movement into a movement that powerfully articulates progressive values and changes the course of our nation to where those values take us. The war has begun a discussion about values. Let's continue it. George Lakoff is the author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," University of Chicago Press, Second edition, 2002. He is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a Senior Fellow of the Rockridge Institute. _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. List archive: From ranita at sarai.net Fri Mar 21 16:53:07 2003 From: ranita at sarai.net (ranita) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 16:53:07 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Report on Bhatti Mines Message-ID: <200303211653.07864.ranita@sarai.net> Report on Bhatti Mines Ravi Agarwal and Anita Soni February-March 03 posting to Sarai Reader-list To see one's 'realistic' assumptions about inescapability of an officially decreed fate being undermined by the real-life stirrings at the grassroots is one of the delights of 'imaginative engagement with social experience'. In non-formalized, open-ended interaction between the researcher and the social reality under research there is place for surprises. While drafting the proposal to document and photograph the predicament of marginalized communities in the Bhatti Mines area of Delhi, we assumed that their pending relocation on the Supreme Court orders could not be averted. Their being impleaded as petitioners in an Inter-locutory Application could at the most result in getting them decent terms of resettlement at nearby Jaunapur, instead of being dispatched as human garbage to currently available dumping sites in the North-Western peripheries of Delhi state. Documenting the traumatic event of relocation as and when it comes to pass, was to figure in our research project agenda. Even later, reflecting on the in-depth problematics of our project already under way (January 03 posting), we stated that the village of Od Mandi, unique because of its archaic tribal content, was worth documenting while it still existed, before its people were forced to set on a journey to Destination Slum. But presently, it appears, other possibilities are taking shape. By the first week of February, we had almost completed putting together a collection of photo graphs and textual data pertaining to village life at Bhatti Mines, including the Od community celebrations like the "mela" and traditional kirtan at the local temple of Baba Ram Deo (a sufi saint of Rajasthan venerated by the Od tribe for centuries), and the more exclusively tribal features such as ancestor worship and burial of the dead (whose tombs are known as 'samadhis') at the village cemetery, recently also serving as the cremation ground. Our next task was to locate and document the various types of jobs engaged in by the majority of wage-earners who hire themselves as 'unskilled' labourers. Their work takes them miles away from their homesteads. Many of them still find employment as old-style diggers, women alongside menfolk, with pack mules or donkeys to carry sackloads of earth at innumerable construction sites all over NCR (and also at illegal mineral trade sites, sprouting right within the NCT borders with open connivance of the police, months after the Supreme Court ban on mining in the entire Aravalli range across Haryana and Rajasthan). A few veterinary centres set up at Od Mandi by voluntary agencies cater to the needs of this group of workers. As a separate theme for detailed documentation we have earmarked the 'modern' category of down-and-out workers in service of global capitalism : truck-borne gangs of mostly young, male labourers deployed by contractors onto constantly changing locations. And not just for digging and loading : the home-grown technicians from the Od community of Bhatti Mines are invariably present at all places where the work of laying internet cables is in progress. At the top, a couple of giant companies take the lead and supply the optic fibre cables; further on, work gets subdivided among a host of petty contractors who in turn allot particular segments to labour-deploying contractors. At the ground level, it is all manual skill and diligence of self-trained 'mistris' who work with simplest tools, without any engineers to guide them. They are quite proud to do this job - often with surface traffic going on - and would like it being photographed. At Od Mandi, their boisterous return atop a truck after a day's work, and the rainbow hued ducts stacked in contractors' courtyards made for good pictures. Due to new developments, absorbing attention of the village community and calling for our response, we had to go slow on exploration of the 'work' thematic in February and March. The continuing refusal of Delhi government to review its stance before the Supreme Court with regard to 'encroachers' in Bhatti sanctuary prompted Mr Colin Gonsalves, the counsel for 'Gram Bachao Sangharsh Samiti", to plan a personal inspection of the officially approved re-settlement sites in Holambi Kalan and Bawana. A few acknowledged local leaders promised to accompany him on an agreed date (9.2.03), but backed out at the last moment. We did a follow-up of this issue, talking to and getting close-up portraits of the reluctant 'community representatives'. We could not escape the conclusion that village-level leadership was simply non-existent: the locally 'prominent' individuals had all been dependent on outside political patronage (of either BJP or Congress bosses) and bent upon forwarding their own mercantile interests. In the meantime, a meeting of all concerned secretaries of Delhi Government was convened at the Chief Ministers's office to discuss the Bhatti Mines issue, and an invitation was extended to the 'Secretary of Gram Bachao Sangharsh Samiti and others'. It turned out to be a hoax. As per the standard practice, the consultation took place behind closed doors while twenty-odd delegates from Bhatti Mines who came forward to hear and be heard, were kept waiting in the lounge. The insult triggered off a resentful reaction that went beyond the usual trading of politically motivated accusations and contr-accusations. In the eyes of villagers, factionalism itself took a beating. It was a sobered lot who proceeded from the Player's Building to Colin's office. The earlier proposed inspection by the legal counsel, along with photographic survey of the living conditions, civic amenities and livelihoods at the prospective destinations in Holambi and Bawana was finally executed on Feb 20, with participation of a cross-section of Bhatti Mines residents. The many horrors of that 'promised land' make a separate story. Subsequently, ground-level mobilization started taking place among members of the Od village community who now feel the need of a credible public platform to represent and uphold their traditional tribal ethos and work-culture. In a long series of meetings, the nucleus of a new organization has been formed. It is styled in a low-key manner as 'Od Samaaj Sewa Parishad'. Service to the community through constructive efforts is a traditional concept, closer to the rustic hearts than the imported gimmics (rally, slogan-shouting) of externally led agitation. Unlike the already defunct 'Gram Bachao Sangharsh Samiti' which was a loose alliance of prominent village businessmen and political players temporarily sinking their rivalries, the emergent organization has a working-class leadership, and shuns political affilliations. Once it becomes a legal entity as a registered trust, it will take up a number of steps towards social reconstruction and tribal self-governance, which may - in the election year - effect a change in the official perceptions about the denizens of Bhatti sanctuary, and get them a lease of the Ridge forest for proper regeneration by indigenous methods. Whatever the outcome of this awakening, it will certainly lend a new angle to our research. It goes beyond a 'movement against eviction'. It spells re-assertion of culture-confidence. Our project, however haphazardly evolving, might be playing some role in it, simply because our attention is focussed on these vital apects of the people's lives which have no meaning for the urban elite of power : the ethnic memories, the codes of cultural expression, the proud collective self-image linked to a continuous history of indigenous craftsmanship. From zipzap_2k at yahoo.com Fri Mar 21 17:41:59 2003 From: zipzap_2k at yahoo.com (Anamika Bhatnagar) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 04:11:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Re: reader-list digest, Vol 1 #176 - 5 msgs In-Reply-To: <20030321192102.30747.87657.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20030321121159.22081.qmail@web41608.mail.yahoo.com> Dear all at Reader List Heartening to see so much of written and vocifeous opinions going between friends and different people denouncing the war on Iraq. But what many have failed to point out is the very very squirmish way the Indian Govt has responded to the crisis. It took its own sweet time to come out with a clear cut stand. It was only when the Opposition held the govt to ransom in the Parliament tat the PM made a statement. The inability to come out with a clear stand on US Iraqi policy was obviously due to the fear of upsetting the newly established "good relations" between US and the NDA govt. It just goes on to show how important it is not to stay undecided but to take a relevenat stand on critical issues of importance to humanity. It reminds me of the Crisis Media Workshop at Sarai recently and how relevant that workshop looks today. As a student of Mass media right now, I can now understand its full implications.........how very urgent it is to shed the garb of neutrality and take a firm position on a particular issue. I do sincerely hope most of us will be able to do so. Also as India readies itself for the Finals of the WorldCup on Sunday, true that most of the Indians will probably be tuned in to watch the cricket game but do spare a moment and pray for all the innocents dying in Iraq. With best wishes Anamika Bhatnagar __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com From shashibiswa at yahoo.com Fri Mar 21 19:46:18 2003 From: shashibiswa at yahoo.com (Shashi Gupta) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 06:16:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] (reader-list) A CITIZENS' DECLARATION Message-ID: <20030321141618.35301.qmail@web80410.mail.yahoo.com> Dear friend,I'm writing to ask you to join me in signing a Citizens'Declaration reaffirming our commitment to internationalcooperation.The outbreak of war is not the end of the fight for peace -- only the beginning. Around the globe, people are joining together in the declaration below. We willbe announcing it in a press conference on Friday, and we need your help to make it as big as possible.Signing up will only take a minute of your time, but it'llsend a message that the momentum built through our oppositionto war in Iraq will only keep growing.You can sign up at: http://www.moveon.org/declaration/Here's the text of the Declaration:------------ A CITIZENS' DECLARATION As a US-led invasion of Iraq begins, we, the undersigned citizens of many countries,reaffirm our commitment to addressing internationalconflicts through the rule of law and the United Nations. By joining together across countries and continents,we have emerged as a new force for peace.As we grieve for the victims of this war,we pledge to redouble our efforts to put an end to the BushAdministration's doctrine of pre-emptive attack andthe reckless use of military power.------------Thank you. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030321/0703d946/attachment.html From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Sat Mar 22 00:35:28 2003 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 14:05:28 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] anti-war protests in the US Message-ID: i cant believe they didnt even mention times sqaure!!! yesterday, rainy and horrible as it was, everywhere i went, everyone was saying, times square, five o clock.... union sqaure is not a big space and also, its easier for the police to stand there and keep 'control'. in the morning, (i work by union square) coming out of the subway, i saw about 40 cops standing there...no people, just cops...later, as the afternoon wore on, more and more people gathered.. i dont know numbers on times square but we did manage to stop traffice and immoblize that part of the city for a bit. there was a candlenight vigil in washington square park after (downtown, in the heart of the nyu campus) that was supposed to start at 8 but till 8 30 there was only about 30 of us. let's see what happens on the 22nd. philly was amazing, it made the news here. nyc protest got VERY little coverage and the numbers were wrong. we had arrests and some violence but again, i havent been able to hear or read much about it. z.rizvi >From: Avishek Ganguly >To: reader-list at sarai.net >Subject: [Reader-list] anti-war protests in the US >Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 03:46:46 +0000 (GMT) > > >Hi >here's some stuff on the anti-war activity in the US >today...may be even sharing them with you all might be >a vent for the desperate feeling of outrage and >helplessness...but this is still only CNN (forget Fox >News!)-- so that explains the possibly fudged anti-war >figures and the carelessly strewn bits about how there >have been an equal number of pro-war rallies too! > >peace >Avishek _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail From aiindex at mnet.fr Sat Mar 22 05:41:34 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 01:11:34 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Delhi University Community Against The War On Iraq Message-ID: In a meeting of Delhi University teachers, students and karmacharis, it was decided to launch the UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY AGAINST THE WAR ON IRAQ. This has been conceived as a collective effort of the University community of the various campuses of Delhi. The first activity has been planned for Tuesday 25 March 2003 from 11.30 AM till 2 PM in the form of a rally at the Vivekananda statue in Delhi University Campus. Students, teachers and karmacharis are requested to participate in the programme in large numbers. Please bring as many posters, placards and banners as possible with the anti-war message. Contact Persons: Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty Prof. Sumit Sarkar Prof. Achin Vanaik Prof. Javed Malik Prof. Vijay Singh Prof. Alok Rai Dr. Nandita Narain Dr. Kumar Sanjay Singh Sunil Madiwal, Democratic Students Union (DSU) Pradeep, Progressive Students Union (PSU) Uma Gupta, AISA Satyendra Misra, SFI Amar Singh Amar ( Non-teaching Staff) 21 March 2003 Kindly circulate this message to as many as possible For details and further queries write to: delhi_academia at hotmail.com -- From jamie.dow at pobox.com Sat Mar 22 07:27:01 2003 From: jamie.dow at pobox.com (Jamie Dow) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 01:57:01 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Reasons that are Too Strong In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I know some are bored with this stuff on reasons. But I am not content to be a war artist. I want to develop and shape opinions that can affect how people think and act. After all, it is principally by acting that we touch one another's lives. It seems to me that certain apparently plausible requirements or moral statements that are made require rethinking. And the idea that a reason can be "too strong" seems to me to be worth understanding. I suppose that this is part of a project that I still see as being worthwhile. It is the project of working out under what circumstances a war would be just. Some medieval philosopher-theologians, with a line into public policy in medieval Europe thought long and hard about this. If you look at a politics or moral textbook on just wars, the impression is given that no real advance has taken place since them. Which is a testimony to them, perhaps, but I also think quite a sad reflection. One of their conditions is that war be a last resort. This seems to me to be widely believed among the anti-war movement. It seems to form a pillar of the French and German positions, perhaps the Russian position, certainly Hans Blix's position, and almost to be institutionalised into the decision-making processes of the UN. This "last resort" requirement also seems to me to be wrong. And wrong because it's too strong a reason. It might seem odd to say that a reason doesn't really count because it is "too strong". Isn't what we want of reasons that they be strong? So how can reasons be *too* strong? Well, what it amounts to is this: if a reason is too strong, it will rule illegitimate things that we would intuitively think are legitimate. So, the 'last resort' requirement is so stringent that World War II would not meet it, the military action in Kosovo would not meet it, nor any of the action in the Balkans, in fact I reckon that no war at all would meet it. The last resort requirement is not usually thought of as an exclusively pacifist requirement, but in reality it is a requirement for just that - never going to war. There is always some hope - however slender - that some alternative course of action might work. That was true with Milosevic, and there were some who thought that on those grounds he should not have been opposed with military means. It was also true with 1930s Germany. So, sadly a little thinking is required, and the neat black and white solutions turn out to be mirages. The requirement should be something like: there must be no option which stands a reasonably foreseeable chance of achieving the same or equivalent benefits as military action. Now put like this, it brings into focus why the French and Germans said some of the things they did. They said, for example, that 'inspections are delivering results'. A strange thing to say, you might think. But if there is deep down an intuition that in order to counter the arguments for military action, you need to show a viable alternative (and this intuition is surely correct - a fact oft forgotten), these hopelessly optimistic statements about weapons inspections are actually vital for the French & German position. If they are untrue, then their case collapses. Another argument (and alarming how frequently this goes unnoticed) is that war will involve the deaths of innocents. Now this could be taken in 2 ways: (i) that the war involves killing innocents is an overriding reason against war, one that cannot be outweighed by countervailing reasons. or (ii) that war involves killing innocents is a strong reason against going to war, but one that could be outweighed by large enough benefits of going to war (or severe enough negative consequences of not going to war). If taken as (i), then this reason would count against all wars. Joining WWII would be a terrible crime on this basis. Again, the reason is just too strong. It immediately entails pacifism (not just tends towards, but immediately entails). If taken as (ii), then this is something that all sides would agree. It should not be stated in such a way as to imply somehow that those who are pro-war have somehow missed the fact that in war innocents die, or that this matters a great deal. Seen this way, it does not clinch the debate, so much as starts it: it leads us to other questions to do with the predicted benefits of going to war, and the predicted consequences of failing to do so. And these are tricky weighings ... more difficult than the black & white logic of some ... but isn't that just what you'd expect in this kind of decision? One of the questions that this reason brings into focus is to ask what level of casualties you would expect from conflict. And that's quite a difficult one as well. Today has brought some deaths among the military, and tonight's bombardment almost certainly some civilian deaths. But last night's bombings apparently brought no deaths (and that's by Iraqi sources), so it may be that the death toll will not be of the nightmare proportions forecast by some who like to talk of "daisycutters", and are cynical in this area that technology could be making any positive difference (an irony really, since this cynicism often comes from those who are very creative and cheerful about the possibilities opened up by technology in other spheres). Of course it is a risky business, since one has to try to predict the casualties when taking a decision. One thing that, of course, makes the calculation easier is if you have a high death toll as the cost of inaction - like several lakhs of innocent Iraqis killed under the Ba'ath regime. Another reason, often cited, that appears under this 'too strong' head, is that war is not the way to establish desirable peaceful goals. So, the thought is that "you can't establish democracy by tanks and down the barrel of a gun". This seems to have a certain plausibility - you use one means to establish a civil system, and then try to insist that in the running of that civil system it should never be used. "Do as I say, not as I do". But a little thought suggests that this is too strong. Again, if it were true, then probably it would never be right to adopt military means. Besides being too strong, this claim just seems straightforwardly false. Some counter examples immediately spring to mind - (ironically) the establishment of the republic in France, the independence of the USA, and even beyond establishment of good forms of government, it just does seem to be not that uncommon for it to be necessary to adopt military or violent means sometimes to defend good peacetime systems. I am not saying that there are no conditions on this - you must, for example, have a good chance of achieving the good purpose, and other means with good foreseeable chances of success must be unavailable (both of which conditions are unfulfilled for, say, Israeli military attacks on Palestinian areas, and for Palestinian suicide bombings; but both of which seem to me to be fulfilled in the case of action against Iraq). I do not predict a long period of British/American military control when this war is over. I suspect that there will be a swift move to a civilian Iraqi administration. Others may deny this - and my remarks here suggest that unless you deny this, another pillar of the anti-war position is removed. Hence the move to over-describe the colonial ambitions of the US (note the *over-* there, please!). Ah, and I can't resist a pop at the "unreasonable veto" line. It's a separate point, but there seems to be great objection to France's veto threat being described as unreasonable. But it seems to me that, certainly in the position as stated, it seems to be just right. The phrase "whatever the circumstances" is what makes 'unreasonable' right. Circumstances are one of the things that determine what is the right way to choose. Circumstances are one of the things that affect what reasons apply, and so on. So to say "we'll veto whatever the circumstances" is to say "we'll veto whatever's the right way to choose", or "we'll veto, whatever reasons apply to the decision". And to say *that* is to be closed to reasons, or at least closed to reasons of a rather important sort. And we have a word for this ... "unreasonable". Sorry this is so long - these are my thoughts as they happened .... not everyone thinks in that 'stream of consciousness' style! Or maybe I'm just the wierd one! Jamie From shashibiswa at yahoo.com Sat Mar 22 18:06:48 2003 From: shashibiswa at yahoo.com (shashibiswa at yahoo.com) Date: 22 Mar 2003 12:36:48 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Tell President Bush: What about the Iraqi people? Message-ID: <20030322123648.2487.41.qmail@web6> Dear Friend, The debates about war in Iraq have largely focused on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But lost in the discussion has been the state, and possible fate, of the 22 million Iraqi civilians who are still suffering horribly from the impact of the Gulf War ten years ago. Click on the link below to tell President Bush: A war in Iraq could kill thousands of people and displace hundreds of thousands more! http://ga0.org/campaign/iraq?source=ftof Almost two-thirds of Iraqis are completely dependent on food aid. A quarter of all Iraqi children suffer from serious malnutrition. The electrical and sewer systems are in terrible shape. Further damage to them could unleash a wave of deadly, infectious diseases. Please take a minute to e-mail President Bush. Ask him to continue to use diplomatic means to resolve this crisis for the sake of the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians who could be killed, wounded, or displaced. Click on the link below: http://ga0.org/campaign/iraq?rk=ypauIlp1mPDmW *********************************** Powered by GetActive Software, Inc. The Leader in Online Campaigns http://www.getactive.com *********************************** From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Sun Mar 23 14:12:02 2003 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 00:42:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Nation-as-Person, Structuralism and other War stories In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030323084202.82479.qmail@web41103.mail.yahoo.com> Jamie I haven't got time to go into all the points you raise but in brief: i think you have too readily accepted the terms of argument presented by the warmakers themselves. these terms are misleading and cause us to focus on trivia. i think what i am going to write here is obvious but i was a bit stunned by your email, so... rejecting an american/british attack on iraq does not amount to believing in saddam's willingness to disarm and all those other things you mentioned. in fact it has nothing to do with which items in the catalogue of alleged misdeeds saddam is actually guilty of. he is guilty of most of them: and when he is toppled we will not be unhappy to see him go. but the debate about this war is not about iraq. iraq, after all has not *suddenly* become the problem it is now deemed to be. that we are all suddenly obsessed about saddam's weapons programmes (which by any measure are less threatening than those of countries like N Korea) is a sleight of hand that has been performed on us (as Bob Fisk advises: try to think about when it was that the fury at Osama and Afghanistan was suddenly held to lead naturally onto war with Iraq). no: the debate is about the american coalition and its current project, of which iraq is only a part. it is about the ethics of invoking a ghostly, omnipresent and neverending enemy to justify the exercise of new forms of absolute power within america and across the world by a small number of individuals and organisations. this power includes, for instance: getting rid of the need for the president to persuade congress of his decision to declare war; the overturning of some of the most basic rights of citizens; the use of overwhelming military force to protect partisan economic interests; the license to go into any "problem" country and submit it to direct US military rule; the ability to ignore consensual notions of legality with respect to war; etc. (and the ability, incidentally, to do all of this in such a way that those same individuals and organisations benefit financially in extraordinary ways.) the problems caused by the exercise of such power will go far beyond the specific horrors of the iraqi war, which are likely to be bad enough (mass famine and disease among a population whose supply network will have been destroyed, various kinds of 'ethnic cleansing', etc). they will include the rapid and entirely rational spread of weapons of mass destruction to states that correctly consider their sovereignty to be under threat and that, again correctly, realise that the only way to have any bargaining position with such power is to possess nuclear weapons. they will include potentially disastrous reassertions of disrupted power in the Middle East. they will surely include more desperate kinds of violent protest against american might. and they will undoubtedly include new kinds of economic injustice against Iraq since the US needs to pay for this imperialist project somehow: it does not earn any tax income from these territories it is spending so many billions to invade and police. these things are not obscure: they are the obvious implications of the exercise of absolute power, discussed for several centuries. because this exercise of pwoer is highly undesirable we have tried to find various ways of qualifying it, at least in theory. this war represents, for many people, an end to those attempts. obviously there are political situations that are repugnant to the entire "international community" (whatever that is) and whose only solution is military. but let us get over all the nauseously repetitive parallels with the supposed moral transparency of 1938/9: nothing whatsoever is "proved" by the invocation of Chamberlain and there are no similarities between the two situations. *even* if you feel that the iraq "problem" was one that needed "dealing with" right now then *even* tony blair acknowledged that current measures had actually begun to meet expectations before the invasion began but said, with some twisted logic, that this was the best reason to invade. no need to argue against "war as a last resort" for that was never the situation we were in. i am surprised by your turn-around on this. the last week, during which it became ridiculous to believe in the possibility of war not happening, seems to have made the whole informationscape suddenly fall into line with it - as if to think against was to pit oneself against historical inevitability. actually there is no more important time for inhabiting alternative imaginations than when they have been exiled from reality. R __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com From aiindex at mnet.fr Mon Mar 24 03:10:14 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 22:40:14 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Opposition from Pentagon for UN role in reconstructing post-war Iraq Message-ID: The Guardian 22 March 2003 Blow for Short in battle with Pentagon By Charlotte Denny, economics correspondent Clare Short returned empty handed from Washington yesterday as Britain's efforts to put the UN in charge of reconstructing post-war Iraq ran into opposition from the Pentagon. Amid signs of widening divisions off the battlefield between the US and its closest ally, Whitehall officials expressed concern that America's military planners appear to be cutting the UN out of any political role in favour of its own plan to put a retired general, Jay Garner, in the driving seat. Ms Short had hoped to secure agreement on a security council resolution which would have given the UN the leading role in rebuilding the shattered country. But after two days of meeting with Kofi Annan and leading UN officials in New York, and state department officials in Washington, the international development secretary returned home with the issue unresolved. "They see a new resolution as cover for their activities rather than a route to enabling the UN to co-ordinate reconstruction," said one Whitehall official. President George Bush promised Tony Blair at the Azores summit that the UN would have a key role after the war ends. But the Pentagon believes this should be confined to humanitarian assistance and is pressing ahead with its own plans, which would put US companies in charge of the country's schools and hospitals. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the US agency for international development has called for American companies to bid for more than $1bn (£640m) worth of reconstruction contracts, including running health and education services. Without a UN resolution, Whitehall lawyers say that the US and UK occupying forces would have no legal right to run the country's institutions. "There is no legal mandate for that sort of activity," said one Whitehall official. "It's all quite bizarre." While state department officials are believed to be sympathetic to the British vision, the Pentagon is determined to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people by branding the postwar reconstruction effort with an American flag. America has set up its own office for reconstruction and humanitarian assistance as part of the department of defence. UN officials have warned that they have no intention of acting as a fig leaf for a US occupying authority. "We can't have a scenario where the US says this is what is needed, now you guys get on and do it," said one UN official. Mark Malloch Brown, the head of the UN development agency, said this week that UN agencies could not act as "sub-contractors" to the US government. The Pentagon's plans have alarmed aid agencies, which are concerned about the precedent it would set and the likely political fallout throughout the Middle East. "We are worried that the US believes and acts like it can replace the UN in delivery of humanitarian aid and reconstruction," said Justin Forsyth, head of policy at Oxfam. "We don't believe they have the skills or the legitimacy." The disagreements between Britain and the US extend even to who should be in charge of the immediate humanitarian work as the battle rages. Washington is boasting that its soldiers will double as mobile aid workers, bringing rations to the vulnerable population, 60% of whom depend on food handed out by the UN's oil for food programme. "We don't want our aid equipment to be offloaded off the back of a US military lorry, because if we were to do that we would be seen as part of a belligerent force," said Mr Forsyth. From menso at r4k.net Mon Mar 24 05:25:17 2003 From: menso at r4k.net (Menso Heus) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 00:55:17 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Musical Protest Message-ID: <20030323235517.GY1482@r4k.net> George Michael did a cover of Don "American Pie" McLeans 'The Grave' which is an MTV Exclusive video clip and shown quite regularly. The video is available online in Windows Media and Real format at the following URL, along with the lyrics: http://www.mtvasia.com/videos/features/Items/2003/20030310001/ The Beastie Boys released a track called 'In a world gone mad' which is available for free download on their website, http://www.beastieboys.com/ Several big name artists have united themselves in a group called "Musicians United to Win Without War". The artists have placed an ad in the New York Times which is downloadable in PDF format. The artists include names such as Busta Rhymes, Cornershop, George Clinton, Sheryl Crow, Brian Eno, Missy Eliot, Peter Gabriel, Massive Attack, REM, and others. http://www.moveon.org/musiciansunited/ Public Enemy has a track called 'Son of a Bush' which was been written and recorded before the war takes place, but is increasing in popularity again. Available online at: http://www.peace-not-war.org/Music/PublicEnemy/ -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of normal routines, for children and adults alike." -- Willard F. Libby, "You *Can* Survive Atomic Attack" -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Mon Mar 24 10:57:49 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 05:27:49 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] The business of war... In-Reply-To: <20030323235517.GY1482@r4k.net> Message-ID: <20030324052749.23719.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> Halliburton Makes a Killing on Iraq War By Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch March 23, 2003 As the first bombs rain down on Baghdad, thousands of employees of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, are working alongside US troops in Kuwait and Turkey under a package deal worth close to a billion dollars. According to US Army sources, they are building tent cities and providing logistical support for the war in Iraq in addition to other hot spots in the "war on terrorism." While recent news coverage has speculated on the post-war reconstruction gravy train that corporations like Halliburton stand to gain from, this latest information indicates that Halliburton is already profiting from war time contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Cheney served as chief executive of Halliburton until he stepped down to become George W. Bush's running mate in the 2000 presidential race. Today he still draws compensation of up to a million dollars a year from the company, although his spokesperson denies that the White House helped the company win the contract. In December 2001, Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, secured a 10-year deal known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), from the Pentagon. The contract is a "cost-plus-award-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity service" which basically means that the federal government has an open-ended mandate and budget to send Brown and Root anywhere in the world to run military operations for a profit. Linda Theis, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Army Field Support Command in Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, confirmed that Brown and Root is also supporting operations in Afghanistan, Djibouti, Georgia, Jordan and Uzbekistan. "Specific locations along with military units, number of personnel assigned, and dates of duration are considered classified," she said. "The overall anticipated cost of task orders awarded since contract award in December 2001 is approximately $830 million." Local Labor in Kuwait The current contract in Kuwait began in September 2002 when Joyce Taylor of the U.S. Army Materiel Command's Program Management Office, arrived to supervise approximately 1,800 Brown and Root employees to set up tent cities that would provide accommodation for tens of thousands of soldiers and officials. Army officials working with Brown and Root say the collaboration is helping cut costs by hiring local labor at a fraction of regular Army salaries. "We can quickly purchase building materials and hire third-country nationals to perform the work. This means a small number of combat-service-support soldiers are needed to support this logistic aspect of building up an area," says Lt. Col. Rod Cutright, the senior LOGCAP planner for all of Southwest Asia. During the past few weeks, these Brown and Root employees have helped transform Kuwait into an armed camp, to support some 80,000 foreign troops, roughly the equivalent of 10 percent of Kuwait's native-born population. Most of these troops are now living in the tent cities in the rugged desert north of Kuwait City, poised to invade Iraq. Some of the encampments are named after the states associated with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 Camp New York, Camp Virginia and Camp Pennsylvania. The headquarters for this effort is Camp Arifjan, where civilian and military employees have built a gravel terrace with plastic picnic tables and chairs, surrounded by a gymnasium in a tent, a PX and newly arrived fast food outlets such as Burger King, Subway and Baskin-Robbins, set up in trailers or shipping containers. Basketball hoops and volleyball nets are set up outside the mess hall. Meanwhile, In Turkey ... North of Iraq approximately 1,500 civilians are working for Brown and Root and the United States military near the city of Adana, about an hour's drive inland from the Mediterranean coast of central Turkey, where they support approximately 1,400 US soldiers staffing Operation Northern Watch's Air Force F-15 Strike Eagles and F-16 Fighting Falcons monitoring the no-fly zone above the 36th parallel in Iraq. The jet pilots are catered and housed at the Incirlik military base seven miles outside the city by a company named Vinnell, Brown and Root (VBR), a joint venture between Brown and Root and Vinnell corporation of Fairfax, Virginia, under a contract that was signed on Oct. 1, 1988, which also includes two more minor military sites in Turkey: Ankara and Izmir. The joint venture's latest contract, which started July 1, 1999 and will expire in September 2003, was initially valued at $118 million. US Army officials confirm that Brown and Root has been awarded new and additional contracts in Turkey in the last year to support the "war on terrorism" although they refused to give any details. "We provide support services for the United States Air Force in areas of civil engineering, motor vehicles transportation, in the services arena here that includes food service operations, lodging, and maintenance of a golf course. We also do US customs inspection," explained VBR site manager Alex Daniels, who has worked at Incirlik for almost 15 years. Cheap labor is also the primary reason for outsourcing services, says Major Toni Kemper, head of public affairs at the base. "The reason that the military goes to contracting is largely because it's more cost effective in certain areas. I mean there was a lot of studies years ago as to what services can be provided via contractor versus military personnel. Because when we go contract, we don't have to pay health care and all the another things for the employees, that's up to the employer." Soon after the contract was signed, Incirlik provided a major staging post for thousands of sorties flown against Iraq and occupied Kuwait during the Gulf war in January 1991 dropping over 3,000 tons of bombs on military and civilian targets. Still ongoing is the first LOGCAP contract in the "war on terrorism," which began in June 2002, when Brown and Root was awarded a $22 million deal to run support services at Camp Stronghold Freedom, located at the Khanabad air base in central Uzbekistan. Khanabade is one of the main US bases in the Afghanistan war that houses some 1,000 US soldiers from the Green Berets and the 10th Mountain Division. In November 2002 Brown and Root began a one-year contract, estimated at $42.5 million, to cover services for troops at bases in both Bagram and Khandahar. Brown and Root employees were first set to work running laundry services, showers, mess halls and installing heaters in soldiers' tents. Future Contracts in Iraq Halliburton is also one of five large US corporations invited to bid for contracts in what may turn out to be the biggest reconstruction project since the Second World War. The others are the Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp, Parsons Corp and the Louis Berger Group. The Iraq reconstruction plan will require contractors to fulfill various tasks, including reopening at least half of the "economically important roads and bridges" about 1,500 miles of roadway within 18 months, according to the Wall Street Journal. The contractors will also be asked to repair 15 percejnt of high-voltage electricity grid, renovate several thousand schools and deliver 550 emergency generators within two months. The contract is estimated to be worth up to $900 million for the preliminary work alone. The Pentagon has also awarded a contract to Brown and Root to control oil fires if Saddam Hussein sets the well heads ablaze. Iraq has oil reserves second only to those of Saudi Arabia. This makes Brown and Root a leading candidate to win the role of top contractor in any petroleum field rehabilitation effort in Iraq that industry analysts say could be as much as $1.5 billion in contracts to jump start Iraq's petroleum sector following a war. Wartime Profiteering Meanwhile Dick Cheney's 2001 financial disclosure statement, states that Halliburton is paying him a "deferred compensation" of up to $1million a year following his resignation as chief executive in 2000. At the time Cheney opted not to receive his severance package in a lump sum, but instead to have it paid to him over five years, possibly for tax reasons. The company would not say how much the payments are. The obligatory disclosure statement filed by all top government officials says only that they are in the range of $100,000 and $1 million. Nor is it clear how they are calculated. Critics say that the apparent conflict of interest is deplorable. "The Bush-Cheney team have turned the United States into a family business," says Harvey Wasserman, author of "The Last Energy War" (Seven Stories Press, 2000). "That's why we haven't seen Cheney he's cutting deals with his old buddies who gave him a multimillion-dollar golden handshake. Have they no grace, no shame, no common sense? Why don't they just have Enron run America? Or have Zapata Petroleum (George W. Bush's failed oil-exploration venture) build a pipeline across Afghanistan?" Army officials disagree. Major Bill Bigelow, public relations officer for the US Army in Western Europe, says: "If you're going to ask a specific question like, do you think it's right that contractors profit in wartime I would think that they might be better [asked] at a higher level, to people who set the policy. We don't set the policy, we work within the framework that's been established. "Those questions have been asked forever, because they go back to World War Two when Chrysler and Ford and Chevy stopped making cars and started making guns and tanks," he added. "Obviously it's a question that's been around for quite some time. But it's true that nowadays there are very few defense contractors, but go back 60 years to the World War Two era, almost everybody was manufacturing something that either directly or indirectly had something to do with defense." Sasha Lilley and Aaron Glantz helped conduct interviews for this article. Pratap Chatterjee is an investigative journalist based in Berkeley, Calif. He traveled to Afghanistan and Uzbekistan in January 2002 and to Incirlik, Turkey, in January 2003 to research this article. ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Mon Mar 24 11:22:54 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 05:52:54 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] support our troops...always? In-Reply-To: <20030324052749.23719.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20030324055254.95811.qmail@web8007.mail.in.yahoo.com> Dear everyone on the list, here's a brilliant indictment of the dangerous "now-that-our troops-have-gone-in-let's-forget-all-differences-and-support-them" argument... Kargil or Iraq...isn't this 'crisis-patriotism' always the last resort of all political leaderships? Go Yossarian! Avishek _______________________________________________________ ZNet | Iraq No Ribbons, No Flags, No Fireworks An Open Letter to Pro-War Americans by Tim Wise ; March 21, 2003 Dear neighbor, Please spare me the lecture. Likewise, dont bother asking me why I refuse to tie a yellow ribbon around the tree in my front yard, or put out a flag, or slather my Honda Civic with Support the Troopsbumper stickers. I dont feel like explaining it every time someone wants answers to these questions, and anyway, you probably wouldnt like my reasons to begin with. You claim that we must now put aside our different opinions about the propriety of war with Iraq, and rally round the President, the country, and our men and women in uniform. But you are wrong, and I imagine that at some level you know this to be true. After all, do we really have an obligation to support the troops no matter what they do as they prosecute this slaughter against a minor league opponent? Would you indeed support the troops if their mission involved nuclear incineration of Iraqi cities and villages? One, two, many My Lai massacres? Beyond hypotheticals, should we support the troops even as they carry out the announced plan to launch nearly a thousand cruise missiles into Iraqs major population centers within forty-eight hours of war? With the UN estimating that upwards of a half-million Iraqis might die as a result of this war, can you really say without any sense of misgiving that we should support the troopscome what may, and that failure to do so should be branded un-American? Dont misunderstand. I guess one could say that I too support the troops, but surely not in the way that you and other flag-wavers intend. I support them being able to make a living and get an education without having first to subordinate their consciences to a military establishment that vitiates critical thought, reflection and free will, so as to create more efficient killing machines. How about you? I support them not being lied to about the chemicals and depleted uranium to which they will likely be exposed. How about you? I support them refusing to fly their planes, refusing to bomb civilian infrastructure, like water treatment facilities, the destruction of which will create mass epidemics and cause the deaths of thousands of children. How about you? I support them refusing to move their tanks against civilians. How about you? I support them deserting, going AWOL, and disobeying the unlawful orders that are the hallmark of modern warfare--unlawful because they almost always violate international law, such as Article 54 of the Geneva Conventions, which makes it a certifiable war crime to target any facility the integrity of which is necessary to the functioning of civilian life. I support the troops as fathers and mothers; as children; as brothers and sisters; as human beings and free moral agents, all of which they were long before they became the foot soldiers of a swaggering empire, led by a functionally-illiterate cowboy with no knowledge of history, who couldnt find Iraq on a map if it wasnt labeled first, and whose drive to mass murder seems motivated as much by a desire to win the love of his daddy as anything more substantive. I support the troops arresting any American solider who they see killing an Iraqi civilian, or ordering the same. They should turn their guns on their own in such a situation, in the name of defending the innocent and in regard to a higher law to which they are bound. But I do not support the troops following orders that will kill scores of innocent people. I will not cheer the light show over Baghdad, the bulldozing of Iraqi soldiers beneath desert sand, burying them alive as was done in the first Gulf War; nor will I support the strafing of Iraqi soldiers as they retreat or seek to surrender, as was also done in the first Gulf War, in what was described at the time as a turkey shoot. Any soldier that engages in those kinds of actions deserves not support but rather prosecution under accepted standards of international law for the commission of war crimes. Following orders was no excuse at Nuremberg and it will be no excuse in Basra either. Indeed, military personnel are sworn to obey orders only when those orders are lawful, according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Whats more, in their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, all members of the military are bound by Article VI of that document which makes international treaties and agreements the highest law of the land. As such, following orders to prosecute this war violates the oath taken by the troops, since Article 51 of the UN Charter allows war only in immediate self-defense or when the Security Council has directed or authorized use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security, neither of which condition applies here. And since Article 2 of the Charter makes clear that war is not legitimate for the purpose of regime change, the attack underway is by definition a criminal act, in violation of international law and thus the Constitution. It is an impeachable offense, far more serious than getting a blow job and lying about it. And saying this is not giving aid and comfort to the enemy, as you suggest. What gives aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States is the prosecution of an unjust war itself. It is this war that will aid our enemies, by giving them yet another issue around which to rally terrorists, suicide bombers, hijackers and other assorted fanatics. Bombing a nation like Iraq, especially after eviscerating it for over a decade with sanctions, can serve no purpose but to enhance the likelihood of terrorism, and even the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, since only being in clear possession of such materials (as with North Korea) seems capable of deterring attack by the U.S. And no, it is not my job to fall in line, just so the morale of soldiers can receive a boost. I want the morale of soldiers to plummet. I want them to question the propriety of their assignments, and I want them to be so conflicted about that mission that they simply refuse to do their jobs. If criticism of this war harms troop morale and can create internal dissent and divisions among the U.S. military, then we need more of it, not less. Lives are worth more than morale; worth more than self-image; worth more than soldiersfeelings. And since it is with my money and in my name that any killing of Iraqis will proceed, I have not just a right but an obligation to speak out against the war if I consider it unjust. When my nation kills, I kill, and I dont take the thought of collaboration lightly. Collaboration puts my soul in jeopardy. So while the troops may use my money to do their dirty work, dont expect me to say amen. My soul is more important than their morale. So is yours. As a father, I believe that this war will endanger the life of my daughter (and my daughter to be) down the line. That by creating even more embittered Muslims--embittered towards my nation because they can, after all, read the markings on the bomb casings that say, Made in the USA--this war will lay the groundwork for a form of payback that will make 9/11 look like a global fender-bender. Survivors have long memories, and the truth be told, we simply cant kill them all. It is those long memories that will haunt my children and their children, for as James Baldwin reminded us, There is no creation of any society more dangerous than the man who has nothing to lose. So no, I cant support the troops in the traditional sense, because if they do their jobs, they contribute to the menacing of my family in years to come, and my familys safety is more important than their morale. So is yours. But I do support the troops in the ways that truly matter. Do you? I support those troops of color in their continuing quest to be treated as equals at all times, and not merely when they are picking up a gun to kill for America: that means that I support the struggle against the racism that those same troops too often face in their homeland. How about you? I support those troops who are women in their continuing struggle against sexual assault and harassment, in general and specifically at places like the Air Force Academy, where some of their male counterparts apparently think it their duty to abuse them as sex objects. How about you? I support those troops who are gay or lesbian in their quest for equitable treatment and the right to be true to themselves and not have to hide their sexual orientations so as to pander to another soldiers bigotry. How about you I support those troops who are poor; specifically I support their right to health care, and a college education and a job and shelter, and a living wage. And I support these things for them whether in or out of uniform. And I support these same things for the families of the troops back home. How about you? It is not the anti-war movement whose concern for the troops should be questioned, but rather that of the men who send them to battle, to face weapons that those same men (or their fathers) sold to the other side in the first place. Those men who never faced war themselves--and in the case of the President went AWOL to avoid even a stateside National Guard assignment during Vietnam--but who are quick to use others as the fighting, bombing appendages to their own shriveled manhoods. Those men who think that respect for international law can be instilled by disregarding international law, international opinion and the primary international decision making body on the planet. Those men who think it appropriate to build up monsters around the globe and then criticize those monsters for doing exactly what we knew they would do all along. Those men who believe they are entitled to say which nations can have certain types of weapons and which cannot; which nations can ignore UN resolutions and which must follow them; which nations are allowed to oppress their own people and which must be held to a higher standard. Those men who believe that our vital national interestslike the free flow of oil at market prices outweigh the right of Iraqi children to walk, laugh, play, or simply breathe. For it is these men who view the troops as expendable, and who see them as one-dimensional tools for destruction, rather than as human beings. It is these men who are putting the troops in harms way so as to satisfy their own ambitions. And it is we who oppose this war who seek to bring them back in one piece--physically and emotionally. So please, spare me the lecture. Tim Wise is a writer, antiracist activist and father. He can be reached at timjwise at msn.com ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From ravikant at sarai.net Mon Mar 24 15:12:03 2003 From: ravikant at sarai.net (ravikant) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 15:12:03 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] cultural 'commons' - India and Pakistan Message-ID: <200303241512.03941.ravikant@sarai.net> I really enjoyed this lucid reading. ravikant Exposure to alien cultures By Anwar Syed http://www.dawn.com/2003/03/23/op.htm#3 According to a report in this newspaper (February 17), the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal condemned the PTV's projection of "obscene" materials. An assembly of the ulema on the same day called upon the government to stop the electronic media from exposing our people to Indian and western cultures, and instead promote Islamic values and traditions. No one will dispute the desirability of spreading Islamic values, but the exclusion of foreign influences may be a tall order. Without becoming abstruse, let us say that culture encompasses much of what we call our way of life: rituals and customs relating to birth and death, and marriage; societal organization, class and caste distinctions; food, culinary styles, ways of eating; homes and furnishings; festivals and celebrations; notions and mores of romance, love and friendship; patterns of interaction with those who may be older or younger, superiors, inferiors, opponents, or strangers; humour, jokes; language and literary forms; music and dance; visual arts. In the discussion that follows we will focus on India and defer consideration of the West to another time. Let us first take a quick look at how much our culture is already Indianized. There is no need to shy away from the fact that the regions which compose our country are forever situated on a land mass known as the Indian subcontinent and, for long stretches of time, were ruled by one or another king located somewhere in India. Next, barring a small minority that claims descent from foreign gentry (invaders from the West), most of us are ethnically the same people as the folks in northern and north-western India. Inevitably, then, there are many elements of commonality between their way of living and ours. The following similarities come readily to mind: At birth a boy is more welcome than a girl; parents have traditionally looked for their children's spouses within their own caste; parents of Punjabi girls on both sides of the border pay a dowry to the groom's family; when the girl's family can afford it (sometimes even if it has to borrow), celebrations connected with the wedding can extend to three or more days (oiling the bride's hair, covering her hands and feet with spots of henna, reception for the groom's party and others on the wedding day) with fine food served to the guests on each occasion; recording of gifts received from each guest. A woman's status takes a big fall if her husband dies, and she is expected to reduce her lifestyle accordingly; widow remarriage is not encouraged in either culture. The majority of Hindus and Sikhs do not normally eat meat, but the spices used for cooking vegetables and lintels, recipes and the order in which the ingredients are mixed, preparation of rice and unleavened bread (chapati) are virtually the same on both sides.. Identification with one's caste has revived in the Pakistani Punjab. Last names signifying the bearer's caste abound. The two major groups among the native gentry (as distinguished from the descendants of foreign invaders) are the Rajputs and Jats. Rathores, Chauhans, Bhattys (Rajputs) and Noons, Tiwanas, Bajwas, Chatthas, Cheemas, Ghummans, Kahloons, Sandhus, Waraich, and others (Jats) will be found among Punjabi Muslims as well as among Sikhs and Hindus in the Indian Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan. Needless to say, the lower-caste Muslims in Punjab (carpenters, blacksmiths, potters, shoemakers, barbers, oilseed crushers, water carriers, etc.) are descended from lower caste Hindus who converted to Islam somewhere along the line. In other words, the great majority of our people in Punjab, and possibly also in Sindh, share common ancestry with groups in India. A common language is a powerful incentive for people to come together. Punjabi spoken in Pakistan is the same as that spoken in India, and it is the same in popular entertainment programmes offered by radio and television. Urdu and Hindi spoken on the street, in homes, and in most movies are easily understood in both countries. There has been a great deal of mixing between Urdu and Hindi during the last couple of hundred years, and it goes on at the popular level. Note also that Urdu is just about the only language in the world which has no verbs of its own. Almost all of its verbs come from Hindi without modification; only a few are taken from Farsi (for instance, "azmana" which derives from Farsi "azmudan"). Classical music in Pakistan is the same as the Indian. The fact that Muslim musicologists (Amir Khusro and others) contributed a great deal to its development does not change its origin. There are Arab, Iranian, Central Asian, Bangladeshi, Malayam, and Indonesian cultures-all of them belonging to Muslim peoples - but is there such a thing as an Islamic culture? As the late Maulana Maududi would have had it, music, dance, romantic poetry, painting of human subjects, and sculpture cannot be Islamic any more than gambling or drinking can be. There is Muslim art, but Islamic art is a contradiction in terms for the most part. We have holidays and celebrations that may be called Islamic. Certain forms of greeting, and expressions of encouragement, praise, gratitude, regret common in Muslim usage may also be called Islamic. But on the larger scale, the import of the advice that we should stick with Islamic culture, to the exclusion of alien influences, is not clear. It is likely that the ulema, and the conservatives generally, are agitating more against obscenity than against the cultural expressions referred to above. But, then, all of us - even Europeans and Indians-disfavour obscenity and have made laws to discourage it. It is moot whether, and to what extent, a book or a movie can corrupt its readers or viewers. But if obscene movies, books, periodicals, symbols, gestures, and actions press upon us wherever we look, their message is bound to influence the way we use our minds and imaginations. Thus they shape our character and personalities. What is obscenity? We can probably agree that it is associated with the explicit and public display of sex-related acts or parts of the human body. But this agreement will not exhaust the subject, for that which looks obscene to a Pakistani may not appear the same to a French woman. According to the United States Supreme Court (Miller v. California, 1973), if the average person, applying contemporary community standards, finds that a publication or presentation is likely to arouse prurient interests or lascivious thoughts and desires in the viewer's mind, well, then the material in question is obscene. The court's reference to the prevailing community standards is one way of identifying obscenity. Another is to consult the scriptures and act on the criteria they provide in making a determination. In actual practice, the likelihood is that prevailing standards, more than the scriptures, will influence attitudes and judgments. As a point of departure, let us say that sexual activity in public view is indisputably obscene. On another plane, note that any number of American and European women will wear a "halter," in the summer that shows all of their backs, arms, and bellies, and shorts that show virtually all of their legs. Is that obscene? Americans and Europeans may think of such attire as a trifle provocative but not obscene. But a Pakistani woman dressed in this fashion, and appearing in public, will probably be arrested. Many Muslim women in the Arab world wear skirts that show their legs, but a Pakistani Muslim woman doing the same will cause a stir. As in other countries, fashions in Pakistani women's dress come, go, and return. For the last ten years or so, tailors in Lahore and Islamabad, who stitch women's clothes, have cut the shirt's neck and back low enough to make the wearer look a bit like an exhibitionist. The "shalwar" is cut short enough to show one's ankles. Is this obscene, improper, daring, or just attractive? Take your pick, but I wouldn't be surprised if the more conservative among us regarded it as obscene. More than the fashions in women's clothing, the obscenity which the critics want to shut out from our television screens is the one projected in western and Indian movies. Those in love are shown as scantily dressed, using a lot of explicit body language. Wiggling of hips, tight hugs, and even rolling on top of each other were shown in the Indian, especially Punjabi, movies even before independence. But all of this is now being done much more blatantly; the gentle, sentimental kiss on the cheek has gone out of fashion. What can be done to stop these trends? The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has recently asked internet providers to block a hundred or so websites that show pornographic material. But it transpires not only that blocking even that many websites is technically very hard, but that there are countless other websites that do the same and of which no one can keep track. Banning cable or dish antennas has not worked in Iran and it will not work in Pakistan. In other words, there is nothing that public authorities can do to keep out western or Indian influences. They can be excluded only if the internet users and movie viewers choose, of their own accord, not to look for them. That is a choice our young people will, or will not, make depending on how their families have raised them. On their part, the ulema should temper their concern for our morals with a sympathetic understanding of our need for a bit of fun. They are much too stern for most of us to take as our models. Many of them will not let us have even a good laugh, not to speak of playing a few hands of bridge, listening to Iqbal Bano, or mixing soda with anything that might elevate one's spirit. If they do not step down from their high horse to the ground where we mortals stand, their audience will continue to diminish. E-mail: syed.anwar at attbi.com From aiindex at mnet.fr Mon Mar 24 16:21:27 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 11:51:27 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Shoot Movies, Not Iraqis Message-ID: #1. http://www.guerrillanews.com/ Guerrilla of the Week Editor's Pick, March 24, 2003 Well, it wasn't quite as dramatic as Marlon Brando's 1972 boycott of an Oscar for Best Actor, but last night's Academy Award ceremony featured some rather inspired demonstrations of thespian dissent. Michael Moore led the charge when, after capping off the brilliant run of Bowling for Columbine with the award for Best Documentary Feature, he appeared on stage with his fellow nominees. Using every inch of his national prime time real estate, the perennial outsider launched into a blustery tirade, almost completed before the band began to play over him. "I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to - they're here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much." Even better was his post-Oscar press conference which can be viewed through the Oscar site [http://www.oscar.com/oscarnight/winners/win_32297.html]. Of course, there were other notable mentions and references to the war. But one that really deserves mention is that of Best Actor winner, Adrien Brody. For those who have not seen his devastating performance in The Pianist, it was one of those rare artistic expressions that are able personify a generation's pain and loss, in this case, from the ravages of war. And so it was not surprising that he would want to use his time to make some mention of the crisis in Iraq. The only difference was that Adrien, wary of the device that conquered Michael Moore's speech, simply commanded the music to stop. "And you know, wait one second. One second, please one second. Cut it out, cut it out. I get one shot at this. I'm sorry. I didn't say more than five names, I don't think, but. This is, you know, it fills me with great joy, but I am also filled with a lot of sadness tonight because I am accepting an award at such a strange time. And you know my experiences of making this film made me very aware of the sadness and the dehumanization of people at times of war. And the repercussions of war. And whatever you believe in, if it's God or Allah, may he watch over you and let's pray for a peaceful and swift resolution. Thank you. And I have a friend from Queens who's a soldier in Kuwait right now, Tommy Zarabinski, and I hope you and your boys make it back real soon. God bless you guys. I love you. Thank you very much." o o o #2. http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/ The Online Beat by John Nichols "Shoot Movies, Not Iraqis" 03/24/2003 @ 01:03am Well, we can rest assured that the Academy Awards voting is not rigged. Going into Sunday night's Oscars' ceremony, it was a safe bet that, if the people who run the movie-industry's annual prize patrol had their druthers, anti-war filmmaker Michael Moore would not have gotten anywhere near a microphone. Moore, who wore a badge reading, "Shoot Movies, Not Iraqis," when he accepted an Independent Spirit Award the night before, had promised that if he won an Oscar he would use his acceptance speech to make an issue of Bush's war. With right-wing talk radio hosts and members of the Congressional Yahoo Caucus already ranting and roaring about unpatriotic celebrities, the pressure was on to avoid controversy. But, to a greater extent than just about anyone in Hollywood, Moore embraces controversy. And the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences voters who decided the winner of the best documentary feature competition embraced Moore's "Bowling for Columbine," a hilarious and haunting examination of gun violence, poverty and the media in America. The Academy voters gave the rabble-rousing filmmaker, author and activist an Oscar for his documentary -- as well as an opportunity to deliver 45-seconds of "message" to the world. Moore took the stage, and immediately took after Bush and the war in Iraq. Surrounded by his fellow nominees in the best documentary category, Moore announced, "They're here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or (the) fictition of Orange Alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush." As the packed auditorium at Hollywood's Kodak Theater erupted with a wild mix of applause and booing, Moore yelled: "Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you." He closed by referencing the international opposition to the U.S. attack on Iraq -- which includes everyone from religious leaders to country music stars. Addressing Bush, Moore said, "Any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up." Moore's was not the only anti-war voice heard at what may well have been the most politically-charged Academy Awards ceremony ever. Dozens of stars wore peace pins and Artists United to Win Without War badges. As he introduced a song from the film "Frida," which tells the story of radical artist Frida Kahlo, actor Gael Garcia Bernal interrupted his scripted remarks to say, "The necessity for peace in the world is not a dream. It is a reality, and we are not alone. If Frida was alive, she would be on our side, against war." Actress Barbra Streisand defended free speech rights. Actress Susan Sarandon flashed a peace sign as she appeared on the stage. Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, an outspoken foe of the war who won the best original screenplay award for his film "Talk to Her," dedicated his Oscar "to all the people that are raising their voices in favor of peace, respect of human rights, democracy and international legality." And Nicole Kidman, who won the best actress Oscar for playing Virginia Woolf in "The Hours," spoke of the pain of "families losing people" in a time of war. Actor Adrien Brody, who won the best actor Oscar for her performance in the Holocaust-themed film "The Pianist," expressed his great joy at the unexpected honor. He then insisted on a bit more time to say, "I am also filled with a lot of sadness tonight because I am accepting an award at such a strange time. And you know my experiences of making this film made me very aware of the sadness and the dehumanization of people at times of war. And the repercussions of war. And whatever you believe in, if it's God or Allah, may he watch over you and let's pray for a peaceful and swift resolution." Accepting the best supporting actor award for his role in the film "Adaptation," actor Chris Cooper closed his speech with a succinct message: "In light of all the troubles in the world, I wish us all -- peace." From nanhi_kali at yahoo.com Mon Mar 24 17:46:16 2003 From: nanhi_kali at yahoo.com (Nandini Chandra) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 04:16:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Child City Cinema In-Reply-To: <20030315165858.32491.qmail@webmail8.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <20030324121616.79799.qmail@web41213.mail.yahoo.com> This is technically my first posting. As they say better late...! Nandini The common image of the country is now an image of the past, and the common image of the city an image of the future�(Raymond Williams, The Country and the City, 1973, p.297) I select two films in which the theme of the child lost in the city (Bombay) is explored as a central strand. These are K. A. Abbas� Munna (1954) and Chetan Anand�s Aakhri Khat (1966). Briefly, Munna is about a five-year-old boy played by Romi who leaves the oppressive walls of his orphanage to avowedly explore new relationships in the city. What is a mother/father/brother/sister are questions he routinely asks of the various characters in the film. Aakhri Khat (or AK) is about the wanderings of a fifteen-month-old infant (Bunty) who has recently lost his mother. His unwed mother(Indrani Mukherjee), a hill tribal had come to the city to leave him with the upper class father (Rajesh Khanna) as she knew she was going to die very soon. The urge to prove that human beings are all good and there is innocence at the base is crucial to the unleashing of children in the city in the IPTA seeped films of the 1950s. While the city ensnares the child, the child sanctifies the city, converting it into an idyllic enclave by virtue of his indifference to the many dangers. For example, in Munna, the modernity of the city is negotiated by the fact that its streets are inhabited by the motley, which largely consists of the poor. They may be pick pockets, petty cheats or drunks, but faced with the guilelessness of the child, all are revealed to have a golden heart. Even the most ruthless black marketeer relents when confronted with the truth of the child. In AK however, danger exists in a maze of roads. There are neither any Dickensian begging rackets nor any throat-slitting rogues on the prowl. The street folk too have been depersonalised. The icecandy man greets the child by saying, �tu dobara aa gaya, agli baar paise ke bina nahin doonga�. The women he chases deluding them to be his mother, seem amused, but are kept free of maternal longing. In fact, a pair of lovers with balloons in their hands whom the child accosts, pass by laughing without parting with their balloons. Throughout the film, the child is not touched or embraced. Only under the dire circumstance of the train passing over him while he is asleep on the rail tracks, does the linesman pick him up. This deprivation of the human touch is deliberate as the only attempt at pathos is created when the dead mother sings about the child bereft of the mother�s god or lap. Even when he seeks out his mother�s statue in the homecoming climax, the father relishes the act of the child�s play with the mother�s breasts and stops his girlfriend from picking him up. Considering the fact that the film is partly about the father�s mission to rid him of the guilt at having deserted his wife and the drawn out agony of recovering the lost son is seen as redemptive, this may be a way of showing relief. But the gesture also attests to the awareness that the experience of the city roads have left the child unscathed. Munna on the contrary meets with willing parents everywhere. The world is full of mothers and fathers and Munna is equally eager to adopt them. He sleeps with them, is held by them and becomes a part of their lives until some larger consideration leads him away. In fact, he even spends a night with his real mother without any special sentimentality or epiphanic recognition. He leaves her as he realises that she will go hungry in order to keep him fed. In AK, the child is bereft of this precociousness that characterises the older child in the 1954 films (Jagriti, Boot Polish and Ferry). This is because he is still an infant and can�t speak. And precocity is above all a verbal quality, closely linked with the ability to ask fundamental questions in a style, which consists in drawing one�s breath inwards and being wide eyed. The fundamental questions (Ma kya hoti hai, Baap kya hota hai etc.) expose the less than perfect adults to the gap between the ideal and the murky reality as it were. In AK, the moral conscience is verbalised by the police inspector who berates and bullies the recalcitrant father, who has deserted his pregnant village wife, into an acceptance of moral responsibility. In both films however, one hardly finds any trace of the fear that the child may be stolen leave alone of the sexual ogre that lurks in dark corners. Evil, which oils the axle of children�s genres is pointedly absent from these social realist narratives. Traffic is the evil, if at all. It is as if motors have their own volition, which is at odds with the child�s rhythm, even though to the current viewer, the roads invariably appear evacuated and quaint. In AK, the city with its railway lines, intersections, traffic snarls, cross-connecting lanes, flyovers and accidents is conjured up with the help of the top angle to convey the impression of a labyrinth that has the power to engulf the child. The accent is on diagonal and perpendicular movements to produce the city as a grid. For instance, the search for the child is always conducted from a moving vehicle, either the father�s convertible or the police jeep. Again the low angle shots help to convey the ensnarement of the child in a melee or a throng of legs. In a way, the child is retracing his mother�s footsteps. As a pregnant woman in search of her lover, she has already faced the cruelty of the streets. But the alarm bells that ring when the hero goes in search of her are different from the ones which accompanies the search for the child. Her wanderings amid the citylights are far more menacing. Her struggles to gain shelter, give birth and procure food for her child and herself are shrouded in mystery probably to conceal the fact that she may have resorted to prostitution. She is rejected precisely because her tribal habit proclaims her subaltern servant status. Therefore she makes doubly sure that her son is dressed nattily so as not to embarrass his father. In fact, she calls herself his mama, not ma. In Munna, we are told by an overly precocious Baby Naaz that the difference between ma and mummy is the difference between the real as opposed to the evil step mother. And finally Munna has to choose his ma over his rich mummy, even though the latter is not at all step-motherish. Munna�s ma played appropriately by Tripti Mitra is socially justified as her desertion of her child has taken place in the context of famine and her survival, as a daily wage labourer makes it difficult for her to go back to retrieve her son. Therefore the biological �ma ki mamta� is given a premium and her claims on her son triumph even as other mothers and fathers prove equally maternal and more materially capable. The child is technically not lost. We are introduced to the child�s peregrinations through the city at a moment when the parents have simultaneously become aware of the presence of the child in the city. So the narrative of loss is from the point of view of the adults. While the child�s wanderings is accompanied on the sound track by the mouth organ, jaltarang, tabla or the sitar, the search of the hunting parent, who is continuously missing the child by inches or seconds, is conducted with heavy drumbeats or shrill violin notes. This is punitive as far as the parents are concerned, but for the child it has exploratory possibilities in the form of yet another adventure. The child is thus guarded by secular shrines, fed by street vendors and the plenty of the city, even though this may be in the form of leftovers. The child may be perpetually hungry, but he does not have to starve. Given the IPTA framework, scavenging is imbued with a sheen of innocent respectability. The child more likely enamours himself to strangers and thus derives food and lodging, but he never begs. The child protagonists are thus haloed creatures distinguished by the fact of their clothes and looks, which in a Gandhian turn is supposed to convey their moral integrity. Physically, the cherubic look, large expressive eyes and an elfin structure enhanced by loose baggy clothes out of which their thin arms and legs stick out was the preferred ideal of the 1950s embodied by Master Romi and Daisy Irani. However, in Anand�s film, the infant is not merely cherubic. He is well endowed. His fat is moreover enhanced by his tight fitting clothes, and his unbalanced toddling is a precursor to the norm of cuteness established for bourgeois childhood in the late 1970s and 80s a la the Glaxo baby. While Munna touches and changes the lives of all those he comes in contact with, and returns to the street in a gesture symbolic of the possible transformation of the nation along democratic and secular lines, Bunty�s role is confined to the redeeming of middle class guilt that becomes necessary as the bourgeois national dream can be realised only when certain aspects of the street and village life are exorcised. The village is strictly sylvan and its inhabitants will not be tolerated outside. The street is an unfeeling place and the bourgeois child needs must have a home even as this home is shown derisively as a place where children have to be cajoled, petted and pampered by their grandparents and servants into eating their meals, while little Bunty eats mud. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Tue Mar 25 01:49:14 2003 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 15:19:14 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] NO BUSINESS AS USUAL Message-ID: > >An ad-hoc coaltion of anti-war groups is planning a massive non-violent >civil disobedience at 8 am on Thursday, March 27. > >The group agreed to target the media/government collusion that is promoting >this war to further corporate interests. The Rockefeller Center area was >chosen as the target since many media and corporations have offices there >or >nearby. > >The plan is for a massive die-in on 5th Avenue at Rock Center, with >coordinated actions planned by affinity groups throughout the city. Spread >the word as widely as possible - a flyer will follow shortly. A website is >being established at www.M27coalition.org tonight. > >The action will take place near 5th Ave. and 50th Sts. There will also be >space for a legal protest at the action. A pre-action meeting is planned >for Weds evening, March 26, location to be announced. > >Spread this email to all your lists! More to follow. > _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail From sanjayb at hotpop.com Tue Mar 25 02:12:17 2003 From: sanjayb at hotpop.com (Sanjay Bhangar) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 02:12:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] anti-war/anti-cnn protest in bombay on 26th... Message-ID: <003f01c2f245$df85fa80$870e0a0a@IDLI> Hey, Enough is enough. The war has started, people are being maimed, the oil for blood campaign is in full-swing. What is also happening is people are waking up - millions of people from around the World are taking to the streets, doing their bit in saying, NO, we will not, as a civilization, accept this unjust war. We are a group of students in Bombay who feel that it would just be wrong and immoral not to do something, to stand for what we believe to be right. We also believe that possibly the only way there can be real change, the only way people can realize the magnitude of the crimes being commited in the name of "freedom", is if they get real information, and not propaganda being disguised as "news" on CNN. So, here's the plan, we hope as many of you can make it... We meet outside St. Xavier's College at 11 AM on the 26th - do carry signs, flyers you may want to distribute, uhh.. anything really.. The idea is to walk to different media houses (TOI, Indian Express, Mid-Day, etc.) and on the way, distribute flyers, show signs and talk to people about alternative sources of information, online and otherwise, and basically appeal to people to turn off their propaganda sets... Below is just a few examples of websites that do offer alternative information and some "real" news... by no means a complete listing... www.indymedia.org www.whatreallyhappened.com www.unknownnews.net www.iraqjournal.org www.truthout.org www.antiwar.com www.commondreams.org ok, i'll stop here... but do explore, find your own spaces... "If you watch CNN for ten minutes, you'll begin to believe that America is doing what they do for the 'greater good' of humanity. If you can get yourself to watch it for an hour, you might want to congratulate Bush on his excellent policies. You'll never know how many innocent people have been killed, how many homes have been blasted into oblivion, how many children are in hospital wards fighting for a life that might not have any future at all." -A.S.A.P (Associaion of Students Against Propoganda) From aiindex at mnet.fr Tue Mar 25 04:02:29 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 23:32:29 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Muzamil Jaleel - Midnight massacre pushes Valley to brink Message-ID: The Indian Express, March 25, 2003 Midnight massacre pushes Valley to brink 24 Kashmiri Pandits shot outside a police outpost Muzamil Jaleel Nadimarg (pulwama), March 24: To the milestones in the Valley's blood-drenched road, add one more: Nadimarg. Exactly three years and four days after the Chittisinghpora massacre, terror sneaked in at midnight again in this remote village in south Kashmir, dragged out the sleeping minority Hindus, 11 men, 11 women and two infants and sprayed them with bullets. The massacre, coming a day after the killing of moderate Hizbul leader Majid Dar, has not only shattered the three-month-old calm since the Mufti government took charge, it also threatens to push the Valley once again to its familiar brink. So gruesome was this killing that even in a place where trauma and tragedy have become cliches, everyone, from the media to the administration, was searching for adjectives. Consider this: * Suraj had gone to sleep after celebrating his third birthday. His mother, among those who was asked to come out and fall in line, tried to hide him behind her. The first bullet got the mother, the second his father, then another crushed Suraj's right toe, shearing off three fingers. One and a half hours later, he died crying. * Monu was just 2-year-old. The bullets had made sieve of his chest. His three-month old brother is the only survivor in the family. His parents too were killed next to him. * Pritima, a 23-year-old woman who could not walk because of a disability, was dragged out and shot dead. * Mohan Lal Bhat, 19, spent the day today looking at his father, mother, sister and uncle, all covered in white, their names scrawled in blue ink on the cotton. A Muslim woman offering water to the family member of a Kashmiri Pandit killed on Monday. Javeed Shah * The first two bullets hit Chunni Lal in his thigh and arm. He fell down and found himself in a pile of bodies. As the guns fell silent, the gunmen came to check for any living. In a pool of blood, he held his breath, feigned dead and thus survived to tell the story. * Phoola Devi (60) slipped away from the line and hid herself in the bushes just metres from the massacre site. Gripped with fear, she had to watch her husband Bansilal and 22-year-old daughter Rajni die crying for help. The irony is that this Kashmiri Hindu hamlet had a police picket too and the massacre took place right in its compound. Out of the nine policemen supposed to guard the Hindus, three were absent while the other six were sleeping. In fact, the unidentified killers had first barged into their picket, collected their guns and kept them locked inside till half of the residents were done to death. ''I was about to go to sleep when there was a knock at the door. My mother opened the door and there were three men wearing army uniforms (olive green), helmets and bullet-proof vests. Two of them were bearded and they asked everybody to come out,'' said Mohan Lal Bhat, whose entire family was wiped out in the massacre. ''One of them spoke in Kashmiri which roused suspicion and when my father tried to resist, they dragged him out. Then they dragged out my mother, sister and uncle. I heard the commotion on the door and hid behind a tin sheet upstairs,'' he said. Within 15 minutes, Bhat said, he heard the gun shots and wails. ''I spent the entire night there in shock and disbelief''. Eyewitnesses revealed that a group of 12 men armed with AK rifles and attired in olive green uniforms, bullet-proof vests and helmets, swooped on this remote village, 80 km south of Srinagar, at around 9.45 last night. ''They told us that they were armymen and had to search the houses. They asked everybody to come out,'' said Phoola Devi. ''I came out with my husband and daughter. But when they asked us to line up in front of the police picket, I slipped away towards the bushes. Within seconds, they started firing indiscriminately,'' she said. ''And when they (the gunmen) left the village, I looked for my family. My husband and daughter were lying dead but my son Chandji had also escaped. He had hidden inside the house.'' In Chittisinghpra, a group of unidentified gunmen had swooped on a Sikh village, lined up 36 men and shot them dead on March, 20, 2000. There was no change in the modus operandi - the only difference is that this time around, the killers did not even spare the women and children. The village was full of people as the entire Muslim neighbourhood had come to join the mourning. There was also a beeline of politicians from government to the separatist parties. The first to arrive was the Pradesh Congress chief Ghulam Nabi Azad who put the blame squarely on Pakistan and promised strengthening of security to the Kashmiri Pandits still living in the Valley. ''The security provided to the 9,000-odd Kashmiri Hindus who had not migrated in 1990 should be the priority of the government,'' he said. Senior Hurriyat Conference leader and JKLF chief Yasin Malik had also come along with another separatist leader Nayeem Khan. ''It is a shameful act against humanity. It is brutality and nobody can accept such a heineous crime,'' he said. ' 'We want an impartial probe into this heineous massacre and the Hurriyat Conference will fully co-operate,'' he said. He said that the problem of Kashmiri Pandits has nothing to do with Kashmir dispute. ''They are an essential part of Kashmir. This tragedy is a human issue and has nothing to do with any politics''. Another senior separatist leader Shabir Shah arrived in the afternoon as the police and local administration were waiting for Chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. He immediately took over and soon the villagers -both Hindu and Muslim - started shouting slogans of unity and against the unidentified killers. There was a lot of commotion in the crowd when Mufti arrived along with his daughter Mehbooba and senior ministers of his administration. Mufti called the massacre a ''major setback to the peace process.'' As the bodies were being taken for the funeral, an old man was bitterly crying on the verandah of his house. ''I have not just lost my family. I feel my roots have ditched me. I will never belong to Kashmir again,'' he said. From mi320 at nyu.edu Tue Mar 25 04:02:06 2003 From: mi320 at nyu.edu (Maham Iftikhar) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 17:32:06 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Opposition from Pentagon for UN role in reconstructing post-war Iraq Message-ID: <2ad7212af9cd.2af9cd2ad721@homemail.nyu.edu> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030324/9ed866ee/attachment.html From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue Mar 25 09:47:14 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 09:47:14 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] American strategy in Middle East Message-ID: Dreyfuss' article gives good background to the strategic ambitions of the US in the Middle East since the 1970s. R The Thirty-Year Itch http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/10/ma_273_01.html Three decades ago, in the throes of the energy crisis, Washington's hawks conceived of a strategy for US control of the Persian Gulf's oil. Now, with the same strategists firmly in control of the White House, the Bush administration is playing out their script for global dominance. By Robert Dreyfuss March/April 2003 Issue If you were to spin the globe and look for real estate critical to building an American empire, your first stop would have to be the Persian Gulf. The desert sands of this region hold two of every three barrels of oil in the world -- Iraq's reserves alone are equal, by some estimates, to those of Russia, the United States, China, and Mexico combined. For the past 30 years, the Gulf has been in the crosshairs of an influential group of Washington foreign-policy strategists, who believe that in order to ensure its global dominance, the United States must seize control of the region and its oil. Born during the energy crisis of the 1970s and refined since then by a generation of policymakers, this approach is finding its boldest expression yet in the Bush administration -- which, with its plan to invade Iraq and install a regime beholden to Washington, has moved closer than any of its predecessors to transforming the Gulf into an American protectorate. In the geopolitical vision driving current U.S. policy toward Iraq, the key to national security is global hegemony -- dominance over any and all potential rivals. To that end, the United States must not only be able to project its military forces anywhere, at any time. It must also control key resources, chief among them oil -- and especially Gulf oil. To the hawks who now set the tone at the White House and the Pentagon, the region is crucial not simply for its share of the U.S. oil supply (other sources have become more important over the years), but because it would allow the United States to maintain a lock on the world's energy lifeline and potentially deny access to its global competitors. The administration "believes you have to control resources in order to have access to them," says Chas Freeman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush. "They are taken with the idea that the end of the Cold War left the United States able to impose its will globally -- and that those who have the ability to shape events with power have the duty to do so. It's ideology." Iraq, in this view, is a strategic prize of unparalleled importance. Unlike the oil beneath Alaska's frozen tundra, locked away in the steppes of central Asia, or buried under stormy seas, Iraq's crude is readily accessible and, at less than $1.50 a barrel, some of the cheapest in the world to produce. Already, over the past several months, Western companies have been meeting with Iraqi exiles to try to stake a claim to that bonanza. But while the companies hope to cash in on an American-controlled Iraq, the push to remove Saddam Hussein hasn't been driven by oil executives, many of whom are worried about the consequences of war. Nor are Vice President Cheney and President Bush, both former oilmen, looking at the Gulf simply for the profits that can be earned there. The administration is thinking bigger, much bigger, than that. "Controlling Iraq is about oil as power, rather than oil as fuel," says Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of Resource Wars. "Control over the Persian Gulf translates into control over Europe, Japan, and China. It's having our hand on the spigot." Ever since the oil shocks of the 1970s, the United States has steadily been accumulating military muscle in the Gulf by building bases, selling weaponry, and forging military partnerships. Now, it is poised to consolidate its might in a place that will be a fulcrum of the world's balance of power for decades to come. At a stroke, by taking control of Iraq, the Bush administration can solidify a long-running strategic design. "It's the Kissinger plan," says James Akins, a former U.S. diplomat. "I thought it had been killed, but it's back." Akins learned a hard lesson about the politics of oil when he served as a U.S. envoy in Kuwait and Iraq, and ultimately as ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the oil crisis of 1973 and '74. At his home in Washington, D.C., shelves filled with Middle Eastern pottery and other memorabilia cover the walls, souvenirs of his years in the Foreign Service. Nearly three decades later, he still gets worked up while recalling his first encounter with the idea that the United States should be prepared to occupy Arab oil-producing countries. In 1975, while Akins was ambassador in Saudi Arabia, an article headlined "Seizing Arab Oil" appeared in Harper's. The author, who used the pseudonym Miles Ignotus, was identified as "a Washington-based professor and defense consultant with intimate links to high-level U.S. policymakers." The article outlined, as Akins puts it, "how we could solve all our economic and political problems by taking over the Arab oil fields [and] bringing in Texans and Oklahomans to operate them." Simultaneously, a rash of similar stories appeared in other magazines and newspapers. "I knew that it had to have been the result of a deep background briefing," Akins says. "You don't have eight people coming up with the same screwy idea at the same time, independently. "Then I made a fatal mistake," Akins continues. "I said on television that anyone who would propose that is either a madman, a criminal, or an agent of the Soviet Union." Soon afterward, he says, he learned that the background briefing had been conducted by his boss, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Akins was fired later that year. Kissinger has never acknowledged having planted the seeds for the article. But in an interview with Business Week that same year, he delivered a thinly veiled threat to the Saudis, musing about bringing oil prices down through "massive political warfare against countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran to make them risk their political stability and maybe their security if they did not cooperate." In the 1970s, America's military presence in the Gulf was virtually nil, so the idea of seizing control of its oil was a pipe dream. Still, starting with the Miles Ignotus article, and a parallel one by conservative strategist and Johns Hopkins University professor Robert W. Tucker in Commentary, the idea began to gain favor among a feisty group of hardline, pro-Israeli thinkers, especially the hawkish circle aligned with Democratic senators Henry Jackson of Washington and Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. Eventually, this amalgam of strategists came to be known as "neoconservatives," and they played important roles in President Reagan's Defense Department and at think tanks and academic policy centers in the 1980s. Led by Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, they now occupy several dozen key posts in the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department. At the top, they are closest to Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who have been closely aligned since both men served in the White House under President Ford in the mid-1970s. They also clustered around Cheney when he served as secretary of defense during the Gulf War in 1991. Throughout those years, and especially after the Gulf War, U.S. forces have steadily encroached on the Gulf and the surrounding region, from the Horn of Africa to Central Asia. In preparing for an invasion and occupation of Iraq, the administration has been building on the steps taken by military and policy planners over the past quarter century. Step one: The Rapid Deployment Force In 1973 and '74, and again in 1979, political upheavals in the Middle East led to huge spikes in oil prices, which rose fifteenfold over the decade and focused new attention on the Persian Gulf. In January 1980, President Carter effectively declared the Gulf a zone of U.S. influence, especially against encroachment from the Soviet Union. "Let our position be absolutely clear," he said, announcing what came to be known as the Carter Doctrine. "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." To back up this doctrine, Carter created the Rapid Deployment Force, an "over-the-horizon" military unit capable of rushing several thousand U.S. troops to the Gulf in a crisis. Step two: The Central Command In the 1980s, under President Reagan, the United States began pressing countries in the Gulf for access to bases and support facilities. The Rapid Deployment Force was transformed into the Central Command, a new U.S. military command authority with responsibility for the Gulf and the surrounding region from eastern Africa to Afghanistan. Reagan tried to organize a "strategic consensus" of anti-Soviet allies, including Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. The United States sold billions of dollars' worth of arms to the Saudis in the early '80s, from AWACS surveillance aircraft to F-15 fighters. And in 1987, at the height of the war between Iraq and Iran, the U.S. Navy created the Joint Task Force-Middle East to protect oil tankers plying the waters of the Gulf, thus expanding a U.S. naval presence of just three or four warships into a flotilla of 40-plus aircraft carriers, battleships, and cruisers. Step three: The Gulf War Until 1991, the United States was unable to persuade the Arab Gulf states to allow a permanent American presence on their soil. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, while maintaining its close relationship with the United States, began to diversify its commercial and military ties; by the time U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman arrived there in the late Ô80s, the United States had fallen to fourth place among arms suppliers to the kingdom. "The United States was being supplanted even in commercial terms by the British, the French, even the Chinese," Freeman notes. All that changed with the Gulf War. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states no longer opposed a direct U.S. military presence, and American troops, construction squads, arms salesmen, and military assistance teams rushed in. "The Gulf War put Saudi Arabia back on the map and revived a relationship that had been severely attrited," says Freeman. In the decade after the war, the United States sold more than $43 billion worth of weapons, equipment, and military construction projects to Saudi Arabia, and $16 billion more to Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, according to data compiled by the Federation of American Scientists. Before Operation Desert Storm, the U.S. military enjoyed the right to stockpile, or "pre-position," military supplies only in the comparatively remote Gulf state of Oman on the Indian Ocean. After the war, nearly every country in the region began conducting joint military exercises, hosting U.S. naval units and Air Force squadrons, and granting the United States pre-positioning rights. "Our military presence in the Middle East has increased dramatically," then-Defense Secretary William Cohen boasted in 1995. Another boost to the U.S. presence was the unilateral imposition, in 1991, of no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq, enforced mostly by U.S. aircraft from bases in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. "There was a massive buildup, especially around Incirlik in Turkey, to police the northern no-fly zone, and around [the Saudi capital of] Riyadh, to police the southern no-fly zone," says Colin Robinson of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank. A billion-dollar, high-tech command center was built by Saudi Arabia near Riyadh, and over the past two years the United States has secretly been completing another one in Qatar. The Saudi facilities "were built with capacities far beyond the ability of Saudi Arabia to use them," Robinson says. "And that's exactly what Qatar is doing now." Step four: Afghanistan The war in Afghanistan -- and the open-ended war on terrorism, which has led to U.S strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere -- further boosted America's strength in the region. The administration has won large increases in the defense budget -- which now stands at about $400 billion, up from just over $300 billion in 2000 -- and a huge chunk of that budget, perhaps as much as $60 billion, is slated to support U.S. forces in and around the Persian Gulf. Military facilities on the perimeter of the Gulf, from Djibouti in the Horn of Africa to the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, have been expanded, and a web of bases and training missions has extended the U.S. presence deep into central Asia. From Afghanistan to the landlocked former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, U.S. forces have established themselves in an area that had long been in Russia's sphere of influence. Oil-rich in its own right, and strategically vital, central Asia is now the eastern link in a nearly continuous chain of U.S. bases, facilities, and allies stretching from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea far into the Asian hinterland. Step five: Iraq Removing Saddam Hussein could be the final piece of the puzzle, cementing an American imperial presence. It is "highly possible" that the United States will maintain military bases in Iraq, Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative strategist, recently told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "We will probably need a major concentration of forces in the Middle East over a long period of time," he said. "When we have economic problems, it's been caused by disruptions in our oil supply. If we have a force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies." Kagan, along with William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, is a founder of the think tank Project for the New American Century, an assembly of foreign-policy hawks whose supporters include the Pentagon's Perle, New Republic publisher Martin Peretz, and former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey. Among the group's affiliates in the Bush administration are Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz; I. Lewis Libby, the vice president's chief of staff; Elliott Abrams, the Middle East director at the National Security Council; and Zalmay Khalilzad, the White House liaison to the Iraqi opposition groups. Kagan's group, tied to a web of similar neoconservative, pro-Israeli organizations, represents the constellation of thinkers whose ideological affinity was forged in the Nixon and Ford administrations. To Akins, who has just returned from Saudi Arabia, it's a team that looks all too familiar, seeking to implement the plan first outlined back in 1975. "It'll be easier once we have Iraq," he says. "Kuwait, we already have. Qatar and Bahrain, too. So it's only Saudi Arabia we're talking about, and the United Arab Emirates falls into place." LAST SUMMER, Perle provided a brief glimpse into his circle's thinking when he invited rand Corporation strategist Laurent Murawiec to make a presentation to his Defense Policy Board, a committee of former senior officials and generals that advises the Pentagon on big-picture policy ideas. Murawiec's closed-door briefing provoked a storm of criticism when it was leaked to the media; he described Saudi Arabia as the "kernel of evil," suggested that the Saudi royal family should be replaced or overthrown, and raised the idea of a U.S. occupation of Saudi oil fields. He ultimately lost his job when rand decided he was too controversial. Murawiec is part of a Washington school of thought that views virtually all of the nations in the Gulf as unstable "failed states" and maintains that only the United States has the power to forcibly reorganize and rebuild them. In this view, the arms systems and bases that were put in place to defend the region also provide a ready-made infrastructure for taking over countries and their oil fields in the event of a crisis. The Defense Department likely has contingency plans to occupy Saudi Arabia, says Robert E. Ebel, director of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank whose advisers include Kissinger; former Defense Secretary and CIA director James Schlesinger; and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national security adviser. "If something happens in Saudi Arabia," Ebel says, "if the ruling family is ousted, if they decide to shut off the oil supply, we have to go in." Two years ago, Ebel, a former mid-level CIA official, oversaw a CSIS task force that included several members of Congress as well as representatives from industry including ExxonMobil, Arco, BP, Shell, Texaco, and the American Petroleum Institute. Its report, "The Geopolitics of Energy Into the 21st Century," concluded that the world will find itself dependent for many years on unstable oil-producing nations, around which conflicts and wars are bound to swirl. "Oil is high-profile stuff," Ebel says. "Oil fuels military power, national treasuries, and international politics. It is no longer a commodity to be bought and sold within the confines of traditional energy supply and demand balances. Rather, it has been transformed into a determinant of well-being, of national security, and of international power." As vital as the Persian Gulf is now, its strategic importance is likely to grow exponentially in the next 20 years. Nearly one out of every three barrels of oil reserves in the world lie under just two countries: Saudi Arabia (with 259 billion barrels of proven reserves) and Iraq (112 billion). Those figures may understate Iraq's largely unexplored reserves, which according to U.S. government estimates may hold as many as 432 billion barrels. With supplies in many other regions, especially the United States and the North Sea, nearly exhausted, oil from Saudi Arabia and Iraq is becoming ever more critical -- a fact duly noted in the administration's National Energy Policy, released in 2001 by a White House task force. By 2020, the Gulf will supply between 54 percent and 67 percent of the world's crude, the document said, making the region "vital to U.S. interests." According to G. Daniel Butler, an oil-markets analyst at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Saudi Arabia's production capacity will rise from its current 9.4 million barrels a day to 22.1 million over the next 17 years. Iraq, which in 2002 produced a mere 2 million barrels a day, "could easily be a double-digit producer by 2020," says Butler. U.S. strategists aren't worried primarily about America's own oil supplies; for decades, the United States has worked to diversify its sources of oil, with Venezuela, Nigeria, Mexico, and other countries growing in importance. But for Western Europe and Japan, as well as the developing industrial powers of eastern Asia, the Gulf is all-important. Whoever controls it will maintain crucial global leverage for decades to come. Today, notes the EIA's Butler, two-thirds of Gulf oil goes to Western industrial nations. By 2015, according to a study by the CIA's National Intelligence Council, three-quarters of the Gulf's oil will go to Asia, chiefly to China. China's growing dependence on the Gulf could cause it to develop closer military and political ties with countries such as Iran and Iraq, according to the report produced by Ebel's CSIS task force. "They have different political interests in the Gulf than we do," Ebel says. "Is it to our advantage to have another competitor for oil in the Persian Gulf?" David Long, who served as a U.S. diplomat in Saudi Arabia and as chief of the Near East division in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research during the Reagan administration, likens the Bush administration's approach to the philosophy of Admiral Mahan, the 19th-century military strategist who advocated the use of naval power to create a global American empire. "They want to be the world's enforcer," he says. "It's a worldview, a geopolitical position. They say, 'We need hegemony in the region.'" UNTIL THE 1970s, the face of American power in the Gulf was the U.S. oil industry, led by Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, and Gulf, all of whom competed fiercely with Britain's BP and Anglo-Dutch Shell. But in the early '70s, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf states nationalized their oil industries, setting up state-run companies to run wells, pipelines, and production facilities. Not only did that enhance the power of opec, enabling that organization to force a series of sharp price increases, but it alarmed U.S. policymakers. Today, a growing number of Washington strategists are advocating a direct U.S. challenge to state-owned petroleum industries in oil-producing countries, especially the Persian Gulf. Think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and CSIS are conducting discussions about privatizing Iraq's oil industry. Some of them have put forward detailed plans outlining how Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other nations could be forced to open up their oil and gas industries to foreign investment. The Bush administration itself has been careful not to say much about what might happen to Iraq's oil. But State Department officials have had preliminary talks about the oil industry with Iraqi exiles, and there have been reports that the U.S. military wants to use at least part of the country's oil revenue to pay for the cost of military occupation. "One of the major problems with the Persian Gulf is that the means of production are in the hands of the state," Rob Sobhani, an oil-industry consultant, told an American Enterprise Institute conference last fall in Washington. Already, he noted, several U.S. oil companies are studying the possibility of privatization in the Gulf. Dismantling government-owned oil companies, Sobhani argued, could also force political changes in the region. "The beginning of liberal democracy can be achieved if you take the means of production out of the hands of the state," he said, acknowledging that Arabs would resist that idea. "It's going to take a lot of selling, a lot of marketing," he concluded. Just which companies would get to claim Iraq's oil has been a subject of much debate. After a war, the contracts that Iraq's state-owned oil company has signed with European, Russian, and Chinese oil firms might well be abrogated, leaving the field to U.S. oil companies. "What they have in mind is denationalization, and then parceling Iraqi oil out to American oil companies," says Akins. "The American oil companies are going to be the main beneficiaries of this war." The would-be rulers of a post-Saddam Iraq have been thinking along the same lines. "American oil companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil," says Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, a group of aristocrats and wealthy Iraqis who fled the country when its repressive monarchy was overthrown in 1958. During a visit to Washington last fall, Chalabi held meetings with at least three major U.S. oil companies, trying to enlist their support. Similar meetings between Iraqi exiles and U.S. companies have also been taking place in Europe. "Iraqi exiles have approached us, saying, 'You can have our oil if we can get back in there,'" says R. Gerald Bailey, who headed Exxon's Middle East operations until 1997. "All the major American companies have met with them in Paris, London, Brussels, all over. They're all jockeying for position. You can't ignore it, but you've got to do it on the QT. And you can't wait till it gets too far along." But the companies are also anxious about the consequences of war, according to many experts, oil-company executives, and former State Department officials. "The oil companies are caught in the middle," says Bailey. Executives fear that war could create havoc in the region, turning Arab states against the United States and Western oil companies. On the other hand, should a U.S. invasion of Iraq be successful, they want to be there when the oil is divvied up. Says David Long, the former U.S. diplomat, "It's greed versus fear." Ibrahim Oweiss, a Middle East specialist at Georgetown University who coined the term "petrodollar" and has also been a consultant to Occidental and BP, has been closely watching the cautious maneuvering by the companies. "I know that the oil companies are scared about the outcome of this," he says. "They are not at all sure this is in the best interests of the oil industry." Anne Joyce, an editor at the Washington-based Middle East Policy Council who has spoken privately to top Exxon officials, says it's clear that most oil-industry executives "are afraid" of what a war in the Persian Gulf could mean in the long term -- especially if tensions in the region spiral out of control. "They see it as much too risky, and they are risk averse," she says. "They think it has 'fiasco' written all over it." From abshi at vsnl.com Mon Mar 24 10:29:56 2003 From: abshi at vsnl.com (Shilpa Phadke) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 09:59:56 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] People Against War Protest Meeting in Mumbai In-Reply-To: <20030323052515.14520.11722.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.20030324095956.009fb500@pop3.norton.antivirus> This was sent to me on another e-mail list and so am passing it on. Apologies for cross-postings. Shilpa People Against War Protest Meeting On 20th March 2003, the United States of America and other countries have launched a massive war crime against the people of Iraq. In the name of freedomMillions of ordinary men and women across the globe have protested spontaneously in huge numbersPeople Against War, a coalition of human rights and public interest groups, unions and concerned citizens in Mumbai, is organising a public meeting to say no to the war on Iraq Speakers: N. Ram, Editor, 'Frontline' Kapil Sibal, Senior Advocate & Member of Parliament Gulzar, Poet & Film Maker Javed Akhtar, Writer & Poet Thursday, 27th March 2003, 5.30 p.m, K.C College Hall, Churchgate, Mumbai Join us there. Remember - one more does make a difference From slumbug at rediffmail.com Tue Mar 25 11:44:06 2003 From: slumbug at rediffmail.com (slumbug) Date: 25 Mar 2003 06:14:06 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Martial Law Message-ID: <20030325061406.23096.qmail@webmail26.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030325/4b9f4db7/attachment.pl From slumbug at rediffmail.com Tue Mar 25 11:55:46 2003 From: slumbug at rediffmail.com (slumbug) Date: 25 Mar 2003 06:25:46 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Fwd: Wal-Mart Opens First 'All You Can Live' Township Message-ID: <20030325062546.7905.qmail@webmail24.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030325/c6dd1a73/attachment.pl From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Tue Mar 25 14:29:19 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 08:59:19 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Columbia University Faculty Teach-in on Iraq/ 26th March In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030325085919.22722.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> Hi For those of you in/around new york city... cheers Avishek _______________________________________________________ COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY FACULTY TEACH-IN ON IRAQ, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE WORLD Wednesday, March 26 Rotunda, Low Library 6 to 11 PM 116th Street/Broadway Campus (1/9 subway stop at 116th St) Topics include: War With Iraq; Civil Liberties at Home; the Presidency; America and the Middle East; Bush Doctrine; Pre-Emption; Media and the War; and more. Schedule subject to change. Speakers listed in order of appearance. 6:00 PM Jean COHEN * Ira KATZNELSON * Michael RATNER * Anders STEPHANSON * George FLETCHER * Brigitte NACOS 7:00 PM Hamid DABASHI * Zainab BAHRANI * Marc VAN DE MIEROOP * Alan BRINKLEY * Kimberle CRENSHAW * Bruce ROBBINS 8:00 PM Roger NORMAND * Barbara FIELDS * Yehouda SHENHAV * Gary SICK * Rosalind MORRIS * Larry RASMUSSEN 9:00 PM Brinkley MESSICK * George SALIBA * Todd GITLIN * Victoria DE GRAZIA * Jack SNYDER * Elizabeth BLACKMAR 10:00 PM Charles ARMSTRONG * Eric FONER * Patricia WILLIAMS * Robert PAXTON * Gerald NEUMAN * Brian BARRY More information: bcc14 at columbia.edu ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From penguinhead at linux-delhi.org Mon Mar 24 00:27:46 2003 From: penguinhead at linux-delhi.org (Pankaj Kaushal) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 00:27:46 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] speaking of this that and the other Message-ID: <20030323185746.GC7213@serpent.snakepit> I'm getting ready to invade Jacks house down the block, because I think Mr. Jack is going to attack me with illegal weapons. I know he has these illegal weapons because I sold them to him just a few years ago. I mean, I gave him the weapons so he could use them against the Joe next door to him. He killed lots of them nasty Joe, thank goodness. (I wonder if anyone thinks I might be partly to blame for the deaths of about half a million Joe children. Nah, probably not.) Back then, Mr. Jack seemed really really evil, but not as evil as the Joe, so I made friends with him. Anyhow, now my sister says she heard a rumor that he still has those weapons (though I haven't really seen them since I gave them to him). The cops checked his house and didn't find anything, but hey, the cops are obstructing justice by not doing exactly what I tell them to do. And don't forget, a robber invaded my home not so long ago. You never know, that Mr. Jack might be planning something with the robber's friends, even though he and those guys have never been on good terms. I know Mr. Jack hasn't done anything lately, but he's probably up to something. I guess that whole robber thing has me a bit freaked out and I have to do something. In any case, by wiping out Mr. Jack, while trying not to kill his children (though I expect quite a few to die in the invasion), I'll certainly be making my house safer. My idiot neighbors all pretty much think this is a bad idea for some reason though, but I've convinced about half my family and a few of my neighbors' heads of household that it's a good plan, and that's good enough for me. The bonus is, Mr. Jack has lots of food in his house. Our house doesn't have much food, but we eat like there's no tomorrow! His has a lot more food than mine. Some people actually say this home invasion is about food! But I assure you it's not. I told him he'd better not destroy any of his food while I invade though. I mean I DO WANT the food. Me and most of my buddies actually have a lot invested in the food business, so we'd certainly benefit from that food. But it's not the main reason. Anyhow, I'm sure the whole neighborhood will be safer with people like me going around killing the neighbors we think might attack us some day. Then again, thank goodness not everyone in the neighborhood takes the initiative to invade the homes of those who it feels threatened by! I mean, the Kareeyans up on North Street actually think I might attack them! Well, I did put them in a list of evil neighbors, the same list as the Jack' in fact. They want to talk to me about it, but I ain't interested in talkin'. I just don't like them. I know they have some serious badass weaponry in that house though. Let's hope that by not talking to them, and carrying through with my attack on the Jack', they'll get the message. -- What does this little button do? -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030324/fc135e50/attachment.bin From anilbhatia at indiatimes.com Sat Mar 22 18:05:05 2003 From: anilbhatia at indiatimes.com (anilbhatia) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 18:05:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Importance of your Vote Message-ID: <200303221201.RAA22791@WS0005.indiatimes.com> Amidst all this war mongering and protests, one message needs to be highlighted: the importance of your vote. Considering the way little Bush won his elections, every voter in Florida who believes in peace and liberty is regretting why he did not vote or put the stamp incorrectly. A few hunderd such votes are today resulting in wide spread deaths of innocents in Iraq. Let's all resolve that we shall vote in each elections so that voice of peace and prosperity is not crushed by the loud sound of fundamental rightists. Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com Buy the best in Movies at http://www.videos.indiatimes.com Bid for Air Tickets @ Re.1 on Air Sahara Flights. 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/20030322/d8ec8782/attachment.html From mklayman at leonardo.info Mon Mar 24 10:59:34 2003 From: mklayman at leonardo.info (Melinda Klayman) Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 21:29:34 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] LEONARDO CO-SPONSORS COMPOSING MESSAGES TO THE COSMOS: PARIS WORKSHOP Message-ID: PRESS RELEASE * * * FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 23, 2003 Contact: Douglas Vakoch Diane Richards Workshop Chair Public Information Officer SETI Institute SETI Institute Cell: 06 32 80 13 30 (France) Phone: (650) 960-4514(USA) altruism at seti.org drichards at seti.org LEONARDO CO-SPONSORS COMPOSING MESSAGES TO THE COSMOS: PARIS WORKSHOP A group of twenty artists, scientists, and scholars from the humanities will gather in Paris, March 23 and 24 (Sunday and Monday), to understand how we might communicate the idea of altruism to any intelligent civilizations that could be circling other stars. The workshop‹³Encoding Altruism: The Art and Science of Interstellar Message Composition²‹will focus on messages that could be transmitted by radio waves or laser pulses. These communication techniques reflect the methods used in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), including the world's most comprehensive search, Project Phoenix, being conducted by the SETI Institute. ³As SETI programs become increasingly powerful, we need to think seriously about what to do if we succeed. Should we reply? If so, what should we say?² asked chair of the workshop, Dr. Douglas Vakoch. ³How could we convey concepts as seemingly abstract as altruism or our sense of beauty?² Participants from a dozen countries will ponder these questions and other topics, including - Creating interactive interstellar messages. - Preparing for interstellar contact by studying animal communication. - Explaining the logic of altruism. - Conveying religious views of altruism through artificial languages. - Composing interstellar "music" inspired by the structure of DNA. More information including complete biographies and abstracts is available online at http://publish.seti.org/art_science/2003/ The workshop is being sponsored by the SETI Institute; Leonardo/OLATS (Leonardo Observatory for the Arts and TechnoSciences); the John Templeton Foundation; the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST); and the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Permanent SETI Study Group. END NOTE TO EDITORS: Participation is by invitation only. Interested journalists should contact workshop chair Douglas Vakoch (altruism at seti.org), cell 06 32 80 13 30 (in France). -- From emmanuel.videcoq at wanadoo.fr Mon Mar 24 22:09:02 2003 From: emmanuel.videcoq at wanadoo.fr (emmanuel.videcoq) Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 17:39:02 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] La revue Multitudes ouvre son nouveau site In-Reply-To: <003c01c2f223$bc27b050$bf7d3051@fineqbwjhzrx2i> Message-ID: La revue Multitudes met l'ensemble de ses archives en ligne, sur son nouveau site http://www.samizdat.net/multitudes Que vous soyez déjà lecteurs de la revue Multitudes ou non, ce site va vous intéresser. MULTITUDES WEB, c'est trois ans d'archives de la revue politique et culturelle Multitudes, avec des textes qui ont fait date sur la biopolitique, Spinoza, la nouvelle économie, le logiciel libre, Internet, le copyright, les luttes et les mouvements sociaux, l'Europe, le revenu garanti, l'art contemporain, la philosophie politique, Gabriel Tarde, les hackers, le capitalisme cognitif, la guerre, le cinéma, les féminismes... * Les numéros en ligne : l'accès à presque tous les articles publiés jusqu'ici, précédés de leurs résumés pour en faciliter la lisibilité : une boîte à outils théoriques au coeur des antagonismes de la mondialisation. * Une extension électronique de la revue papier : versions originales et traductions des textes publiés (textes en anglais, italien, espagnol,...), textes inédits, versions longues, débats préparatoires. * Un index des auteurs avec de courtes biographies. Vous pourrez communiquer avec les auteurs par e-mail grâce à un système qui permet de préserver le caractère privé de leurs adresses. * Les sommaires des prochains numéros. * Les archives de la revue Futur Antérieur : Multitudes est née du désir de reconduire une communauté de pensée qui s'était constituée autour de la revue Futur Antérieur, créée par J-M Vincent et Toni Negri. Le Web Multitudes mettra peu à peu à votre disposition les archives de cette revue qui avait permis de respirer un peu dans l'atmosphère étouffante des années 1990. MULTITUDES WEB, c'est aussi des infos et des liens: * la fiche d'identité de la revue, ses éditeurs et son comité de rédaction transnational. * des renseignements pratiques pour se procurer la revue et s'abonner. * l'association Multitudes : ses débats et ses initiatives. * des liens privilégiés vers nos sites préférés du Web, sites militants et théoriciens, sites de collectifs ayant écrit dans la revue... Grâce à une navigation fonctionnelle, développée sous SPIP, vous pourrez : - tracer votre chemin au coeur de la revue en utilisant le moteur de recherche interne, - parcourir les archives de la revue auteur par auteur, rubrique par rubrique, en attendant l'arrivée prochaine d'un accès par mots-clés, - communiquer avec les auteurs. From amitbasu55 at hotmail.com Tue Mar 25 10:40:31 2003 From: amitbasu55 at hotmail.com (Amit R Basu) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 05:10:31 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Rag-pickers of Delhi Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030325/b1836b17/attachment.html From ambarien at yahoo.co.uk Tue Mar 25 11:01:55 2003 From: ambarien at yahoo.co.uk (=?iso-8859-1?q?ambarien=20qadar?=) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 05:31:55 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Bhaisoon Wali Gali. Zakir Nagar. (Independent Research posting) Message-ID: <20030325053156.51257.qmail@web20104.mail.yahoo.com> Bhaisoon wali Gali. (The lane of Buffaloes)17.02.03 Gali number 7. Zakir Nagar Yo! Net. Inaugurated on 14.02.03 with two banners, two heavy yellow lights, and sounds (feet, voices and laughter) of young boys and men in the gali. Only two houses away from mine ( 119/ 7). Number 576/ 7. The Net with a difference @ 10/ hr.. Kahkashan also lives in the same Gali. Sameen (her daughter) thought this was the first of its kind in Zakir Nagar : private cabins- the computer and you. Sameen hates someone peeping at her screen. Both of us decided to go together. Hired a system There was also a system of getting registered with the address and name before sitting on a system. This "organization" made her feel as if she was in an airport or a cyberden in Vasant Kunj. Mails kept on bouncing back. There was a knock at our cabin door. The owner was gazing fixedly at our screen before we could minimize it and complain. Ten minutes later there was another knock.. The owner’s neck popped over the cabin door. He said, " I’d be too happy if your mails are sent". We replied, " So would we be". He vanished behind the cabin door. One week later there was a white poster at Yo! Net: NET IN DISORDER. The banners are still there. One at the entrance, the other between two electric poles across the gali. There are no heavy yellow lights. The gali is also more still at nights. Naheed is Kahkashan’s friend. She lives fives houses away. Next to the Jama Masjid. (the main mosque in Zakir Nagar). 23.03.03. Sunday. 10 a.m. Sitting in her verandah I could hear the following sounds: Kabadi wallai..kabadi. Aaloo lo piyaz lo sabziwallai kulfiwallai ki ghanti....the phone ring...washing machine timer..shifting of some furniture in the neighbouring house cycle and a motorcycle.. Naheed arranged a local anti war rally. The route included Noor Nagar, Batla House, Joga Bai and Zakir Nagar- colonies settled as extensions of one main road but expanding endlessly into lanes, bylanes and newer main roads. 19.03.03.Wednesday.8.30 p.m. Naheed’s mother lives across the main road. Kahkashan reached there with her friends and Sameen. Naheed was upset. Kahkashan was late. The jaloos had already passed. On the main road Naheed and Kahkashaan ran into an argument as to why she got late: was it the cricket on TV because of which she did not hear the rising slogans or was it the aazaan (prayer call) kahkashan pointed to the joggers she was wearing for the occasion. Naheed said that atleast Bush got her out on the streets. To this kahkashan replied, " usne to bahut logon ko sadak pe nikala hai" (I had recorded this event on tape. While making diary entries I was listening to it again. Because of the quality of my recorder and my position within the crowd on the main road, the conversation lost to other sounds) A dog’s bark. A cycle horn that sounded like a whining baby. More horns. Cars whirring past. Motorcycles. Feet. Voices. 22.03.03. Saturday. 11a.m. Kahkashan and Naheed at Trimurti Bhavan to participate in the anti war rally. Demonstrated. Tried breaking the barracks. The cops made them sit in a lorry saying that they were being taken to the U.S. embassy where they could sit on a dharna. They landed in a thana. After being released they had coffee and patties. Naheed had been badly hurt. Returned home. 22.03.03. Saturday. 7p.m. Went for an interview with Kahkashan. She was busy cleaning her face. Has just returned from the rally. Her 12 year old son, Amaam, asked me to record a song he wanted to sing from the film Kaante. " .collar ko thora sa upar chara ke cigarette ke dhuan ke challa bana ke .." He sang the whole song. Kept confirming if I was recording it. Sameen, Amaan and their brother Akif listened to the whole song. They were looking at each other and grinning. Smell of buffaloes in the room (a peculiarly pungent mix of dung, mud and the stagnant water of the Yamuna canal where they go to bathe every morning and evening) Kahkashan’s verandah almost runs into the gali. It was packed with popping heads of the buffaloes going to Fakhruddin’s dairy on the main road. Traffic on the main road had come to a halt. Two men with lathis across the gali’s entrance supervised the movement of the buffaloes. Kahkashan said that Gali no.7 was the most "respectable" gali in Zakir Nagar. She came here 22 years ago. Before that, she used to stay in Batla House. From the window of her room she could see the batla house pulia, the bus stand and the Jamia University. Between Zakir Nagar and Batla House, the main road had keekar and babul trees on either sides. The Jogabai pulia had a Kuan. That was used as a garbage dump. From her terrace in Zakir Nagar, she could see the Yamuna canal. The gali now: innumerable houses and electricity poles almost heaving under the weight of the uncountable Katias (the local electricity connection wires taken from the main lines). Its end has vanished. All one can see of it at the other end (away from the Zakir Nagar main road) is a curve blocked by a four story building of the Tender Hearts School and a web of wires hanging from an electricity pole. At the far end of the curve is a music shop from where Sameen gets songs of her choice recorded onto blank tapes. She calls them her "personal albums." She puts down her signature on every jacket. From ravis at sarai.net Tue Mar 25 15:45:24 2003 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 15:45:24 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] more on the media war from fisk Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20030325154401.01d99d38@pop3.norton.antivirus> Fisk is reporting from Baghdad... The shocking truth about 'shock and awe' 25 March 2003 So far, the Anglo-American armies are handing their propaganda to the Iraqis on a plate. First, on Saturday, we were told – courtesy of the BBC – that Umm Qasr, the tiny Iraqi seaport on the Gulf, had "fallen". Why cities have to "fall" on the BBC is a mystery to me; the phrase comes from the Middle Ages when city walls literally collapsed under siege. Then we were told – again on the BBC – that Nasiriyah had been captured. Then its "embedded" correspondent informed us – and here my old journalistic suspicions were alerted – that it had been "secured". Why the BBC should use the meretricious military expression "secured" is also a mystery to me. "Secured" is meant to sound like "captured" but almost invariably means that a city has been bypassed or half-surrounded or, at the most, that an invading army has merely entered its suburbs. And sure enough, within 24 hours, the Shia Muslim city west of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigress rivers proved to be very much unsecured, indeed had not been entered in any form – because at least 500 Iraqi troops, supported by tanks, were still fighting there. With what joy did Taha Yassin Ramadan, the Iraqi Vice President, inform us all yesterday that "they claimed they had captured Umm Qasr but now you know this is a lie". With what happiness did Mohamed Said al-Sahaff, the Iraqi Information Minister, boast yesterday that Basra was still "in Iraqi hands", that "our forces" in Nasiriyah were still fighting. And well could they boast because, despite all the claptrap put out by the Americans and British in Qatar, what the Iraqis said on this score was true. The usual Iraqi claims of downed US and British aircraft – four supposedly "shot down" around Baghdad and another near Mosul – were given credibility by the Iraqi ability to prove that the collapse of their forces in the south was untrue – quite apart from the film of prisoners obtained last night. We know that the Americans are again using depleted uranium munitions in Iraq, just as they did in 1991. But yesterday, the BBC told us that US Marines had called up an A-10 strike aircraft to deal with "pockets of resistance" – a bit more military-speak from the BBC – but failed to mention that the A-10 uses depleted uranium rounds. So for the first time since 1991, we – the West – are spraying these uranium aerosols in battlefield explosions in southern Iraq; and we're not being told. Why not? And where, for God's sake, does that wretched, utterly dishonest phrase "coalition forces" come from? There is no "coalition" in this Iraq war. There are the Americans and the British and a few Australians. That's it. The "coalition" of the 1991 Gulf War does not exist. The "coalition" of nations willing to "help" with this illegitimate conflict includes, by a vast stretch of the imagination, even Costa Rica and Micronesia and, I suppose, poor old neutral Ireland, with its transit rights for US military aircraft at Shannon. But they are not "coalition forces". Why does the BBC use this phrase? Even in the Second World War, which so many journalists think they are now reporting, we didn't use this lie. When we landed on the coast of North Africa in Operation Torch, we called it an "Anglo-American landing". And this is an Anglo-American war, whether we – and I include the "embedded ones" – like it or not. The Iraqis are sharp enough to remember all this. At first, they announced that captured US or British troops would be treated as mercenaries, a decision that Saddam himself wisely corrected yesterday when he stated that all prisoners would be treated "according to the Geneva Convention". All in all, then, this has not been a great weekend for Messrs Bush and Blair. Nor, of course, for Saddam although he's been playing at wars for almost half the lifetime of Tony Blair. And even those journalists who have most bravely tried to see for themselves what is going on without the protection of their armies – an ITV crew near Nasiriyah, for example – are in mortal peril of their lives. So here's a question from one who believed, only a week ago, that Baghdad might just collapse and that we might wake up one morning to find the Baathist militia and the Iraqi army gone and the Americans walking down Saadun Street with their rifles over their shoulders. If the Iraqis can still hold out against such overwhelming force in Umm Qasr for four days, if they can keep fighting in Basra and Nasiriyah – the latter a city that briefly rose in revolt against Saddam's regime in 1991 – why should Saddam's forces not keep fighting in Baghdad? Certainly, Iraqi history will not be complete without a new story of "martyrdom" in the country's eternal battle against foreign occupiers. The last fighters of Um Qasr will become, in the years to come – whatever the fate of Saddam – men of song and legend. The Egyptians long ago did the same for their men killed at Suez in 1956. Of course, this might all be a miscalculation. The pack of cards may be more flimsy that we think. But suddenly, this weekend, the quick and easy war, the conflict of "shock and awe" – the Pentagon's phrase is itself a classic slogan from the pages of the old Nazi magazine Signal – doesn't seem so realistic. Things are going wrong. We are not telling the truth. And the Iraqis are riding high on it all. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030325/99b3cf69/attachment.html From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue Mar 25 19:40:29 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 19:40:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] more on the media war from fisk In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.2.20030325154401.01d99d38@pop3.norton.antivirus> Message-ID: I've been listening to BBC a lot too and share Fisk's disgust for these stupid, obfuscatory, cowboy terms like "secured". Below is a mail I wrote to them on this subject: Dear BBC I am sure you've already seen Bob Fisk's article on the language being used by your organisation to report the war. but may I reiterate: much of your reporting has been shocking in the way its language has been drawn wholesale from the military spokespeople, whose objective-oriented, technology-assisted, us-them talk is not helpful for those trying to understand the realities of the war. To take a single example from the current lead on your website: "Aircraft have flown more than 900 sorties ... in what correspondents say is plan to soften up Baghdad's defenders." Why are BBC correspondents using terms like "soften up"? Does "soften up" mean "disarm"? "Weaken"? "Kill"? Please lose all these military euphemisms which place your audience in the role of aggressor and, to me, totally discredit your reporting. R From monica at mail.sarai.net Wed Mar 26 03:41:08 2003 From: monica at mail.sarai.net (monica at mail.sarai.net) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 23:11:08 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Anhad initiative Message-ID: <20030325221108.GD12931@sarai.net> ----- Forwarded message from Shabnam Hashmi ----- NOTE: This message was sent out on March 20th from Indiatimes.com account , due to problems with the server this has not reached most of the people. If you have received it earlier please ignore this. In future kindly use this e-mail id for correspondence with us. anhadinfo at yahoo.co.in Dear Friends, We are happy to announce the formation of ANHAD (information pasted below). Please do let us know if you would like to: Receive regular information about Anhad?s activities. If you do then please send us your full name, complete postal address, telephone, fax and e-mail id. Contribute to Anhad as a resource person, please indicate the subject, area of interest; Receive information about activities in your state/ country (in case of Indian diaspora) ; Contribute / send donations towards Anhad?s work (from within India : individual and institutional donations); Contribute time as a volunteer Anhad office would start functioning from the first week of April in New Delhi. We would be able to respond to your queries/ replies after the first week of April. In Solidarity KN Panikkar Shubha Mudgal Harsh Mander Shabnam Hashmi anhadinfo at yahoo.co.in March 20, 2003 ANHAD The urgency to intervene in defense of democracy, secularism and justice has never been more pressing than in the conditions prevailing in the country today. There is a recognizable change in the general tenure of public discourse; unlike in the past, it is informed more by the communal than by secular ethos. The prejudices against the minorities are widely shared as a result of motivated and sustained propaganda. Those who claim to be secular are forced on the back foot; some of them have increasingly become compromising or even silent. In the face of social mobilization attempted by communal organizations by invoking religious symbols and sentiments the civil society has come under a siege. Nevertheless, it is evident from the large number of secular democratic initiatives by political parties, voluntary organizations and individuals that the society is seized of the need for sustained and constructive action for strengthening secularism and democracy and for realising justice and peace. Their number and strength are not inconsequential. Yet, the communal appears to be poised to conquer. It is therefore necessary to energize the secular forces by a conscious regrouping and co-operation. ANHAD is intended to be a modest attempt in this direction. ANHAD is neither a structured organization nor a movement capable of large-scale popular mobilisation. It would, however, try to combine the elements of both by collaborating with existing organizations and movements and by undertaking local level activities, by instituting small secular communities. The former would enable ANHAD to develop creative co-operation with people?s organizations and social movements working in different areas of social, cultural and political concerns, the latter would open up for secular mobilisation the space hitherto uncolonised by communalism. There will be no formal membership; all are welcome to participate on a voluntary basis. The activities of ANHAD would be overseen by a working group and would be advised by a national committee of eminent citizens. Like any other voluntary organisation the work of ANHAD would also evolve with experience. Yet, some areas have been identified for initial involvement. They are cultural action, social mobilisation, defense of civil liberties and work in the diaspora. The cultural action is conceived as intervention in daily life practices through popular and folk culture, syncretic and tolerance systems of faith and the building of communities invested in pluralism, while challenging hatred, obscurantism and superstition. The social mobilisation would be attempted both through demonstrative actions like jathas and constructive work organized around youth and women?s clubs. The defense of civil liberties would include legal action for defending the rights of minorities, dalits, tribals and women. The work with the diaspora, particularly creating secular consciousness among them, assumes great importance in the light of the sustained communal propaganda among them. In short ANHAD would like to undertake grass root level activities, with the support and collaboration of the existing organizations wherever possible and if not, by initiating work on its own through volunteers. The emphasis is on constructive and continuous activity, which would create and sustain secular and democratic consciousness. ANHAD would like to bring at least a major part of the country under its umbrella, which would obviously take quite some time to achieve. Therefore it would begin its activities in four states: Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgardh. During the course of the year Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Karnataka and Kashmir would be added. In all these states the endeavour would be to create a fraternity of secular activists who would through their interaction with the local people bring into being small secular communities for ensuring peace and social understanding. Each locality would have its own peculiarities in cultural practices and social relations, which would be given particular attention while organizing the activities of ANHAD. ANHAD means without limits. We envisage it as an inclusive institution in which every one who stands for democracy, secularism, justice and peace can participate. Become a friend of Anhad, a volunteer worker, a financial contributor, a resource person. There are a hundred ways of being a part of Anhad, it is for you to decide your role in this effort. Just remember one thing-now is the time to act, tomorrow may be too late. Send e-mail to : anhadinfo at yahoo.co.in Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker ----- End forwarded message ----- From faizan at sarai.net Tue Mar 25 18:58:15 2003 From: faizan at sarai.net (FaIzan Ahmed) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 18:58:15 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Secular Perspective Message-ID: <200303251858.15054.faizan@sarai.net> IS SECULARISM DEAD IN INDIA? Asghar Ali Engineer (Secular Perspective March 16-31,2003) Secularism had evoked certain controversies in India from very beginning but nevertheless it was accepted by all baring few exceptions. Since the concept of secularism did not exist in India its equivalent was also not found in Indian languages. It had to be translated. In Hindi it was translated as dharm nirpekshta and in Urdu it was rendered as la diniyyatI. Both these translations were not correct as they implied neutrality towards religion and being non-religious respectively. Even in the west it did not mean being non-religious. It implied neutrality of state towards religion. West had ushered in democracy much before India did and secularism is quite important for democratic functioning and particularly if society as in India happens to be multi-religious. A multi-religious society cannot function democratically without secularism. In democracy citizenship and citizens' rights are most central. While in a non-secular state religion becomes central and citizenship becomes secondary. India was from very beginning of its known history a multi-religious and multi-cultural society. Democracy in such a society cannot function without secularism as in democracy citizenship has priority over religion. In democracy all are equal citizens though they may not follow same religion or may not follow any religion at all. Thus when the Britishers left and India chose to be democracy it had no recourse but to opt for secularism as well. Only a secular democracy can ensure equal rights for all citizens. The argument that since Pakistan chose to be Islamic nation India too has right to become a Hindu Rashtra is not valid one. Pakistan was based on two- nation theory and was primarily a Muslim nation it could choose to be Islamic nation (though a modern nation-state and a religious state are anomalous) but this course was certainly not available for India, it being a multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-lingual country. Thus India rightly chose to be a secular country in the sense that Indian state shall not privilege any religion and that followers of majority religion shall not have more privileges than the followers of minority religions in terms of citizenship. Also that state shall protect all religions equally without any distinction. This came to be known as Nehruvian model of secularism and a broad consensus was evolved around it. Only the Jansangh, which had very narrow political base until then rejected any concept of secularism and stood for Hindu Rashtra. However, even Jansangh while merging into the Janta Party in post-emergency period in 1977 accepted secularism and Gandhian socialism and took pledge to this effect on Gandhiji's samadhi in Delhi. However, for Jansangh it was more a tactical move than a principled stand. Though in its new avtar as BJP it continued to swear by secularism but began to promote most militant Hindu nationalism in mid-eighties. One of the members of Sangh Parivar the Vishwa Hindu Parishad adopted Hindu militancy without any restraint. In the post-Minakshipuram conversion period the Vishwa Hindu Parishad came to the forefront and got involved in most militant propaganda of Hindutva. There were open assaults on Nehruvian model of secularism and even secularism as such was dubbed as a western concept quite alien to Indian culture. But for the BJP there were certain restraints and it could not reject secularism openly without drawing criticism. So it adopted a new tactics; it began to talk of positive secularism and denounced Nehruvian secularism as 'pseudo-secularism'. According to the BJP Nehruvian secularism was based on what it called 'appeasement of minorities' and it defined appeasement as allowing minorities to follow their personal law and allowing their men to take four wives. This assault on Nehruvian secularism, which ultimately meant assault on constitutional secularism, became sharper and sharper with passage of time. The BJP ultimately adopted what it called the 'Hindutva agenda' and this agenda, as is well known, included abolition of personal laws (enforcing common civil code), Article 370 (special status for Kashmir) and building Ram Temple at Ayodhya. Obviously a secular state cannot undertake construction of temples and mosques and BJP's Hindutva agenda was a direct blow to the Constitutional concept of secularism in India. The BJP government and its other Parivar members are openly attacking a concept of secularism around, for which there was a broad consensus, as pointed out above. The BJP was somewhat restrained at the Centre as it is a coalition government but it had no such restraint in Gujarat where it was in power of its own. And it was in Gujarat that one could understand to what extent it would go if it ever came to power at the Centre. Gujarat was often described as a 'laboratory of Hindutva' and it became a mini-Hindu Rashtra. And after the horrible Gujarat riots, which shamed the country and winning the elections with two-third majority the BJP leaders began to say that we will repeat the Gujarat model in other states of India. Thus it has become more than obvious that the BJP in principle rejects secularism and only adopts it tactically while in power as part of NDA alliance. Not only this it has been systematically carrying out campaign for Hindutva politics. Even the Prime Minister Shri Vajpayee is on record to have said in USA that RSS is 'my soul' and RSS, as everyone knows stands for Hindu Rashtra. It is unfortunate that this aggressive propaganda has affected even the principal opposition party the Congress. It has also wilted under pressure and has adopted what is being described as softer variety of Hindutva. Even in late eighties and early nineties some of the Congress members had begun to talk of secularism being unsuitable for India and under pressure from aggressive BJP propaganda sought to redefine secularism. Mr. Narsimha Rao, the then Prime Minister also adopted policy of soft Hindutva and even refused to take any action while the Babri Masjid was being demolished. He was almost under awe of the BJP propaganda. In fact the Congress commitment to secularism began to weaken in the last phase of Mrs. Indira Gandhi when she tried to utilise VHP for her survival and to compensate for loss of Muslim votes. Mr. Rajiv Gandhi too did not show any strong commitment to secularism and his notorious reversal of the Shah Bano judgement and laying the foundation of Ramjanambhumi and call for Ramrajya on the eve of 1989 parliamentary elections also delivered a great blow to Nehruvian concept of secularism. The Gujarat carnage in February-March last year further struck fear in the minds of Congress politicians and except for few exceptions the Congress leaders are adopting soft variety of Hindutva. Though the 'Gujarat model' did not work in Himachal Pradesh and the BJP lost elections there the fear of alienation from Hindu voters is very much there in the minds of the Congress leaders. Even during the Gujarat election campaign in post-Gujarat carnage the congress leaders, particularly Mr. Kamalnath who was in charge of elections in Gujarat, did not allow any Muslim congress leaders like Mohsina Kidwai or Ahmed Patel to campaign for the Congress. Not only this he did not allow even leaders like Arjun Singh to campaign for election as Arjun Singh has pro-Muslim image. The Congress openly played pro-soft Hindutva card by making Waghela as the Congress chief of Gujarat as he was an ex-RSS man and it was thought that he will be better able to attract the Hindu votes in Gujarat. However, the soft Hindutva did not work in favour of the Congress and BJP won with two-third majority in Gujarat elections. But instead of learning any lesson from the Gujarat defeat the Congress leaders want to play the soft Hindutva card in other states like the Madhya Pradesh. Even a person like Digvijay Singh who has been known for his commitment to secularism is now playing this card and is demanding ban on cow slaughter throughout India. He did this to embarrass the BJP and to woo the upper caste Hindu voters. The ban on cow slaughter should be discussed on its own merit as Gandhiji also maintained. Gandhiji even refused to take up cow slaughter issue to win over the Hindu support for Khilafat movement. He maintained that both Khilafat movement and ban on cow slaughter should be taken up on their own merits and not to trade one with the other. Even our Constitution in Article 48 says that "State shall endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle." Thus it will be seen that the Constitution also does not talk of banning cow slaughter on religious grounds but on modern scientific lines. It is regrettable that leaders of Nehru's Congress are indulging in such sensitive issues just to win elections. It is certainly weakening commitment to secularism. It can be said without fear of contradiction that Nehruvian concept of secularism is as good as dead and we are left with cheap tactics to win elections. It has serious implications for future of our democracy in a pluralist society like India. There is great need to revive Nehruvian concept of secularism, which is based on cultural and political wisdom. It can perhaps be done only by a leader of Nehru's stature as it requires courage of conviction and not simply lust for power. **************** Centre for Study of Society and Secularism Mumbai:- 400 055. E-mail: csss at vsnl.com ------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030325/63dfc1e3/attachment.html From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Wed Mar 26 00:02:30 2003 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 13:32:30 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Anhad initiative Message-ID: rehan ansari had written a piece about activists and how they look...he was referring to bayard rustin and the 60's activisits, their style, their flair, their politics. he was comparing them to the activisits of today...no style, no flair, tired out looking boring folk...(today at the time he was writing was perhaps september 02 or so)...a friend/housemate of mine, kiran was talking about the recent protests in nyc and around the world and how activism was replaying a revivial of the fervor of the 60's. coming out from a 50's/90's kind of complacency, people getting riled up. but more i guess, being paid attention to. im thinking through what she has said but the question that concerns me more...: does this mean we are sexy again? we can start signing off emails no justice, no peace no blood for oil tell me what democracy looks like/this is what democracy looks like in solidarity (you n me baby!) zehra. ----- when did *I* become so cynical? or rather when did i want to start cutting through the bullshit? it just seems like a trend takes off and everyone wants to start an organization/magazine/collective/website/popsicle stand and be the first and the best and just like in academics, they take ONE good idea one had in grad school 15 years ago, and 'rugrofy' it to death and still try to keep it alive. is the world so bereft of ideas....or we of attention? too many layers to get into. anyone else want to start peeling? _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail From shuddha at sarai.net Wed Mar 26 09:10:46 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 03:40:46 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Reflections on the Massacre in Nandimarg Message-ID: <200303260340.h2Q3ekOl016009@mail.sarai.net> Dear All on the Reader List, It would be unfortunate if in the midldle of the spectacle of the war in Iraq, we were to forget what is going on in Kashmirr. Muzammil Jaleel�s report on the Nandimarg massacre (forwarded on to this list by Harsh Kapoor) in which, 24 Kashmiri Pundit men women and children were murdered while they lay asleep by unidentified men wearing Army uniforms, (some of whom reportedly spoke Kashmiri ) makes for horrific and very disturbing reading. It is also a strange echo of the Chattisinghpura massacres three years ago. Even as we spend a lot of our time thinking and reading about Iraq (which we must continue to do) I want to spend some time thinking about this, which is closer home for many of us on this list. This latest incident, whosoever it has been perpetrated by, deserves to be condemned in the strongest possible words. The fate of Kashmiri pandits, who have been at the receiving end of the violent campaign carried out by insurgents in Kashmir on the one hand, and have been victims of the most callous and cynical treatment by the Indian state and mainstream Indian political forces on the other, is one of the great underestimated tragedies of our times. While nothing can justify the brutal regime of repression and violence unleashed by the Indian state in Kashmir since the nineties, nothing can also justify the violence that the kashmiri pandit minority have experienced, at the hands of those who claim to speak for the �freedom� of Kashmiris. It is clear that this is one of those instances, where, as Ranjit Hoskote said during his plenary presentation in the Crisis/Media workshop at Sarai, speaking for one set of victims, should not compel us to turn a blind eye to another set of victims. There are more than two sides to this conflict, and the third side, the one that is a partisan to the truth, is one that we must always be vigilant in defending. For it is the one that suffers the most in times like this. Just as to condemn the naked aggression on the people of Iraq being unleashed by the militaries of the United States and the United Kingdom, does not mean one has to hail the genocidial Iraqi state as a vanguard of the rights of oppressed people, so too, to be resolutely against the state repression in Kashmir, does not mean that one has to be silent about what happens to Kashmiri Pandits. In fact, the two must go hand in hand. The most common explanation that we are likely to get for the heinous Nandimarg massacre is that it is the work of Kashmiri separatist militants. This may be true. If it is, then it will only illustrate the moral bankruptcy of Kashmiri nationalist and/or islamist terrorism. Any political tendency that has to massacre defenceless villagers of another faith, while they were asleep cannot be trusted to lead any people into �Azaadi� or freedom. They will only replace today�s tyranny with their own brand. Indeed the record of movements of national liberation (especially, though not only, of those that deployed terrorism to achieve their goals) all over the world is a depressing record of the replacement of one form of tyranny with another. The gun that speaks the language of Azaadi will no doubt turn against its own people, if and when the occupiers are gone. Few people know the macabre record of the Indian National Army, under the leadership of Subhash Chandra Bose, for instance in the �liberated� territories of Malaya, Burma and the Andamans in the 1940s . It is no different from the conduct of Afghan mujahideen, or the Bangladeshi mukti joddhas or the victorious Zimbabwean nationalists. Once the occupying powers left the scene, it was time to take on the people that the �freedom fighters� had �freed�. The slogan of �national liberation� is only the fig leaf of the thugs who speak the language of victimhood, for a while. However, there may be, other possible explanations as well. Which are equally if not more disturbing. And these have to do with the shadow world of Kashmir, where (like in other parts of the world, like the mysterious synergy between state and free lance terror in Algeria, the close links between Mossad and Hamas, between the CIA and the Al Qaida, between RAW and the LTTE) it is often difficult to distinguish between state and non state actors of terror. Nothing in this murky world is organized along easy black and white, �for and against� polarities. The world of Kashmiri insurgency is a game of reflecting surfaces, a lethal special effects/�special operations� spectacle made up of mirrors and mist. �Miltiants� wear the uniforms of the Indian armed forces, and the forces of the Indian state often work with militants or �surrendered� militants to provoke specific situations. The Cchatisinghpura massacre came at an awkwardly convenient time � when Clinton was visiting India. The necessity of staging a fake encounter in the wake of the Cchatisinghpura incident, elaborate efforts at forensic deception and a systematic manipulation of information, have led to a host of un answered questions. The attack on the Indian parliament, to this date remains shrouded in mystery. And the present Nandimarg massacre too can be seen to be much too convenient for two major powers (India and Pakistan) committed to keeping a climate of fear and terror alive in the Kashmir valley, and to ensure that international attention, which is conveniently distracted by Iraq at the moment, can be jolted back on to some grandstanding by either regime. Could we consider this an instance of the skilful deployment of what Arundhati Roy (at the Crisis/Media Workshop at Sarai) called �the Weapons of Mass Distraction�. The advantages of a climate of terror in Kashmir for the Pakistani regime are transparent. At a time when the population is restive about the war in Iraq, what could be more convenient than provoking a severe backlash of state repression in Kashmir, to distract the people, yet again, with the �Kashmir Cause�. But, as I am more familiar with what happens east of the India Pakistan Border, I would like to think aa little bit about what advantages might accrue to the Indian state from such an incident. I think it is important at such times for all people to subject those who speak for them, and rule them to the most stringent scrutiny. Suspect all rulers, but suspect those who rule you, first of all. The fall out of the Nandimarg massacre can have several possible consequences which are beneficial to the Indian regime at the centre. It can create the conditions of a build up of tension at a time in the Kashmir valley, when it was looking as if the PDP led government in Kashmir might actually be successful in bringing some displaced Kashmiri Pandits back into the valley, and also lead to an actual marginal improvement in the conditions of everyday life in the valley through a refusal to endorse at lest the worst excesses of the security forces. The Nandimarg massacre yields two direct results, it stonewalls the return of Kashmiri pandits to Kashmir, and catalyzes another exodus. It leads to a direct increase in the intensity of state terror in the name of confidence and security building measures. These become unpopular, leading to a greater climate of unrest, a breakdown of what is called the �constitutional machinery� � a re-imposition of �governors rule�, dismissal of the PDP government and a heightening of tensions on the border and the LOC, yet again � in other words, a depressing repetition of a pattern with which we are all too familiar. The second consequence, is a chain of spiraling violence, which can be used to argue for unilateral military engagements with Pakistan, this time with a measure of support from key constituencies of the �coalition of the willing�, in exchange for a softening of the stated Indian position on Iraq, and what that translates into, in actual terms. The playing out of this script, may actually be a part of the small print of the future development of the Project for a New American Century scenario, which has just begun being realized in Iraq, and which, has a much larger agenda, than the simple disarming of Iraq per se. This is far fetched, but it is not unimaginable. Whichever of these two cases may be true, they will have required the deployment of people who can kill, leave a confused impression (army uniforms, and the unlikely fact of them speaking Kashmiri � which suggests, that they could be militants, or the armed forces, depending on your point of view) and disappear into the night, with no one claiming responsibility. It is noteworthy to remember here that several leading militant organizations, pro independence politicians, the APHC And the Pakistani government have all condemned the incident, and that no one has claimed responsibility so far. Who or what could deploy this lethal confusion. A key suspect would be the so called �renegade� militant outfits, such as the one that Koko Parray used to lead � called the Ikhwan ul Muslimoon ( the same name as the oldest active international muslim fundamentalist organization also known as the �Muslim Brotherhood�, which is particularly active in north Africa) and several others. It is well known now that the security forces and intelligence agencies, the army, the BSF and other state paramilitaries have worked closely with a number of shadowy outfits led by �surrendered� militants. This is also the case in Assam, where the SULFA (Surrendered ULFA) has had a particularly dubious record. There is also apparently a Kashmir based outfit called �surprise� the Taliban, (a local group which claims no connection to their more famous eponymous counterparts) which also enjoyes the patronage of key counter insurgency operatives. Here is a link to a report titled "Renegade Militants in Kashmir" By Akhila Raman which outlines in some detail the dubious shadow world of the usage of ex -miliants, supposedly for counter insurgency. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=32&ItemID=27 80 Readers might also find Akhila Raman�s exhaustive chronology of the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir quite useful as a background to the news that we get from there. This is available at http://www.mindspring.com/~akhila_raman/kashmir/kashmir_nutshell.h tm As I have said before. It is not clear as to who killed the 24 men, women and children of Nandimarg village. Perhaps it will never be. It may well be an act of the separatist /and or islamist militias (backed by Pakistan) � who have been known to commit the most heinous atrocities in the past, and there is no reason to think that they would not do so again. But, given the Indian states record in deliberately stage managing incidents of the most gruesome kind, it too is not above suspicion. Perhaps the truth indicts both, a cynical state (or two cynical states) and a cynical miliant outfit, dancing a macabre tango into the Kashmiri night, collaborating, each to their own end, (knowingly, or unknowingly) to prolong the agony of the people who are in Kashmir, of the Kashmiris who have been forced to leave Kashmir, and also those who may be compelled to leave Kashmir now. I hope that this leads to some hard thinking on all our part about what exactly is going on in Kashmir, without jumping to hasty conclusions either way. Remember, the truth is likely to have more than two sides. Regards Shuddha -- Shuddhabrata Sengupta SARAI Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 Phone 23960040 From rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com Wed Mar 26 03:56:31 2003 From: rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com (rehan ansari) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 14:26:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Ich Bin Ein Mussulman Message-ID: <20030325222631.32776.qmail@web40104.mail.yahoo.com> The start of the war for the conquest, and reconstruction (both terms are to imperialism like milk & sugar to coffee) of the Middle East finds me in Berlin. By the way, the conquest of the Middle East is only a smart aleck way of referring to what is true. Today� Wall St Journal(European Edition) carries a headline story saying that the Bush administration is following through on a plan first thought out by a neo conservative (Berlin tempts me to say Neo-Nazi) Washington-based think tank called �roject for the New American Century� I am in Berlin to attend a festival of literature, film, performance, music, theatre, and visual arts by artists from my generation living in Syria, Lebanon, Israel-Palestine, Egypt. The festival is called DisORIENTation. It is disorienting to be in Berlin, what to speak of attending the festival. My hotel room window is right across the Spree River from a magnificent building. At dawn, at noon, at night I view it, and its dappling reflection in the Spree, and see the glory of German Romanticism and empire. Empire is good, look, see the high taste. I walk any old strasse and see monumental buildings with plaques dedicated to a founding father of microbiology, pharmacy, chemistry, or some fundamental modern science. I was unreasonably intimidated and then I found the barbarism kin to this European Civilization. ------- I walked one avenue and saw the spires of a mosque. Closer, I found out it was a synagogue. It was not just the dome and the spires that were Islamic, the abstractions on the tile and windows recalled for me geometries (or should I say cosmo-etries) I have seen in Fatehpur Sikri and on Akbar� Tomb. I remembered how a Dilli ka Yaar, Shuddha, oriented me once about the designs we saw in Humayun� Tomb: they represent the universe breathing in and out. This beautiful synagogue was the epicentre of the desecration on Kristalnaacht, the night in 1933 when the Nazis burnt the books. Berlin, like Delhi, Lahore, Kolkata, Dhaka, Ahmedabad has broken many hearts, and worse. I can see the high romanticism of Berlin in places but most of the city feels like some power has cleaned up the place with acid and built an anaesthesised, functional city. I wonder if this is what Baghdad is going to look like in ten years: bombed to hell and then germ-free. Not bad, but Gabbar, kitnay banday maray ga? My disorientation with the festival began when I entered the palatial venue on John Foster Dulles road (the Dulles were brothers, one secretary of state and the other defence secretary in the 50s). The American made structure for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (the House of World Culture) has been built opposite the Reichstag (Hitler� offices), and symbolically disempowers the Nazi past. Inside I read the dedication, from Benjamin Franklin (one of America� Founding Fathers) about the future time when all the countries in the world will respect human values and a philosopher will be at home everywhere. 50 years of US billions in Pakistan have not made a home for soldiers, not philosophers. Perhaps Baghdad will fare well, and soon have a Colin Powell dedicated House of Culture on Paul Wolfowitz Boulevard (Paul is Assistant Secretary of Defence and leading light of the Project for the New American Century). I hope my final disorientation will not occur on the way back to New York. Though in Berlin I am part of an American group, some of us, a Palestinian American member and me, joke that we are the Imperial Delegation, the way back makes me nervous. A civil liberties lawyer I consulted in New York before I left said you are brown, Muslim, born in Pakistan (three strikes! No, it� really one strike!), going to Germany (a country that is not an ally and considered a breeding ground for al-Qaeda�America has woken up to more germs!), and attending an Arab festival (now its three strikes...), you may be... er, harassed. Anyway, my next writing may be from Karachi (remember, they deported a Canadian passport holder like me, but who was born in Syria, to Syria). __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed Mar 26 05:25:09 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 00:55:09 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Alys Faiz (September 2, 1915 - March 12, 2003) Message-ID: In Memory of Alys Faiz South Citizens Wire Special March 26 2003 Contents: #1. Alys Faiz passes away (Nasir Jamal) #2. HRCP mourns Mrs Faiz's passing #3. Alys Faiz (1914-2003) (Moni Mohsin) #4. Alys Faiz, great woman behind great poet (Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad) #5. Tribute to Alys Faiz - She crafted the future (I. A. Rehman) #6. Alys Faiz (Ariz Azad) #7. Leaving a void (Zafar Samdani) ______ #1. DAWN (Karachi) 13 March 2003 Alys Faiz passes away By Nasir Jamal LAHORE, March 12: Human rights crusader, peace activist and wife of poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Alys Faiz, passed away here on Wednesday morning at the age of 88. She had been unwell for some time and was confined to her house after suffering a fracture of the hipbone in a fall. She died at the Ittefaq Hospital at around 10am where she was taken for emergency treatment. Mrs Faiz was buried in the evening in the Model Town graveyard by the side of her husband. Faiz had died on Nov 20, 1984. Hundreds of people from all walks of life attended the funeral prayers. Prominent among them were Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, former finance minister Dr Mubashir Hasan, and PPP leader Salman Taseer. Mrs Faiz is survived by two daughters, Salima Hashmi, former principal of the National College of Arts, and Muneeza Hashmi, a senior producer at PTV in Lahore. Born on Sept 22, 1914, in London, Alys Faiz came to India in 1938 to visit her elder sister, Christobel (Bilqees), who was married to Dr M.D. Taseer. She could not go back to her country because of World War II and decided to stay on. She married Faiz, who was teaching at the MAO College in Amritsar at that time, in October 1941. The wedding took place in Srinagar and their nikah was solemnized by prominent Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdullah. She was given a Muslim name, Kulsoom, when she embraced Islam at the time of her marriage, but she always remained Alys to her friends and admirers. Alys Faiz had joined the Communist Party of Britain when she was only 16. She also served as secretary to Mr Krishna Menon, who was then in London, and took an active part in the subcontinent's independence struggle. She joined The Pakistan Times in 1950 and looked after the women's and children's sections of the newspaper. She joined the newspaper's regular staff in 1951 after the arrest of her husband in the so-called Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case. She also started the newspaper's reference section. Mrs Faiz taught special children in Karachi when her family settled there in the late 1950s. She started working for Unicef when Faiz moved to Islamabad. She joined the weekly Viewpoint after the family returned to Lahore following a period living abroad in Beirut. Dr Mubashir Hasan described Mrs Faiz as a "fighter in her own right". "Faiz owed a great debt to her. She stood by him in the worst of times," he said. Ms Salima Hashmi said her mother was a rebel who never compromised on principles. She made "a tremendous sacrifice for her husband and family and submerged her identity. In spite of her parents' insistence, she refused to leave Pakistan and join them in London with her children when our father was jailed in the conspiracy case." Alys was the author of two books, Dear Heart, a collection of her letters written to her husband during his years in jail in the 1950s, and Over My Shoulder, a collection of her dispatches for Viewpoint sent from Beirut at the height of the civil war. _____ #2. Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Press Release March 12, 2003 | Lahore HRCP mourns Mrs Faiz's passing Lahore, March 12: Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) mourns the passing away of Mrs Alys Faiz this morning and acknowledges her outstanding services to the cause of human rights as one of HRCP's founder members, as a member of its first executive, and as a leading figure on its editorial board for many years. Her commitment to the rights of the disadvantaged was as complete as possible and she inspired her colleagues at HRCP with unremitting devotion to peace, freedom and human dignity, an exemplary sense of duty, and boundless compassion for all human beings. Earlier, she had devoted many years to the education and welfare of the sick and the special children and had taken an active part in the subcontinent's struggle for independence as a young volunteer in London. She left her family and home in England to share Faiz's passion for his people's freedom from oppression, want and squalor, a cause she did not abandon even when on sickbed. One of her greatest contributions was extending Faiz Ahmed Faiz the emotional support and family stability that considerably helped the great poet in realising his creative genius. The HRCP Secretary-General and members of its secretariat have in a resolution expressed, their solidarity with the bereaved family and renewed their pledge to continue fighting for human rights as Mrs Faiz would have wished. I. A. Rehman Director _____ #3. The Friday Times, Lahore March 2003 Alys Faiz (1914-2003) Moni Mohsin remembers the life and times of an extraordinary woman It is not easy being a famous man's wife - and few women could have known this better than Alys Faiz. Married to Faiz Ahmed Faiz for 43 years, and widowed for almost two decades, Alys continued to be known by her association with him. And it was not as if Alys had not achieved anything in her own right. A journalist by profession, she came to be recognised as a tireless campaigner for human rights. But when measured against the immortal poetry of Faiz, few achievements - hers or indeed anyone elses - could stand up to scrutiny. However, Alys did not grudge Faiz his fame. In fact, she strove through all those years spent with him to create conditions in which he could produce his best work. And in the process, if she reaped the rewards of Faiz's fame, she also lived with separation, imprisonment and ostracism. Sailing out to India as a young woman in her early twenties, Alys George had little idea of the course destiny had charted for her. It was the late 1930s and all she knew was that she was going to a country struggling for liberation from two centuries of British rule. Unlike most other young British women of her generation, however, Alys approved wholeheartedly of freedom for the colonies. But then Alys was different. The second daughter of a middling publisher and bookseller, Alys had been a card-carrying member of the Communist Party since the age of eighteen. Instead of romantic novels, the literary staples of her youth had been the publications of London's Left Book Club. It was an ideology that Alys shared with the handful of Indian students that she and her elder sister, Christabel, met in London. The Indians were inspired young men, burning with the zeal to liberate their country. Some of their passion must have rubbed off on the two sisters, for Chris left for India to marry MD Taseer, a young PhD student she had met and fallen in love with at Cambridge. Soon after, Alys too set sail for India. "I felt that I was by now committed to socialism and India's struggle for freedom", recalled Alys. "And I also wanted to see India". A brilliant educationalist, MD Taseer was the Principal of the Muslim and Oriental College at Amritsar in the late '30s. Taseer, with his towering intellect was something of a guru for young poets and writers of the Punjab. His house in Amritsar was a salon where the likes of Imtiaz Ali Taj, Hasrat, Jallundhri, Sufi Tabussum and others gathered at weekends. A member of this elite intellectual club was a young English teacher at the college called Faiz Ahmed. Though shy and diffident, Faiz was known as a budding poet whose work had received favourable notice. Herself forthright and confident, Alys at first mistook Faiz's reticence for a taciturn nature. But as she grew to know him, she discovered that "he was not taciturn, but shy with a becoming sense of humour". The friendship blossomed into love. They had long twilight walks and leisurely "drives in Taseer's Victoria to the gardens to drink cool well water". In Faiz, Alys discovered a soul mate. Like her he, too, had read Marxist literature and been won over by its humane philosophy. Theirs was to be a partnership built not just on the fleeting pleasures of romance but the enduring premise of a shared ideology. Faiz's widowed mother, however, wouldn't hear of marriage to a foreigner. Conservative and orthodox, she wanted her son to marry one of his own kind, a Jat. Alys had to convert to Islam, become fluent in Urdu and only then, two years later, did Faiz's mother relent. Faiz, accompanied by his younger brother, set off for Srinagar, where Alys was now staying with her sister's family. In Faiz's pocket was a gold ring, bought with money lent by Mian Iftikharuddin. Those were difficult days for Faiz. His father had died a few years previously, and since then the family had been plunged into near penury. Alys must have thought about this, along with the huge differences in their backgrounds. But if she had any doubts they were drowned by Faiz's personal qualities. Their nikah was performed by Sheikh Abdullah and the wedding party, aside from Faiz and his brother, comprised Taseer's family and the poets, Josh and Majrooh. After the ceremony there was a small mushaira and two days later the couple set off for Lahore where the family received Alys warmly. The newlyweds took up residence with Faiz's large family in a house on the Canal Bank and slowly, Alys set about familiarising herself with the alien customs of her new life. Faiz was now a lecturer at Hailey College and though he earned a modest salary, his recently published collection of poems, Naqsh-e-Faryadi, had catapulted him to instant fame. Faiz was hot property not only at mushairas but on radio programmes and public functions. Students gravitated towards him, often arriving at his house at all hours to sit at the poet's feet. Alys, who was still adapting to the unfamiliar mores of a Punjabi household, had now also to contend with the public's tangible presence in their lives. She handled it with grace, smoothing out the details of Faiz's life so that he could devote his attention to his art. When Faiz joined the army during World War II, Alys accompanied him to his posting in Delhi. Those were happy days for them. Faiz's old friends from Lahore - Taseer, A S Bokhari, Rasheed Ahmed, Sufi Tabassum, Amina and Majeed Malik - were also in Delhi and Alys, who had made a place for herself in this select group, enjoyed their stimulating company. For the first time in her married life she also had the independence and privacy of her own house. It was in Delhi, that she had her firstborn, Salima. They returned to Lahore four years later where Faiz was now editor of the newly established paper, The Pakistan Times.Alys and Faiz shared a small house on Race Course Road, with a colleague from the paper, Mazhar Ali Khan and his beautiful young wife, Tahira. When the clouds of Partition engulfed the Punjab, Alys was holidaying in Srinagar with her parents. When riots broke out, Faiz brought Alys and their two daughters to Murree, and returned to Lahore. Murree was still full of Sikh refugees waiting for transport and a way out. Ever practical and helpful, Alys pitched in with some friends to arrange a safe exit for the Sikh families. Despite their best efforts, however, the convoy was attacked and every single Sikh murdered. It was with some difficulty that Alys found her way back. Accompanied by her two small daughters and her friend, Anna Molka Ahmed, Alys boarded a train for Lahore. Afraid of being butchered if recognised as western women, Alys and Anna wore burqas and clutched Qurans in their hands. Though the journey was fraught with danger, Alys shepherded her little convoy home safely. Fortitude was perhaps Alys' greatest attribute. It was also one which she was called upon to demonstrate repeatedly. In 1951, when Faiz was arrested for participating in a conspiracy - later called the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case - to overthrow the then government, Alys rose to the occasion with a grit and determination which few women in her place could have mustered. For the four years of Faiz's imprisonment, Alys held together her small family through sheer strength of will. In the beginning when a possible death sentence dangled over Faiz's head, Alys and her children were ostracised by old acquaintances. Though hurt and worried, Alys refused to buckle under. She sold their car, bought a bicycle and securing herself a job at The Pakistan Times became the breadwinner of the family. She had to remove her daughters from their posh school to a modest establishment, but though money was desperately short and her spirits low, she managed to treat her daughters to small luxuries like paint-boxes and picnics. Through an endless stream of letters, she bolstered her husband's spirits and when funds allowed she made the long train journey - travelling third class - across the scorching deserts of Sindh to Hyderabad jail. "They were difficult days", recalled Alys, "but there were good moments too, like when I'd return from home to find my two daughters and sister-in-law looking over the balcony for me, or those rare meetings with Faiz and the kindness of friends like Amina, Mazhar and so many others". Life with Faiz, though exciting and rewarding, was never certain. His was too unsettling a presence for the comfort of dictatorial regimes. Hence when the harassment from Governor Kalabagh became unbearable, Alys convinced Faiz to leave the country for a while. They spent two years in England and while Faiz alternately travelled abroad and pined for home, Alys found a job in a school and set about putting some order to their life. In 1964 Faiz decided to return. General Ayub Khan's regime was still very much in place. Alys feared that the days of harassment were far from over, but Faiz was determined to return. As it happened, their life in Karachi, where they now settled, was pleasant. Faiz had been offered a job as the head of a charity school and orphanage and surrounded by his old friends like the Majeed Maliks, Sibte Hassan and Shaukat Haroon he was at peace and fulfilled. Alys, who was also teaching again, enjoyed the settled, harmonious rhythms of their life. They stayed in Karachi for eight years. Meanwhile their daughters grew up and flew the coop, and with the years of hardship and uncertainty behind them, Alys could look forward to a peaceful middle age. But Faiz was a man of ideas and plans and when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto invited him to head the National Council of the Arts, he did not demur. The '70s found them in Islamabad where Faiz put together a cultural policy for the country. Before it could be properly implemented, however, General Zia had usurped power. Disheartened and depressed by the turn of events, Faiz chose to exile himself. He left for Beirut, where he edited Lotus, a magazine of Third World literature. Alys followed him out and there amid the bombs, strafing and daily ravages of the war, she lived with her man. Often, on bad days, she couldn't leave their flat. Though impressed by the courage of their Palestinian friends, Alys mourned for them too. But for fear of infecting Faiz's already low spirits she concealed her worry. Faiz was visibly depressed and now suffering from ill health. Alys probably guessed that they were now running out of time. Through careful husbanding of their resources, Alys had built a small house in Lahore and it was here that Faiz, tired, ailing but still cheerful, returned home. But time was against them. By the end of the year, Faiz was dead. Grieving, worn, Alys stood alone. Theirs had been a fruitful marriage. Faiz had been a liberal, affectionate and sensitive husband, but lost in his own thoughts, he was often removed from the mundane worries of life. So throughout their married life it was Alys who had dealt with the practical necessities. Though Faiz always provided, it was she who saved, planned and managed. Lionised by an adoring public, Faiz had constantly been surrounded by acolytes and fans. It fell to Alys to organise his time, often at the risk of courting unpopularity among his friends. But had Alys not done that, Urdu literature would have been the poorer for it. Throughout his peripatetic and often hazardous life, she stuck by him. When he was imprisoned she could conceivably have left for England with her daughters - but to flee the battleground would not have been her style. The foundations of their marriage was their shared ideology and once she had entered into that covenant, Alys did not renege. She never pressed him to accept lucrative jobs or compromising stipends. Alys' brusque Anglo-Saxon style was sometimes resented, but even her detractors cannot deny that she lived a life of dignity and sincerity. She died peacefully last week in Lahore, at her home in Model Town. There was no pain, no fuss at the end. Her eldest daughter, Salima, kissed her in the morning before she left for work, wrapping a blanket around her frail figure as she sat in her wheelchair in the cool, morning hours (Alys had been increasingly confined to a wheelchair in recent months). Less than half an hour later, she had passed away quietly. As Salima tried to explain to the visitors who flocked to their house upon hearing the news, the family would like to remember her by celebrating her extraordinary life rather than mourning her death. _____ #4. DAWN 22 March 2003 ISLAMABAD: Alys Faiz, great woman behind great poet BY Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad ISLAMABAD, March 21: Alys Faiz, the great woman behind the great poet, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, was remembered at a meeting organized by the Islamabad Cultural Forum at the Trust for Voluntary Organizations (TVO) auditorium here on Friday evening. "While Faiz created poems of ineffable beauty, Alys lived poems all the time," said eminent educationist Prof Khawaja Masud, who knew the famous couple very closely, quoting from writer Walter Lowenfels, "for anyone to create poems anytime, some one has to live poems all the time". Bringing out the distinctive qualities of the two personalities, Prof Masud thought that Alys represented the pragmatic humanism that runs through Locke, Shaw, Wells and Russell; while Faiz epitomized the sublime humanism of the great mystics: Mansoor, Madhu Lal Husain, Shah Abdul Latif, Rehman Baba and Sarmad. He quoted from one of the letters of Faiz to his wife, and said it summed up the difference in their approach to erring humanity. Faiz said: "Your philosophy of toughness has amused me. I know this is the way the world goes. My philosophy of not casting the first stone can produce only poetry." Prof Masud said, in their letters to each other, they may differ in their interpretation of humanism, but in life both stand vindicated. In her letters to Faiz, Alys emerges as an extraordinary woman of great courage and fortitude. She had an identity of her own, which neither Faiz would have liked to be submerged in his own, nor could she ever tolerate it to be tempered with. He also read out a poem for Faiz written by Alys: I will sing of you later, When the thread of a thousand feet the unending roll of sorrow the breath of roses enfolding the eulogies, the warranted praise the drawn-out memories of others the grief of recalling, the total acceptance of death are over. Then will I sing, not to the tread of a thousand feet, nor to the roll of sorrow Nor will I lift the roses nor echo praise nor recall, nor accept My song neither begins nor ends It is eternity. Poet Ahmad Faraz spoke of his awe and reverence for the great poet since his student days, and how he came into contact with the great poet which also lead to his great respect for Alys Faiz. He recalled that while being editor of a literary journal in Peshawar, he visited the residence of the poet in Lahore to request for a poem from him for publication in his journal. "As Faiz Sahab went to the other room and brought out his poem, Faraz and the publisher presented him with Rs20, his wife came along and angrily said: 'How come you can accept this amount so casually." Faraz said, he thought that perhaps the wife was angry because the amount was too small for such a big name, but Faiz Sahab went inside, and on the advice of his wife wrote a formal receipt to formalize even this small transaction. Talking of his exile days in London, he said that Faiz also came from Beirut and settled there. He said Alys Faiz would often telephone him and ask Faraz to take care of the poet. He said that when she came to London he once remarked to her jokingly that she was a great disciplinarian as far as her husband was concerned. Although she did not answer then, but one day asked him if he was serious in his comment. She said that she did so because she had to look after him, and care for his health. Faraz said that this combination of a care-free poet and a disciplined wife seemed to be working very well. She was a friend, a companion who bore the brunt of his days in jail, and contributed a great deal in the upbringing of the children. Referring to Khwaja Masud's remark that Faraz was a great poet after Faiz, Faraz modestly quoted an Arabic proverb that the death of great has also made us great. Ashfaq Saleem Mirza read out from various extracts of letters of Faiz written to Alys. He also read out an article "Women know a lot of things", written by her. A number of participants, including Dr Zarina Salamat, Munir Raja, Shahzad and Ishaque Chaudhry also spoke on various facets of her personality, some of them remembering her as the "Aapa Jan", the pen name under which she edited the children's page of Pakistan Times. The meeting also observed one minute of silence for the loss of innocent lives in the present US invasion in Iraq. ____ #5. The News on Sunday / The News International 23 March 2003 tribute She crafted the future The world was rattled by the noise made by the victors in the Second World War about a new war -- this against an erstwhile ally -- and Alys clutched the banner of peace, that was never lowered as long as she could walk By I. A. Rehman Alys Faiz, who recently withdrew herself from the earthly scene at the age of 88, was a woman of many parts. She played the none-too-easy role of a life partner to a man of genius, guided their two children towards becoming celebrities, worked as a journalist and as a teacher for many years, wrote and spoke on humankind's joys and sorrows, fought for the rights of the under-privileged, and never looked back -- certainly not with any regret. It is difficult to decide which of these roles revealed her at her best. Perhaps all these roles were fashioned by her quest for a happier future. She devoted herself to the crafting of such a future. Adjectives that are often used in obituaries to describe the life and work of a dear departed, such as 'great', 'outstanding', 'noble', are not needed, nor are they adequate, while paying a tribute to Alys Faiz. She acquired eminence without labouring for distinction and chose to derive pleasure from doing what she had to do without carrying for the value anybody was going to put on it. What was it that persuaded Alys at a very young age to join the fight for South Asian people's freedom at a time when young men and women of England were more keen to benefit from service of the colonial administration? True, the First World War had radicalized the European youth and they began exerting for their ideals in different parts of the world. But there had to be something within one's self to persuade one to devote one's whole life to the building of a better future for the fellow human beings. Alys had been blessed by this spark of light and she never allowed it to go off. She came into the South Asian family at a time when fascism was rapidly advancing to capture the world and threatening to sniff out the socialist experiment. But every anti-fascist did not try to understand the colonised people's dreams or to stand by their side. Alys did that and more -- she fell in love with them. While remaining very English all along she obliterated all the distinctions that separated her first from the Indians and then from the Pakistanis. These were in fact only two different appellations for peoples whose tomorrows were linked with those of the rest of humanity. In the early years of Pakistan one saw her in the small brigade of fighters for civil liberties and she was one of the few who understood what the shouting was about. The defence of these rights was to become a passion for life. The world was soon rattled by the noise made by the victors in the Second World War about a new war -- this against an erstwhile ally -- and Alys clutched the banner of peace, that was neverlowered as long as she could walk. During the first half of the 1950s she faced challenges severe enough to break any ordinary will. The way she faced the shower of calumny and stood at her post at home and outside it and carved dignity out of deprivation and suffering opened many eyes that had been slow to recognise her mettle. She was allowed a modest assignment at The Pakistan Times and along with it a great deal of drudgery and she used this opportunity to add to the newspaper's credit. That was also the beginning of the discovery that life is not made entirely by the fulminations of the rich and the powerful, it also receives its colour and dynamism from the strivings and aspirations of the poor and the young. While Faiz Ahmad Faiz was in prison, made to pay for something that was nowhere mentioned in the tale, Alys was the moving symbol of defiance. The best reply from Faiz and her would be, she decided, to launch 'Dast-i-Saba', and show the world the joy of creativity. However, she had to wait for many years before her talent for journalism found a fuller expression. When she joined the Viewpoint in the 1980s she had little difficulty in creating a niche for herself and defining her outlook as a member of a journalist team. People whose mother tongue is English often suffer heart-aches while working with the subcontinental consumers of this language. Alys had her share but did not allow this to affect her responsibility or friendships. During the break from journalism, Alys had opportunities to join women's forums abroad and share the Palestinians' struggle for their identity and their homeland. Of course, the ground for her joining this front was paved by Faiz's entry in it, but Alys read the script by herself and put her personal stamp on what she stood for. Faiz's death in 1984 was a deadly loss and it seemed insurmountable, particularly as she counted the days spent without him. But she found strength in sharing the deprivation of the disadvantaged. When she came to work at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan it seemed she had taken up a job she had been doing since her days of youth. She could feel the pain of women ravaged and the anguish of people jailed without cause and there was no question of abandoning the ranks of the people fighting for their sovereign rights. Even when physical disability had obliged her to remain confined to bed, the will to speak out when this was needed did not disappear. And whenever there was occasion to recall the past years of struggle, the triumphs and setbacks, her eyes would light up as if she was again relishing the joy of struggle, because struggle was all that mattered. What does commitment to civil rights, peace, freedom and human rights mean? One must go on building a future that guarantees freedom and happiness for all people, she would often observe. As for herself she never gave up and perhaps she did not fail to transmit to the young girls and boys of Pakistan the spark of hope that had illuminated her path decades ago. ____ #6. The Guardian (London, UK) Tuesday March 25, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,921150,00.html Alys Faiz Ariz Azad The journalist Alys Faiz, who has died aged 87, was one of the last surviving members of a diminishing band of internationally minded campaigners who fought for the anti-colonial cause in prewar London, and later exercised considerable influence on the human rights agenda in the newly emerging states of the Indian sub-continent. Born in London, the daughter of a bookseller, she went to school in Leyton, Essex, and joined the Communist party as a teenager. With her sister Christobel, she became close to a group of London-based Indian intellectuals, and joined the Free India League. She worked as the unpaid secretary to Krishna Menon, the league secretary, who became a leading diplomat and politician in Jawaharlal Nehru's government after Indian independence in 1947. In 1938, Alys went to India herself to visit Christobel, who had married a well-known educationist and writer, MD Tasser. There, she fell in with a group of radical writers and political activists, including her future husband, the Urdu poet and Lenin peace prizewinner Faiz Ahmed Faiz. They were married in 1941. After the partition of the sub-continent, Alys adopted Pakistan as her homeland, and helped resettle the mass of refugees generated by the transfer of Hindus and Muslims across the new borders. In 1951, Faiz Ahmed Faiz was imprisoned for his alleged role in what became known as the "Rawalpindi conspiracy" to overthrow the government of Pakistan; he was, in part, the inspiration for the character of the poet Nadir Khan, in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. Alys bore this difficult period with dignity. She joined the staff of the country's leading English-language daily, the Pakistan Times, editing its women's and children's pages with flair. Her regular column, Appa Jan (or "elder sister"), inspired a generation of young women into writing and human rights activism. The touching letters she wrote to her imprisoned husband, collected into Dear Heart (1986), are a testimony to her courage. After her husband's release in 1955, the family moved to London, but Faiz Ahmed Faiz could not endure exile and, a year later, they returned to Pakistan, settling in Karachi. In 1971, when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto formed Pakistan's first democratically elected government, Alys moved to Islamabad, where her husband became cultural adviser to the new administration. From 1973, Alys herself worked with the United Nations children's fund (Unicef). In the wake of General Zia ul-haq's military coup against Bhutto in 1977, Alys followed Faiz into exile in Beirut, from where she wrote regular dispatches to the radical weekly Pakistan paper Viewpoint; these were later collected into the anthology Over My Shoulder (1991). After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1983 forced the Faizs to return to Pakistan, Alys wrote regularly for Viewpoint, mostly on human rights and social justice issues. She became a familiar figure on the political and cultural landscape of Lahore. Following her husband's death in 1984, Alys continued to write for Viewpoint until it folded in 1992, after which she produced a regular column for She magazine. She also collected material for a national centre of folk heritage and handicrafts, and worked for Unicef in Islamabad, having been closely engaged with the Pakistan human rights commission since its birth in 1986. She is survived by her daughters Saleema Hashmi, an artist and former head of the National College of Arts, and Muneeza Hashmi, a television producer and former general manager of Pakistan Television. · Alys Faiz, journalist and human rights campaigner, born September 2 1915; died March 12 2003 _____ #7. Khaleej Times (Dubai) March 21, 2003 Lahore Notebook Leaving a void BY ZAFAR SAMDANI Lahore I HAD planned to write on the spate of protests the city witnessed over the past few days. Politicians were up in arms against the Legal Framework Order; lawyers were agitating against the extension in the retirement age accorded to judges and women were marching on the roads demanding rights. Lahore presented the picture of a political and social cauldron. Then something more disturbing happened. Mrs Alys Faiz, wife of the late laureate and Lenin Prize winning poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz breathed her last on March 12. In her death the entire country lost a woman who was a remarkable, incomparable and a role model. Establishing a personal identity as the wife of an international celebrity with a tremendous fan following is not easy. But Alys Faiz carved a distinguished place for herself as a loyal wife, devoted mother, human rights activist, committed journalist, author, and a woman of fortitude and dedication. For columnist Munno Bhai, a close associate of the couple for decades, Alys possessed exceptional qualities and was a source of inspiration for men and women from many spheres of life. Faiz, he said, could not have been such a great poet without her support. Alys stood by Faiz when he was in jail and provided strength to the leftist poet - she was a communist at the early age of 16 - in his years of exile, and made her impact on Pakistani society without borrowing glory from her husband. She came to be loved and respected for her willingness to wage crusades for women, workers and the generally less endowed human beings, both physically and economically; she did commendable work for special children. Alys had come to undivided India to meet her sister who was married to educationist and scholar poet, Dr Taseer, but was soon married to Faiz, a friend and colleague of Taseer and never went back. For the record, she was Faiz's wife for 43 years and his widow for 19. While she took Kulsoom as her name after embracing Islam, contemporaries called her Alys and many of the younger generation addressed her as 'Mama', like her daughters Salima, Munneza and grandchildern. After independence, the poet and his wife shifted to Pakistan, where Faiz was born, and lived in the country, except for periods of forced exile. Faiz grew to be an internationally renowned poet and Alys became a leading light of the country's educated and conscientious classes. She was given an emotional and affectionate send-off by a very large crowd. The gathering at her funeral and qul ceremony comprised the literati and the glitterati, writers and painters, politicians and public servants, lawyers and judges, activist groups, social workers and of course journalists - a veritable who's who of Lahore's thinking elite. Those who came to pay homage to the elegant lady who embodied the best in society included a number of people from outside Lahore. Karachi-based composer Arshad Mehmood, a lifelong devotee and admirer of Faiz and Alys, commented that "one had often heard people say that somebody's death had left a void in the society; now I know what these words imply." His words summed up the feelings of many who will miss her. ++++++++ Complied by Harsh Kapoor for the South Asia Citizens Wire. SACW is an informal, independent & non-profit citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web (www.mnet.fr/aiindex) From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed Mar 26 06:48:23 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 02:18:23 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Declarations / Edits / Reports on the Massacre in Nandimarg [Kashmir] Message-ID: On the Massacre in Nandimarg [Kashmir] 23, March 2003 A : Declarations and Statements by Citizens Groups and Governments B : 'Western' Media coverage C : Pakistan / India Edits and Reports ------------ A. : Declarations and Statements by Citizens Groups and Governments #1. ALL INDIA CHRISTIAN COUNCIL Regd. Office: 8-2-601/B/17 Bhanu Society Banjara Hills, Hyderabad 500034 Andhra Pradesh, India President: Dr Joseph D’ Souza Secretary General: Dr. John Dayal Please correspond with Secretary General at: Phone (91 11) 22722262 Mobile 09811021072 Email: johndayal at vsnl.com Christian Groups Condemn Massacre of Kashmiri Pandits JOINT PRESS STATEMENT NEW DELHI, March 25, 2003 The Christian Community has reacted with shock and concern over the massacre of 22 innocent Kashmiri Pandit men, women and children by terrorists in the Valley. Major Christian organisations and activists issued a joint statement today expressing solidarity with the Kashmiri Pandit community in their hour of grief, and demanded swift action against the perpetrators of the heinous crime which was meant to intimidate the Pandits and sabotage the peace process in the State. The joint statement was issued by All India Catholic Union president Dr Maria E Menezes, All India Christian Council president Dr Joseph D Souza, Dr John Dayal, Delhi Catholic Archdiocese Justice and Peace Commission coordinator Sr. Mary Scaria, New Delhi YMCA president Elwin Nathaniel and general secretary Philip Jadhav, and pioneering children’s right activist Joseph Gathia. “We are deeply disturbed and anguished at the brutal slaying of innocent people, including children, in this act of war against humanity. The targeting of any particular community in democratic, plural and secular India – whether it is of Pandits in Kashmir, Muslims and Christians in Gujarat, or Dalits elsewhere – is specially heinous as it is meant to terrorise an entire people and hold them hostage to narrow sectarian or political ends. It has been Kashmir’s tragedy that in the last decade or so, it has seen many such occurrences, including repeated attacks on the Pandits, and on Sikhs. Every time there is a movement forward towards peace, it is halted and reversed by such a bloody interlude. The international community also cannot shirk its responsibility in the cross–border origins of such terrorism. The Central and State governments must been seen to be acting to bring the culprits to boom and to prevent a recurrence of such crime. It is gratifying and a wholesome portent that the entire Muslim community of the Kashmir valley, itself victim of terrorism, and the country has categorically denounced this violence and has made common cause with the Pandits. The solidarity of all communities will give the nation strength to emerge from such trials. ------------ Released to the Media for Publication by Dr John Dayal _____ #3. Date: 25 Mar 2003 06:32:21 -0000 URGENT PROTEST BY AMAN EKTA MANCH TO PROTEST THE KILLINGS OF KASHMIRI PANDITS ON 23.03.2003 IN VILLAGE NANDIMARG OF PULWAMA DISTRICT IN SOUTH KASHMIR, WE ARE ORGANISING A DHARNA AT JANTAR MANTAR FOR AN HOUR TODAY, 25TH MARCH 2003 FROM 4:30 PM TO 5:30 PM. PLEASE COME WITH BANNERS AND PLACARDS. IF ANYONE OF YOU HAVE CONTACTS IN THE MEDIA, PLEASE MOBILISE. _____ #4. Group of Concerned Citizens GCC condemns the heinous killing of Kashmiri Pandits New Delhi, 24 March, 2003: We a group of concerned citizens condemn the heinous killing yesterday of 24 Kashmiri Pandits in village Nandimarg of Pulwama district in South Kashmir. This monstrous act against innocent people reflects the depraved nature of the killers who are bent upon derailing efforts of the sane elements of society who are trying to bring Kashmiri Pandits and Kashmiri Muslims together. What has been done in Kashmir is a dastardly act meant to create fear psychosis among ordinary peace loving people of both Hindu and Muslim communities. As citizens we share the heart wrenching grief of the families who are left to mourn the dead. No sane individual or group could have plunged the valley into this massive blood bath. Only the most sinister minds could have conceived and executed this dastardly crime. This insanity in which the criminal elements have gripped the entire world finds its ghastly manifestation in events such as this. It must stop and stop at once. We demand: Immediate and urgent action to catch the criminals responsible Undertaking from the Central and State Administrations that no untoward incident will be permitted to take place as a reaction. Protection of minorities. Relief and rehabilitation of the families of the victims to be immediately given Yours Truly Syeda Saiyidain Hameed For Group of Concerned Citizens Kuldip Nayar, Nirmala Deshpande, Dr. Syeda Hameed, Dr. Prakash Louis, Saiyid Hamid, Moosa Raza, Syed Shahabuddin, Prof. Mushirul Hasan, Sumit Chakravorty, Prof Azizuddin Husain, Prof Rizwan Qaisar, Prof Manoranjan Mohanty, Kamla Bhasin, Sushobha Barve, Dr. Monisha Behal, Harsh Mander, Ahmad Raza Khan, M.Sajjad, Neshat Qaisar, Prof M.H.Qureshi, Prof Asaduddin, Lt General Moti Dhar (retd), Navaid Hamid, Admiral Ramdas (retd), Fatima Talib, V.K Tripathi. ______ #5. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE AI Index: ASA 20/013/2003 (Public) News Service No: 65 24 March 2003 India/Kashmir: Safeguard the lives of civilians Amnesty International today condemned the unlawful killing by unidentified gunmen of 24 civilians in Nadimarg village in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The dead included 11 women and two children and were all members of the Kashmiri Pandit community. According to reports, around midnight on 23 March, approximate 15 men wearing army fatigues and carrying automatic weapons disarmed police officers at a nearby police station before ordering villagers out of their homes. When the villagers where gathered outside, the armed men fired on them indiscriminately killing 24 people before escaping into nearby forest. So far no one has claimed responsibility for the killings. This comes in the wake of the Government of Jammu and Kashmir's calling on the Pandit community to return to the Kashmir Valley after a decade and its attempts to restore the rule of law across the state. "All sides must safeguard the lives of civilians in Jammu and Kashmir," Amnesty International said. "International humanitarian law prohibits deliberate attacks on civilians and those not taking direct part in hostilities. It is as yet unclear who is responsible, but we wholeheartedly condemn this attack." "The killing of innocent civilians should never be used to score a political point or undermine a political process," the international human rights organization continued. Amnesty International urged the authorities to take measures to prevent further abuses against civilians and to ensure that the killings in Nadimarg are comprehensively and transparently investigated with a view to identifying the perpetrators and holding them to account. "In the past, all too often the unlawful killing of civilians were left uninvestigated and those responsible remain punished," Amnesty International said. As an example, the organization referred to the massacre at Chitthisinghpora in which 36 Sikh civilians were deliberately killed in March 2000, which has still not been subjected to scrutiny. Background An early consequence of the rise of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir was the migration of large numbers of the Hindu Pandit community from the Kashmir Valley. The Pandits were regarded by some as having strong links to the rest of India because they were Hindu and because they held a large percentage of government posts. Sections of the press called for the community to leave the Valley and anti-Pandit demonstrations took place in Srinagar. Several prominent members of the Pandit community, such as leading academics, were allegedly killed by militants. In 1991 about 150,000 Kashmiri Pandits migrated from the Kashmir Valley. Those who were wealthy or had relatives in New Delhi moved there while the rest were relocated in camps around Jammu and New Delhi. A decade later, thousands of the migrants still live in camps around Jammu. According to government figures in April 2001, about 32,000 Kashmiri migrant families have been registered with relief organizations. Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW. web: http://www.amnesty.org _______ #6 Press Release Pakistan: Ministry of Foreign Affairs http://www.forisb.org/PR03-095.htm The Government of Pakistan strongly condemns the massacre of 24 Kashmiri Pandits in Nandimarg village in Shopian in the Indian Occupied Kashmir. This blatant act of terrorism, reportedly carded out by persons wearing Indian army uniforms, is reprehensible. The Government of Pakistan also offers condolences to the bereaved families. Islamabad, 24 March 2003. ______ #7. Following is the text of a statement from State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher on a March 23 terrorist attack in Srinagar, Kashmir: (begin text) U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Office of the Spokesman March 24, 2003 STATEMENT BY RICHARD BOUCHER, SPOKESMAN Kashmir Violence The United States is deeply disturbed and saddened by yesterday's horrific terrorist attack south of Srinagar. The cowardly attack appears aimed at disrupting the bold efforts of the Kashmir state government led by Mufti Mohammed Sayeed to restore peace and religious harmony to the troubled state. Secretary of State Powell phoned Indian Foreign Minister Sinha this morning to express U.S. condemnation of this brutal attack and to extend condolences to the wounded and to the families of the victims. Violence will not solve Kashmir's problems. Such acts are intended to disrupt the program of the state government in Kashmir, which is attempting to reduce tensions and promote reconciliation. Dialogue remains a critical element in the normalization of relations between India and Pakistan. (end text) (Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov) ======= B: MEDIA COVERAGE: International Media: BBC Analysis: Kashmir Hindus' dilemma http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2885533.stm o o o The New York Times March 25, 2003 Attack on Hindus in Kashmir May Signal Increase in Violence There By AMY WALDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/25/international/asia/25KASH.html o o o Boston Globe 3/25/2003 Page A6 Massacre of Hindus by gunmen in Kashmir condemned By Mujtaba Ali Ahmad, Associated Press, 3/25/2003 NADIMARG, India -- Suspected Islamic militants in Indian Army uniforms dragged 24 Hindus from their homes, lined them up outside a temple, and shot them to death yesterday in a remote village in Indian-controlled Kashmir. It was the biggest-ever terrorist attack on Hindus in the Muslim-majority state on India's northernmost tip. A group of about eight to 10 armed men pulled the villagers -- upper-caste Hindus known as Kashmiri Pandits -- out of their homes in Nadimarg in the disputed Himalayan province and shot them at close range, police and witnesses said. The dead included two children. Others in the village managed to escape, said M.A. Anjum, a police officer. ''Around midnight, a group of men in army uniform banged on our doors and dragged us outside,'' said Ramesh Kumar, a villager who escaped. No one claimed responsibility for the attack. Indian police said they believed the gunmen were Islamic militants, who have been fighting for Kashmir's independence from mainly Hindu India, or a merger with Islamic Pakistan, since 1989. A cease-fire line divides Kashmir between the two countries, both of which claim the whole Himalayan territory, which has a population of some 10 million. The massacre posed another threat to India's already tense relations with its nuclear rival Pakistan, although Islamabad condemned the violence against civilians. The hostile neighbors came to the brink of a fourth war after the Indian government blamed Pakistan for similar attacks a year ago. Syed Salahuddin, chief of the Hezb-ul Mujahedeen militant group in Pakistan's part of Kashmir, expressed grief over the massacre of civilians and blamed the Indian security forces and spy agencies for the attack. ''Indian security forces and their spy agencies have been involved in such killings in the past as well to defame the valiant and just struggle of the Kashmiri freedom fighters,'' he said in a statement. India accuses Pakistan of training and arming the Islamic groups, a charge Islamabad denies. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India met with his top security advisers in New Delhi and decided to send Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani to the site of the attack today, External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha said. The United States joined Pakistan and Britain in condemning the attack, which occurred 30 miles south of Srinagar, the summer capital of India's portion of Kashmir. The main separatist alliance, All Parties Hurriyat Conference, in Indian-held Kashmir also called for a general strike today to protest the massacre of civilians. Kashmiri Pandits, who have lived in the region for centuries, have often been the target of attacks by suspected Islamic militants causing tens of thousands of them to flee. At least 23 people were killed in a 1998 raid on another Hindu village. Many live in refugee camps in other Indian cities. The state government has been making efforts to bring them back to their homes, and Girish Chandra Saxena, the governor of Indian-controlled Kashmir, said yesterday's attack was aimed at preventing that. The US ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, condemned ''the ghastly murder of innocent men, women, and children.'' ''The global war on terrorism will not be won until such atrocities end against all countries,'' Blackwill said in a statement. The Pakistan Foreign Ministry said in a statement: ''This blatant act of terrorism, reportedly carried out by persons wearing Indian army uniforms, is reprehensible.'' Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain spoke to his Indian counterpart Sinha by phone, expressing his shock and offering condolences to the bereaved families. The massacre occurred a day after unidentified gunmen assassinated an Islamic guerrilla leader who was forced out of Kashmir's main rebel group after reportedly holding secret talks with the Indian government. Hours after yesterday's attack, hundreds of Hindu refugees living in camps in Jammu, the state's winter capital, held a street protest, accusing the government of failing to protect them. In an unrelated incident, Indian security forces killed three suspected Islamic militants in a gun battle yesterday in Phatan, a village 45 miles south of Srinagar, police said. Two of three wars between Pakistan and India since independence in 1947 fought over Kashmir. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. ____ ABC Online http://www.abc.net.au Wed, 26 Mar 2003 8:50 AEDT EC brands massacre of Kashmiri Hindus an act of terror European Commission (EC) external relations commissioner Chris Patten has condemned the "appalling" weekend massacre of 24 Hindus in India's Muslim-majority state of Kashmir. The EC, the European Union's executive arm, said Mr Patten had written to Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha to express his condolences. "This was an appalling act of terrorist violence that the European Commission condemns without reservation," Mr Patten said in a statement. It said he "stressed that the European Union and India stand side by side in their common fight against terrorism, and even more so after such an atrocity". Mr Sinha laid the blame for Sunday's massacre of the Hindu villagers on India's arch-rival Pakistan. Unidentified gunmen late on Sunday local time, herded the Hindus from their homes in Nadi Marg village in northern Kashmir, lined them up and sprayed them with automatic gunfire. Among the dead were 11 women and two children. ____ The Guardian , Tuesday March 25, 2003 Manhunt after Hindus massacred in Kashmir Maseeh Rahman in New Delhi http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,921315,00.html ____ The Independent (UK) (Mar 25, 2003) Islamic militants kill 24 Hindus in Kashmir massacre http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=390508 ____ LEMONDE.FR | 24.03.03 Tuerie d'hindous au Cachemire indien http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3216--314011-,00.html ====== C: Pakistan / India Edits and Reports Pakistan Press: The Daily Times March 26, 2003 Editorial Interpreting the latest Valley killing Twelve armed men disguised as Indian troops massacred 24 Hindu men, women and children in the village of Nadi Marg, 52 kilometers from Srinagar in Indian Held Kashmir on Monday, tilting India and Pakistan into a new crisis of bilateral tensions. The killing has attracted international attention and New Delhi is receiving messages of condolence and sympathy from London and Washington. India and Pakistan exchanged heavy fire across the Line of Control (LoC) immediately after the incident. The grisly act has cast another shadow on the future of India-Pakistan relations. India's hardline interior minister, L.K. Advani, has visited the scene of the massacre and is expected to set off another round of paranoid opinion in the Indian media that makes it easy for him to enforce his militant anti-Pakistan agenda. None of the Muslim Kashmiri militant groups has accepted responsibility for the massacre. In fact, the Pakistan-based leader of Hizbul Mujahideen, Syed Salahuddin, has condemned it in very strong terms and blamed the Indian agencies for it. He has linked it to the recent killing of the moderate Hizb leader, Majid Dar, who last year caused a split in the Kashmir jihad by accepting a ceasefire in the Valley. It may be recalled that in 2000, a group of armed men had killed 37 Sikhs in Chattisinghpura to coincide with the visit of President Clinton to New Delhi. That killing was widely believed to be staged by the Indian agencies to put the blame on Pakistan-based jihadi organisations and highlight Pakistan's "cross-border terrorism" during the visit. In fact, amid a new warlike rhetoric unleashed by the BJP government, acts of terrorism in Held Kashmir seem to have increased after a winter of relative calm. This month an attack on a police post killed thirteen people. A section of the Pakistani press has already delivered its verdict by saying that Indian troops had massacred their own people. But it is sad that reality is interpreted differently in India and Pakistan. Any act of terrorism in any part of India is immediately dubbed a crime committed by the jihadi militias and the ISI. In Pakistan, anything claimed by India is rejected by the establishment and the public and all acts of terrorism are automatically assumed to be India's blame-game against Pakistan. This tendency gibes well with the official Indian policy to target Pakistan as a "terrorist state" after the 9/11 incident. International pressure on Pakistan to rein in its jihadi militias, prevent them from crossing the LoC, and purge its madrasas of extremist elements, has also been used by India to strengthen its anti-Pakistan campaign. On the other side, violent anti-India rhetoric unleashed by the leaders of the banned organisations in Pakistan has not helped Pakistan's cause at all. In the new situation created by the latest killings in Nadi Marg, India's policy will hinge on the measure of credibility the two hostile states enjoy with the international community. The world supports Pakistan's policy of seeking dialogue with India, but it doesn't believe that Pakistan has ceased completely the cross-border infiltration by its militias. It is also not satisfied with the way Pakistan has acted against the banned militias, nor is it happy with the measures adopted by it to prevent the religious seminaries from becoming a nursery of extreme opinion in Pakistan. The stage is thus set for India to exploit Pakistan's continuing internal disorder and its negative international image. Pakistan's reaction is expected to be counter-condemnatory, which will tend to ratchet up the bilateral tension on the international border only recently brought down with great international effort. That is why the Nadi Marg massacre requires careful handling rather than the gut reaction of a hard-hitting rebuttal. * o o o DAWN 25 March 2003 New Delhi blamed for Kashmir massacre By Our Staff Correspondent MUZAFFARABAD, March 24: The chairman of Muttahida Jihad Council and supreme commander of Hizbul Mujahideen, Syed Salahuddin, on Monday strongly condemned the killing of 24 Kashmiri Pundits and blamed the Indian agencies for the gruesome incident. "The latest of the series of such incidents is imitation of the Chattisingpura massacre, which was later proven to have been carried out by the Indian army to defame the freedom movement," he said in a statement here. At least 36 Sikhs were killed in cold blood on the outskirts of Srinagar on the eve of the then US President Bill Clinton's visit to India. The MJC chief said the Hindu community, which had not migrated from held Kashmir, was supporting the freedom struggle, and India was trying in vain to confront them with the Mujahideen by carrying out such ghastly incidents. Recalling the killing of Hizb battalion commander Kuldip Kumar alias Akhtar by the Indian army in an encounter in Udhampur on March 19, he said members of the minority communities were being killed by the army for their affiliation with the freedom struggle. He said the recent disclosure by a former occupied Kashmir minister, Dr Mustafa Kamal that the Indian army was involved in the Chattisingpura massacre was enough to establish that New Delhi itself was masterminding and executing such incidents. "The Mujahideen groups strongly condemn the massacre of Pundits and express their heartfelt sympathies with the bereaved families. It is not their but our loss as well," Mr Salahuddin said. "We also reiterate our demand that an independent probe should be held under the auspices of the United Nations to unearth and expose the perpetrators of such heinous crimes," he added. ++++ Indian Press: Kashmir Images www.kashmirimages.info 25 Mar 2003 Editorial Shame! by Bashir Manzar The gruesome and barbaric massacre of twenty four hapless Pandits has once again put a question mark on the very concept of humanity. People cutting across political thoughts and beliefs have condemned the act. Once again there are emotional statements from mainstream as well as separatist politicians. On the day of massacre there was a mad race among the politicians from different schools of thought to visit the spot and get themselves clicked beside the dead bodies of poor and unfortunate victims. They got themselves clicked and managed to get those pictures published in newspapers and telecast on television channels, and that is all. This has been happening and this will continue to happen in future as for politicians it is part of the game. Conflict economy is on what the politicians here thrive. They are mere shopkeepers and the cheapest commodity available on their political shops is human life and blood. The more blood split, the more money, fame it gets for them. It is the human tragedy that keeps them relevant and, therefore, they issue statements for a day or too, order probes, suspend some cops, call strikes and after a few days forget, no matter how gruesome the tragedy would have been and start praying for something more dastardly to occur so that they get more media coverage, more money and more fame. People describe the act as inhuman. Is it so? No, calling the killers as inhumans is insulting the species. Inhumans never do this, only humans do. History bears witness, humans have been massacring humans, burning them alive, burying them alive. Human life has become the cheapest thing available and none other than the humans are responsible for it. Dogs never eat dogs, only humans have that distinction. Those who massacred twenty four humans are very much humans - part of human civilisation. Civilisation - what humans are proud of is in fact barbarism. Humans have been doing this and they will continue to do this and in a bid to maintain the fiasco that they are Ashraf-ul-Makhlookat (superior creation) they will try to camouflage things by describing these acts as inhuman, insulting the species that can not even dream of falling as low as humans fall. Why these hapless Pandits were done to death? Who were the shameless people who massacred them? These and much more question will continue to haunt those who are yet to abandon their sanity. Kashmir polity is full of questions and questions alone. Not that there are no answers to all these questions but there is no will to answer. Mysteries are what help politicians to rule the roost. Keep everything shrouded in mystery and add to the confusion of an already confused lot. From Moulana Farooq's murder to Qazi Nissar's, from Chittisinghpora massacre to Nadimarg, there are only questions - not difficult to answer. Politicians don't want to make the answers public as that may devastate their conflict entrepreneurship. And as for as common people are concerned it is the vested interest coupled with fear and scare that has sealed their lips. Unless they gather the courage to unlock their lips nothing is going to change. Humans would continue to die at the hands of unidentified persons who in most of the cases are well identified but the identity is being concealed for different reasons. Politicians will always try to save their skin - mainstream accusing separatists and vice versa but those who are dying are ordinary Kashmiris and only they, not the government or the separatists, can save themselves if they gather courage to call a spade a spade. o o o The Indian Express Tuesday, March 25, 2003 Edits Return of the dark night The heinous attack on Kashmiri Pandits belied any hope that J&K had exorcised its past http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=20760 o o o The Economic Times, MARCH 26, 2003 EDITORIAL Foil their designs http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=41393345 o o o The Statesman, India Brought to heal http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=3&theme=&usrsess=1&id=10500 o o o PTI KASHMIR-BJP Khurana asks Govt to break restraint and launch war on Pak NEW DELHI, MAR 2 (PTI) BJP leader Madan Lal Khurana today asked the Government to "break the restraint" and launch a war against Pakistan following the massacre of 24 pandits in Pulwama district in south Kashmir. "Enough is enough. It is high time the Government break the restraint being observed against Pakistan. Terrorism against India can be stopped only through an all out war", the Delhi BJP President said addressing a protest demonstration near the Pakistan High Commission. "Till when will we wait to teach Pakistan a lesson?. Parliament attack, Akshardham killings and Kashmir temple carnage should not have been pardoned and if the Government continues with the policy, the terror tactics will only continue", he said. He said India need not expect US to persuade Pakistan to stop cross border terrorism as the "Americans need their help during the Iraq war and have already withdrawn sanctions to appease them". Holding Jammu amd Kashmir Government's soft policy on militants directly responsible for the recent spate of killings, Khurana demanded dismissal of Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed for failing to take steps to curb terrorism. Shouting anti-Pakistan slogans, BJP activists burnt the effigy of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. Later, large number of protestors led by Khurana and MPs Anita Arya and Lal Behari Tiwari who tried to break the police cordon and march into the Commission were arrested by the police and released immediately. o o o PTI KASHMIR-MASSACRE-KISHORE Sack Mufti govt: VHP NEW DELHI, MAR 25 (PTI) Accusing the Mufti Sayeed government of failing to stop attacks on Kashmiri Pandits, Vishwa Hindu Parishad today demanded dismissal of the state government and imposition of emergency in Jammu and Kashmir. The Centre should immediately declare the state as "disturbed" and impose emergency and if the Union government failed to provide security to these Pandits, it should also go, VHP senior Vice-President Acharya Giriraj Kishore told reporters here. He said it was also Central government's responsibility to provide security to its citizens and if it fails to do so, it should go. Condemning the Pulwama massacre, Kishore took a dig at Centre saying "everytime any such incident occurs, the central leadership only reiterate that this is a tragic incident and it should not have happened but the responsibility of security also lies with them along with the state government. -- From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed Mar 26 07:31:48 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 03:01:48 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Robert Fisk on Washingtons Quagmire in Iraq, Civilian Deaths and the Fallacy of Bushs War of Liberation Message-ID: http://www.democracynow.org/fisk.htm Democracy Now! March 25, 2003 Live From Iraq, an Un-Embedded Journalist Robert Fisk on Washington's 'Quagmire' in Iraq, Civilian Deaths and the Fallacy of Bush's 'War of Liberation' by Robert Fisk, Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill NOTE: THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! Host: Set the scene for us in Baghdad right now. Robert Fisk, The Independent: Well, it's been a relatively—relatively being the word—quiet night, there's been quite a lot of explosions about an hour ago. There have obviously been an awful lot of missiles arriving on some target, but I would say it was about 4 or 5 miles away. You can hear the change in air pressure and you can hear this long, low rumble like drums or like someone banging on a drum deep beneath the ground, but quite a ways away. There have only been 2 or 3 explosions near the center of the city, which is where I am, in the last 12 hours. So, I suppose you could say that, comparatively, to anyone living in central Baghdad, it's been a quiet night. The strange thing is that the intensity of the attacks on Baghdad changes quite extraordinarily; you'll get one evening when you can actually sleep through it all, and the next evening when you see the explosions red hot around you. As if no one really planning the things, it's like someone wakes up in the morning and says, "Let's target this on the map today", and it's something which sort of characterizes the whole adventure because if you actually look at what's happening on the ground, you'll see that the American and British armies started off in the border. They started off at Um Qasr and got stuck, carried on up the road through the desert, took another right turn and tried to get into Basra, got stuck, took another right at Nasiriyah, got stuck—it's almost as if they keep on saying, "Well let's try the next road on the right", and it has kind of a lack of planning to it. There will be those who say that, "No it's been meticulously planned," but it doesn't feel like it to be here. Amy Goodman: Can you talk about the POWs and television - the charge that they're violating the Geneva Convention by showing them on television? Robert Fisk: Well, you know, the Geneva Convention is meant to protect children, and hospitals are full of civilians, including many children who've been badly wounded. It seems to me that this concentration on whether television should show prisoners or not is a kind of mischief: it's not the point. The issue, of course, is that both sides are taking prisoners, and that both sides want the other side to know of the prisoners they've taken. I watched CNN showing a British soldier forcing a man to kneel on the ground and put his hands up and produce his identity card and I've seen other film on British television of prisoners near Um Qasr and Basra being forced to march past a British soldier with their hands in the air. Well, they (the American soldiers) weren't interviewed, it's true, although you heard at one point a man asking questions, clearly to put any prisoner on air answering questions is against the Geneva Convention. But for many, many years now, in the Middle East television has been showing both sides in various wars appearing on television and being asked what their names are and what their home countries are. And the real issue is that these prisoners should not be maltreated, tortured, or hurt after capture. When you realize that 19 men have tried to commit suicide at Guantanamo, that we now know that 2 prisoners at the US base Bagram were beaten to death during interrogation. To accuse the Iraqis of breaking the Geneva Convention by putting American POWs on television in which you hear them being asked what state they're from in the states, it seems a very hypocritical thing to do. But one would have to say, technically, putting a prisoner of war on television and asking them questions on television is against the Geneva Convention. It is quite specifically so. And thus, clearly Iraq broke that convention when it put those men on television - I watched them on Iraqi TV here. But, as I've said, it's a pretty hypocritical thing when you realize, this equates to the way America treats prisoners from Afghanistan - Mr. Bush is not the person to be teaching anyone about the Geneva Convention. Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! Correspondent: Robert Fisk, you wrote in one of your most recent articles, actually, the title of it was "Iraq Will Become a Quagmire for the Americans" and I think many people within the US administration were surprised to find the kinds of resistance they have in places like Nasiriyah. We have the two Apache helicopters that have apparently been shot down and many US casualties so far. Do you think the Americans were caught by surprise, particularly by the resistance in the south where everyone was saying that the people are against Saddam Hussein? Robert Fisk: Well, they shouldn't have been caught by surprise; there were plenty of us writing that this was going to be a disaster and a catastrophe and that they were going to take casualties. You know, one thing I think the Bush administration has shown as a characteristic, is that it dreams up moral ideas and then believes that they're all true, and characterizes this policy by assuming that everyone else will then play their roles. In their attempt to dream up an excuse to invade Iraq, they've started out, remember, by saying first of all that there are weapons of mass destruction. We were then told that al Qaeda had links to Iraq, which, there certainly isn't an al Qaeda link. Then we were told that there were links to September 11th, which was rubbish. And in the end, the best the Bush administration could do was to say, "Well, we're going to liberate the people of Iraq". And because it provided this excuse, it obviously then had to believe that these people wanted to be liberated by the Americans. And, as the Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said a few hours ago, I was listening to him in person, the Americans expected to be greeted with roses and music - and they were greeted with bullets. I think you see what has happened is that - and as he pointed out - the American administration and the US press lectured everybody about how the country would break apart where Shiites hated Sunnis and Sunnis hated Turkmen and Turkmen hated Kurds, and so on. And yet, most of the soldiers fighting in southern Iraq are actually Shiite. They're not Sunnis, they're not Tikritis, they're not from Saddam's home city. Saddam did not get knocked off his perch straight away, and I think that, to a considerable degree, the American administration allowed that little cabal of advisors around Bush - I'm talking about Perle, Wolfowitz, and these other people - people who have never been to war, never served their country, never put on a uniform - nor, indeed, has Mr. Bush ever served his country - they persuaded themselves of this Hollywood scenario of GIs driving through the streets of Iraqi cities being showered with roses by a relieved populace who desperately want this offer of democracy that Mr. Bush has put on offer-as reality. And the truth of the matter is that Iraq has a very, very strong political tradition of strong anti-colonial struggle. It doesn't matter whether that's carried out under the guise of kings or under the guise of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath party, or under the guise of a total dictator. There are many people in this country who would love to get rid of Saddam Hussein, I'm sure, but they don't want to live under American occupation. The nearest I can describe it - and again, things can change - maybe the pack of cards will all collapse tomorrow - but if I can describe it, it would be a bit like the situation in 1941- and I hate these World War II parallels because I think it's disgusting to constantly dig up the second world war - Hitler is dead and he died in 1945 and we shouldn't use it, but if you want the same parallel, you'll look at Operation: Barbarosa, where the Germans invaded Russia in 1941 believing that the Russians would collapse because Stalin was so hated and Communism was so hated. And at the end of the day, the Russians preferred to fight the Germans to free their country from Germany, from Nazi rule, rather than to use the German invasion to turn against Stalin. And at the end of the day, a population many of whom had suffered greatly under Communism fought for their motherland under the leadership of Marshal Stalin against the German invader. A similar situation occurred in 1980 when Saddam himself invaded Iran. There had just been, 12 months earlier, a revolution in Iran and the Islamic Republic had come into being. It was believed here in Baghdad that if an invasion force crossed the border from Iraq - supported again in this case by the Americans - that the Islamic Republic would fall to pieces; that it would collapse under its own volition; that is couldn't withstand a foreign invasion. I actually crossed the border with the Iraqi forces in 1980, I was reporting on both sides, and I remember reaching the first Iranian city called Horam Shar and we came under tremendous fire; mortar fire, sniper fire, and artillery fire, and I remember suddenly thinking as I hid in this villa with a number of Iraqi commandos, "My goodness, the Iranians are fighting for their country". And I think the same thing is happening now, and, obviously, we know that with the firepower they have the Americans can batter their way into these cities and they can take over Baghdad, but the moral ethos behind this war is that you Americans are supposed to be coming to liberate this place. And, if you're going to have to smash your way into city after city using armor and helicopters and aircraft, then the whole underpinning and purpose of this war just disappears, and, the world - which has not been convinced thus far, who thinks this is a wrong war and an unjust war - are going to say, "Then what is this for? They don't want to be liberated by us." And that's when we're going to come down to the old word: Oil. What's quite significant is in the next few hours the Oil Minister in Iraq is supposed to be addressing the press, and that might turn out to be one of the more interesting press conferences that we've had, maybe even more interesting, perhaps, than the various briefings from military officials about the course of the war. Amy Goodman: We're speaking to Robert Fisk in Baghdad, Iraq. Robert, we also have word that the Turks have also crossed over the border - thousands of Turkish soldiers - into northern Iraq. Robert Fisk: I wouldn't be surprised, I really don't know. You've got to realize that, although electricity and communications continue n Baghdad, I only know what I hear on the radio and television, and, as in all wars, covering it is an immensely exhausting experience. I simply haven't been able to keep up with what's happening in the north. I rely on people like you, Amy, to tell me. I have a pretty good idea of what's happening in the rest of Iraq, but not in the north. Amy Goodman: Well can you tell us what is happening and what it's like to report there? How are you getting around and do you agree with the Iraqi General Hazim Al-Rawi that you quoted that Iraq will become a quagmire for the Americans? Robert Fisk: Well, it's not just Rawi, we've had Vice President Ramadan, [and] the Minister of Defense just over 24 hours ago giving the most detailed briefings. One of the interesting things is whether or not you believe these various briefings are correct, the detail is quite extraordinary, and certainly we're being given more information about what's been going on at the front - accurate or not - than most of the Western correspondents have been getting in Qatar. I mean, you'll see pictures of journalists saying, "Well, I'm with the US Marines near a town I can't name, but we're having some problems, here's Nasiriyah and here's a bridge". If you go to the Iraqi briefing, they'll tell you it's the third corp, 45th Battalion, they're actually giving the names of the officers who are in charge of various units and what position they're in, and where the battles are taking place. There is actually more detail being given out by the Iraqis than by the Americans or the British, which is quite remarkable, it's the first time I've ever known this. Now, again, it may be plausible to think that all this information is accurate - when the Iraqis first said they had taken American prisoners, we said, "Oh, more propaganda" - then up comes the film of the prisoners. Then they said they'd shot down a helicopter, and the journalists here in the briefing sort of looked at each other and said, "There's another story", and suddenly we're seeing film of a shot down helicopter - then another film of a shot down helicopter. Then they said they had attacked and destroyed armored personnel carriers belonging to the US armed forces, and we all looked at each other and said, "Here we go again, more propaganda", and then we see film on CNN of burning APCs. So, there's a good deal of credibility being given to the Iraqi version of events, although I'd have to say that their total version of how many aircraft have been shot down appears to be an exaggeration. So, we do have a moderately good idea, in that sense, of what's actually happening. There are Iraqis moving around inside Iraq and arriving in Baghdad and giving us accounts of events that appear to be the same as accounts being given by various authorities. And no journalist can leave Baghdad to go to the south to check this out, but I do suspect that will happen in due course, I do think they will get journalists to move around inside Iraq providing they can produce a scenario that is favorable to Iraq. But frankly, any scene that a journalist sees that is opposition to the United States would be favorable to Iraq. But, it may well be that, with the Americans only about 50 miles away from where I am, if they're going to try to enter Baghdad or if a siege of Baghdad begins, of course the Iraqis have boasted for a long time that this would be a kind of Stalingrad - here come the World War II references again - we won't have to go very far to see the Americans fighting the Iraqis, we'll see them with our own eyes. The Americans won't be arriving close to Baghdad; they already are close. When we'll be moving around - you asked me about reporting - it's not nearly as claustrophobic as you might imagine. I can walk out from my hotel in the evening, and, if I can find a restaurant open, I can get in a cab and go to dinner, no one stops me. When I'm traveling around during the day, if I want to go and carry out any interviews, if I want to do anything journalistic, I have a driver and I have what is called a minder; a person provided by the ministry to travel with me. This means that nobody I speak to is able to speak freely. I've gone up to people in the streets – shopkeepers - and talked to them, but it's quite clear that there's a representative of the authority with me, and I, in fact, don't do any interviews like that any more, I think it's ridiculous. Many of my colleagues continue to point microphones at these poor people and ask them questions which they cannot possibly respond to freely. So I simply do not do interview stories, I think it's too intimidating to the person one is talking to, it is unprofessional and it is unethical to travel with anyone else on an interview of that kind. But, you know, as I say, I can get into a car without a minder and go to a grocery shop and pick up groceries, bottles of water, biscuits, vegetables - I don't need to travel around with a minder in that case and nobody minds. In other words, it's not as though you're under a great oppressive watch. Television reports now, by and large, when reporters are making television interviews, or when they're being interviewed by the head offices, now require a ministry minder to sit and listen. It doesn't mean they are being censored, but it means that they bite their lip occasionally. I will not do any television interviews with minders present so I don't appear on television here. The odd thing is that there is no control at all attempted over written journalism or radio journalism. While I'm talking to you now, I'm sure this phone is being listened to, but whether they have the ability to listen to every phone call in Baghdad, but I doubt very much. I can say anything I want, and I do. And when I write, I'm not worried at all about being critical of the regime here and I am. So, it's really a television thing here that I think the authorities are more fixated with and the actual presence of the minder, who, in my case is a pleasant guy who does not have a political upbringing particularly. It's more of a concern, which I suppose one could understand if you saw it through Iraqi eyes or the eyes of the regime, that the reporter is not doing some kind of dual purpose. Obviously, there is a tradition that journalists sometimes, unfortunately, turned out to work for governments as well as for newspapers or television, and I think the concern of the Iraqis is that some vital piece of information doesn't get out to what is referred to by them as the enemy, and, secondly, that reporters are what they say they are. But, you know, this happened in Yugoslavia when I was covering the Serbian war. I was in there from the beginning of the war and most journalists were thrown out but I managed to hang on. And at the beginning, one couldn't travel anywhere in Serbia or Yugoslavia at all without a government official. And, after days and weeks went by, and you turned out to be who you said you were, and you were not at all interested in working for anyone but your editor and your newspaper, a form of trust build up where they know that you disapprove of their regime, but they vaguely know you're going to tell the truth, even if it's critical towards Britain or America or whoever. And they leave you alone, by and large. I have been to Iraq many times and I know a lot of people here, both in authority and civilians. I think people generally realize that The Independent really is an independent newspaper. So, there's no great attempt to influence me or force me to praise the regime, for example, which is kind of a Hollywood version of what happens in these places. I've written very critically, with condemnation of Saddam and the regime and of all the human rights abuses here and the use of gas in Halabja and so on. And I think there's a sort of understanding that as long as you're a real journalist you will have to say these things, and indeed one has to, one should, but that doesn't mean that we are laboring under the cruel heel—to use Churchill's phrase—of some kind of Gestapo. Again, this is not a free country, this is a dictatorship, this is a regime that does not believe in the free speech that you and I believe in. One has to do ones best to get the story out. Amy Goodman: Do you think Saddam Hussein is in control? Robert Fisk: Oh yes, absolutely. There have been a few incidents, I mean there was a little bit of shooting last night and there were the rumors that people had come from Saddam City and there were clashes with security forces or security agents, and rumors of a railway line being blown up, which was denied by the authorities, but there is no doubt Saddam is in control. It's very funny sitting here, in a strange way, I suppose, if you could listen to some of the things that were said about the United States here, you'd laugh in America, but I've been listening to this uproariously funny argument about whether Saddam's speech was recorded before the war and whether they have look-alikes. So, that in fact, the speech that Saddam made 24 hours ago, less than 24 hours ago, a speech that was very important if you read the text carefully and understand what he was trying to do, it has been totally warped in the United States by a concentration not on what he was saying, but whether it was actually him that was saying it. The American correspondent was saying to me yesterday morning, "This is ridiculous, we simply can't report the story, because every time we have to deal with something Saddam says, the Pentagon claims it's not him or it's his double or it was recorded 2 weeks ago". So, the story ceases to be about what the man says, the story starts to be this totally mythical, fictional idea that it really isn't Saddam or it's his double, etcetera. I watched this recording on television, all his television broadcasts are recordings because he's not so stupid as to do a live broadcast and get bombed by the Americans while he's doing it. The one thing you learn if you're a target is not to do live television broadcasts, or radio for that matter, or, indeed telephone. But if you listen and read the text of what Saddam said, it has clearly been recorded in the previous few hours, and I can tell you, having once actually met the man, it absolutely was Saddam Hussein. But that's the strange thing, you see, that in the US, the Pentagon only has to say it's not Saddam, that it's a fake, it was recorded years ago, or that it's a double, and the Hollywood side of the story, which is quite rubbish, it's not true - it is him, then takes over from the real story, which is "What the hell is this guy actually saying?'. Amy Goodman:What is he saying? Robert Fisk: There were several themes. The first one; 14 times he told the Iraqis, "Be patient". Oddly enough, that's what Joseph Stalin told the Russian people in 1941 and 1942; be patient. He made a point of specifically naming the army officers in charge of Um Qasr, Basra, and Nasiriyah and the various other cities in which are holding out against the Americans. It was important that he kept saying, "the army, the army, the Ba'ath party militia'. He was constantly reiterating that these things were happening; they were opposing the Americans and the Americans were taking casualties. In some ways, his speech was not unlike that of George W. Bush, he talked about fighting evil, of fighting the devil. And, although there's no connection, that's something that bin Laden used to say a lot. The idea of good versus evil has become part of kind of a patoire for every warring leader whether it be Bush or Saddam or anyone else. But there was also this constant reference to the anti-colonial history of Iraq, the need to remember this was a battle against an invader; that these people were invading from another country. This was not Iraq invading the US - this was the US invading Iraq. It was not a speech that was delivered with a great deal of passion, and Saddam is capable of emotion. He read from a text, it wasn't Churchillian - here we go again, World War II grasping at me like a ghost. But it was an interesting text because of its constant repetition; wait, we will win eventually. And it was quite clear what came over from it; Saddam believes Iraq's salvation - at least the salvation of the regime, shall we say - is just keeping on fighting and fighting and fighting until the moral foundations and underpinnings which America has attached to this invasion have collapsed. In other words, if you can keep holding out week after week, if you can suck the Americans into the quagmire of Baghdad and make them fight, and use artillery against them in civilian areas, that will undermine the whole moral purpose they've strapped onto this war. Frankly, having listened to the various meretricious reasons put forward for this war, I think he's understood one of the main reasons why it's taking place and thus has decided he's going to go on fighting. And, of course, once you apply unconditional surrender - World War II - isn't that what Roosevelt did at Casablanca, there is no way out. It was an interesting moment last night when Tariq Aziz was asked by a journalist, "Can you see a way out?" Is it possible to have another peace?" Tariq Aziz looked at the journalist as if he'd seen a ghost and he said, "What are you talking about? There is a war". I asked Tariq Aziz, I said, "You've given us a very dramatic description of the last 7 days of the war, can you give us a dramatic description of the next 7 days?" "Just stay on here in Baghdad and you'll find out", he said. Jeremy Scahill: Robert Fisk, what are you seeing in terms of the preparations for the defense of Baghdad? The people that we've been interviewing inside of Iraq- both ordinary Iraqis as well as journalists and others, are saying that there aren't really visible signs that there are any overt preparations underway. What's your sense? Robert Fisk: Well, it doesn't look like Stalingrad to me, but I guess in Stalingrad there probably weren't a lot of preparations. I've been more than 20 miles outside of Baghdad, and you can certainly see troops building big artillery vetments around the city. I mean, positions for heavy artillery and mortars, army vehicles hidden under overpasses, the big barracks of long ago - as in Serbia before the NATO bombardment - have long been abandoned. Most of these cruise missiles that we hear exploding at night are bursting into government buildings, ministries, offices and barracks that have long ago been abandoned. There's nobody inside them; they are empty. I've watched ministries take all their computers out, trays - even the pictures from the walls. That is the degree to which these buildings are empty; they are shells. Inside the city, there have been a lot of trenches dug beside roads, sandbag positions set up. In some cases, holes dug with sandbags around them to make positions on road intersections to make positions for snipers and machine gunners. This is pretty primitive stuff. It might be WW2 in fabrication, but it doesn't look like the kind of defenses that are going to stop a modern, mechanized army like that of the United States or Britain - I think the US is a little more modern than we are. I don't think it needs to be, because America's power is in its firepower, its mechanized state, its sophistication of its technology. Iraqi military power is insane; these people are invading us and we continue to resist them - active resistance is a principle element of Iraq's military defense. It's in the act of resistance, not whether you can stop this tank or that tank. And, the fact of the matter is, and it's become obvious in the Middle East over the last few years; the West doesn't want to take casualties. They don't want to die. Nobody wants to die, but some people out here realize a new form of warfare has set in where, the United States, if they want to invade a country, they will bombard it. They will use other people's soldiers to do it. Look at the way the Israelis used Lebanese mercenaries of the South Lebanon army in Lebanon. Look at the way the Americans used the KLA in Kosovo or the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. But here in Iraq there isn't anyone they can use; the Iraqi opposition appears to be hopeless. The Iraqis have not risen up against their oppressors as they did in 1991 when they were betrayed by the Americans and the British after being urged to fight Saddam - they're staying at home. They're letting the Americans do the liberating. If the Americans want to liberate them, fine, let the Americans do it - but the Americans aren't doing very well at the moment. You see, we've already got a situation down in Basra where the British army have admitted firing artillery into the city of Basra, and then winging on afterward talking about "We're being fired at by soldiers hiding among civilians'. Well, I'm sorry; all soldiers defending cities are among civilians. But now the British are firing artillery shells into the heavily populated city of Basra. When the British were fired upon with mortars or with snipers from the cragg on the state or the bogside in Delhi and in Northern Ireland, they did not use artillery, but here, apparently, it is ok to use artillery on a crowded city. What on Earth is the British army doing in Iraq firing artillery into a city after invading the country? Is this really about weapons of mass destruction? Is this about al Qaeda? It's interesting that in the last few days, not a single reporter has mentioned September 11th. This is supposed to be about September 11th. This is supposed to be about the war on terror, but nobody calls it that anymore because deep down, nobody believes it is. So, what is it about? It's interesting that there are very few stories being written about oil. We're told about the oil fields being mined and booby-trapped, some oil wells set on fire - but oil is really not quite the point. Strange enough, in Baghdad, you don't forget it, because in an attempt to mislead the guidance system of heat seeking missiles and cruise missiles, Iraqis are setting fire to large berms of oil around the city. All day, all you see is this sinister black canopy of oil smoke over Baghdad. It blocks out the sun, it makes the wind rise and it gets quite cold; here, you can't forget the word oil. But I don't hear it too much in news reports. Amy Goodman: We're talking to Robert Fisk in Baghdad, Iraq. I wanted to get you comment on Richard Perle's piece in The Guardian where he said "Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is about to end. He will go quickly, but not alone. In a parting irony, he will take the UN down with him". Robert Fisk: Well, poor old UN. Very soon, the Americans are going to need the United Nations as desperately as they wanted to get rid of them. Because if this turns into the tragedy that it is turning into at the moment, if the Americans end up, by besieging Baghdad day after day after day, they'll be looking for a way out, and the only way out is going to be the United Nations at which point, believe me, the French and the Russians are going to make sure that George Bush passes through some element of humiliation to do that. But that's some way away. Remember what I said early on to you. The Americans can do it - they have the firepower. They may need more than 250,000 troops, but if they're willing to sacrifice lives of their own men, as well as lives of the Iraqis, they can take Baghdad; they can come in. But, you know, I look down from my balcony here next to the Tigris River - does that mean we're going to have an American tank on every intersection in Baghdad? What are they there for - to occupy? To repress? To run an occupation force against the wishes of Iraqis? Or are they liberators? It's very interesting how the reporting has swung from one side to another. Are these liberating forces or occupying forces? Every time I hear a journalist say "liberation" I know he means "occupation'. We come back to the same point again which Mr. Perle will not acknowledge; because this war does not have a UN sanction behind it - I mean not in the sense of sanctions but that it doesn't have permission behind it, it is a war without international legitimacy, and the longer it goes on, the more it hurts Bush and the less it hurts Saddam. And we're now into one week, and there isn't even a single American soldier who has even approached the city of Baghdad yet. And the strange thing, looking at it from here in Baghdad, is the ad hoc way in which this war appears to be carried out. We heard about the air campaign. There is no air campaign; there was not a single Iraqi airplane in the sky. This isn't Luftwaffe faces the Battle of Britain or the Royal Air Force or the USAF - this is aerial bombardment. The fighting is going on on the ground. There wasn't meant to be any fighting, but there is. It's the way in which during the first night there was some distant rumbling, and we were told that the war had begun, but it wasn't really the bombing of Baghdad, but a one off attempt to kill Saddam. I guess someone walked into the White House and said, "Mr. President, we're not planning to start until tomorrow, but we've got this opportunity to kill Saddam". "OK, let's have a go, let's try it, let's try it". Then we have this big blitz the following night, and a much bigger one the next night, where I was literally standing in the middle of Baghdad literally watching buildings blow up all over Baghdad around me - a whole presidential palace went into flames right in front of me, it was extraordinary. An anarchical sight of red and gold colors and tremendous explosions and leaves dropping off the trees like autumn in the spring. And then the next night was quite quiet, and then last night, for example, most of the attacks by the cruise missiles were in the suburbs, and it was possible - until you rang, of course, to sleep. It's as if someone down there in Qatar or in CentCom in Tampa, Florida, or somewhere is saying, "Ok, let's send another 20 tonight, let's send 300 tonight, where should we send them, let's send them here". It's as if the whole idea of the war was not planned militarily, it was planned politically, it was planned ideologically, as if there's an ideological plan behind the war. It started with al Qaeda, it moved on to weapons of mass destruction, then we're going to liberate the people - and it's all going wrong. Whatever kind of ideological plan there was has fallen to bits. Now, of course, maybe Saddam falls in the next few days, maybe Baghdad collapses. I actually believed and wrote in the paper a few days ago that it's possible that one day we'll all get up and all the militias and the Iraqi soldiers will be gone and we'll see American soldiers walking through the streets. But I don't believe that now. Amy Goodman: Last question - have you been to the hospitals of Baghdad? Robert Fisk: Yes; quite a few of them. The main visit I made was to one of the main government hospitals on Saturday morning after a pretty long night of explosions around the city in which of course quite a lot of these cruise missiles exploded right on their targets. Others missed them and crashed into civilian areas. I went to one hospital where - the doctors here are not Ba'ath party members - the chief doctor I spoke to was trained in Edinborough where he got his FRCF. He went very coldly down his list of patients and he had 101, whom he estimated 16 were soldiers 85 were civilians, and of the 85 civilians, 20 were women, 6 were children. One child and one man had died in the operating theater during surgery. Most of the children were pretty badly hurt, one little girl had shrapnel from an American bomb in her spine and her left leg was paralyzed. Her mother was, rather pathetically, trying to straighten out her right leg against it as if both the legs, if pointed in the same direction, she'd somehow regain movement in the left side of her body, which, of course, she did not. Other children were on drip feeds and had very serious leg injuries. One little girl had shrapnel in her abdomen, which had not yet been removed. They were clearly in pain, there was a lot of tears and crying from the children, less so from the young women who had been hit - one woman was actually 17, they weren't all young. In one case a woman and her daughter were there. The woman said to me that she had gone to see a relative and she had gotten out of a taxi, her daughter, whom I also spoke to, was standing in front of her and there was a tremendous explosion, noise, and white light, as the woman said. The girl was hit in the legs and the woman was hit in the chest and legs by shrapnel. They were lying next to each other in hospital beds. This is not the worst kind of injuries I have ever seen, and I've seen just about every injury in the world including people who've virtually got no heads left and are still alive, and I didn't see that. But, if you're going to bomb a country, you will wound and kill civilians; that is in the nature of warfare. We bomb, they suffer, and nothing I saw in that hospital surprised me. Amy Goodman: Well, Robert Fisk, we're going to let you go to sleep. General Colin Powell said that foreign journalists should leave as the campaign of so-called "shock and awe' is initiated - and it has started. Why have you chosen to remain in Baghdad? Robert Fisk: Because I don't work for Colin Powell, I work for a British newspaper called The Independent; if you read it, you'll find that we are. It's not the job of a journalist to snap to the attention of generals. I wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago in my newspaper saying that before the war began in Yugoslavia, the British Foreign Office urged journalists to leave and then said the British intelligence had uncovered a secret plot to take all the foreign reporters hostage in Belgrade. I decided this was a lie and stayed - and it was a lie. In Afghanistan, just before the fall of Khandahar, as I was entering Afghanistan, the British Foreign Office urged all journalists to stay out of Taliban areas and then said the British intelligence had uncovered a plot to take all the foreign reporters hostage. Aware of Yugoslavia, I pressed on to Khandahar and it proved to be a lie. Just before the bombardment here, the British Foreign Office said that all journalists should leave because British intelligence had uncovered a plot by Saddam to take all journalists hostages, at which moment I knew I'd be safe to stay because it was, of course, the usual lie. What is sad is how many journalists did leave. There were a very large number of reporters who left here voluntarily before the war believing this meretricious nonsense. I should say that the Iraqis have thrown quite a large number of journalists out as well. But I don't think it's the job of a journalist to run away when war comes just because it happens to be his own side doing the bombing. I've been bombed by the British and Americans so many times that it's not "shock and awe' anymore, it's "shock and bore" frankly. Amy Goodman: Thank you, Robert. Good night, be safe. Robert Fisk: Good night, Amy, I'm going to bed. From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Wed Mar 26 12:43:23 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 26 Mar 2003 07:13:23 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] This did not happen in my Kashmir Message-ID: <20030326071323.15826.qmail@webmail30.rediffmail.com> The Rediff Special This did not happen in my Kashmir Basharat Peer March 24, 2003 This morning a colleague phoned me. "There has been a massacre in Kashmir,” he said. "Twenty-four Kashmiri Pandits killed." It jolted me out of my slumber. He told me it had happened some hours ago in a village in south Kashmir. He did not know where exactly. He wanted me to leave for Srinagar. I had known that. I have been leaving for Kashmir every time some maniac pulled the trigger and killed innocents. I would run to my room, throw a few shirts, jeans, a notebook and my camera into my backpack, lock my room and head for the airport. But today I began calling my friends in Kashmir to find out where the massacre had occurred. I wanted to know which village -- yes, I wanted to know that badly. Because it could be my village. Because the survivors I would interview, the bullet-ridden bodies I would see, they could be my people. Would it be Chaman Lal Kantroo, my Pandit teacher, who gave me a notebook and two pencils for winning a quiz at school? Would it be Somnath Dhar, our grocer, my grandfather's friend, from whose shop I would return home with my pockets full of cashew nuts and dried apricots? Would they have killed Naina, that beautiful classmate of mine with whom I used to lunch by the side of the spring? I prayed not. I did not have the strength to face that. How would I write about the people who have influenced my life, who have taught me to live? About the friends of my grandfather, a devout Muslim who headed the prayers at the mosque but kept not a separate place for Somnath Dhar in his house? About my father's best friend, Bansi Lal Pandita, Pandita uncle to me? How would I write about their death? I have seen my parents cry when our Pandit neighbours migrated. I did not cry then. I did not understand what was happening. A decade later, I did. When I visited the migrants camp in Jammu. On another assignment there, I decided to visit the camp on the outskirts of the city to write about my displaced brethren who live in claustrophobic one-room hutments, abandoned by man and god. "Nobody cares about us," a teenager told me. He did not speak like a Kashmiri. And he hated Muslims. I could not muster the courage to tell him I was one. I told him I was a Punjabi from Delhi. As I walked around, trying to locate the people from my part of Kashmir, a 50-something man in a white kurta appeared out of a narrow, dingy lane. I introduced myself as a journalist working in Delhi, originally from Anantnag. He looked at me carefully. ”Where from in Anantnag?" "Seer," I said. "You are from Seer? Whose son are you?" I gave my father's name and my grandfather's name. In my part of the world, you are always your father's son, your grandfather's grandson. His eyes lit up. He laughed, abused me fondly, hugged me tight. Before I could ask him who he was, he grabbed my arm, telling me to keep my mouth shut and obey. We walked through narrow lanes for a minute or so. He stopped outside a shabby hut, where a frail woman was washing clothes. "Get up, Gowri!" he said. "Hug him! Your son has come!" She didn't recognize me. But she hugged me. "She is your father's sister," the man told me. I did not know of any. But I believed him, when the woman said: "Is he Amel's son?" Amel is my father's nickname, which hardly anyone outside the family knew. She was crying. So was her husband. And so was I. I spent the next few hours with them in their cramped room, learning about my family, my history. Not for a moment was I anything but their son. I left Jammu that day happier than ever, richer by an aunt and an uncle and a faith in that unorthodox, anti-communal value system that makes me proud of Kashmir. But today the news has come. More of my people have been massacred. The friends I phoned up said it was not in my village. The massacre was in a place where I have never been to. Every child orphaned, every widow there is a stranger to me. But I share a bond with them. And it is a strong bond. We belong to Kashmir. We are partners in the grief and misery of our beautiful valley. There are maniacs who want to severe this emotional, cultural and historical chord I share with my Pandit brothers. I am not sure about the identity of these enemies of my Kashmir. The police say they are Muslim militants. Maybe. Maybe not. Everything the police tell us in Kashmir is not true. What they told us after the Chittisinghpora massacre of Sikhs in March 2000 has been proved a lie. The separatists say it is Indian intelligence agencies; words like ‘politico-intelligence operations' fly in carpeted drawing rooms. I do not know the truth. The truth was murdered in the first bomb blast in Kashmir. Now we have only versions in Kashmir. As I prepared to leave for the airport, my reporter's reflexes failed. I did not want to go. I did not want to report this massacre. This did not happen in my Kashmir. Not again. I dream about seeing the Pandits back. I want to visit Somnath Dhar's shop again. And walk home with cashews and apricots in my pockets. I don't have words to express my grief. Let me paraphrase Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali from Farewell in the country without a post office: At a certain point I lost track of you. You needed me. You needed to perfect me: In your absence you polished me into the Enemy. Your history gets in the way of my memory. I am everything you lost. Your perfect enemy. Your memory gets in the way of my memory. There is nothing to forgive. You won't forgive me. I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself. There is everything to forgive. You can't forgive me. The Rediff Special/Basharat Peer March 24, 2003 This morning a colleague phoned me. "There has been a massacre in Kashmir,” he said. "Twenty-four Kashmiri Pandits killed." It jolted me out of my slumber. He told me it had happened some hours ago in a village in south Kashmir. He did not know where exactly. He wanted me to leave for Srinagar. I had known that. I have been leaving for Kashmir every time some maniac pulled the trigger and killed innocents. I would run to my room, throw a few shirts, jeans, a notebook and my camera into my backpack, lock my room and head for the airport. But today I began calling my friends in Kashmir to find out where the massacre had occurred. I wanted to know which village -- yes, I wanted to know that badly. Because it could be my village. Because the survivors I would interview, the bullet-ridden bodies I would see, they could be my people. Would it be Chaman Lal Kantroo, my Pandit teacher, who gave me a notebook and two pencils for winning a quiz at school? Would it be Somnath Dhar, our grocer, my grandfather's friend, from whose shop I would return home with my pockets full of cashew nuts and dried apricots? Would they have killed Naina, that beautiful classmate of mine with whom I used to lunch by the side of the spring? I prayed not. I did not have the strength to face that. How would I write about the people who have influenced my life, who have taught me to live? About the friends of my grandfather, a devout Muslim who headed the prayers at the mosque but kept not a separate place for Somnath Dhar in his house? About my father's best friend, Bansi Lal Pandita, Pandita uncle to me? How would I write about their death? I have seen my parents cry when our Pandit neighbours migrated. I did not cry then. I did not understand what was happening. A decade later, I did. When I visited the migrants camp in Jammu. On another assignment there, I decided to visit the camp on the outskirts of the city to write about my displaced brethren who live in claustrophobic one-room hutments, abandoned by man and god. "Nobody cares about us," a teenager told me. He did not speak like a Kashmiri. And he hated Muslims. I could not muster the courage to tell him I was one. I told him I was a Punjabi from Delhi. As I walked around, trying to locate the people from my part of Kashmir, a 50-something man in a white kurta appeared out of a narrow, dingy lane. I introduced myself as a journalist working in Delhi, originally from Anantnag. He looked at me carefully. ”Where from in Anantnag?" "Seer," I said. "You are from Seer? Whose son are you?" I gave my father's name and my grandfather's name. In my part of the world, you are always your father's son, your grandfather's grandson. His eyes lit up. He laughed, abused me fondly, hugged me tight. Before I could ask him who he was, he grabbed my arm, telling me to keep my mouth shut and obey. We walked through narrow lanes for a minute or so. He stopped outside a shabby hut, where a frail woman was washing clothes. "Get up, Gowri!" he said. "Hug him! Your son has come!" She didn't recognize me. But she hugged me. "She is your father's sister," the man told me. I did not know of any. But I believed him, when the woman said: "Is he Amel's son?" Amel is my father's nickname, which hardly anyone outside the family knew. She was crying. So was her husband. And so was I. I spent the next few hours with them in their cramped room, learning about my family, my history. Not for a moment was I anything but their son. I left Jammu that day happier than ever, richer by an aunt and an uncle and a faith in that unorthodox, anti-communal value system that makes me proud of Kashmir. But today the news has come. More of my people have been massacred. The friends I phoned up said it was not in my village. The massacre was in a place where I have never been to. Every child orphaned, every widow there is a stranger to me. But I share a bond with them. And it is a strong bond. We belong to Kashmir. We are partners in the grief and misery of our beautiful valley. There are maniacs who want to severe this emotional, cultural and historical chord I share with my Pandit brothers. I am not sure about the identity of these enemies of my Kashmir. The police say they are Muslim militants. Maybe. Maybe not. Everything the police tell us in Kashmir is not true. What they told us after the Chittisinghpora massacre of Sikhs in March 2000 has been proved a lie. The separatists say it is Indian intelligence agencies; words like ‘politico-intelligence operations' fly in carpeted drawing rooms. I do not know the truth. The truth was murdered in the first bomb blast in Kashmir. Now we have only versions in Kashmir. As I prepared to leave for the airport, my reporter's reflexes failed. I did not want to go. I did not want to report this massacre. This did not happen in my Kashmir. Not again. I dream about seeing the Pandits back. I want to visit Somnath Dhar's shop again. And walk home with cashews and apricots in my pockets. I don't have words to express my grief. Let me paraphrase Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali from Farewell in the country without a post office: At a certain point I lost track of you. You needed me. You needed to perfect me: In your absence you polished me into the Enemy. Your history gets in the way of my memory. I am everything you lost. Your perfect enemy. Your memory gets in the way of my memory. There is nothing to forgive. You won't forgive me. I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself. There is everything to forgive. You can't forgive me. _______________________________________________________________________ Odomos - the only mosquito protection outside 4 walls - Click here to know more! http://r.rediff.com/r?http://clients.rediff.com/odomos/Odomos.htm&&odomos&&wn From pauline at metamute.com Wed Mar 26 22:39:32 2003 From: pauline at metamute.com (Pauline van Mourik Broekman) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 17:09:32 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] depressing thought for the day no. xxxxx Message-ID: I realise this is pretty much the same phenomenon as the Halliburton/Cheney & Project for the New American Century information overload has already shown us, but I found some grim symbolic load in the conjuncture this future governor demonstrates between the 'full spectrum dominance' of the Star Wars project and present-day Iraq. Thank you Shuddha and all for the information on Kashmir. With regards to keeping our eyes open to what's happening everywhere else too, I was thinking very much the same vis a vis what is going on in Nigeria (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,920684,00.html). All the best, Pauline. --- American may leave UK firms in cold Lauren Chambliss in New York, Evening Standard 25 March 2003 JAY Montgomery Garner was rebuilding the boat deck at his new $1.1m (£700,000) Florida home, when his old friend Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked him to take on a much larger and far more controversial reconstruction project - Iraq. Garner, the 64-year-old businessman and decorated lieutenant general, has been catapulted into a high-profile job as the likely military governor of post-war Iraq. Rumsfeld appointed him to head the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, which is putting together plans - and handing out lucrative contracts - to rebuild a war-torn Iraq under US control. That process has already come under fire for favouring US companies and ignoring British firms. P&O yesterday lost out on a potentially lucrative contract to run Iraq's only deep-water container port at Umm Qasr to an unnamed American company. Garner's appointment is unlikely to ease concerns that British firms will continue to be overlooked in the multi-billion pound task of rebuilding the country. He is already closely tied to businesses prospering from the Gulf War conflict, and is currently on leave from L-3 Communications, which makes surveillance, intelligence, reconnaissance and airport security products. Just last week L-3 received its largest military contract - a $1.5bn bonanza to provide logistical equipment to US special operations forces. Rumsfeld's defence department has also been criticised for handing out contracts for helping with the war effort solely to US firms. US Vice-President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, has been one of the main beneficiaries. Appointed in January with no fanfare, Garner has maintained a low profile since. That is no surprise to those who know him. Before he retired in 1997, Garner ran the Star Wars programme, one of the most controversial military projects ever, yet he still managed to keep off the public radar. It will be hard for him to remain in the shadows once the war is over, however. Many analysts say Garner will have an extremely tough time helping the Iraqis to rebuild their country, installing democracy and apportioning contracts in an even-handed manner. On the civilian side, Garner was president of SY Technology, a Virginia-based company that supplied communications systems for missiles. When SY Technology was bought last year by L-3 for $43m, Garner stayed with L-3 to head the subsidiary that included his firm. Garner is known in military circles for his interest in humanitarian aid. He was in charge of US programmes that delivered supplies to the Kurds in northern Iraq after the first Gulf War. A soft-spoken man, friends and neighbours describe him as humble, efficient although somewhat humourless. He is not one to joke. -- *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Pauline van Mourik Broekman Mute / Metamute / Mutella 2nd Floor East, Universal House, 88-94 Wentworth Street, London E1 7SA, UK T: +44 (0)20 7377 6949 // T: +44 (0)20 7377 9520 E: pauline at metamute.com // W: www.metamute.com From mriduchandra at hotmail.com Wed Mar 26 23:38:49 2003 From: mriduchandra at hotmail.com (Mridu Chandra) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 13:08:49 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] The Official War Glossary Message-ID: The Official War Glossary � � Well now this explains everything!�� From the Seattle Weekly... ------------------------------------------------------------------ The War: The Official War Glossary Doublespeak edition. by Geov Parrish As in all military actions (can we really call this one-sided massacre a "war"?), government and media advocacy for the planned U.S. invasion of Iraq has introduced a number of new words and phrases, or new usages of existing ones, to the English language. Since many of these are directly opposite of their intuitive meanings, we present here, for your reference, a guide to some of these new linguistic developments. Keep this handy guide by your TV for the next time Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Franks, or any of their minions appear on your screen. allies n: Tony Blair. collateral damage obs: The hapless schmucks that happen to be in the way when the U.S. bombs civilian facilities or residential neighborhoods. No longer in common usage since civilian deaths are now ignored entirely. Other obsolete words and phrases include: Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan, budget surplus, economy, environment, corporate scandals, education, civil liberties, Constitution, Guant�mo Bay, and "the end of the war." � � democracy n: The ideal form of a political system-now used interchangeably with the economic system called capitalism-in which a handful of wealthy people with occasional minor policy differences take turns enriching their patrons and being elected by a citizenry that is allowed no other choices; e.g., "We intend to turn Iraq into a democracy, just like the United States." � � deterrent n: A category of military weapons that includes massive nuclear arsenals, space-based nuclear and laser weapons, and chemical and biological weapons research. Only applies when possessed by the United States.See weapons of mass destruction � � disarm v.: To blow to smithereens; e.g., "Saddam Hussein's destruction of missiles is an impediment to U.S. plans to disarm Saddam Hussein." � � embed v: To engage in an act of prostitution; e.g., "Hundreds of U.S. media outlets have elected to cover the war by having their reporters embedded in an American military unit." � � empire abbr: A shortened form of the phrase American empire. A state in which 196 countries are eternally grateful, or should be, for being plundered by the 197th. See democracy. � � homeland n: That portion of empire that got ignored because the Department of Defense is no longer used for defending. � � oil n: Booty. � � Old Europe n: Formerly "allies." A collection of countries too stuck in the mud or jealous to welcome empire. See world. � � peace n: The mythical state achieved when the United States has a complete global monopoly on the use of military force. Not to be confused with "democracy," "freedom," or "justice." See empire. � � people of Iraq n: See Saddam Hussein. � � precision bombing n: Replaces smart bombs. What a morally enlightened country like the United States does. Involves using MOABs, daisy cutters, or up to 3,000 cruise missiles to create firestorms that convert oxygen to carbon monoxide and asphyxiate anyone within range of the miles-wide inferno, and then pretending that the resulting fatalities do not exist. See civilian casualties. � � pre-emptive attack n: Replaces blitzkrieg. Unprovoked invasion of a country that poses no threat, esp. if that country is defenseless and has extensive reserves of oil. � � proof n: Sales receipts, usually from before or just after the Gulf War; e.g., "We have extensive proof for the existence of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons." � � reconstruction n: The lucrative process undertaken during the occupation of an invaded country, involving replacing buildings, bridges, and utility systems. There is nothing you can do to rebuild the people-fortunately, they never existed. See Saddam Hussein. � � regime change n : Coup d'�t. � � Saddam Hussein n: The nation of Iraq, pop. 24,002,000 (2002 est.); area 172,476 sq. mi. (slightly larger than California), centered on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Southwest Asia, previously known as Persia and Mesopotamia; one of the oldest continuously civilized regions in the world. "Iraq" and "Saddam Hussein" are generally used interchangeably; e.g., "We're going to bomb the hell out of Saddam Hussein." � � shock and awe n: War crime. � � terrorism n: What they do. � � terrorist n: Anybody who dislikes George Bush's policies. See unlawful combatant. � � unlawful combatant n: Any opponent of George Bush's policies whom the U.S. government would prefer to have held indefinitely without trial. See Constitution. � � war on terror n: A comprehensive marketing strategy to ensure the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004 by embroiling the United States in war for decades to come. Replaces these previous campaigns: "compassionate conservative," "fiscally responsible," "education president," and "he's really not as dumb as he looks." � � weapons of mass destruction n: What they have. See deterrent. � � world n: The collection of nations and peoples that thinks George Bush is out of his freakin' mind. � � gparrish at seattleweekly.com _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail From gabrown at axionet.com Thu Mar 27 03:52:33 2003 From: gabrown at axionet.com (graham a brown) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 14:22:33 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] International Call To Creative Action. Message-ID: Hi I would like to bring to your attention the International Call To Creative Action. The theme is to explore your post 9€11 experience. All the winning and finalists entries will be published September 2003, on the 9€11 International Call to Creative Action, a digital storytelling interactive DVD, to be presented to the United Nations Library, and Canadian Parliamentary Library and the American Library of Congress. Categories: Writer, Visual Artist, Photography, Multimedia, and a separate family or school entry. Detailed information is on the web site or email info at netcomediainteractive.com. Entry fee: fifteen ($15) US money order with one (1) entry or twenty five dollars ($25) US money order for three (3) entries.1st Prize: $250, 2nd Prize: $150, all in US currency. Winners will receive a copy of the published DVD. Deadline post marked May 1, 2003 c/o netcoMedia Interactive 1027 Davie Street, Suite 532 Vancouver, BC, Canada V6E 4L2 http://www.netcomediainteractive.com Info at netcomediainteractive.com From aiindex at mnet.fr Thu Mar 27 06:52:32 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 02:22:32 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Into the Iraqi quagmire? Message-ID: The News International Thursday March 27, 2003 Into the Iraqi quagmire? Praful Bidwai First they told us it would be a largely "no-contact" war, much like the wars the Americans have fought (and won) mostly from 20,000 feet above the ground -- since their humiliating disaster in Somalia in 1993. Then they said the first 48 hours of "shock and awe" with 3,000 to 4,000 cruise missiles would assuredly wreck the morale of the Iraqi army and trigger either its instant disintegration or a coup against Saddam Hussein. If that didn't happen, the 250,000-plus US and British ground troops, backed by devastating airpower, would hammer Iraq into submission -- within a matter of days. In the event, the strategic experts who drew up the war plans, and their media publicists, have proved thoroughly wrong on the first two forecasts and seem set to go wrong on the third too. As I write this, at the end of the sixth full day of the attack on Iraq by the truncated war coalition comprising the US, Britain and Australia, there are several signs that an easy, swift, decisive, victory remains elusive -- despite the coalition's overwhelming, indeed forbidding, military superiority over its half-disarmed, sanctions-battered, adversary. Just as the ("premature"?) attack of "opportunity" on a government building (where Saddam was believed to be present by intelligence agencies) failed to kill or cripple him, the war coalition's "shock and awe" plans have run into hurdles. They have been jolted by numerous setbacks, which have the potential to radically change the course of the conflict, especially its political complexion. The ultimate outcome of the war may be certain. But what immediately matters is this: if the US-UK get bogged down in a messy engagement, especially in the quagmire of urban warfare, the US will have to trim and even abandon its audacious long-term plans, including a naked bid to redraw the borders of the Middle East and reshape the rest of the world after its own image. Thus, the "victory celebration" staged in Washington last Friday by the extremely influential Right-wing hawkish American Enterprise Institute, just hours before the war began, might be premature. Then, at a "black coffee briefing", its leaders, including Richard Perle, chairman of the Defence Advisory Board, neo-conservative guru William Kristol, and other buddies of people deeply "embedded" in the Bush cabinet, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, set out their epochal vision for the post-war world: radical reform of the UN, regime change in Iran and Syria, and "containment" of France and Germany, as "The Financial Times" put it. Frustrating their grandiose plans are the war coalition's many military setbacks: 40 soldiers dead in combat, at least five prisoners of war (PoWs) taken, two helicopters and a "Tornado" warplane lost in avoidable accidents, a fratricidal attack by an American soldier, and repeated recrudescence of fighting in cities and facilities declared "captured". Militarily, the biggest "negative" is the emergence of Iraqi "guerrillas" and "guerrilla tactics" -- terms used for the first time by coalition officials last Sunday. The stiff and so-far irrepressible resistance from individual snipers and poorly armed militias has proved as damaging for the war coalition as artillery engagement by regular forces in parts of southern Iraq. In almost every town declared "taken" last week, the Americans and the British are still fighting for convincing control. This is true, as this is written, of Basra, Nassiriya, Najaf and Karbala. It may again apply to Umm Qasr, Iraq's only deep-sea port, and key to supplies of heavy weapons and humanitarian aid, although it has been declared "quite and safe" after fierce fighting. If this resistance is a prelude to what is to come in Baghdad, then US and British forces could get sucked into close-quarter combat and guerrilla warfare -- in which they enjoy little advantage over the adversary in relation to their enormous superiority in "fourth generation" high-technology warfare based on the so-called "Revolution in Military Affairs". As the unsuccessful fierce missile assault on the Medina division of Saddam's Republican Guard shows, aerial attacks so far haven't "softened" Baghdad to a point where it cannot be defended against ground attack. If this situation persists, the US will have two options: get into close combat -- ie urban warfare -- or apply more force, less discriminately, by bombing facilities located right next door to civilian inhabitations, and by using new, more destructive, weaponry and firepower. This will greatly increase "collateral damage", a term people everywhere loathe. Massive, indiscriminate force could speed up Baghdad's fall; but it cannot guarantee that there will be no urban guerrillas sniping at the invading troops, and that these won't retaliate with excessive force -- just as Israeli forces do in Palestine, causing worldwide outrage. The war coalition is in a spot. What went wrong? The US made a big blunder in underestimating the strength of Arab nationalism and its own unpopularity in Iraq's neighbourhood -- despite Hussein's despotic rule. Most Iraqis see American troops as conquerors, not "liberators". In Jordan, the ratio of positive to negative perceptions of the US has decreased from 34/61 to 10/81 after Washington announced it would attack Iraq. In Morocco, 88 percent now hold a negative view of the US, compared to 61 percent earlier. The US public is shocked, and the government rattled, by Iraq's capture of five prisoners of war. It has accused Iraq of "parading" and mistreating them. It has invoked the Geneva Convention under which mistreatment is a war crime. However, the Iraqi government has not subjected the PoWs to mistreatment or paraded them to arouse "public curiosity" -- even less than the British did when they displayed Iraqi prisoners marching with their arms raised above their heads or handcuffed at the back with plastic clips. The Iraqi government says the PoWs are civilians, not army personnel at all. There is no evidence that Iraq has harassed the American PoWs. It displayed their pictures and allowed television interviews by the local media. The third Geneva Convention prohibits starvation, physical harassment, aggressive interrogation of PoWs, and subjecting them to "insults and public curiosity". Going by Al-Jazeera videos, this description is totally inappropriate. True, the PoWs were identified in TV interviews, but they were not humiliated nor subjected to official interrogation on camera. This is different from the Iraqi display in 1991 of American airmen taken prisoner and obviously beaten to exhaustion and perhaps tortured: they could barely lift their heads. The US' double standards on PoWs are starkly revealed in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where over 600 al-Qaeda suspects lie detained, often in chains and inside cages. Brutal methods have been used to extract information from them. The US does not even accord them PoW status. It merely calls them "unlawful combatants". American courts have no jurisdiction over them. This is an insult to international law. Yet, on PoWs, the US hypocritically invokes the Geneva Conventions, although it violates a far more important international statute, the UN Charter itself. Equally deplorable is its threat to treat Iraqi officers as "war criminals" merely because they are employed by Iraq's army, while insisting that American soldiers be treated, when held, as PoWs! With such hypocrisy, the US can only lose what's left of the political war, which will be far important than any military battles in Iraq. From aiindex at mnet.fr Thu Mar 27 09:47:30 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 05:17:30 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] S. Asian workers at American bases | Only non-Muslims can apply for US base jobs... Message-ID: 2 reports from an ongoing compilation being done by Labour Notes South Asia / South Asia Citizens Web, on South Asian labour and the current war on Iraq. ======== #1. http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/5478127.htm The Mercury News (USA) Wednesday, Mar 26, 2003 War with Iraq Posted on Tue, Mar. 25, 2003 Foreign workers carry out basic tasks at bases BY SARA OLKON Miami Herald NEAR THE IRAQ BORDER - Men from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other south Asian countries clean toilets, run the mess tent, fill sandbags and help with other basic operations at U.S. installations around the Persian Gulf. Their work saves the military from devoting personnel to mundane tasks. But it also requires devoting personnel to escort and watch them. Some in the military worry that these men -- only men are hired -- may be desperate enough to take bribes from people against the U.S.-led fight in Iraq or, even worse, work with the al Qaeda terrorist group. Thus, their every word and action is under scrutiny. ''My people is very happy. Everybody is happy,'' said Tahir Mehmood, a Pakistani man who oversees a mess hall at an air base that the military has asked not be precisely described in news accounts. He said his men worked 12-hour shifts. He was then led away by a military official. On a recent afternoon, a security officer tagged along and watched a worker empty trash containers. In the mess hall, workers often are paired with military personnel. ''You never know,'' said Master Sgt. Willie Johnson, of Waldorf, Md. ``We heard one guy had a plan to poison the food on base.'' Maj. David Andino-Aquino, the commander of services, said he instructed troops to be careful but respectful with the foreign workers, known in military jargon as ''third-country nationals,'' or ``TCNs.'' Their presence is awkward during missile alerts. Andino-Aquino said his staff never had thrown a TCN out of a protective bunker. But base policy doesn't mandate such courtesy. On Saturday, after several hours of repeated missile alerts, relations grew tense. ''TCNs got kicked out of bunkers because they ran out of room,'' said Master Sgt. Patrick Wilson, who supervises force protection on base. ``The escorts look for a bunker that is more empty. If by the second bunker it is not, [the TCNs] are out of luck.'' While the men could go on their own in search of a roomier bunker, they ''are programmed to follow. They don't go anywhere without an escort,'' Wilson said. After Saturday's attacks, the number of TCNs on base dropped from 150 to about 30. Workers deemed essential to the base were issued gas masks, Wilson said. But they don't have protective clothes to ward off chemical weapons. ''Maybe at least we can give them the discarded ones,'' Wilson said. ____ #2. http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_222087,0008.htm The Hindustan Times (India) March 27, 2003 | Updated: 03:05 IST Only non-Muslims can apply for US base job: Advertisement Srinivasa Prasad Bangalore, March 26 Tucked in the classifieds of national Indian dailies on Wednesday was an advertisement that could further alienate the Muslim community from the United States. The advertisement calls for applications from "non-Muslims only" for sundry jobs at the US base in northern Kuwait. The US base "urgently requires" lift operators, store keepers, clerks, typists, security guards and drivers. The advertisement insists that the applicants, besides being non-Muslims, should speak English and be below 35. The advertisement was issued by Indian head-hunters Rehman Enterprises and Continental Mercantile. Executives of these firms said they were representing a Kuwaiti company, Marafi, which has a "maintenance contract" with the US army. "The Americans are strict that we should only process applications sent in by non-Muslims," Rehman Enterprises' head Abdul Rehman told the Hindustan Times on Wednesday. "What to do? They probably don't want to take chances with Muslims," said Continental Mercantile's manager in Kochi TS Jairaj. There is an unmistakable sense of urgency in the advertisement which asks applicants to "contact immediately with relevant documents". "The response has been very bad," said Jairaj. "We are getting very few calls." The head-hunters are in a fix since the executives of Marafi are flying to India to interview and shortlist candidates on March 31 for a final selection by the US army. "The poor response is not just because of the war situation," Jairaj explained. "The age limit and the condition on English speaking ability are also problems." The recruitment effort could be an indication of the US intention of digging its heels in for a long time in the Middle East. From faizan at sarai.net Thu Mar 27 17:26:00 2003 From: faizan at sarai.net (FaIzan Ahmed) Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 17:26:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: MASSIVE ANTI WAR RALLY Message-ID: <200303271726.00479.faizan@sarai.net> ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: MASSIVE ANTI WAR RALLY Date: 27 Mar 2003 05:58:20 -0000 From: "ABDUL RAHIMAN POKAKILLATH" To: bindu2010 at rediffmail.com, arshadalam2002 at hotmail.com, anaskalib at hotmail.com, binsal at rediffmail.com, bmathew at gmx.net, charmy at intoday.com, nazindia at bol.net.in, renimma at rediffmail.com Cc: dimpivd at yahoo.com, faizan at sarai.net, g_savant at rediffmail.com, jafferpc at yahoo.co.uk, jithatj at hotmail.com, m_sayeedalam at rediffmail.com, shahinth at yahoo.com A Massive anti war rally is being called on March 28, 2003 for expressing solidarity with the Iraqi people, who are putting up a brave resistance in a unilateral war imposed by America and Britain and to express anger at the Vajpayee govt. for surrendering to American imperialism by refusing to condemn the war. Please join the rally and express solidarity with the anti war movement. More than 10,000 people will be present in Delhi alone. Similar mobilization is being done in Calcutta and Chennai. Anti war demonstration will also be held on the same day at Agartala, Guhwati, Ranchi, Bhubaneshwar, . MASSIVE ANTI WAR RALLY March28, 2003 DELHI CALCUTTA, CHENNAI, In Delhi : From Ram Lila Maidan, 12.00 p.m. To Parlaiment Street, 1.00 p.m. In solidarity Rahman _______________________________________________________________________ Odomos - the only mosquito protection outside 4 walls - Click here to know more! http://r.rediff.com/r?http://clients.rediff.com/odomos/Odomos.htm&&odomos&&wn ------------------------------------------------------- From pauline at metamute.com Wed Mar 26 22:33:17 2003 From: pauline at metamute.com (Pauline van Mourik Broekman) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 17:03:17 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] depressing thought for the day no. xxxxx Message-ID: I realise this is pretty much the same phenomenon as the Halliburton/Cheney & Project for the New American Century information overload has already shown us, but I found some grim symbolic load in the conjuncture this future governor demonstrates between the 'full spectrum dominance' of the Star Wars project and present-day Iraq. Thank you Shuddha and all for the information on Kashmir. With regards to keeping our eyes open to what's happening everywhere else too, I was thinking very much the same vis a vis what is going on in Nigeria (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,920684,00.html). All the best, Pauline. --- American may leave UK firms in cold Lauren Chambliss in New York, Evening Standard 25 March 2003 JAY Montgomery Garner was rebuilding the boat deck at his new $1.1m (£700,000) Florida home, when his old friend Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked him to take on a much larger and far more controversial reconstruction project - Iraq. Garner, the 64-year-old businessman and decorated lieutenant general, has been catapulted into a high-profile job as the likely military governor of post-war Iraq. Rumsfeld appointed him to head the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, which is putting together plans - and handing out lucrative contracts - to rebuild a war-torn Iraq under US control. That process has already come under fire for favouring US companies and ignoring British firms. P&O yesterday lost out on a potentially lucrative contract to run Iraq's only deep-water container port at Umm Qasr to an unnamed American company. Garner's appointment is unlikely to ease concerns that British firms will continue to be overlooked in the multi-billion pound task of rebuilding the country. He is already closely tied to businesses prospering from the Gulf War conflict, and is currently on leave from L-3 Communications, which makes surveillance, intelligence, reconnaissance and airport security products. Just last week L-3 received its largest military contract - a $1.5bn bonanza to provide logistical equipment to US special operations forces. Rumsfeld's defence department has also been criticised for handing out contracts for helping with the war effort solely to US firms. US Vice-President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, has been one of the main beneficiaries. Appointed in January with no fanfare, Garner has maintained a low profile since. That is no surprise to those who know him. Before he retired in 1997, Garner ran the Star Wars programme, one of the most controversial military projects ever, yet he still managed to keep off the public radar. It will be hard for him to remain in the shadows once the war is over, however. Many analysts say Garner will have an extremely tough time helping the Iraqis to rebuild their country, installing democracy and apportioning contracts in an even-handed manner. On the civilian side, Garner was president of SY Technology, a Virginia-based company that supplied communications systems for missiles. When SY Technology was bought last year by L-3 for $43m, Garner stayed with L-3 to head the subsidiary that included his firm. Garner is known in military circles for his interest in humanitarian aid. He was in charge of US programmes that delivered supplies to the Kurds in northern Iraq after the first Gulf War. A soft-spoken man, friends and neighbours describe him as humble, efficient although somewhat humourless. He is not one to joke. -- *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Pauline van Mourik Broekman Mute / Metamute / Mutella 2nd Floor East, Universal House, 88-94 Wentworth Street, London E1 7SA, UK T: +44 (0)20 7377 6949 // T: +44 (0)20 7377 9520 E: pauline at metamute.com // W: www.metamute.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030326/72771dd7/attachment.html From narender224 at rediffmail.com Thu Mar 27 11:33:47 2003 From: narender224 at rediffmail.com (narender kumar thakur) Date: 27 Mar 2003 06:03:47 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Attack on Humanity Message-ID: <20030327060347.14348.qmail@webmail31.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030327/0fbb398f/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- Dear Friends, We must raise our voices against the dictatorship of US,UK and other countries. It is not only a question of Iraqi people but the concern of existence of human beings.The hidden aggendas of this hegemony are oil and other resources of underdeveloped countries.The ongoing recession in US economy is the main cause of the series of attacks viz. attack on Iraq, attack on Afganistan etc.US has how many nuclear weapons?In continuation of this, we should also ask from either developed countries or developing, for disarment, destroy of nuclear arms etc. There is a voice, as: To a Child on the Night before a War Dedicated to the children of the Al Gameel family in Iraq Words and music by William B. Petricko, Whitehorse, Yukon, Y1A 1G8, Canada,songwriter at canada.com Soft – ly Soft - ly Soft ly gen - tly gen - tly gen tly Whis - per the dream you're Whis - per the dream you're Whis - per the dream you're & dream - ing dream - ing dream ing Dark - ness Dark - ness Dark ness holds you in the holds you in the holds you in the still - ness of the still - ness of the still - ness of the night. In the night. In the night. In the dawn- ing dawn- ing dawn ing mor - row mor - row mor - row wait - ing the sound of wait - ing the sound of wait - ing the sound of sor - row but to - sor - row but to - sor - row but to - mor - row can- not mor - row can not mor - row can not bor - row to - bor - row to - bor - row to - night. night. night In your dream of to - In your dream of to - In your dream of to - mor - row mor - row mor - row do we hear your do we hear your do we hear your cry? cry? cry? & Wak - ening hearts that are Wak - ening hearts that are Wak - ening hearts that are ten - der that would ten - der that would dare not watch you dare not watch you dare not watch you die. die. die. Soft - ly Soft - ly Soft ly gen - tly gen - tly gen tly Whis - per the prayer you're Whis - per the prayer you're Whis - per the prayer you're pray - ing. pray - ing. pray ing. rit. rit. rit. Soft - ly Soft - ly gen - tly gen - tly gen - tly Good Good Good night. night. wnight. fade to silence fade to silence fade to silence Naren From announcer at pukar.org.in Wed Mar 26 23:17:50 2003 From: announcer at pukar.org.in (PUKAR) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 12:47:50 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Gandhi and Violent Ideologies Today Message-ID: Dear Friends: Gallerie Publishers, in partnership with PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) and Crossword Bookstore, invites students, urban youth, and the public to a discussion the question of "Gandhi and Violent Ideologies Today". Three Mumbai college students, SANJAY BHANGAR, LUGANO ALVARES, and BEHROOZ AVARI, will share their views on the relevance of Mahatama Gandhi in today's context of violence and politics. The discussion will be moderated by GANESH NOCHUR of Greenpeace India, and will feature Dr JAIRUS BANAJI as a key speaker. Date: FRIDAY 28 MARCH 2003 6.30 p.m. onwards At: CROSSWORD Book Store Mahalakshmi Chambers 22, Bhulabbhai Desai Road (Warden Road) Mumbai 400026 _____ PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) P.O. Box 5627, Dadar, Mumbai 400014, INDIA E-Mail Phone +91 (022) 2207 7779, +91 98200 45529, +91 98204 04010 Web Site http://www.pukar.org.in _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From announcer at pukar.org.in Wed Mar 26 23:57:01 2003 From: announcer at pukar.org.in (PUKAR) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 13:27:01 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Rethinking Urban Metabolism Message-ID: Dear Friends: PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research), in partnership with University College London and the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) invites you to a seminar titled "Rethinking Urban Metabolism: Water, Space and Society in Contemporary Mumbai". It is widely predicted that Mumbai will become the world's largest city within the next ten years. The continued and rapid growth of metropolitan Mumbai is placing enormous pressure on the physical infrastructure of the city. This pressure is particularly acute in the fields of water supply and sanitation. Existing conceptions of the relationship between water and cities have tended to focus on technical issues, to the relative neglect of political, cultural and historial factors. In this seminar, a diverse range of voices will be heard, from urban planning and film-making, to explore the meaning and future prospects for water provision in the contemporary city. Seminar Chair: MATTHEW GANDY is Reader in Geography at University College London. His research is concerned with the cultural and historical aspects of urban metabolism, and representations of nature and landscape in the visual arts. He is author of Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002). He is currently writing a book on the cultural histories of urban infrastructure and the "hidden city", which involves fieldwork in Los Angeles, Mumbai, Lagos and Berlin. Seminar Participants: SHEELA PATEL is the Executive Director of SPARC (Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres), Mumbai. NIRUPA BHANGAR is a teacher and consultant on water conservation and management based in Mumbai. B.C. KHATUA is Secretary for Water Supply and Sanitation to the Government of Maharashtra. RAMESH BHATIA is Chief Hydraulic Engineer of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). DEV BENEGAL is a feature film-maker and director of Split Wide Open (2001), clips of which will be screened in the seminar. Date: SATURDAY 5 APRIL 2003 4.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m. At: PUKAR 4th Floor, Kitab Mahal Dr Dadabhai Naoroji Road Next to New Excelsior Cinema Bombay 400001 R.S.V.P. Phone Rahul Srivastava or Shekhar Krishnan at 2207 7779 _____ 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 sougata_28 at rediffmail.com Fri Mar 28 01:34:56 2003 From: sougata_28 at rediffmail.com (sougata bhattacharya) Date: 27 Mar 2003 20:04:56 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Aurora Message-ID: <20030327200456.29252.qmail@webmail23.rediffmail.com> To the reader list : This is the third episode of my research work that I'm working under the Sarai independent Research Grant. Comments and suggestions are cordially welcome ....Sougata. This is an interview with Mr. Biswanath Mitra (Editor), working at 'Aurora Film Corporation' for last 64 years. Q. How long you are working for Aurora? A. Since 1939. When I joined Aurora Film Corporation, I was 17 years old. Though I knew Aurora earlier. Q. How? A. I was a resident of 41, Kashi Mitra Ghat Road from my childhood. Anadi babu was the maternal uncle of my mother. On the other hand, my maternal uncle was the nephew of Anadi Nath Bose. I lost my parents in my childhood and came to Anadi babu's residence. Q. You have seen Early Aurora A. Yes. But I did not take part in any of its activities. Q. How was Aurora then? A. Aurora's office was at 41, Kashi Mitra Ghat Road. Debi Ghosh and Charu Ghosh used to come here regularly. Two or three rooms at the ground floor were always occupied for projection machines, film rolls, cameras etc. I heard that Aurora's film processing laboratory was also at the same house earlier. Though I did not see it. By that time it was shifted to Rajballavpara (Kolkata). Once Anadi Nath Bose took the charge of 'Monmohan Theatre'. At that time several eminent personalities like Kazi Nazrul Islam, Dani babu, Nirmalendu Lahiri and others used to come Aurora's office. Q. Did Anadi Nath Bose associated with Theatre business also? A. Not exactly. More than a business, it was his amateur. I think it was due to the closeness of these two form of narrative entertainment. In Bengal, during those days, theatre was more popular than cinema. Moreover, 'Aurora Touring Party' had its own theatre team for itinerant shows. Itinerant shows means a combination of film shows, magic shows and theatre shows. Q. Did you see Aurora's itinerant exhibition? A. Not those film shows. But I saw the activities of touring party at our house. Just after the Durgapuja festival, Those teams used to get out and traveled throughout the Bengal, Bihar, Assam for entire winter season. I saw three similar teams. Among the three managers, one was my maternal uncle, Sati Bhusan Ghosh. The other two was Ashu Gupta and ..(sorry! I can't recall it). Q. How long this business run? A. Up to the mid 1930s until Aurora had its own studio and fully shifted in distribution and production business. Q. But as far I read, tent shows lost its popularity from early 1920s A. That was happened in cities and developing villages, not in the entire Bengal. Moreover we had some invitations from different landlords at their palaces. Q. Did Aurora has any permanent cinema hall? A. Yes. Till 1947, in undivided Bengal, Aurora had several cinema halls. I saw one hall at 'Pabna' and one at 'Faridpur' which we had to leave after independence. At that time we also had to leave few other halls as those were remained under the territory of East Pakisthan. In West Bengal, we had two cinema halls, one at Kharagpur and one at Midnapur. Both were named 'Aurora Talkies' and still exist. Once Aurora took lease one cinema hall at Howrah for few days. Q. What type of films Aurora used to show in silent era? A. Foreign short-films, mainly comedy gags were exhibited for tent shows. In the city, there were Madan's films and moreover, Aurora had its own Bengali films. Q. Did you see any silent film of Aurora? A. Yes, I did. Q. Was there any specialty in Aurora's films? A. It's very difficult to say. It was my boyhood, you know, I hardly can remember those things. Q. Did you participate in any of those productions? A. No, I did not. Before to join here, I was not interested in films except viewing. Q. Then why did you join here? A. After matriculation, I was moving as a vagabond. I started a business at Ranchi but it failed. Then Anadi Nath Bose told me to work here. Q. You joined as a A. As a laboratory assistant. Q. How much was your salary then? A. First six months I got nothing. Then my monthly salary was fixed at Rs.10/-. Q. How longs you worked for Rs.10/-? A.There is a story behind it. I found interest in editing. At that time, Biren Guha was the editor of Aurora. Though I learned nothing from him. Very soon he resigned and Santosh Gangooly took the charge. He taught me editing, aesthetically, practically. In 1942 Aurora was producing a film 'Patibrata'. During its post production, suddenly the editor left the job and the studio manager could not find out any other editor to complete the film. Some of my colleagues proposed my name to Anadi babu. Though the manager did not want to give me the chance, but anyway, I got the opportunity to edit the film. I did it well. Several people praised my edit-work and I became the permanent editor of Aurora. My salary jumped into Rs.150/- per month. Q. Wow! It was a great jump! A. Yah! After 'Patibrata', I edited all films, produced by Aurora. Q. But in the whole decade of 1940s Aurora produced only four films A. That decade was disturbed for second world war. Surrounding our studio, there was a slum area of Muslim inhabitants. During that time, studio was closed for a long time due to Hindu-Muslim riot. Q. Then most of the time you had to remain idle? A. No-no. Aurora produced lots of documentary. We were always busy in it. Q. It's interesting. When feature film had a huge market, apart from mainstream business, Aurora constantly produced nonfictions . A. From 1938 Aurora started production of 'Aurora Screen News'. In fact, the touring party never stopped. Only shifted from the exhibition of films to the production of documentaries. The team moved entire Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Asam or United provinces and captured almost every item they found interesting like from rituals to festivals or from lifestyles to memorable events. Indeed, we produced a lot. Aurora recorded speeches of several eminent personalities like, Subhash Chandra Bose, Jwaharlal Nehru, Shyamaprasad Mukhopadhyay, Rabindranath Tagore and so on. To capture a news regarding earthquake at Muzaffarpur, Aurora hired an aeroplane to reach there. Q. Was there a very good market of those documentaries? A. Not at all. Those were for free screening purposes only. It was a passion of Anadibabu. Or perhaps, he could understand the potentiality of Documentaries. But unfortunately, In 1946, all those were damaged by fire. Q. But why Aurora did not produce feature films in large scale? A. Aurora was the sole distributor of New Theatres' Bengali films. Here distributor means financier. Actually, Aurora was the financier of most of the Bengali films produced by New Theatres Ltd. Q. But after all those films are labeled as New Theatres' films A. It does not matter. In fact, at that time, Aurora had no modern equipment. Anadibabu purchased all second hand equipment. Those cameras, talkie sets or others were not sufficient for talkie film production. On the other hand New Theatres appeared with advanced equipment support. B.N.Sirkar himself was an educated, intellectual and technologically sound person with lot of enthusiasm. Anadibabu was a vastly experienced person who immediately tied up with New Theatres. Moreover, Anadibabu was quite old to take the hazards of feature film production. I think, he preferred to concentrate in a particular segment of business that is distribution. Q. Do you think distribution was the main business of Aurora that helped it to survive so many years? A. Yes, I think distribution business was the key source of finance because it was not only restricted in Bengal, but also spread South India, Cylone and Far-East countries. Q. How many people worked in Aurora at that time? A. When I joined, in studio, there were around 30 employees and around 20 staff at our office. There was a branch office at Madras and also one in Rengoon. But I think those were small and just for distribution purpose. Maximum two or three people worked there. Q. Were all of you paid staff? A.Yes.All of us. Q. Was there any scope to interfere in other's work? Like, did you work anything else apart from editing? A. All of us had to do several other works beside our own. It was mandatory for me to be present at the floor or location during shooting. I used to do different production work like, artists' contract, location hunting and so on. Sometimes, carrying those film cans, I used to go to different cinema halls in districts or outside Bengal. When Aurora produced colour films for different commission projects, I had to go Mumbai for developing and printing of those films. I also shot several newsreels for Aurora. Q. Did you work as a cameraman too? A. No-no. There were cameramen for feature films and documentaries. For news coverage we used some old cameras, which were very easy to operate. I only shot some of those news items. Q. Did you ever direct any film? A. Few documentaries like, ' Bigata Diner Smriti', 'Deep Sea Hunting' and so on. Q. Would you like to share those experiences? A. 'Bigata Diner Smriti' was a project of Govt. of West Bengal, mainly a travelogue on Gour, Malda. Rather, 'Deep Sea Hunting' was interesting. This film was based on fisherman's lifestyle and their socio-economic problems. There was a director for this film. But after the first phase of shooting in the land area, he denied to go into the deep sea with those fishermen. Having no other alternative, I went on board a trawler with one of my camera operator. It was 10 days' experience. Q. Had you ever directed any feature film? A. No, I did not. Q. Did you edit any other film outside Aurora? A. No, I did not. Q. Why did not you think for freelance work as an editor? A. Film industry is an unorganized sector, you know. There are lots of uncertainties in this profession. Here, in Bengal, technicians are never being paid well. Q. Do you have the same grievance to Aurora? A. No. At least I had a security here. Q. What was an average cost for feature film at that time? A. As far I know, it needed Rs.30000/- to produce Aurora's first full length talkie film, 'Patibrata'. It was in 1942. In the 1950s, the average cost was around Rs.50000/-. Though our biographical films like, 'Raja Rammohan' and 'Bhagini Nibedita' were more expensive due to the sets, props and costumes. Moreover, few locations of 'Bhagini Nibedita' were shot in London. Q. How did you enjoy the England tour? A. Only the director and the cameraman went there. Camera and other equipment were hired from London. They shot different locations from London. Finally, here in the post production, characters were superimposed on those locations. Q. I think, it was the first Bengali film that shot in foreign location A. Yes, it was. It got the National Award in 1961 as the best film. This film was also selected for entry in the 23rd 'International exhibition of cinematographic art' in Venice in 1962. Q. Were there similar other records of any other film? A. Aurora's other biographical film 'Raja Rammohan' was the first Bengali film that got exemption from the amusement tax. Another film 'Raikamal' was invited in 'Berlin film festival' in1956. This film was televisioned there and probably it was the first Indian film that televisioned in foreign. Satyajit Ray's 'Aparajito' got several prizes.I think you know that. Q. But I read that 'Aparajito' was not produced by Aurora. 'Epic Films' produced it. A. 'Epic Films' was a partnership company of Ajit Bose, Satyajit Ray and other two or three persons. After the end of this film, during its pre release screening, those people doubted that the film would not run well. They mourned for incurring a loss. Then Ajit Bose paid their money back and took the sole right of that film. Q. Did all those films run well? A. Not always. There were some flopped films also. Q. Why Aurora stopped feature film production from the 1970s? A, I guess it was due to the market uncertainty. From the 1970s the market became so volatile that Aurora could not take risk. Q. Do you think it was the only reason? A. Definitely not. I think this was the main reason. There are several other reasons also. But I know very little about film business. Better you talk with Anjan Bose. I can only share some of my memories. Q. Then tell me something about Anadi Nath Bose. A. He was like my father. Though I hardly talked with him. In my childhood I saw him working at the office of Aurora Cinema Company from morning to 12 noon. Then he used to go his office. He had a horse drawn carriage. In the evening, several people used to come our house, at the office room of Aurora Cinema Company, to discuss with him regarding cinema or theatre. Q. Did you ever talk with him regarding cinema? A. No, I did not. Q. Had Mr. Bose ever directed any film? No, he did not. His technological knowledge was very poor. He always believed his friends like Devi Ghosh, Charu Ghosh and others. He was a very good organizer. It was his effort to form 'Bengal Motion Picture Association' (BMPA) in1937. He always encouraged others to do something, anything. Q. Can you point out any drawback of Mr. Bose? A. Several people took loan from Anadi babu by pawning their equipment but could not pay off. Most of those equipment were very old and ultimately useless. In this way Aurora got several cameras but could not use those for shooting purpose. Q. Your studio was also built in the same process A. Once P.C.Barua took loan by mortgaging his studio and could not pay back. Then Aurora claimed it at court and finally we won the case. But according to the order we got very short time, only one night, to occupy those things. At that time Aurora had a huge manpower. Within a night, we could be able to take those all even every brick from Barua studio. Later we built our own studio at Narkeldanga. Q. You have seen the all three generations of Bose family and their activities. Can you make any difference? A. They all are very progressive and always looked for a unique identity. Only they implemented different strategies in different time. I think those decisions were according to the change of market. Q. Did Ajit Bose implement any new policy for Aurora? A. Of course. From the 1950s studio system was collapsed. But it was his intellectual support that helped Aurora to survive actively and successfully another twenty years. He was well versed in different subjects. In his time, Aurora achieved a different position in film industry for both, production and distribution of feature films. Those films were identified with elite aesthetic practices over and against popular entertainment. Q. And Anjan Bose A. Anjan Bose is like my son though he is my boss. When he took the charge of Aurora, Bengali cinema was in a crisis. Yet he produced and directed few good documentaries. He got National Award too. But now he is going to do a great job. Very soon there will be another 'Aurora Studio' at Saltlake (Kolkata). This is for the first time Kolkata will get such a modern studio furnished with air-conditioned floor and latest facilities. Anjan already brought two digital cameras and one edit setup. I think, beside rental business, he has a plan to produce digital films in future. After the thirty years' of dormant phase, I hope Anjan will start Aurora again. _______________________________________________________________________ Odomos - the only mosquito protection outside 4 walls - Click here to know more! http://r.rediff.com/r?http://clients.rediff.com/odomos/Odomos.htm&&odomos&&wn From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Fri Mar 28 01:36:04 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 27 Mar 2003 20:06:04 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Sorrow, fear rule over Kashmir Message-ID: <20030327200604.28403.qmail@webmail7.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030327/56a88b93/attachment.pl From aiindex at mnet.fr Fri Mar 28 07:04:15 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 02:34:15 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] No. 2: Nandimarg Massacre, Kashmir - Statements / Press Coverage Message-ID: [28 March 2003] Second Compilation of material on the Massacre in Nandimarg [Kashmir] 23, March 2003 * A : Declarations and Statements by Citizens Groups and Governments B : Op-Ed.s and Reports ------------ A. : Declarations and Statements by Citizens Groups and Governments #1. Pakistan India Peoples' Forum for Peace & Democracy (India Chapter) Press Release 25th March 2003 Condemn killings of innocent people in Kashmir The Pakistan India Peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy condemn the barbaric incident whereby alleged militant groups have killed 24 innocent people belonging to the Kashmiri Pandit community. As per media reports, the dead include 11 women, 2 children and 9 male adults. Triggered by religious fundamentalism, incidents like this hamper all attempts to bring peace back to the blood-ridden Kashmir Valley. Incidents like these are not only attempted at sabotaging the peace initiatives in Kashmir, but also are aimed at maligning the secular and harmonious fabric of Kashmir. We condemn all such attempts at terrorising the people or any section of it, by armed groups or individuals. In this hour of grief, we join the families of those killed and injured in the incident at NADIMARG in South Kashmir. We request the Kashmir state government to institute a high-level enquiry into the incident bringing to book all those who committed this inhuman act. We call upon all peace loving people of Kashmir and rest of India to refrain from any act of violence, which will further worsen the present turmoil existing in the state. We strongly believe that such attempts at disrupting initiatives for peace will not succeed and that the people of Kashmir will not tolerate any violation of the right to life of all citizens. On Behalf of PIPFPD, Admiral Ramdas Sushil Khanna Chairperson, India Chapter G. Secretary _____ #2. A Public Statement March 25, 2003 A cowardly, yet horrendously brutal, killing of innocent people has shattered the Kashmir Valley again. In the nightly hours of March 23, twenty-four men, women and children were gunned down by unknown attackers in the village of Nadimarg (Pulwama). The victims were all Hindu Pandits of Kashmir. We in SANSAD (South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy) and in INSAF (International South Asia Forum) utterly condemn this savage act, this crime against humanity. When members of any particular community are subjected to brutal killings - whether they are Sikhs in Punjab, Christians, Dalits, Tribals and Muslims in Gujarat and elsewhere, the fragile secular and democratic make-up of the Indian society goes through another challenging test. For over twelve years now, the people of Kahmir have been subjected to a never-ending vortex of violence. The entire people have been turned into helpless victims of the terror inflicted by the contending forces, while their genuine aspirations for peace, dignity, and democratic rights of self-determination remain crushed. It is very unfortunate that every time there is some movement toward normalization of social relations, some movement toward peace in the entire region, it becomes disrupted by such wanton and melicious acts of interruption. It is obvious that there are vested interests who do not want the Kashmir problem to be solved. That the secular and harmonious aspects of the Kashmiri society have yet not been destroyed is indicated by the manner in which the entire community in the village of Nadimarg came together to mourn the deaths of the innocents. Muslim men and women wiped their own tears and those of the survivors of the Hindu families. ''We don't believe this could happen here,'' said Khatija Bano, a Muslim housewife. ''I am shocked. Why will anybody kill these poor people? They had nothing to do with anything. They were struggling like all of us for two meals a day here in this far off village,'' she said. ''They had not left the village because they had always felt safe here. It is their home like it is our home''. It is noteworthy that all the Muslim, Christian, Sikh and the democratic/secular organizations have strongly condemned this ghastly act, and have demanded from the Government of India and of Jammu and kashmir to find the culprits, and to take the necessary steps in bringing security and a sense of dignity to all the people in Jammu and Kashmir. We in SANSAD and INSAF join these voices of sanity, and of goodwill. Hari Sharma president, SANSAD (South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy) president, INSAF (International South Asia Forum) residence: 8027 Government Road, Burnaby, BC, Canada, V5A 2E1 phone: 604 - 420-2972 fax: 604 - 420-2970 _______ #3. From: "Gadar Heritage Foundation" Subject: [gadar13] (unknown) Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 08:24:09 +0000 Massacre of Kashmiri Pandits We are shocked and horrified by the news of the inhuman and unconscionable massacre of 24 innocent Kashmiri Pandit children, women and men in Pulwama district of Kashmiri Valley late last night. We condemn this ghastly killing of defenceless people in the strongest possible terms. The cowards behind the latest outrage are unlikely to identify themselves. But there can be do doubt that the latest massacre is a desperate bid by those eager to communalise the Kashmir issue to sabotage any effort towards ensuring the return of the Kashmiri Pandits to their homes. Our hearts go out to the survivors of the carnage in particular, and the Kashmiri Pandit community in general, the overwhelming majority of whom have been condemned to live the life of refugees in their own country because of Pakistan-aided terrorism in the Valley. We demand an urgent review of the security arrangements for Kashmiri Pandits throughout the Valley and immediate and adequate compensation for the families of those killed by the J&K government. The J&K chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed has called it “[an] unpardonable crime by militants to derail the peace process initiated in J&K by the coalition government.” He has also said he has asked the security forces to launch a massive manhunt and bring the killers to the book for "these gun-wielding militants deserve no mercy." However, we also demand a thorough investigation in the security lapses that turned the vulnerable Kashmiri Pandits into easy targets of mass murderers who pretend to be serving lofty causes. Signatories: Javed Anand (Co-editor, Communalism Combat, Mumbai) Teesta Setalvad (Co-editor, Communalism Combat, Mumbai) Javed Akhtar (Poet and Lyricist) Shabana Azmi, (Rajya Sabha MP, social activist and actress). Dr. Agni Shekhar (Panun Kashmir) Askok Pandit (Panun Kashmir) Mahesh Bhatt, Film director Farooque Shaikh, films, theatre and TV personality Nikhil Wagle, Editor, Apla Mahanagar Sajid Rashid, Editor, Hindi Mahanagar Hasan Kamal, Lyricist and Columnist Gulam Mohamed Peshimam,Businessman Sushobha Barve, Social Activist Javed Siddiqui, Writer Aslam Parvaiz, Advertising Farrukh S. Waris, Educationist Syed Firoz Ashraf, Social Activist Yacoob Rahee, Writer, Social Activist Fazal Shaad, Social Activist Abdulkader Mukadam, Columnist, Social Activist Khan Ahmed Ali, Social Activist Vaqar Kadvi, Social Activist Shamim Tariq, Social Activist Salem bin Razak, Social Activist Muqaddar Hameed, Writer Khan Ayub, Social Activist Salim Alware, Social Activist _______ #4. Indian Muslim Federation (UK) Press Release - For Immediate Issue Dated: 26 March 2003 A COLD BLOODED MASSACRE The Indian Muslim Federation (UK) condemns the barbaric massacre of innocent 24 Kashmiri Pandits and their families including women and children on Monday in village Nandimarg of Pulwama in South of Kashmir, India. "This is the most horrific cold-blooded murder. It is one of the darkest days of the valley. These marauder robots have no feelings, no shame and no religion - Savages who have no regards for human lives. It is about time that the Indian Government should take effective steps to check this trans-border terrorism" said Shamsuddin Agha, the President of Indian Muslim Federation (UK). "Our hearts go to the grieving families of the victims who have suffered irrecoverable loss. May the souls of the departed rest in peace" Shamsuddin Agha further added. Press release issued by: Indian Muslim Federation (UK) Trinity Close, London E11 4 RP Tel: +44 20 8558 6399 Fax: +44 20 8539 0486 _______ #5. NRIS FOR SECULAR & HARMONIOUS INDIA 115 W. 238th Street, Bronx, New York 10463 Friday, March 28th 2003 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NRIS CONDEMN KASHMIR MASSACRE New York, New York—“We the Non Resident Indians strongly condemn the killing of 24 innocent Hindus in the village of Nadimarg in Kashmir valley recently. Terrorists posing as security force. The merciless brutes did not even spare women and children, killing eleven women and two children “The Hindu Kashmiri Pandits are blood brothers of many of the Muslim Kashmiri Pandits and had enjoyed warm relationship with each other. They have common ancestors; common traditions until the separatist and terrorist created a gulf between them by taking to violence for their own political ends. “Historically, India has led the world in pursuit of peace, tranquility and maintaining communal harmony among people of all faiths. It is sad to see these ancient values and wisdom challenged by the political culture of today. “Sufferings of the people of Kashmir, both Hindus and Muslims, but especially the attacks on Kashmiri Hindus in a clear attempt at forcing them to migrate out of the Kashmir valley, are deplorable and must be stopped at once. “We the undersigned individuals and groups represent the broadest cross section of Non Resident Indians of all faith and no faith such as Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Parsees, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhist, Atheists and others strongly urge the President, Prime Minister, leaders of all political parties, religious and social leaders, members of India’s Parliament and all other citizens of India to urgently take these steps: Ø Identify The 'Guilty' And Vigorously Prosecute Them. Ø Provide Urgent Relief & Rehabilitation Help To The Survivors of The Massacre Ø Protect Against Future Attacks on Hindus And Possible Backlash Against Muslims Ø Form 'Sadbhavana Committees’ All Over The State Of Kashmir To Strengthen Communal Harmony. “We offer our deepest condolences to the family members of the 24 people killed in Nadigram and laud their courage for staying back in Kashmir valley to preserve the unity and integrity of India. “We salute you the brave people of Nadigram. We stand with you in your hour of grief and promise to work with you to defeat the forces of hatred, communalism and separatism,” this statement was released by Mr. Satinath Choudhary, the national co-coordinator of Non Resident Indians for Secular and Harmonious India. Individuals: Shrikumar Poddar, Okemos, Michigan, USA K. S. Sripada Raju, East Lansing, Michigan, USA Devesh Poddar, Okemos, Michigan, USA Najid Hussein, Bear, Delaware, USA Satinath Choudhary, New York, New York, USA Mayurika Poddar, Okemos, Michigan, USA Organizations: India Foundation, Lansing, Michigan International Service Society, East Lansing, Michigan Washington Watch Inc. East Lansing, Michigan Vaishnava Center for Enlightenment, Lansing, Michigan Educational Subscription Service, Lansing, Michigan Seva International, Okemos, Michigan India Development Society, East Lansing, Michigan NRIs For Secular & Harmonious India, New York, NY, USA _______ #6. Foreign and Commonwealth Office http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1007029391629&a=KArticle&aid=1048701995178 JOINT STATEMENT BY JACK STRAW & COLIN L POWELL ON VIOLENCE IN KASHMIR (27/03/03) The United States and the United Kingdom strongly condemn the massacre of innocent civilians in Kashmir on March 23. Nothing can justify such a vicious and cowardly act. The United States and the United Kingdom condemn all terrorism wherever it occurs and whatever its purported justification. We will continue to work with our partners to eliminate this scourge. Violence will not solve Kashmir's problems. Pending the resolution of these problems, the LOC should be strictly respected and Pakistan should fulfil its commitments to stop infiltration across it. Pakistan should also do its utmost to discourage any acts of violence by militants in Kashmir. Both sides should consider immediately implementing a ceasefire and taking other active steps to reduce tension including by moves within the SAARC context. The differences between India and Pakistan can only be resolved through peaceful means and engagement. The United States and the United Kingdom stand ready to help both countries to start a process aimed at building confidence, normalising bilateral relations and resolving outstanding differences, including Kashmir. ======= B: MEDIA COVERAGE: Indian Press: The Hindustan Times Friday, March 28, 2003 http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/printedition/280303/detPLA01.shtml Death shall have no dominion Balraj Puri Protests against the massacre at Nadimarg in Kashmir on March 24 have been more strident than against similar incidents before. Despite the distraction of war in Iraq, the killing of 24 innocent people that include 11 women and two children have been condemned by national leaders as well as international ones. The central and state governments have blamed Pakistan for the carnage. Opposition parties and survivors of the victims have vented their anger against the governments for the lapses of security and intelligence agencies. Both accusations are not without basis. The word 'condemnation' has lost its meaning by its excessive use in Jammu and Kashmir. It has become too inadequate a response to the pent-up anger of the people and fails to provide relief to injured sentiments. The fresh assurances for their security given by government leaders, therefore, received a cynical response at the place of the tragedy. More effective measures will, therefore, have to be considered by all agencies concerned to prevent the recurrence of such tragedies and inspire the confidence of the people. Any policy revision must, however, take a closer look at a new dimension. The Muslims of Kashmir are more shell-shocked this time than ever before. Not only were the latest victims completely unconnected with any security or government agency, but also they were not killed in any Hindu majority area. They were a minuscule minority in an almost entirely Muslim area and were closely knit - ethnically, socially and emotionally - with the majority community. They were a part of those prepared to share the trials and tribulations of Kashmiri Muslims and who hadn't joined the 1990 Pandit exodus. They had demonstrated their faith in the Muslim community and in the tenets of Islam. More than a challenge to the Indian State and the fate of a few thousand Kashmiri Pandits still left in the Valley, the Nadimarg massacre is an insult to Islam. It is also an assault on the very soul of Kashmir and the values of a unique civilisational heritage. The wailing Muslim men and women in the funeral procession was not merely a testimony to their genuine sympathy for the bereaved families, but also to their sense of guilt and realisation that the real target of the terrorists were the humane principles of their religion and Kashmiriyat. The spontaneous slogans against dehshatgardi (terrorism) indicated that they had no doubt who the culprits were. That all Kashmiri leaders and parties, including militants and separatists, have condemned the massacre shows that they have realised the strength of popular sentiment. However, the Hizbul Mujahideen has accused Indian security forces of orchestrating the massacre to defame its movement. The Hurriyat has demanded an impartial probe to find out who are responsible for the barbaric act. If the Indian State had organised a series of mass killings of innocent Hindus and Sikhs - from Wandhama in Kashmir in 1998 to Rajiv Nagar in Jammu in 2002 - would it have been possible for it to keep it a secret? Such a decision, which can only be taken at the highest level and implemented only after it's passed through a number of channels and hundreds of operators, would have definitely been leaked out - as it had been when the army mowed down five innocent locals after branding them as terrorists responsible for the killing of 35 Sikhs at Chittisinghpora. There may have been some grey areas in the past when some individuals were killed and the identity of the killers could not be established. It is also possible to understand the compulsions of separatist leaders who can't ignore the warning implied in the fate of some leaders of the movement suspected to have deviated from any 'official line' of the militant leadership. The killings of dissident Hizb leader Abdul Majid Dar and senior Hurriyat leader Abdul Gani Lone are recent examples. If an inquiry is needed, let Pervez Musharraf find out whether the carnage was ordered by the ISI. He could also ascertain how much control he has over those who carried out the Nadimarg massacre. After all, the Pakistani general's anti-terrorism declarations have lost all credibility and terrorists are a major threat to his regime and to the stability of Pakistan. By diverting them to Kashmir, he cannot become immune from the threat. An inquiry is needed to find out the inadequacies and lapses in the security system. It must also fix responsibility on individuals and agencies who failed to protect a small group of innocent Kashmiri pandits. As far as Kashmir's movement for azadi is concerned, it's high time that it's understood that the gun has outlived its utility. The violent movement has reached a stage when like all violent revolutions, it has started devouring its own children. The question of who is responsible for the massacre at Nadimarg is less relevant than the fact that gun culture has become the greatest liability for the 'Kashmir cause'. It was this realisation that made people defy militants' bullets and the boycott call of separatists to take part in the elections in October 2002. It may not stand to logic that all those who voted have become anti-azadi. But there is little doubt that they have realised that azadi is unachievable through the gun. Moreover, freedom from misgovernance, corruption and nepotism, unemployment and economic hardship is at least as important and more urgent than azadi from India. The separatist leaders who had underrated the wisdom of the people have lost some of their relevance. The message from Nadimarg is equally unequivocal. Azadi will not be worth having if in the process the soul of Kashmir is killed. The foremost task in Kashmir is to save this soul and repair the injuries that have been inflicted on it. Any leadership that can't read this message will become irrelevant. The writer is a senior journalist based in Jammu o o o The Hindu Thursday, Mar 27, 2003 http://www.hindu.com/stories/2003032702221200.htm Rage against the dying of the light By Syeda Saiyidain Hameed It was Dylan Thomas who said, "Do not go gentle into the good night/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light." On Tuesday evening, some of us, ordinary citizens and concerned people of Delhi raged. We stood on Sansad Marg, across the road from Park Hotel, in solidarity with the Kashmiri Pandits whose families had been gunned down in Nadimarg village in Pulwama district of south Kashmir. We were mourning the killing of 24 innocent villagers and demanding justice for the survivors. Not even the most hard-hearted cynic could keep a dry eye reading the blow-by-blow account of the event on March 25. The pathos of a handful Pandits who had for 12 years braved the scourge of terrorism and chosen to stay back in their beloved Valley, is an expression of the most depraved mentality. Beasts masquerading as humans in military fatigues brutally gunned down the last of them sparing neither the smallest baby nor the most venerable elder. These families had stayed back from the early 1990s on the strength of support they got from their neighbours. These very neighbours, Muslim women and men, were seen on TV screens and in photographs, crowding around the grieving families, speechless with the horror they had witnessed with their own eyes. And those who perpetrated the heinous massacre, will to their dying day, carry the guilt not only of taking 24 innocent lives but also of having tried to deal a death blow to very ethos of Kashmiriyat. In this land of Sufis, made sacred by the teachings of Nund Reshi and Lalla Arifa, who are these shaitani forces which kill innocent children, women and men to create terror. Every time innocent blood is spilt in Kashmir whether of Muslims, Sikhs or Hindus we read about `unidentified gunmen' who enter at the dead of night, force the villagers to line up for identification or tell them that they have cordon and search orders. Having lined up their prey, their guns then splatter innocent bodies with bullets. Children's small bodies are seen riddled with holes, before they are covered with white sheets. Women beat their breasts when they see the faces of their loved ones for the last time before the last rites are performed. One entire generation of Kashmiris has been lost in this 12-year dance of death. Can we forget the face of Prof. Mushirul Haq, Vice-Chancellor, Kashmir University, when he was gunned down in 1991? Or the face of Abdul Gani Lone who was showered with bullets last year? Or the mass killings of Sikhs in Chattisinghpora three years ago. Or Abdul Majeed Dar of Sopore two days ago and now the Kashmiri Pandits. Kashmir has been a gallery of horrors. On Tuesday, we all stood up. There was not much planning or mobilisation. People came out spontaneously, nothing was more important than standing on Sansad Marg for the victims of Pulwama. A few of us spread the word and in a matter of two hours we had representatives of over 30 civil society organisations such as the Women's Initiative for Peace in South Asia, the All-India Democratic Women's Association, the Indian Social Institute, Sangat, the Aman Ekta Manch, the Muslim Women's Forum, Guild of Service, Jagori, Saheli, Action Aid, the Women's Federation for World Peace, North Eastern Network and Servants of People Society plus many, many individuals who came in their personal capacity. Our message was clear; namely, we won't let this go on. We won't allow the peace process to be derailed. We are one with the Kashmiris in their moment of sorrow. We demand that the central and state government ensure that they will ruthlessly crush all elements who will try to use this event for political gain. No reprisals, justice for the families, and protection for the minorities. We will not go gentle into the good night. (The writer is Convener, Muslim Women's Forum.) o o o Kashmir Monitor Editorial, March 25 "The brutal massacre of 24 innocent members of the minority community at Pulwama has added yet another sordid chapter to the ongoing separatist struggle in Jammu and Kashmir... "[It] has once again exposed the inability of the state government to make adequate security arrangements for the minority [Pandit] community who have fallen to the bullets of unidentified gunmen more than once... "The consistent killings have made clear that the killers are not interested in peace in Kashmir. They want to keep the issue burning by shedding innocent blood. This [is] the reason that the killers are sabotaging every move aimed at peaceful resolution to the long pending dispute. And Sunday night added yet another leaf in the bloody history of Jammu and Kashmir." o o o Greater Kashmir Editorial, March 25 "Whenever the political situation at the international level gets hot, Kashmiris have been used as cannon fodder... After every massacre both the militants and the [Kashmiri regional] government have been putting the blame on each other. Every time various quarters including the [separatist] Hurriyat Conference and even the frontline militant outfits have demanded a probe by an impartial agency and every time the government has rejected the demand. The reluctance of the government to unveil the ugly faces behind such brutal acts has been sending the wrong signals." o o o Kashmir Observer Editorial, March 24 "It is shameful that the state government has failed to provide security... at a time when it is making boastful statements of bringing back the migrant Kashmiri Pandits and setting up separate colonies for them. Governments are not run by making mere statements or coining new slogans... "Like his predecessors, the new government of the chief minister, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, also seems to be the captive of a section of bureaucrats and sleuths who have been thriving on the prevailing political uncertainty in the state. There is need for doing something more than issuing ritualistic statements to prevent recurrence of such carnage in the future. "There is need for preventing the mysterious gun to take lives of innocents. Whosoever is responsible for this monstrous act simply cannot be a human being." o o o The Hindu, Thursday, Mar 27, 2003 http://www.hindu.com/stories/2003032702201200.htm NHRC notice to Centre, J&K Govt. By Our Special Correspondent NEW DELHI MARCH 26. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has asked the Union and Jammu and Kashmir Governments to submit reports on the massacre of 24 Kashmiri Pandits in Nadimarg, which occurred "despite the presence of a police picket there." The NHRC also asked the Union Home Secretary and the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary to provide details of the measures taken or planned to be taken to increase security of the Pandits in the State and to ameliorate the suffering of the families of those killed or traumatised. Taking a suo motu cognisance of the killings, the Commission said that such an "unspeakable act of violence,'' was "deeply hostile to human rights, including the most fundamental of human rights - the right to life." The massacre, the Commission said, was "doubly reprehensible'' as it had taken place at a time when fresh efforts were under way to bring peace and reconciliation to the States.'' The NHRC said that it had received a petition from the Kashmiri Samiti, copies of which had been sent to the State and Central Governments. o o o Rediff.com The Rediff Special/Basharat Peer in Nadimarg Sorrow, fear rule over Kashmir March 27, 2003 "Enter with your shoes on, there is no one left to stop you," a hysterical youth surrounded by a group of wailing women shouts from a barely lit room. In the courtyard of this mud-and-brick house there are more men and women, all crying. Nine occupants of this house were among the 24 persons -- men, women, children -- who were lined up in a neighbour's courtyard and sprayed with bullets by militants on Sunday night. Every house in Nadimarg, a tiny hamlet in Pulwama district inhabited by only Kashmiri Pandits, is grieving. Nadimarg had just lulled itself to sleep on Sunday night when armed men in fatigues knocked on the doors. The villagers took it for an army search operation, though search operations in this village were rare and never so late in the night. The gunmen asked the villagers to gather in the garden of a migrant Pandit's deserted house. The assassins then showered bullets on them. Two days later, the remnants of that Hitleresque act lie littered around the village -- Lassa Koul's crutches, a plastic shoe, a blue woollen cap, a pair of sleepers, crushed chinar leaves smeared with blood, an impotent sandbag bunker. Beyond the killing field, now swarming with soldiers in bulletproof jackets, a dusty track leads to the heart-rending wails of men and women. "They killed everyone here!" the disconsolate youth repeats. "Nobody will tell you to take off your shoes now!" His reference to the Kashmiri practice of taking one's shoes off before entering a drawing room is poignantly melodramatic. "Sushma would sleep here," a girl cries, throwing herself on the unfolded bedding. The wailing girl is Shehnaz Akhter, the angry boy is Bilal Ahmad. They were with Sushma just hours before she was killed along with her father. The three had walked the unpaved, dusty paths of their villages, shared their small joys and little secrets. "She was my best friend, my sister," says Shehnaz, tears rolling down her cheeks. Sushma worked with Shehnaz's sister as an Integrated Child Development Scheme worker. Shehnaz and her sisters would accompany Sushma on her trips to nearby towns and walk her back home. "We would spend most of the time together," Shehnaz says. Sushma's was one of the nine Hindu families that had refused to migrate from Nadimarg in the early 1990s despite militant threats and that had made their Muslim friends very protective of them. Though survivors of Sunday night's massacre like Pran Nath Bhat, who lost his mother, brother, and a nephew, speak of it as "unthinkable", talk of death had been a part of the lives of the residents of this semi-pastoral village for a long time. Similar massacres in the past and the helplessness of the majority Muslim community in protecting their friends had played on their minds. Shehnaz, Sushma and Bilal would often talk of an unseen death. Sushma would confide her fears, her insecurity and vulnerability, to her friends. "We would tell her we will be your shield," sobs Shehnaz. "If a bullet comes your way, we will take it. But the day it happened, we could not keep the promise." Bilal finds it hard to keep his composure for long. In his hysteria he refers to his discussions on Sufism and Hinduism with Sushma's paramedic father. "Daddy [Sushma's father] would tell me about satsangs [devotional congregations] and Shaivism. I would talk to him about Islam. He was like my father and they killed him," he says. On the Saturday preceding the massacre, Sushma had spent the night at Shehnaz's house. The girls had chatted the night away. Sushma seemed to have had a premonition of death. "She was very scared and told us some armed men were spotted near her house," recalls Shehnaz. "We were worried, but we told her to talk about good things, like her cousin Vijay's marriage." Vijay Bhat, 27, a teacher, had left for Jammu a week back to shop for his marriage. He returned to light his family's funeral pyres. In the courtyard of his house, his friends and acquaintances from neighbouring villages console Vijay. Lying on a grass-mat, two Muslim youths plead with him to take some tea. "They could have burnt my house down, taken away every valuable. But they took all the lives, they did not spare a single person," Vijay sighs. Vijay studied at the government college in Anantnag. He has several Muslim friends and students. The massacre, however, has left him with nothing. "What do I stay here for?" he wonders. "I never wanted to leave, but now I have to." The government's promises of increased security in villages inhabited by the Pandits do not mean anything to Vijay; nor do the tears, the grieving faces of his neighbours. The frenzied slogans raised after every death in Kashmir sound hollow too. The helplessness of the situation was evident in the words of Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani, who visited Nadimarg on Tuesday. On the one hand he promised assistance to those wanting to migrate; on the other, he said migration of Pandits from the Kashmir Valley would be like playing into the enemy's hands. The Muslims, though grieving with the Pandits, seem reluctant to come out in the open with their protest. "We want all this to stop," says Vijay's friend Tufail Ahmad, a teacher. "Every person you will talk to will tell you how they hate these massacres, but nobody wants to stick his neck out. Even the most secured politicians are using carefully chosen words to react to the situation. It is fear that keeps the Kashmiri Muslims indoors." His words are heard everywhere in Kashmir. The condemnations have come pouring in, not just from mainstream parties and separatists, but even from ultra-Islamist parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir and Jamiat-e-Ahli Hadees. But all they have is sympathy. As far as the Pandits are concerned, they see no option but to move out of the valley. "We are in a state of shock," says Pran Nath Bhat, "but we will decide soon." Vijay Bhatt has made up his mind already. o o o The Rediff Special March 24, 2003 http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/mar/24spec.htm This did not happen in my Kashmir Basharat Peer This morning a colleague phoned me. "There has been a massacre in Kashmir," he said. "Twenty-four Kashmiri Pandits killed." It jolted me out of my slumber. He told me it had happened some hours ago in a village in south Kashmir. He did not know where exactly. He wanted me to leave for Srinagar. I had known that. I have been leaving for Kashmir every time some maniac pulled the trigger and killed innocents. I would run to my room, throw a few shirts, jeans, a notebook and my camera into my backpack, lock my room and head for the airport. But today I began calling my friends in Kashmir to find out where the massacre had occurred. I wanted to know which village -- yes, I wanted to know that badly. Because it could be my village. Because the survivors I would interview, the bullet-ridden bodies I would see, they could be my people. Would it be Chaman Lal Kantroo, my Pandit teacher, who gave me a notebook and two pencils for winning a quiz at school? Would it be Somnath Dhar, our grocer, my grandfather's friend, from whose shop I would return home with my pockets full of cashew nuts and dried apricots? Would they have killed Naina, that beautiful classmate of mine with whom I used to lunch by the side of the spring? I prayed not. I did not have the strength to face that. How would I write about the people who have influenced my life, who have taught me to live? About the friends of my grandfather, a devout Muslim who headed the prayers at the mosque but kept not a separate place for Somnath Dhar in his house? About my father's best friend, Bansi Lal Pandita, Pandita uncle to me? How would I write about their death? I have seen my parents cry when our Pandit neighbours migrated. I did not cry then. I did not understand what was happening. A decade later, I did. When I visited the migrants camp in Jammu. On another assignment there, I decided to visit the camp on the outskirts of the city to write about my displaced brethren who live in claustrophobic one-room hutments, abandoned by man and god. "Nobody cares about us," a teenager told me. He did not speak like a Kashmiri. And he hated Muslims. I could not muster the courage to tell him I was one. I told him I was a Punjabi from Delhi. As I walked around, trying to locate the people from my part of Kashmir, a 50-something man in a white kurta appeared out of a narrow, dingy lane. I introduced myself as a journalist working in Delhi, originally from Anantnag. He looked at me carefully. "Where from in Anantnag?" "Seer," I said. "You are from Seer? Whose son are you?" I gave my father's name and my grandfather's name. In my part of the world, you are always your father's son, your grandfather's grandson. His eyes lit up. He laughed, abused me fondly, hugged me tight. Before I could ask him who he was, he grabbed my arm, telling me to keep my mouth shut and obey. We walked through narrow lanes for a minute or so. He stopped outside a shabby hut, where a frail woman was washing clothes. "Get up, Gowri!" he said. "Hug him! Your son has come!" She didn't recognize me. But she hugged me. "She is your father's sister," the man told me. I did not know of any. But I believed him, when the woman said: "Is he Amel's son?" Amel is my father's nickname, which hardly anyone outside the family knew. She was crying. So was her husband. And so was I. I spent the next few hours with them in their cramped room, learning about my family, my history. Not for a moment was I anything but their son. I left Jammu that day happier than ever, richer by an aunt and an uncle and a faith in that unorthodox, anti-communal value system that makes me proud of Kashmir. But today the news has come. More of my people have been massacred. The friends I phoned up said it was not in my village. The massacre was in a place where I have never been to. Every child orphaned, every widow there is a stranger to me. But I share a bond with them. And it is a strong bond. We belong to Kashmir. We are partners in the grief and misery of our beautiful valley. There are maniacs who want to severe this emotional, cultural and historical chord I share with my Pandit brothers. I am not sure about the identity of these enemies of my Kashmir. The police say they are Muslim militants. Maybe. Maybe not. Everything the police tell us in Kashmir is not true. What they told us after the Chittisinghpora massacre of Sikhs in March 2000 has been proved a lie. The separatists say it is Indian intelligence agencies; words like 'politico-intelligence operations' fly in carpeted drawing rooms. I do not know the truth. The truth was murdered in the first bomb blast in Kashmir. Now we have only versions in Kashmir. As I prepared to leave for the airport, my reporter's reflexes failed. I did not want to go. I did not want to report this massacre. This did not happen in my Kashmir. Not again. I dream about seeing the Pandits back. I want to visit Somnath Dhar's shop again. And walk home with cashews and apricots in my pockets. I don't have words to express my grief. Let me paraphrase Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali from Farewell in the country without a post office: At a certain point I lost track of you. You needed me. You needed to perfect me: In your absence you polished me into the Enemy. Your history gets in the way of my memory. I am everything you lost. Your perfect enemy. Your memory gets in the way of my memory. There is nothing to forgive. You won't forgive me. I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself. There is everything to forgive. You can't forgive me. =========== [* A collection of articles on the Nandimarg [Kashmir] massacre of 23, March 2003 has been gathered from 24 march 2003 to 28 March 2003 by the South Asia Citizens Web. It is available to all interested. For a copy write to ] -- From aiindex at mnet.fr Fri Mar 28 09:00:55 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 04:30:55 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Fisk: Raw, devastating realities that expose the truth about Basra Message-ID: The Independent (UK) 28 March 2003 Robert Fisk: Raw, devastating realities that expose the truth about Basra Two British soldiers lie dead on a Basra roadway, a small Iraqi girl - victim of an Anglo American air strike - is brought to hospital with her intestines spilling out of her stomach, a terribly wounded woman screams in agony as doctors try to take off her black dress. An Iraqi general, surrounded by hundreds of his armed troops, stands in central Basra and announces that Iraq's second city remains firmly in Iraqi hands. The unedited al-Jazeera videotape - filmed over the past 36 hours and newly arrived in Baghdad - is raw, painful, devastating. It is also proof that Basra - reportedly "captured'' and "secured'' by British troops last week - is indeed under the control of Saddam Hussein's forces. Despite claims by British officers that some form of uprising has broken out in Basra, cars and buses continue to move through the streets while Iraqis queue patiently for gas bottles as they are unloaded from a government truck. A remarkable part of the tape shows fireballs blooming over western Basra and the explosion of incoming - and presumably British - shells. The short sequence of the dead British soldiers - over which Tony Blair voiced such horror yesterday - is little different from dozens of similar clips of dead Iraqi soldiers shown on British television over the past 12 years, pictures which never drew any condemnation from the Prime Minister. The two Britons, still in uniform, are lying on a roadway, arms and legs apart, one of them apparently hit in the head, the other shot in the chest and abdomen. Another sequence from the same tape shows crowds of Basra civilians and armed men in civilian clothes, kicking the soldiers' British Army Jeep and dancing on top of the vehicle. Other men can be seen kicking the overturned Ministry of Defence trailer, which the Jeep was towing when it was presumably ambushed. Also to be observed on the unedited tape - which was driven up to Baghdad on the open road from Basra - is a British pilotless drone photo-reconnaissance aircraft, its red and blue roundels visible on one wing, shot down and lying overturned on a roadway. Marked "ARMY'' in capital letters, it carries the code sign ZJ300 on its tail and is attached to a large cylindrical pod which probably contains the plane's camera. Far more terrible than the pictures of dead British soldiers, however, is the tape from Basra's largest hospital that shows victims of the Anglo-American bombardment being brought to the operating rooms shrieking in pain. A middle-aged man is carried into the hospital in pyjamas, soaked head to foot in blood. A little girl of perhaps four is brought into the operating room on a trolley, staring at a heap of her own intestines protruding from the left side of her stomach. A blue-uniformed doctor pours water over the little girl's guts and then gently applies a bandage before beginning surgery. A woman in black with what appears to be a stomach wound cries out as doctors try to strip her for surgery. In another sequence, a trail of blood leads from the impact of an incoming - presumably British - shell. Next to the crater is a pair of plastic slippers. The al-Jazeera tapes, most of which have never been seen, are the first vivid proof that Basra remains totally outside British control. Not only is one of the city's main roads to Baghdad still open - this is how the three main tapes reached the Iraqi capital - but General Khaled Hatem is interviewed in a Basra street, surrounded by hundreds of his uniformed and armed troops, and telling al-Jazeera's reporter that his men will "never'' surrender to Iraq's enemies. Armed Baath Party militiamen can also be seen in the streets, where traffic cops are directing lorries and buses near the city's Sheraton Hotel. Mohamed al-Abdullah, al-Jazeera's correspondent in Basra, must be the bravest journalist in Iraq right now. In the sequence of three tapes, he can be seen conducting interviews with families under fire and calmly reporting the incoming British artillery bombardment. One tape shows that the Sheraton Hotel on the banks of Shatt al-Arab river has sustained shell damage. On the edge of the river - beside one of the huge statues of Iraq's 1980-88 war martyrs, each pointing an accusing finger across the waterway towards Iran - Basra residents can be seen filling jerry cans from the sewage-polluted river. Five days ago the Iraqi government said 30 civilians had been killed in Basra and another 63 wounded. Yesterday, it claimed that more than 4,000 civilians had been wounded in Iraq since the war began and more than 350 killed. But Mr Abdullah's tape shows at least seven more bodies brought to the Basra hospital mortuary over the past 36 hours. One, his head still pouring blood on to the mortuary floor, was identified as an Arab correspondent for a Western news agency. Other harrowing scenes show the partially decapitated body of a little girl, her red scarf still wound round her neck. Another small girl was lying on a stretcher with her brain and left ear missing. Another dead child had its feet blown away. There was no indication whether American or British ordnance had killed these children. The tapes give no indication of Iraqi military casualties. But at a time when the Iraqi authorities will not allow Western reporters to visit Basra, this is the nearest to independent evidence we have of continued resistance in the city and the failure of the British to capture it. For days the Iraqi have been denying optimistic reports from "embedded'' reporters - especially on the BBC - who gave the impression that Basra was "secured'' or otherwise in effect under British control. This the tape conclusively proves to be untrue. There is also a sequence showing two men, both black, who are claimed by Iraqi troops to be US prisoners of war. No questions are asked of the men, who are dressed in identical black shirts and jackets. Both appear nervous and gaze at the camera crew and Iraqi troops crowded behind them. Of course, it is still possible that some small-scale opposition to the Iraqi regime broke out in the city over the past few days, as British officers have claimed. But, seeing the tapes, it is hard to imagine that it amounted, if it existed at all, to anything more than a brief gun battle. The unedited reports therefore provide damaging proof that Anglo-American spokesmen have not been telling the truth about the battle for Basra. And in the end this is far more devastating to the invading armies than the sight of two dead British soldiers or - since Iraqi lives are as sacred as British lives - than the pictures of dead Iraqi children. 28 March 2003 04:28 From bharatich at hotmail.com Fri Mar 28 10:47:09 2003 From: bharatich at hotmail.com (Bharati) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 10:47:09 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] creating the bangladeshi References: <200303260340.h2Q3ekOl016009@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: dear friends, Many of us have been reading about the "deportment of illegal Bangladeshis" in India in the newspapers in the last few months. Who are these persons? As an environmentalist working with waste recyclers, (ranging from kabaris to ragpickers), I know for one that all recyclers have been unofficially classified as Bangladeshis. (Personally, to me it hardly matters who is or is not from where and I see no reason why Bangladeshis should not get a life here or anywhere else where the opportunity exists.) The official clssification holds ground at the most unexpected levels : sub-inspectors of the Police, councillors of municipalities and many, many middle class citizens. There is no basis for this in the form of any survey, or reports. It's based upon perception. In case you're wondering what such a survey might actually show, studies carried out by us (in a different context) show that most recyclers come from North India. (and here, we are often told that Bangladeshis change their names, lie and pretend to be North Indians, that we have been fooled. But arguing over the data is itself dangerous and undesirable and one acknowledges that). So firstly, communities of workers are classified, on the basis of their work. This work (or waste picking and recycling) also happens to be stigmatised, considered dirty and debased, fitting in well of the unofficial-official understanding of Bangladeshis. But all recyclers are not suspect in the same way. In India, the recycling works like a flat topped pyramid, with waste pickers at the bottom, forming the base. There are almost 100,000 waste pickers in Delhi, saving at least Rs.600,000 daily for the city. They sell to small waste buyers, often opening out of slums, working under poor conditions. Above them, the richer dealers and millionaires from waste (some have, in the past, described the comforts of Italian socks to me) and the recyclers. As you climb up the pyramid, the work of the players involves less direct handling of waste, ( and much of it has already been cleaned) and moves into the realm of "business." About 1 in a hundred persons is a recycler in Delhi. None of them at any layer are immuned from various kinds of discrimination, but I will stick to the lower two layers, who are currently classified as Bangladeshis. So, How do you deport a Bangladeshi? According to the police and Home Ministry, it's pretty simple. First, you pin-point them because they " look different," they "speak differently", and "you can tell if you are trained." According to officials in the Lt. Governor's Office, "its very easy because there is a big difference in the manner of a UP Muslim and a Bangladeshi Muslim." Also, no documents to prove citizenship are typically accepted because " they make false Voter-I-Cards." So what do you do if a catcher lands up with a truck at your jhuggi tonight? Flash your undisputable and accurate citi-bank credit card? Secondly, as I discovered during a visit paid to my office by the police, its about playing your concern about national security. Police has occasionally asks us to " hand over the Bangladeshis" for the sake of the country. This argument about security is a new one, that has evolved many branches in the last few months. It now includes the arguments that Bangladeshis are involved in huge hawala deals and of kabaris buying stolen goods. In other words, they are constructed to be endangering security and safety : of the economy and average middle classes. In the minds of many officials, therefore, safety means that the fencing of the city (watch recent developments in Luyten's Delhi) must go hand in hand with eliminating the thieves and the markets for their stolen goods. In the same vein, wastepickers are routinely caught when any theft takes place as it is presumed that with their access to a buyer, they will not hesitate to steal. Very few persons acknowledge that given the fact that wastepickers take the same route each day, are highly territorial and depend greatly upon this territory to earn a living, it is unlikely that they will want to endanger their work by frequent robberies. Some of the wastepickers I work with have often expressed anguish over the fact that their desire to simply labour honestly is not even considered valid enough for debate. (BTW : None of these arguments have been penned down in any public document that I was able to access. I therefore depended largely on conversations and meetings. ) This last argument about theft is particularly of concern to many of the kabaris/waste buyers in Delhi. From being accused of dealing in stolen goods -nothing new there- they are now being informally drawn into the Bangladeshi-Non-Bangladeshi debate and classification. It seems to work as an uncontrollable chain reaction: from dirty to undesirable to thieves to Bangladeshis. It seems to me that Bangladeshi is really a euphemism increasingly used for anyone who can be seen as poor/Muslim. Moreover, this is also a means of ridding the city of the unwanted. Don't forget, the move to deport comes on the basis of orders of the Home Minister whose Ministry also shots from the shoulder of the Supreme Court, which it claims has given these orders. (However, I could not locate these. ) So suddenly, the waste buyer who act as the sink of middle class consumption, finds himself a triple accused non-citizen. This is not surprise, given how the Lt. Governor of Delhi's office has been giving orders for eviction of kabaris for a while now. About 2 years ago, an order circulated to the Municipalities and the Police asked them to shut down all the kabari shops operating in slums. No reason was cited. Although only a few were shut down, there was widespread harassment and the bribe rates and frequency increased. Again, informally, officials said that it was a step towards cleaning up the city of people who "dirty "the city. They as said that slums, though undesirable within the city, cannot be "exploited" for "commercial purposes". In a quick stoke, therefore, a waste dealer becomes both dirty and commercial (as against playing a role as a cleanser and a free service provider). This dynamic, ongoing construct of the ubiquitous kabariwala and ragpicker of Delhi is not without resistant, of course. There is a staunch argument against being forced not to be from UP, Bihar, even West Bengal. In meetings with the Police, many ask about the basis of this classification and challenge it in small ways. While wastepickers are decidedly nervous, many of them have also some idea of emergency plans. None of these include changing their names, changing their accents or reinventing a life-story. These do include ensuring their peer group knows if they are picked up, being able to borrow money to bribe and be let out and at times of greatest fears, stay awake to warn the others if the trucks come along. Several of them have decided against opening bank accounts for fear of being unable to access savings in case of deportation.(Fearfully, the stories doing the rounds are that deportees are dumped on the border and left to fend for themsleves. None of them are heard from in any case). This year, many of them optimistically applied for voters I cards. .Others sent for documents from their villages across India and some of them tried locating birth certificates or proof of being born in India. Documents that might never be accepted but which hold out hpe during the questioning sessions. Most have none, and they can only hope to be out mining the waste from a bin when the rounding-up is happening. Bharati Bharati Chaturvedi Chintan Environmental Reserach and Action Group 238 Sidhartha Enclave. New Delhi. 110014. From ravis at sarai.net Fri Mar 28 17:11:42 2003 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 17:11:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] more media war stuff (al jazeera) Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20030328171005.0259f8c0@pop3.norton.antivirus> Al-Jazeera tells the truth about war My station is a threat to American media control - and they know it Faisal Bodi Friday March 28, 2003 The Guardian Last month, when it became clear that the US-led drive to war was irreversible, I - like many other British journalists - relocated to Qatar for a ringside seat. But I am an Islamist journalist, so while the others bedded down at the £1m media centre at US central command in As-Sayliyah, I found a more humble berth in the capital Doha, working for the internet arm of al-Jazeera. And yet, only a week into the war, I find myself working for the most sought-after news resource in the world. On March 23, the night the channel screened the first footage of captured US PoW's, al-Jazeera was the most searched item on the internet portal, Lycos, registering three times as many hits as the next item. I do not mean to brag - people are turning to us simply because the western media coverage has been so poor. For although Doha is just a 15-minute drive from central command, the view of events from here could not be more different. Of all the major global networks, al-Jazeera has been alone in proceeding from the premise that this war should be viewed as an illegal enterprise. It has broadcast the horror of the bombing campaign, the blown-out brains, the blood-spattered pavements, the screaming infants and the corpses. Its team of on-the-ground, unembedded correspondents has provided a corrective to the official line that the campaign is, barring occasional resistance, going to plan. Last Tuesday, while western channels were celebrating a Basra "uprising" which none of them could have witnessed since they don't have reporters in the city, our correspondent in the Sheraton there returned a rather flat verdict of "uneventful" - a view confirmed shortly afterwards by a spokesman for the opposition Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. By reporting propaganda as fact, the mainstream media had simply mirrored the Blair/Bush fantasy that the people who have been starved by UN sanctions and deformed by depleted uranium since 1991 will greet them as saviours. Only hours before the Basra non-event, one of Iraq's most esteemed Shia authorities, Ayatollah Sistani, had dented coalition hopes of a southern uprising by reiterating a fatwa calling on all Muslims to resist the US-led forces. This real, and highly significant, event went unreported in the west. Earlier in the week Arab viewers had seen the gruesome aftermath of the coalition bombing of "Ansar al-Islam" positions in the north-east of the country. All but two of the 35 killed were civilians in an area controlled by a neutral Islamist group, a fact passed over with undue haste in western reports. And before that, on the second day of the war, most of the western media reported verbatim central command statements that Umm Qasr was under "coalition" control - it was not until Wednesday that al-Jazeera could confirm all resistance there had been pacified. Throughout the past week, armed peoples in the west and south have been attacking the exposed rearguard of coalition positions, while all the time - despite debilitating sandstorms - western TV audiences have seen litte except their steady advance towards Baghdad. This is not truthful reporting. There is also a marked difference when reporting the anger the invasion has unleashed on the Muslim street. The view from here is that any vestige of goodwill towards the US has evaporated with this latest aggression, and that Britain has now joined the US and Israel as a target of this rage. The British media has condemned al-Jazeera's decision to screen a 30-second video clip of two dead British soldiers. This is simple hypocrisy. From the outset of the war, the British media has not balked at showing images of Iraqi soliders either dead or captured and humiliated. Amid the battle for hearts and minds in the most information-controlled war in history, one measure of the importance of those American PoW pictures and the images of the dead British soldiers is surely the sustained "shock and awe" hacking campaign directed at aljazeera.net since the start of the war. As I write, the al-Jazeera website has been down for three days and few here doubt that the provenance of the attack is the Pentagon. Meanwhile, our hosting company, the US-based DataPipe, has terminated our contract after lobbying by other clients whose websites have been brought down by the hacking. It's too early for me to say when, or indeed if, I will return to my homeland. So far this war has progressed according to a near worst-case scenario. Iraqis have not turned against their tormentor. The southern Shia regard the invasion force as the greater Satan. Opposition in surrounding countries is shaking their regimes. I fear there remains much work to be done. · Faisal Bodi is a senior editor for aljazeera.net From amitbasu55 at hotmail.com Fri Mar 28 19:12:29 2003 From: amitbasu55 at hotmail.com (Amit R Basu) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 13:42:29 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Vernacular Psychiatry in 19yh Century Calcutta Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030328/2b91b0ed/attachment.html From sanghamitramag at yahoo.co.in Thu Mar 27 23:17:28 2003 From: sanghamitramag at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Sangha=20Mitra?=) Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 17:47:28 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] ANOUNCEMENT--Sangha Mitra, Bangalore's LGBT Magazine--Accepting submissions Message-ID: <20030327174728.29542.qmail@web8103.mail.in.yahoo.com> SANGHA MITRA--DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 24/4/03 Dear friends, I am happy to anounce that Sangha Mitra, Bangalore's annual LGBT magazine, is accepting submissions for its upcoming issue. This will be the fourth publication of Sangha Mitra, which has historically been distributed to the Bangalore community in print and on the internet. We hope that this year's issue will reach and include an audience from beyond Bangalore as well. You can view or download last year's issue from this address (you will need Adobe Acrobat to open the file): http://www.geocities.com/goodasyoubangalore/attachments/sanghamitraissue3.pdf This year's issue promises to include a diversity of articles, including personal stories, non fiction articles, poetry, fiction, photographs and whatever else the community and its friends around India would like to submit. Themes we are expecting to include will be: religion and homosexuality, being out in the workplace, being out in school, book or film reviews, interviews and more. Any ideas or suggestions are welcomed! There are many voices to be heard and many stories to tell. Submissions are open to the LGBT community and its friends around India, and you may remain anonymous (many have in the past). If you would like to donate money to support Sangha Mitra's publication, please contact this email. Currently, we have very little and would like to be able to afford quality printing and an issue to be translated into Kannada. If you have any submissions, donations or ideas for the magazine besides a submission, please contact me, your friendly Editor, at this email address: sanghamitramag at yahoo.co.in The deadline for submissions is Thursday April 24. Please submit your articles, photos or drawings by this date. Please forward this email to any person or group who may be interested. ...in peace and solidarity. [For more information regarding the group that puts Sangha Mitra together, Good As You, please see: http://www.geocities.com/goodasyoubangalore/ ] ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From aiindex at mnet.fr Fri Mar 28 19:38:23 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 15:08:23 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] U.S. Media Applaud Bombing of Iraqi TV Message-ID: FAIR-L Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting Media analysis, critiques and activism MEDIA ADVISORY: U.S. Media Applaud Bombing of Iraqi TV March 27, 2003 When Iraqi TV offices in Baghdad were hit by a U.S missile strike on March 25, the targeting of media was strongly criticized by press and human rights groups. The general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, Aidan White, suggested that "there should be a clear international investigation into whether or not this bombing violates the Geneva Conventions." White told Reuters (3/26/03), "Once again, we see military and political commanders from the democratic world targeting a television network simply because they don't like the message it gives out." The Geneva Conventions forbid the targeting of civilian installations-- whether state-owned or not-- unless they are being used for military purposes. Amnesty International warned (3/26/03) that the attack may have been a "war crime" and emphasized that bombing a television station "simply because it is being used for the purposes of propaganda" is illegal under international humanitarian law. "The onus," said Amnesty, is on "coalition forces" to prove "the military use of the TV station and, if that is indeed the case, to show that the attack took into account the risk to civilian lives." Likewise, Human Rights Watch affirmed (3/26/03) that it would be illegal to target Iraqi TV based on its propaganda value. "Although stopping enemy propaganda may serve to demoralize the Iraqi population and to undermine the government's political support," said HRW, "neither purpose offers the 'concrete and direct' military advantage necessary under international law to make civilian broadcast facilities a legitimate military target." Some U.S. journalists, however, have not shown much concern about the targeting of Iraqi journalists. Prior to the bombing, some even seemed anxious to know why the broadcast facilities hadn't been attacked yet. Fox News Channel's John Gibson wondered (3/24/03): "Should we take Iraqi TV off the air? Should we put one down the stove pipe there?" Fox's Bill O'Reilly (3/24/03) agreed: "I think they should have taken out the television, the Iraqi television.... Why haven't they taken out the Iraqi television towers?" MSNBC correspondent David Shuster offered: "A lot of questions about why state-run television is allowed to continue broadcasting. After all, the coalition forces know where those broadcast towers are located." On CNBC, Forrest Sawyer offered tactical alternatives to bombing (3/24/03): "There are operatives in there. You could go in with sabotage, take out the building, you could take out the tower." On NBC Nightly News (3/24/03), Andrea Mitchell noted that "to the surprise of many, the U.S. has not taken out Iraq's TV headquarters." Mitchell's report cautioned that "U.S. officials say the television headquarters is in a civilian area. Bombing it would further infuriate the Arab world, and the U.S. would need the TV station to get out its message once coalition forces reach Baghdad. Still, allowing Iraqi TV to stay on the air gives Saddam a strong tool to help keep his regime intact." She did not offer the Geneva Conventions as a reason to avoid bombing a media outlet. After the facility was struck, some reporters expressed satisfaction. CNN's Aaron Brown (3/25/03) recalled that "a lot of people wondered why Iraqi TV had been allowed to stay on the air, why the coalition allowed Iraqi TV to stay on the air as long as it did." CNN correspondent Nic Robertson seemed to defend the attack, saying that bombing the TV station "will take away a very important tool from the Iraqi leadership-- that of showing their face, getting their message out to the Iraqi people, and really telling them that they are still in control." It's worth noting that CNN, like other U.S. news outlets, provides all these functions for the U.S. government. New York Times reporter Michael Gordon appeared on CNN (3/25/03) to endorse the attack: "And personally, I think the television, based on what I've seen of Iraqi television, with Saddam Hussein presenting propaganda to his people and showing off the Apache helicopter and claiming a farmer shot it down and trying to persuade his own public that he was really in charge, when we're trying to send the exact opposite message, I think, was an appropriate target." According to the New York Times (3/26/03), Fox's Gibson seemed to go so far as to take credit for the bombing of Iraqi TV, suggesting that Fox's "criticism about allowing Saddam Hussein to talk to his citizens and lie to them has had an effect." Fox reporter Major Garrett declared (3/25/03), "It has been a persistent question here, why [Iraqi TV] remains on the air." Given such attitudes, perhaps it's not surprising that discussions of the legality of attacking Iraqi TV have been rare in U.S. mainstream media. Yet when the White House accused Iraq of violating the Geneva Conventions by airing footage of American POWs, media were eager to engage the subject of international law. It's a shame U.S. media haven't held the U.S. government to the same standards. If you'd like to encourage media outlets to investigate this story, contact information is available on FAIR's website: http://www.fair.org/media-contact-list.html From eye at ranadasgupta.com Sat Mar 29 10:33:22 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:33:22 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Seamas Milne on status of war Message-ID: Published on Thursday, March 27, 2003 by the Guardian/UK They are Fighting for Their Independence, not Saddam by Seumas Milne The Anglo-American war now being fought in the Middle East is without question the most flagrant act of aggression carried out by a British government in modern times. The assault on Iraq which began a week ago, in the teeth of global and national opinion, was launched without even the flimsiest Iraqi provocation or threat to Britain or the US, in breach of the UN charter and international law, and in defiance of the majority of states represented on the UN security council. It is necessary to descend deep into the mire of the colonial era to find some sort of precedent or parallel for this piratical onslaught. However wrong or unnecessary, every previous British war for the past 80 years or more has been fought in response to some invasion, rebellion, civil war or emergency. Even in the most crudely rapacious case of Suez, there was at least a challenge in the form of the nationalization of the canal. Not so with Iraq, where the regime was actually destroying missiles with which it might have hoped to defend itself only a couple of days before the start of the US-led attack. But there is little reflection of this reality, or of Anglo-American isolation in the world over the war, in either the bulk of the British media coverage or the response from most politicians and public figures. Little is now heard of the original pretext for war, Iraq's much-vaunted weapons of mass destruction, and regime change - that lodestar of the US hawks which Tony Blair struggled to dissociate himself from for so long - is now the uncontested mission of the campaign. Having lost the public debate on the war, Blair has demanded that a divided nation rally round British troops carrying out his policy of aggression in the Gulf. And under a barrage of war propaganda, the soft center of public opinion has dutifully shifted ground - in the wake of those MPs who put their careers before constituents and conscience once Blair had failed to secure UN authorization. Many balk at criticizing the war when British soldiers are in action, but it's hardly a position that can be defended as moral or principled when the action they are taking part in arguably constitutes a war crime. And whether public support holds up under the pressure of events in Iraq - such as yesterday's civilian carnage in a Baghdad market - remains to be seen. Events have, of course, signally failed to follow their expected course. The pre-invasion spin couldn't have been clearer. The Iraqis would not fight, we were told, but would welcome US and British invaders with open arms. The bulk of the regular army would capitulate as soon as soon as they saw the glint on the columns of American armour. The war might even only last six days, Donald Rumsfeld suggested, in a contemptuous evocation of the Arabs' humiliation in the Six Day war of 1967. His hard right Republican allies insisted it would be a "cakewalk". British ministers, as ever, took their cue from across the Atlantic, while the intelligence agencies and US-financed Iraqi opposition groups reinforced their arrogant assumptions. But Rumsfeld's six days have been and gone and resistance to the most powerful military machine in history continues to be fierce across Iraq - in and around the very Shi'ite-dominated towns and cities, such as Najaf and Nasiriyah, that the US and Britain expected to be least willing to fight. Nor has the Iraqi army yet collapsed or surrendered in large numbers, while regular units are harrying US and British forces along with loyalist militias. One senior US commander told the New York Times yesterday, "we did not put enough credence in their abilities," while another conceded that "we did not expect them to attack". The International Herald Tribune recorded dolefully that "the people greeting American troops have been much cooler than many had hoped". There was little public preparation for the resistance that is now taking place. Third World peoples have after all been allocated a largely passive role in the security arrangements of the new world order - the best they can hope for is to be "liberated" and be grateful for it. There has been little understanding that, however much many Iraqis want to see the back of Saddam Hussein, they also - like any other people - don't want their country occupied by foreign powers. No doubt Ba'athist militias are playing a coercive role in stiffening resistance. There are also those who cannot expect to survive the fall of the dictatorship and therefore have nothing to lose. But the scale and commitment of the resistance - along with reports of hundreds of Iraqis struggling to return from Syria and Jordan to fight - suggests that it is driven far more by national and religious pride. Most of these people are not fighting for Saddam Hussein, but for the independence of their homeland. To fail to recognize this now obvious reality is not only condescending, but stupid. But then we have been subjected to such a blizzard of disinformation in recent days - from the reported deaths of Tariq Aziz and Saddam Hussein to the non-existent chemical weapons plant and Tuesday's uprising in Basra - that it should come as no surprise to hear everyone from British and US defense ministers to BBC television presenters refer to Iraqis defending their own country as "terrorists". Of course, the US has the military might to break Iraqi conventional resistance and impose a puppet administration in Baghdad in order to change the regional balance of power, oversee the privatization of Iraq's oil and parcel out reconstruction contracts to itself and its friends. But the course of this war will also have a huge political impact, in Iraq and throughout the world. This is after all a demonstration war, designed to cow and discipline both the enemies and allies of the US. The tougher the Iraqi resistance, the more difficult it will be for the US to impose its will in the country, and move on to the next target in the never-ending war on terror. The longer Iraqis are able and choose to resist, the more the pressure will also build against the war in the rest of the world. Almost 86 years ago to the day, the British commander Lieutenant General Stanley Maude issued a proclamation to the people of Baghdad, whose city his forces had just occupied. "Our armies," he declared, "do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors, but as liberators." Within three years, 10,000 had died in a national Iraqi uprising against the British rulers, who gassed and bombed the insurgents. On the eve of last week's invasion Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins echoed Maude in a speech to British troops. "We go to liberate, not to conquer", he told them. All the signs from the past few days are that a new colonial occupation of Iraq - however it is dressed up - will face determined guerrilla resistance long after Saddam Hussein has gone; and that the occupiers will once again be driven out. From eye at ranadasgupta.com Sat Mar 29 11:14:26 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 11:14:26 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] HUMOUR: Bush Bravely Leads 3rd Infantry Into Battle Message-ID: Bush Bravely Leads 3rd Infantry Into Battle (MORE ONION COVERAGE OF IRAQ WAR: www.theonion.com) IRAQ-KUWAIT BORDER—As the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division began its ground assault on Iraq Monday, President Bush marched alongside the front-line soldiers, bravely putting his own life on the line for his country by personally participating in the attack. [Picture: A weary Bush marches through enemy territory near the Iraq-Kuwait border. ] "Bush is the real deal, and when he talks about fighting for freedom, he means it," said Pvt. Tom Scharpling, 21. "He'd never ask one of us grunts to take any risks for our country that he wasn't willing to take himself." According to reports from the front, many of the soldiers were initially suspicious of the president, doubtful that an Ivy Leaguer who once used powerful family connections to avoid service in Vietnam had what it took to face enemy fire head-on. However, Bush—or, as his fellow soldiers nicknamed him in a spirit of battlefield camaraderie, 'Big Tex'—quickly overcame the platoon's reluctance to having a "fancy-pants Yalie" in its ranks. "Bush is the best soldier I've ever had the honor of fighting alongside," said Pvt. Jon Benjamin, 23. "I'd take a bullet for that man, because I know he'd take one for me if he had to." Proving himself a worthy foot soldier, Bush has earned the respect of his fellow front-line combatants with acts of courage and heroism that one soldier called "a truly inspiring example of one man's commitment to the cause of liberty." "Just yesterday, George stormed an Iraqi machine-gun nest when our sergeant took one in the belly," Pvt. Scott "Lumpy" Fellers, 20, told reporters. "We were pinned down, cut off from our division, and it looked like curtains for us all. Thankfully, George was there. He ran through heavy artillery fire and lobbed a grenade right into their bunker. If it hadn't been for him, God knows how many of us would've been coming home in body bags." "It's not just any president who would risk his life like the nation's men in uniform do," Fellers added. "God bless him and everything he stands for." Bush's courage, sources say, was evident from the earliest stages of the war's planning. Though the Pentagon initially wanted an air war with minimal ground combat, Bush quickly dismissed this strategy, insisting that the only way a true and lasting victory could be achieved was to go in and fight—dune by dune, village by village—until Iraq was finally free. White House sources say Bush's decision to place his own life on the line for his country met with resistance from top military leaders. "The Joint Chiefs of Staff kept telling him, 'Mr. President, we beg you—stay here in Washington, where it's safe.' But George was having none of it," said Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry. "He was adamant that if our boys overseas were going to risk their lives for liberty, he was going to do the same. And, by God, he proved himself a man of his word." The president has only been in battle for less than a week, but he has already proven himself more than willing to put himself in the line of fire. "The president carried me through an enemy minefield after my arm had been blown off by a mortar shell, blazing away with his pistol as he delivered me to safety," Pvt. Chris Adair said. "Then, after he'd gotten me to a medic, he went all the way back through that same minefield—carrying a 40-pound bag of ice the whole way—to retrieve my severed arm so the doctors could sew it back on. Now, thanks to President Bush, I'll still be able to play piano for the church choir back home in Appleton, just like I promised Grandma. He is truly an American hero." Adair's comments were echoed by many of the soldiers fighting alongside Bush. "I used to be cynical about politicians who are born into privilege and wealth. I thought, 'Sure, they talk a good game about our duty to protect democracy, but when push comes to shove, they'd rather send off the nation's poor, uneducated, and underprivileged to do the fighting for them,'" said Pvt. Frank Elkins, 19. "I always figured they'd rather see somebody else die in some foreign land than make that sacrifice themselves. But now I know I was wrong." "There may be some folks out there, born silver spoon in hand, who'd act that way, but that ain't Bush. No, that ain't Bush," Elkins said. "He ain't no fortunate son." From eye at ranadasgupta.com Sat Mar 29 13:17:27 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 13:17:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Robert Kagan "Power and Weakness" Message-ID: See the essay at this URL: http://www.policyreview.org/JUN02/kagan_print.html It was slightly long to paste. As the NYT says about it: >> Every now and again, American thinking about foreign affairs is galvanized by an essay that seems to explain the confusing and disparate phenomena of a changing world -- a sort of unifying theory that, whether accepted or rejected, cannot be ignored. Such were George Kennan's ''X'' article in 1947, which set the strategy for the cold war; Francis Fukuyama's ''End of History'' article in 1989; and Samuel Huntington's 1993 essay ''The Clash of Civilizations.'' >> These days, the loudest buzz is over Robert Kagan's ''Power and Weakness,'' an essay that appeared in the June-July 2002 issue of Policy Review. It presented the provocative notion that America and Europe are fundamentally different and are becoming more so as the United States amasses extraordinary military might while the Europeans seek to supplant it with international cooperation. The article has just led to a book. It's interesting to read these kind of strategic commentators. They are like Marxists, except that the underlying "base" that explains everything else is military power. In Kagan's view, the European instincts for diplomacy and moral complexity (as against American ones for force and moral simplicity) are simply the result of the fact that (1) Europeans aren't strong enough to determine the outcome of situations through force anyway, so diplomacy is all they have left, and (2) Europeans have the luxury of knowing that America and its military force are there if anything gets really out of hand, and can therefore remain secure in their post 1945 ethos of peace and tolerance. The essay is fairly crude (as most of these "What Washington is reading" essays seem to be). There is a thinly-veiled delight in being stronger than everyone else that comes across in so much American writing on this subject. But I think the essay throws European attitudes into light in some interesting ways. And i also think it's very interesting to see how watertight this kind of language is: it talks about the might of nations across great historical periods, it sees those nations as naturally in conflict, and peace as a kind of exception or "miracle", it makes no reference to intellectual or organisational frameworks within which force would not be the all-determining factor except to debunk them as the pipedream of the weak. It is a clean picture of the world into which most of the kind of discussions that happen here about this war - legal frameworks, human costs etc - cannot enter. And in particular, since the only concept of the nation that is interesting to such a discourse is the government that runs it and has a monopoly on military power, there is no complexity about the nature of nations: no talk of divisions within the nation (except when there are rebel forces that can be counted on as allies, in which case the nation becomes binary), no acknowledgment of those things that make the integrity of the nation messy (e.g. Kurdish aspirations, and the will of various governments to quash them). I think the reason these kind of things are so popular amongst a certain class of person is that their unflinching acknowledgement of the importance of military power in our world, and their hard-nosed analyses of where the currrent balance of power is taking us, seem to "cut through the crap" of international diplomacy and provide hard reality - a reality upon which a "strategy" - perhaps a "Bush doctrine" - can be built. of course this essay is also going to be much more popular in washington than in Paris because it tells americans what they would love to hear - that europeans are not more morally sophisticated than them, simply weaker (and probably jealous). this seems like a very useful - and sophisticated - way of dismissing any kind of moral argument and getting on with the hard but important work of liberating the world. R From jyotirmoy2003 at rediffmail.com Sun Mar 30 11:45:41 2003 From: jyotirmoy2003 at rediffmail.com (Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri) Date: 30 Mar 2003 06:15:41 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Film Fest/ Aparna Sen Message-ID: <20030330061541.24876.qmail@webmail15.rediffmail.com> A friend at Wellesley asked me to put this up on Sarai - for those who are interested. Jyoti ----------------------- Aparna Sen Film Festival Wellesley College April 11-13, 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology April 16, 2003 Dear Members of the Press, The Wellesley College Women Studies Department and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are very pleased to announce the Aparna Sen Film Festival, which will take place at Wellesley College’s Collins Cinema April 11-13, 2003 and at MIT Carpenter Center for the Arts on Wednesday, April 16th, 2003. Aparna Sen is an award winning actress and director of multiple films, and the most accomplished woman filmmaker from India, home to the world’s largest national film industry. The festival will present six feature length films directed by Ms. Sen. Opening and closing receptions will be held. Ms. Sen will be in attendance at the screenings and will participate in question and answer sessions as part of the festival program. Aparna Sen’s Career Aparna Sen is one of India's most celebrated directors. Her directorial debut was an English film, 36 Chowringhee Lane, which she also wrote. The film won The Grand Prix at the Manila International Film Festival and the National Award for Best Direction in India. Her directorial work also includes memorable films such as Sati, Parama, and Yugant. Daughter of the renowned film historian, critic, and filmmaker, Chidanda Das Gupta, Aparna Sen is also one of India's finest actresses and has won several awards for acting. Ms. Sen has served on juries at many international film festivals, such as International Film Festival of India, Moscow International Film Festival, and the Hawaii International Film Festival. Aparna Sen has also been honored with some of India's most prestigious awards including the Padmashree Award by the President of India and the Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award. Aparna Sen’s Filmography Teen Kanya, 1961 – Actress Akash Kusum, 1965 – Actress The Guru, 1965 – Actress Aparachita, 1969 – Actress Bombay Talkie, 1970 – Actress Aranyer Din Ratri, 1970 – Actress Sagina, 1974 – Actress Jana Aranya, 1976 – Actress Kotwal Saab, 1977 – Actress Imaan Dharam, 1977 – Actress Hullabaloo over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures, 1978 – Actress 36, Chowringhee Lane, 1981 – Writer, Director Pikoor Diary, 1981 – Actress Parama, 1984 – Writer, Director, Actress Sati, 1989 – Writer, Director Shet Patharer Thala, 1992 – Actress Mahaprithivi, 1992 – Actress Unishe April, 1994 – Actress Yugant, 1995 – Director Paromitar Ek Din, 2000 – Writer, Director, Actress Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, 2002 – Director Please contact K. Paras at aparnafilm @yahoo.com for interview possibilities. Opening Night Reception at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum and Cultural Center, 5:30-7 p.m. Mr. And Mrs. Iyer, 2002, 120min, 35mm Friday, April 11, 7:00pm Saturday, April 12, 8:00pm (THIS FILM will also screen at MIT Wednesday, April 16 at 7:00 p.m., Carpenter Center for the Arts) Mr. and Mrs. Iyer explores the common bond between a man and a woman separated by centuries of religious conflicts and taboos. On a bus journey, Meenakshi, a young Tamil Brahmin, accepts water from Raja, a Muslim. Introduced to Meenakshi by a mutual friend, Raja feels responsible for the young woman’s comfort and safety. Naturally enough, everyone on the bus takes them for a couple. But then the bus is stopped by a group of Hindu extremists, looking for the Muslims who had burned down one of their villages. Raja is frightened, while Meenakshi, born and raised in a Brahmin family, is shocked at his religious affiliation and feels obliged to keep her distance. But an extremely violent massacre takes place: guns are fired, blood flows and people are killed. When she sees how savagely the Muslims have been murdered, Meenakshi decides to save Raja’s life and lies to the extremists, assuring them they are married: Mr. and Mrs Iyer. Forced to leave the bus, they are left to their own devices. The violence and horror they have witnessed has brought them closer together, allowing them to put aside their religious differences, and they soon discover a mutual attraction. Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, Aparna Sen’s second English-language film, was written in the months following September 11, and six months before the riots in Gujarat, uncannily prescient in terms of current political events. Paromitar Ek Din (House of Memories), 2000, 132min, 35mm Sunday, April 13, 8:00pm Paromitar Ek Din centers around Paromitar, the wife of an oppressive husband, who, despite her master's degree, has taken a traditional path and cares for their physically handicapped child. The director appears in the role of the mother-in-law, the only person who understands Paromitar's difficulties because her experiences and Hindu values mirror the younger woman's. Yugant, 1995, 125min, 35mm Friday, April 11, 9:30pm Sunday April 13, 2:00pm Yugant shows how the disintegration of the marital relationship is part of a greater disintegration all around us of ecology and values. An unhappy couple, the husband, an advertising agency director, and the wife, a classical dancer, return to the fishing village where they spent their honeymoon seventeen years ago. Their past life is shown in a series of flash-backs, while the sea, polluted by conspicuous consumerism, symbolizes the current state of their relationship. Sati, 1989, 140min, 35mm Saturday, April 12, 5:30pm Monday, April 14, 4:00pm Sati or “suttee” is the former Hindu custom in which a widow would sacrifice herself by being burned alive on her dead husband’s funeral pyre. The Sanskrit word literally means “faithful wife.” This film is set in the early nineteenth century, right before the practice of sati was outlawed. Uma is a mute orphaned woman considered unfit for marriage by an orthodox Brahmin society. She is compelled to marry a banyan tree because of a faulty astrological chart. Sati is a sustained indictment of 19th-century Hindu society’s practice of consigning widows to burn on their dead husbands’ funeral pyres and the symbolic fate of a mute orphan married off to a tree. Parama, 1984, 139min, 35mm Saturday, April 12, 2:00pm Monday, April 14, 8:30pm Parama uncovers the ruthless confinements of gender in a traditional patriarchal social setting. Parama is an ordinary, sincerely devoted housewife in an affluent urban family living traditionally in a third world metropolis. Parama’s life changes when she falls in love with a photographer. After much soul-searching she abandons her family for a man that changes her life. 36, Chowringhee Lane, 1981, 122min, 35mm Sunday, April 13, 5:30pm Monday, April 14, 6:30pm Violet Stoneham is an elderly schoolteacher whose life consists of a series of little routines: her walk in the park, church on Sundays, feeding her beloved cat, Sir Toby, visiting her brother in an old-age home and teaching Shakespeare to generations of uninterested students. When a new principal takes over, Violet is relegated to drilling younger students in the elements of English grammar. Her bewilderment and grief leave her especially vulnerable on Christmas Eve as she walks back from church. A chance meeting with a former student and her boyfriend cheers Violet. She feels she has found true friends at last. But the young couple is simply looking for a place to be alone. Miss Stoneham’s apartment seems ideal. *** The Aparna Sen Film Festival is sponsored by the Davis Fund for World Cultures and Leadership, the Wellesley College Committee on Lectures and Cultural Events, Wellesley College Friends of Art, the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College Art Department, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Writing Program and Office for the Arts, The Indian Consulate New York, and The Directorate of Film Festivals under the Ministry of Culture, India. Admission is free and on a first come, first served basis. The theatre will open 20 minutes before each screening. Films are in their original version with English subtitles. Please contact Geeta Patel at gpatel at wellesley.edu or K. Paras at aparnafilm at yahoo.com for further information ### Geeta Patel Associate Professor of Women's Studies Wellesley College Wellesley MA 02481 781 283 3335 508 753 8615 (fax) Aparna Sen Film Festival Wellesley College April 11-13, 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology April 16, 2003 Dear Members of the Press, The Wellesley College Women Studies Department and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are very pleased to announce the Aparna Sen Film Festival, which will take place at Wellesley College’s Collins Cinema April 11-13, 2003 and at MIT Carpenter Center for the Arts on Wednesday, April 16th, 2003. Aparna Sen is an award winning actress and director of multiple films, and the most accomplished woman filmmaker from India, home to the world’s largest national film industry. The festival will present six feature length films directed by Ms. Sen. Opening and closing receptions will be held. Ms. Sen will be in attendance at the screenings and will participate in question and answer sessions as part of the festival program. Aparna Sen’s Career Aparna Sen is one of India's most celebrated directors. Her directorial debut was an English film, 36 Chowringhee Lane, which she also wrote. The film won The Grand Prix at the Manila International Film Festival and the National Award for Best Direction in India. Her directorial work also includes memorable films such as Sati, Parama, and Yugant. Daughter of the renowned film historian, critic, and filmmaker, Chidanda Das Gupta, Aparna Sen is also one of India's finest actresses and has won several awards for acting. Ms. Sen has served on juries at many international film festivals, such as International Film Festival of India, Moscow International Film Festival, and the Hawaii International Film Festival. Aparna Sen has also been honored with some of India's most prestigious awards including the Padmashree Award by the President of India and the Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award. Aparna Sen’s Filmography Teen Kanya, 1961 – Actress Akash Kusum, 1965 – Actress The Guru, 1965 – Actress Aparachita, 1969 – Actress Bombay Talkie, 1970 – Actress Aranyer Din Ratri, 1970 – Actress Sagina, 1974 – Actress Jana Aranya, 1976 – Actress Kotwal Saab, 1977 – Actress Imaan Dharam, 1977 – Actress Hullabaloo over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures, 1978 – Actress 36, Chowringhee Lane, 1981 – Writer, Director Pikoor Diary, 1981 – Actress Parama, 1984 – Writer, Director, Actress Sati, 1989 – Writer, Director Shet Patharer Thala, 1992 – Actress Mahaprithivi, 1992 – Actress Unishe April, 1994 – Actress Yugant, 1995 – Director Paromitar Ek Din, 2000 – Writer, Director, Actress Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, 2002 – Director Please contact K. Paras at aparnafilm @yahoo.com for interview possibilities. Opening Night Reception at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum and Cultural Center, 5:30-7 p.m. Mr. And Mrs. Iyer, 2002, 120min, 35mm Friday, April 11, 7:00pm Saturday, April 12, 8:00pm (THIS FILM will also screen at MIT Wednesday, April 16 at 7:00 p.m., Carpenter Center for the Arts) Mr. and Mrs. Iyer explores the common bond between a man and a woman separated by centuries of religious conflicts and taboos. On a bus journey, Meenakshi, a young Tamil Brahmin, accepts water from Raja, a Muslim. Introduced to Meenakshi by a mutual friend, Raja feels responsible for the young woman’s comfort and safety. Naturally enough, everyone on the bus takes them for a couple. But then the bus is stopped by a group of Hindu extremists, looking for the Muslims who had burned down one of their villages. Raja is frightened, while Meenakshi, born and raised in a Brahmin family, is shocked at his religious affiliation and feels obliged to keep her distance. But an extremely violent massacre takes place: guns are fired, blood flows and people are killed. When she sees how savagely the Muslims have been murdered, Meenakshi decides to save Raja’s life and lies to the extremists, assuring them they are married: Mr. and Mrs Iyer. Forced to leave the bus, they are left to their own devices. The violence and horror they have witnessed has brought them closer together, allowing them to put aside their religious differences, and they soon discover a mutual attraction. Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, Aparna Sen’s second English-language film, was written in the months following September 11, and six months before the riots in Gujarat, uncannily prescient in terms of current political events. Paromitar Ek Din (House of Memories), 2000, 132min, 35mm Sunday, April 13, 8:00pm Paromitar Ek Din centers around Paromitar, the wife of an oppressive husband, who, despite her master's degree, has taken a traditional path and cares for their physically handicapped child. The director appears in the role of the mother-in-law, the only person who understands Paromitar's difficulties because her experiences and Hindu values mirror the younger woman's. Yugant, 1995, 125min, 35mm Friday, April 11, 9:30pm Sunday April 13, 2:00pm Yugant shows how the disintegration of the marital relationship is part of a greater disintegration all around us of ecology and values. An unhappy couple, the husband, an advertising agency director, and the wife, a classical dancer, return to the fishing village where they spent their honeymoon seventeen years ago. Their past life is shown in a series of flash-backs, while the sea, polluted by conspicuous consumerism, symbolizes the current state of their relationship. Sati, 1989, 140min, 35mm Saturday, April 12, 5:30pm Monday, April 14, 4:00pm Sati or “suttee” is the former Hindu custom in which a widow would sacrifice herself by being burned alive on her dead husband’s funeral pyre. The Sanskrit word literally means “faithful wife.” This film is set in the early nineteenth century, right before the practice of sati was outlawed. Uma is a mute orphaned woman considered unfit for marriage by an orthodox Brahmin society. She is compelled to marry a banyan tree because of a faulty astrological chart. Sati is a sustained indictment of 19th-century Hindu society’s practice of consigning widows to burn on their dead husbands’ funeral pyres and the symbolic fate of a mute orphan married off to a tree. Parama, 1984, 139min, 35mm Saturday, April 12, 2:00pm Monday, April 14, 8:30pm Parama uncovers the ruthless confinements of gender in a traditional patriarchal social setting. Parama is an ordinary, sincerely devoted housewife in an affluent urban family living traditionally in a third world metropolis. Parama’s life changes when she falls in love with a photographer. After much soul-searching she abandons her family for a man that changes her life. 36, Chowringhee Lane, 1981, 122min, 35mm Sunday, April 13, 5:30pm Monday, April 14, 6:30pm Violet Stoneham is an elderly schoolteacher whose life consists of a series of little routines: her walk in the park, church on Sundays, feeding her beloved cat, Sir Toby, visiting her brother in an old-age home and teaching Shakespeare to generations of uninterested students. When a new principal takes over, Violet is relegated to drilling younger students in the elements of English grammar. Her bewilderment and grief leave her especially vulnerable on Christmas Eve as she walks back from church. A chance meeting with a former student and her boyfriend cheers Violet. She feels she has found true friends at last. But the young couple is simply looking for a place to be alone. Miss Stoneham’s apartment seems ideal. *** The Aparna Sen Film Festival is sponsored by the Davis Fund for World Cultures and Leadership, the Wellesley College Committee on Lectures and Cultural Events, Wellesley College Friends of Art, the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College Art Department, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Writing Program and Office for the Arts, The Indian Consulate New York, and The Directorate of Film Festivals under the Ministry of Culture, India. Admission is free and on a first come, first served basis. The theatre will open 20 minutes before each screening. Films are in their original version with English subtitles. Please contact Geeta Patel at gpatel at wellesley.edu or K. Paras at aparnafilm at yahoo.com for further information ### Geeta Patel Associate Professor of Women's Studies Wellesley College Wellesley MA 02481 781 283 3335 508 753 8615 (fax) Aparna Sen Film Festival Wellesley College April 11-13, 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology April 16, 2003 Dear Members of the Press, The Wellesley College Women Studies Department and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are very pleased to announce the Aparna Sen Film Festival, which will take place at Wellesley College’s Collins Cinema April 11-13, 2003 and at MIT Carpenter Center for the Arts on Wednesday, April 16th, 2003. Aparna Sen is an award winning actress and director of multiple films, and the most accomplished woman filmmaker from India, home to the world’s largest national film industry. The festival will present six feature length films directed by Ms. Sen. Opening and closing receptions will be held. Ms. Sen will be in attendance at the screenings and will participate in question and answer sessions as part of the festival program. Aparna Sen’s Career Aparna Sen is one of India's most celebrated directors. Her directorial debut was an English film, 36 Chowringhee Lane, which she also wrote. The film won The Grand Prix at the Manila International Film Festival and the National Award for Best Direction in India. Her directorial work also includes memorable films such as Sati, Parama, and Yugant. Daughter of the renowned film historian, critic, and filmmaker, Chidanda Das Gupta, Aparna Sen is also one of India's finest actresses and has won several awards for acting. Ms. Sen has served on juries at many international film festivals, such as International Film Festival of India, Moscow International Film Festival, and the Hawaii International Film Festival. Aparna Sen has also been honored with some of India's most prestigious awards including the Padmashree Award by the President of India and the Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award. Aparna Sen’s Filmography Teen Kanya, 1961 – Actress Akash Kusum, 1965 – Actress The Guru, 1965 – Actress Aparachita, 1969 – Actress Bombay Talkie, 1970 – Actress Aranyer Din Ratri, 1970 – Actress Sagina, 1974 – Actress Jana Aranya, 1976 – Actress Kotwal Saab, 1977 – Actress Imaan Dharam, 1977 – Actress Hullabaloo over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures, 1978 – Actress 36, Chowringhee Lane, 1981 – Writer, Director Pikoor Diary, 1981 – Actress Parama, 1984 – Writer, Director, Actress Sati, 1989 – Writer, Director Shet Patharer Thala, 1992 – Actress Mahaprithivi, 1992 – Actress Unishe April, 1994 – Actress Yugant, 1995 – Director Paromitar Ek Din, 2000 – Writer, Director, Actress Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, 2002 – Director Please contact K. Paras at aparnafilm @yahoo.com for interview possibilities. Opening Night Reception at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum and Cultural Center, 5:30-7 p.m. Mr. And Mrs. Iyer, 2002, 120min, 35mm Friday, April 11, 7:00pm Saturday, April 12, 8:00pm (THIS FILM will also screen at MIT Wednesday, April 16 at 7:00 p.m., Carpenter Center for the Arts) Mr. and Mrs. Iyer explores the common bond between a man and a woman separated by centuries of religious conflicts and taboos. On a bus journey, Meenakshi, a young Tamil Brahmin, accepts water from Raja, a Muslim. Introduced to Meenakshi by a mutual friend, Raja feels responsible for the young woman’s comfort and safety. Naturally enough, everyone on the bus takes them for a couple. But then the bus is stopped by a group of Hindu extremists, looking for the Muslims who had burned down one of their villages. Raja is frightened, while Meenakshi, born and raised in a Brahmin family, is shocked at his religious affiliation and feels obliged to keep her distance. But an extremely violent massacre takes place: guns are fired, blood flows and people are killed. When she sees how savagely the Muslims have been murdered, Meenakshi decides to save Raja’s life and lies to the extremists, assuring them they are married: Mr. and Mrs Iyer. Forced to leave the bus, they are left to their own devices. The violence and horror they have witnessed has brought them closer together, allowing them to put aside their religious differences, and they soon discover a mutual attraction. Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, Aparna Sen’s second English-language film, was written in the months following September 11, and six months before the riots in Gujarat, uncannily prescient in terms of current political events. Paromitar Ek Din (House of Memories), 2000, 132min, 35mm Sunday, April 13, 8:00pm Paromitar Ek Din centers around Paromitar, the wife of an oppressive husband, who, despite her master's degree, has taken a traditional path and cares for their physically handicapped child. The director appears in the role of the mother-in-law, the only person who understands Paromitar's difficulties because her experiences and Hindu values mirror the younger woman's. Yugant, 1995, 125min, 35mm Friday, April 11, 9:30pm Sunday April 13, 2:00pm Yugant shows how the disintegration of the marital relationship is part of a greater disintegration all around us of ecology and values. An unhappy couple, the husband, an advertising agency director, and the wife, a classical dancer, return to the fishing village where they spent their honeymoon seventeen years ago. Their past life is shown in a series of flash-backs, while the sea, polluted by conspicuous consumerism, symbolizes the current state of their relationship. Sati, 1989, 140min, 35mm Saturday, April 12, 5:30pm Monday, April 14, 4:00pm Sati or “suttee” is the former Hindu custom in which a widow would sacrifice herself by being burned alive on her dead husband’s funeral pyre. The Sanskrit word literally means “faithful wife.” This film is set in the early nineteenth century, right before the practice of sati was outlawed. Uma is a mute orphaned woman considered unfit for marriage by an orthodox Brahmin society. She is compelled to marry a banyan tree because of a faulty astrological chart. Sati is a sustained indictment of 19th-century Hindu society’s practice of consigning widows to burn on their dead husbands’ funeral pyres and the symbolic fate of a mute orphan married off to a tree. Parama, 1984, 139min, 35mm Saturday, April 12, 2:00pm Monday, April 14, 8:30pm Parama uncovers the ruthless confinements of gender in a traditional patriarchal social setting. Parama is an ordinary, sincerely devoted housewife in an affluent urban family living traditionally in a third world metropolis. Parama’s life changes when she falls in love with a photographer. After much soul-searching she abandons her family for a man that changes her life. 36, Chowringhee Lane, 1981, 122min, 35mm Sunday, April 13, 5:30pm Monday, April 14, 6:30pm Violet Stoneham is an elderly schoolteacher whose life consists of a series of little routines: her walk in the park, church on Sundays, feeding her beloved cat, Sir Toby, visiting her brother in an old-age home and teaching Shakespeare to generations of uninterested students. When a new principal takes over, Violet is relegated to drilling younger students in the elements of English grammar. Her bewilderment and grief leave her especially vulnerable on Christmas Eve as she walks back from church. A chance meeting with a former student and her boyfriend cheers Violet. She feels she has found true friends at last. But the young couple is simply looking for a place to be alone. Miss Stoneham’s apartment seems ideal. *** The Aparna Sen Film Festival is sponsored by the Davis Fund for World Cultures and Leadership, the Wellesley College Committee on Lectures and Cultural Events, Wellesley College Friends of Art, the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College Art Department, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Writing Program and Office for the Arts, The Indian Consulate New York, and The Directorate of Film Festivals under the Ministry of Culture, India. Admission is free and on a first come, first served basis. The theatre will open 20 minutes before each screening. Films are in their original version with English subtitles. Please contact Geeta Patel at gpatel at wellesley.edu or K. Paras at aparnafilm at yahoo.com for further information ### Geeta Patel Associate Professor of Women's Studies Wellesley College Wellesley MA 02481 781 283 3335 508 753 8615 (fax) _______________________________________________________________________ Odomos - the only mosquito protection outside 4 walls - Click here to know more! http://r.rediff.com/r?http://clients.rediff.com/odomos/Odomos.htm&&odomos&&wn From ravis at sarai.net Sun Mar 30 13:20:42 2003 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 13:20:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] More Media War analysis Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20030330131758.02300a60@pop3.norton.antivirus> Richard Keeble: We see more and more of the conflict, but we know as little as ever Most of the US/UK's important military action is covert, away from prying TV cameras and the public's gaze The Independent 30 March 2003 Propaganda is a vital ingredient of military strategy during the conflict with Iraq. The enemy is manufactured, its leaders demonised, and its strength grossly exaggerated. Yet the media are not part of a massive conspiracy. Rather, the war myth is the result of profound geostrategic, ideological, social, political and economic factors. Most of the important military activity by the US and the UK is covert, away from prying TV cameras and the public gaze. But our screens are filled with images of the war. Constantly repeated – and tightly controlled – battlefield images of coalition forces in action feature as never before on TV, while seemingly endless speculation by military commentators only serve to crowd out the views of oppoenents to the aggression by the US and the UK. Horrific images of the dead and wounded shown by the Arabic TV station Al-Jazeera are not being allowed to disturb the sanitised representation of the conflict for British viewers. Today the most obvious contrasts with the 1991 coverage arise from the access to the frontlines for the 600 US and 128 UK journalists "embedded" with the troops, and the round-the-clock television coverage. Not surprisingly, Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, was quick to praise the "embeds": "The imagery they broadcast is at least partially responsible for the public's change of mood with the majority of people now saying they back the coalition." And those distant shots, from an eerily static camera, of huge mushroom clouds erupting over Baghdad following yet another night-time aerial bombardment only seem to acclimatise the viewer to the everyday ordinariness of the horror. In contrast, during the first Gulf conflict, reporting pools were used to keep journalists huddled in packs in Saudi Arabia away from the frontlines, although the war in the Gulf had to be seen. The US desperately needed to fight a "big" war to help "kick the Vietnam syndrome", to legitimise its enormous military budget and to reinforce the power of the military/industrial/intelligence elite. In the end there was nothing more than a series of massacres bureid beneath the myth of heroic warfare. Colin Powell, then chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reported in his autobiography that 250,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed in the conflict – compared to just 150 in the US-led forces (most of them through "friendly fire"). Reporters such as Robert Fisk of the Independent and Peter Sharp of ITN, who dared to operate away from the pools, were intimidated by the military and some of their journalist colleagues. Most of the crucial military action in 1991 came from the air, and since journalists had no access to fighter jets, the conflict was kept largely secret. This time a repeat of the same kind of media controls was never feasible since the Middle East has been swarming with thousands of journalists for months. In any case, military censorship regimes always serve essentially symbolic purposes – expressing the arbitrary power of the army over the conduct and representation of war. For their part, mainstream journalists, influenced by professional norms and conventional news values, can usually be relied upon to apply self-censorship. All the mainstream print and broadcast media, just before the bombing of Baghdad on 20 March, were happy to highlight Pentagon leaks that suggested 3,000 missiles and precision-guided bombs would be dropped on Iraq in an early "shock and awe" campaign. Now, as the UK/US tanks build up outside Baghdad, countless unnamed Iraqi troops and conscripts are being killed away from the TV cameras. When civilian homes are destroyed, such tragedies are "inevitable", the fault of "Saddam" or simply "mistakes" – blips in an otherwise smoothmilitary operation rather than moral outrages. Take, for instance, the coverage of the bombing of the Baghdad market on 26 March. How many were killed? "At least 14," say the media. But they remain anonymous – dehumanised "targets". We can expect no profiles of the Iraqi dead or their grieving families. Richard Keeble is professor of journalism at Lincoln University, and the author of 'Secret State, Silent Press' (John Libbey), a study of press coverage of the 1991 Gulf War From lachlan at london.com Sun Mar 30 16:48:46 2003 From: lachlan at london.com (Lachlan Brown) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 11:18:46 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] International Call To Creative Action. Message-ID: <20030330111846.26494.qmail@iname.com> What an excellent initiative, I wish you the very best with it. We are all invited to think of the many ways we might die these days, and perhaps the antidote to the nihilism of The Anglo-American West attempting to solve a problem it created by causing more problems, is to consider the ways we might live. Art and criticism have always considered this question. There are very recent cultural shifts in how we imagine our world and the nightmare presented to us in North America - a future that looks like some of the worst dytopian phantasies in science fiction, as well as some of the worst political solutions (which we are seeing played out in 'Homeland Security' Witchhunt paranoia in North America, and in the present War in Iraq) to imagined threats embodied by even the slightest difference or deviation from the 'norm'. Yesterday I met an Arab in Toronto wearing a sign: 'I am not a Terrorist'. What kind of society is it that There have been signs of emergent fascism in Europe and in North America for several years. Only seven or eight years ago the idea that politics had anything to do with art or criticism digital or otherwise was supported by many, in vacant looks, silences, sneers, slanders. The field of digital culture perhaps because it emerged culturally in stages: within a culture of IT professionals Instead of the 'vector' of overpopulation and the belief in 'a tragedy of the commons' caused by competition over limited resources, we find that there are some projections worldwide are now for depopulation should present trends continue. We can see what can happen in a generation to one of the fundamental beliefs underlying peoples' and cultures' world views, or 'horizons of understanding', as well as political decision making, and economic policies, and all that derive from the complex interaction of these three, so lets see what different scenarios we may imagine for ourselves in our world for ourselves and for the generations to come. Science and technology have a role, but not the deciding one. At the head of Toronto's march against the war in on Saturday 22nd March 2003 was a reproduction of Guernica. Picasso's painting representing, mediating and refusing the first arial Blitzkrieg practised by the Nazi Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War in 1938. The painting was removed from the UN where it has hung since the building opened in 1952 during debate over War in Iraq. Faces in the marching crowd, expressions, gestures, from fear to refusal to fear embedded passions in Picasso's Guernica. For the first time I began to understand exactly how the 'aura' in the work of art might translate through reproduction and changing context. I see no reason why this aura should not reside also in digital reproduction and digital art. Nor why it should cling to worn out ideas about digital technology and culture, that some change is coming to culture due to something called technology. Technology and humans have always had interrelationship we would not be human without our technologies and our interelations with them are profoundly cultural, as we see with that Western promise of technological nirvana Internet. Its really great to read this proposal and I would hope to add something to the programme as I have been writing, and sometimes almost perfoming my own impression or protest of the 'fascist turn' in culture, those very dark pre and post 911 days in 'Thoughts on the "Unmarked Grave of History" from the Unmade Bed of Culture' - . I'm uploading bytes of it to a number of lists and online projects before getting it publishing. Let's create art and lets create affinities across and in spite of the processes of globalisation. And lets replace those who preferred silence to criticism as it seemed the pragmatic thing to do, or because going against the grain did not appear to suit self interest at the time, or because they were people who did not value these faculties, with people who can make: create, criticise what they create, and celebrate their criticism and creativity. Let's get back to celebrating our intrinsic samenesses and our ecstatic differences, and let the 'middle managers of meaning' who mediated art, culture and technology fulfil their infantile aspirations for power (such a vacuous fetish) elsewhere. What makes an artist and a critic? Well, individually they can't shut up and collectively can't be shut up. They just don't make much of a fuss about it. Yours Truly, Lachlan Brown Toronto. Subject: [Reader-list] International Call To Creative Action. > > Hi I would like to bring to your attention the International Call To > Creative Action. > The theme is to explore your post 9€11 experience. > All the winning and finalists entries will be published September 2003, on > the 9€11 International Call to Creative Action, a digital storytelling > interactive DVD, to be presented to the United Nations Library, and Canadian > Parliamentary Library and the American Library of Congress. > Categories: Writer, Visual Artist, Photography, Multimedia, and a separate > family or school entry. Detailed information is on the web site or email > info at netcomediainteractive.com. Entry fee: fifteen ($15) US money order with > one (1) entry or twenty five dollars ($25) US money order for three (3) > entries.1st Prize: $250, 2nd Prize: $150, all in US currency. Winners will > receive a copy of the published DVD. > Deadline post marked May 1, 2003 > c/o > netcoMedia Interactive > 1027 Davie Street, Suite 532 > Vancouver, BC, > Canada V6E 4L2 > http://www.netcomediainteractive.com > Info at netcomediainteractive.com > > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > Lachlan Brown T+VM: +1 416 666 1452 eFax: +1 435 603 2156 -- __________________________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup From shuddha at sarai.net Mon Mar 31 00:46:13 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 19:16:13 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] DELHI AGAINST WAR ON IRAQ Message-ID: <200303301916.h2UJGDOl003780@mail.sarai.net> Forwarded From: Vivan Sundaram > peopleforpeace at rediffmail.com wrote > DELHI AGAINST WAR ON IRAQ > Dear Friends, > A bigger show of disgust, anger and protest against > the war in Iraq is > being organized by the Committee Against War in Iraq. > The demonstration > is on: > MARCH 31, 2003 in Delhi > Programme > Marchers will gather at 11:00 am in front of Red Fort > at DANGAL GROUND > PARK (Near Subhash Park). The March will start at > 12:00 noon and end at > the Ram Lila Maidans. > There will be NO FLAGS/BANNERS of Political Parties > and other > organizations. All Banners/Placards will be against > the War. > There will be NO SPEECHES by any political leaders or > others. One > statement in Hindi and English will be read out by a > well-known woman and > man (not affiliated to a political party). > There will be songs, poems, plays at Shivaji Park. > There will be a BONFIRE to burn US and UK goods and a > call will be > given to boycott these goods.(Bring the goods you > would like to burn) > Mobilisation > Please mobilize large numbers of people. (Students > from schools, > colleges, universities, despite your exams, do come > for a few hours.) > Let?s all make and bring colorful placards, banners > etc. > NO BLOOD FOR OIL! > Please circulate this information widely > > > __________________________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! > http://platinum.yahoo.com > > -- Shuddhabrata Sengupta SARAI Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 Phone 23960040 From lachlan at london.com Sun Mar 30 17:03:14 2003 From: lachlan at london.com (Lachlan Brown) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 11:33:14 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] International Call To Creative Action. Message-ID: <20030330113314.40417.qmail@iname.com> Sorry, I haven't completed this message and meant to save it as a draft but accidentally sent it. I love this sort of accident with these ridiculous technologies of media and communication that I've studied and worked with for almost 10 years now, but this is not a complete or a revised message yet, and I will probably send it later tomorrow. It won't be much different, but the unfinished sentences will I hope be finished. I tend to leap on to another idea, another thread, another intervention another paragraph. Sorry Serai-L Truly, Lachlan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lachlan Brown" Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 11:18:46 +0000 To: gabrown at axionet.com, reader-list at mail.sarai.net Subject: Re: [Reader-list] International Call To Creative Action. > > What an excellent initiative, I wish you the very best > with it. We are all invited to think of the many ways > we might die these days, and perhaps the antidote to > the nihilism of The Anglo-American West attempting to > solve a problem it created by causing more problems, > is to consider the ways we might live. Art and criticism > have always considered this question. > > There are very recent cultural shifts in how we imagine > our world and the nightmare presented to us in North America - > a future that looks like some of the worst dytopian phantasies > in science fiction, as well as some of the worst political > solutions (which we are seeing played out in 'Homeland Security' > Witchhunt paranoia in North America, and in the present War > in Iraq) to imagined threats embodied by even the slightest > difference or deviation from the 'norm'. Yesterday I met > an Arab in Toronto wearing a sign: 'I am not a Terrorist'. > What kind of society is it that > > There have been signs of emergent fascism in Europe and in > North America for several years. Only seven or eight years ago > the idea that politics had anything to do with art or criticism > digital or otherwise was supported by many, in vacant looks, > silences, sneers, slanders. The field of digital culture > perhaps because it emerged culturally in stages: within > a culture of IT professionals > > Instead of the 'vector' of overpopulation and the belief in > 'a tragedy of the commons' caused by competition over limited > resources, we find that there are some projections worldwide > are now for depopulation should present trends continue. We can > see what can happen in a generation to one of the fundamental > beliefs underlying peoples' and cultures' world views, or > 'horizons of understanding', as well as political decision > making, and economic policies, and all that derive from > the complex interaction of these three, so lets see what different > scenarios we may imagine for ourselves in our world for ourselves > and for the generations to come. Science and technology > have a role, but not the deciding one. > > At the head of Toronto's march against the war in on Saturday > 22nd March 2003 was a reproduction of Guernica. Picasso's painting > representing, mediating and refusing the first arial Blitzkrieg > practised by the Nazi Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War in > 1938. The painting was removed from the UN where it has hung > since the building opened in 1952 during debate over War in Iraq. > > Faces in the marching crowd, expressions, gestures, from fear to > refusal to fear embedded passions in Picasso's Guernica. > For the first time I began to understand exactly how the 'aura' > in the work of art might translate through reproduction and changing > context. I see no reason why this aura should not reside also in > digital reproduction and digital art. Nor why it should cling > to worn out ideas about digital technology and culture, that > some change is coming to culture due to something called technology. > Technology and humans have always had interrelationship > we would not be human without our technologies and our > interelations with them are profoundly cultural, as we > see with that Western promise of technological nirvana > Internet. > > Its really great to read this proposal and I would hope to > add something to the programme as I have been writing, and > sometimes almost perfoming my own impression or protest > of the 'fascist turn' in culture, those very dark pre and > post 911 days in 'Thoughts on the "Unmarked Grave of History" > from the Unmade Bed of > Culture' - . I'm uploading bytes of it to a number of lists > and online projects before getting it publishing. > > Let's create art and lets create affinities across and in spite > of the processes of globalisation. And lets replace those who > preferred silence to criticism as it seemed the pragmatic thing > to do, or because going against the grain did not appear to suit > self interest at the time, or because they were people who did > not value these faculties, with people who can make: create, > criticise what they create, and celebrate their criticism and > creativity. Let's get back to celebrating our intrinsic > samenesses and our ecstatic differences, and let the 'middle > managers of meaning' who mediated art, culture and technology > fulfil their infantile aspirations for power (such a vacuous > fetish) elsewhere. > > What makes an artist and a critic? Well, individually they can't > shut up and collectively can't be shut up. They just don't make > much of a fuss about it. > > > Yours Truly, > > Lachlan Brown > Toronto. > > > > Subject: [Reader-list] International Call To Creative Action. > > > > > Hi I would like to bring to your attention the International Call To > > Creative Action. > > The theme is to explore your post 9€11 experience. > > All the winning and finalists entries will be published September 2003, on > > the 9€11 International Call to Creative Action, a digital storytelling > > interactive DVD, to be presented to the United Nations Library, and Canadian > > Parliamentary Library and the American Library of Congress. > > Categories: Writer, Visual Artist, Photography, Multimedia, and a separate > > family or school entry. Detailed information is on the web site or email > > info at netcomediainteractive.com. Entry fee: fifteen ($15) US money order with > > one (1) entry or twenty five dollars ($25) US money order for three (3) > > entries.1st Prize: $250, 2nd Prize: $150, all in US currency. Winners will > > receive a copy of the published DVD. > > Deadline post marked May 1, 2003 > > c/o > > netcoMedia Interactive > > 1027 Davie Street, Suite 532 > > Vancouver, BC, > > Canada V6E 4L2 > > http://www.netcomediainteractive.com > > Info at netcomediainteractive.com > > > > > > _________________________________________ > > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > > Critiques & Collaborations > > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > > List archive: > > > > > > Lachlan Brown > > T+VM: +1 416 666 1452 > eFax: +1 435 603 2156 > > > -- > __________________________________________________________ > Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com > http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > Lachlan Brown T+VM: +1 416 666 1452 eFax: +1 435 603 2156 -- __________________________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup From ghoshvishwajyoti at rediffmail.com Sun Mar 30 23:13:51 2003 From: ghoshvishwajyoti at rediffmail.com (vishwajyoti ghosh) Date: 30 Mar 2003 17:43:51 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] SARAI FELLOWSHIP POSTING Message-ID: <20030330174351.31623.qmail@webmail30.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030330/371c8f21/attachment.pl From yazadjal at vsnl.net Mon Mar 31 10:38:51 2003 From: yazadjal at vsnl.net (Yazad Jal) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 10:38:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] War hypocrisy Message-ID: <01b001c2f747$6d06dc20$541241db@vsnl.net.in> Perhaps the best article I've read on the war uptil now. -yazad http://yazadjal.blogspot.com HYPOCRISY, EVERYBODY? SWAMINOMICS / SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR [ SUNDAY, MARCH 30, 2003 12:00:42 AM ] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/uncomp/articleshow? msid=41784296 Wars are prime time for hypocrisy. The bogus emotion and rhetoric displayed by pro-war factions is fully matched by that of anti-war factions, and bystanders. The prime hypocrite, of course, is the USA. Arab TV stations have broadcast pictures of captured American prisoners of war. US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld claims it is a violation of the Geneva Convention to photograph or humiliate POWs. The same day The Washington Post carried a photo of a blindfolded Iraqi soldier held captive by US troops. Will Rumsfeld prosecute The Post for war crimes? I doubt it. To Rumsfeld's outrage, Iraqi soldiers have pretended to surrender and then opened fire. Some US analysts claim this is perfidy and a war crime as defined in the 1977 amendment to the Geneva Convention of 1949. Guess who refused to ratify the 1977 amendment? The USA. It merrily violates the Convention by holding Afghan prisoners in Guantanamo, yet gets moralistic about Saddam. The US denounces Saddam as a monster and mass murderer. Very true, but this monster was created and armed to the teeth by the NATO powers, notably the US and France. Indeed, the US helped Saddam produce chemical weapons and warheads whose use finally forced Iran to accept a cease fire. As long as Saddam was a convenient tool to combat Iran, the US smilingly ignored his mass murders. Only when he turned against it did the US suddenly discover all sorts of vices in its former buddy. France has been cheered by many in India for opposing the war, yet its hypocrisy runs as deep as America's. Force is always the last resort, it proclaimed at the UN debate on Iraq. Why, then, is the French Army so constantly deployed in former French colonies that some observers wonder whether French colonialism ever ended? Remember French brutality in Algeria and Vietnam? If force is a last resort, why did France destroy the unarmed Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, that protested against French nuclear explosions in the Pacific? Can it really distance itself from its Hutu pals in the Rwanda regime that committed the greatest genocide of recent times, killing 800,000 people of the Tutsi tribe? Germany has protested in the UN about regime change in Iraq. Yet Germany above all stoked the break-up of Yugoslavia, recognising different segments as independent countries. France and other Europeans followed suit. This led to a horrendous sectarian war that killed 200,000 people. Having lit the fires in Yugoslavia, the Germans and French did not have the guts or will to send in their own troops to quell the violence. Instead they twiddled their thumbs till the US, which had strongly opposed Yugoslavia's break-up, agreed to come in and clear the mess they had created. Regime change in Yugoslavia killed far more people than will die in Iraq, and Germany and France cannot escape the blame. Russia has bombed Chechnya into a moonscape, killing thousands and violating all civil rights. Yet it swoons at the thought of violence in Iraq. Very selective morality here. India says the UN should sanction any war on Iraq. Did India ask the UN permission for its 1971 war with Pakistan? Not at all, it acted unilaterally. It used its buddy, the Soviet Union, to veto peace moves by the UN. Officially, India claims that Pakistan started that war through an air attack on December 3. In fact the Pakistan Air Force was simply responding to the intrusion of Indian troops into East Pakistan on November 21, an invasion reported by the international press but blanked out totally by the tame Indian press. Anti-war protesters are taking to the streets across the globe. They did not do so when wars without US involvement produced massive slaughter in Africa, Asia or Yugoslavia. Why was there was no political pressure on European and US governments to stop at the outset the horrendous killing in Rwanda or Yugoslavia? The `international peace movement' is, by and large, anti-American. Many peaceniks protested when Bush Sr went into Iraq in 1991. But when he withdrew, and Saddam Hussein slaughtered 50,000 Shias in southern Iraq, they staged no protest. In theory, they oppose violence by anybody, but they stage mass rallies only when the US gets violent. Journalists, academics and moralists yawn with boredom if Hutus slaughter Tutsis, but explode with outrage if the US sends in its marines. US hypocrisy in Iraq is easily explained by narrow self-interest. Can opposition to the war by others also be explained by narrow self-interest? Is there really no higher morality? From ravis at sarai.net Sun Mar 30 12:51:10 2003 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 12:51:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The War: A view from a form Reagan official Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20030330124823.02280450@pop3.norton.antivirus> This is interesting since its not from counterpunch.org, but from an former Reagan admin official. And its so early in the conflict. Ravi The War in Iraq Turns Ugly. That's What Wars Do. By JAMES WEBB March 30, 2003, New York Times ARLINGTON, Va. — This campaign was begun, like so many others throughout history, with lofty exhortations from battlefield commanders to their troops, urging courage, patience, compassion for the Iraqi people and even chivalry. Within a week it had degenerated into an unexpected ugliness in virtually every populated area where American and British forces have come under fire. Those who believed from intelligence reports and Pentagon war planners that the Iraqi people, and particularly those from the Shiite sections of the southeast, would rise up to greet them as liberators were instead faced with persistent resistance. Near Basra, as The Financial Times reported, "soldiers were not being welcomed as liberators but often confronted with hatred." In the increasingly messy fights around Nasiriya, Marine units, which earlier were ambushed while responding to what appeared to be a large-scale surrender, had by the end of the week destroyed more than 200 homes. Visions of cheering throngs welcoming them as liberators have vanished in the wake of a bloody engagement whose full casualties are still unknown. Snippets of news from Nasiriya give us a picture of chaotic guerrilla warfare, replete with hit-and-run ambushes, dead civilians, friendly fire casualties from firefights begun in the dead of night and a puzzling number of marines who are still unaccounted for. And long experience tells us that this sort of combat brings with it a "downstream" payback of animosity and revenge. Other reports corroborate the direction that the war, as well as its aftermath, promises to take: Iraqi militiamen, in civilian clothes, firing weapons and disappearing inside the anonymity of the local populace. So-called civilians riding in buses to move toward contact. Enemy combatants mixing among women and children. Children firing weapons. Families threatened with death if a soldier does not fight. A wounded American soldier commenting, "If they're dressed as civilians, you don't know who is the enemy anymore." These actions, while reprehensible, are nothing more than classic guerrilla warfare, no different in fact or in moral degree from what our troops faced in difficult areas of Vietnam. In the Fifth Marine Regiment area of operations outside Da Nang, we routinely faced enemy soldiers dressed in civilian clothes and even as women. Their normal routes of ingress and egress were through villages, and we fought daily in populated areas. On one occasion a smiling, waving girl — no more than 7 years old — lured a squad from my platoon into a vicious North Vietnamese crossfire. And if a Vietcong soldier surrendered, it was essential to remove his family members from their village by nightfall, or they might be killed for the sake of discipline. The moral and tactical confusion that surrounds this type of warfare is enormous. It is also one reason that the Marine Corps took such heavy casualties in Vietnam, losing five times as many killed as in World War I, three times as many as in Korea and more total casualties than in World War II. Guerrilla resistance has already proved deadly in the Iraq war, and far more effective than the set-piece battles that thus far have taken place closer to Baghdad. A majority of American casualties at this point have been the result of guerrilla actions against Marine and Army forces in and around Nasiriya. As this form of warfare has unfolded, the real surprise is why anyone should have been surprised at all. But people have been, among them many who planned the war, many who are fighting it and a large percentage of the general population. Why? Partly because of Iraq's poor performance in the 1991 gulf war, which caused many to underestimate Iraqi willingness to fight, while overlooking the distinction between retreating from conquered territory and defending one's native soil. And partly because protection of civilians has become such an important part of military training. But mostly, because the notion of fierce resistance cut against the grain of how this war was justified to the American people. The strategies of both Iraq and the United States are only partly, some would say secondarily, military. The key strategic prize for American planners has always been the acceptance by Iraq's people of an invasion intended to change their government. If the Iraqis welcomed us, the logic goes, it would be difficult for those on the Arab street, as well as Americans and others who questioned the wisdom of the war, to condemn our presence. Thus, throughout the buildup to war, the Iraqis were characterized to America — and to our military — as so brutally repressed by Saddam Hussein's regime that they would quickly rise up to overthrow him when the Americans arrived. This was clearly the expectation of many American fighting men as they crossed into Iraq. "Their determination was really a surprise to us all," said Brig. Gen. John Kelly of the Marines on Friday. "What we were really hoping for was just to go through and everyone would wave flags and all that." On the other side, the Iraqi regime has used both its ancient history and American support of Israel in appealing to the nationalism of its people to resist an invasion by an outside power. It is as yet unclear which argument is succeeding, although early indications are that the American invasion has stirred up enormous animosity. The initial bombing campaign was political, aimed at Iraqi leaders. The current effort appears to be increasingly strategic, designed to damage the Iraqi military's better units. After that, the next step is likely to be a series of conventional engagements matching American armored and infantry forces against Iraq's Republican Guard. The United States hopes to force Iraq into fixed-position warfare or even to draw them into a wild attack, where American technological superiority and air power might destroy Iraq's best fighting force. But Iraq's leaders have reviewed their mistakes in the first gulf war and have also studied the American efforts in Somalia and Kosovo. They will most likely try to draw American units into closer quarters, forcing them to fight even armored battles in heavily populated areas nearer to Baghdad. This kind of fighting would be designed to drive up American casualties beyond the point of acceptability at home, and also to harden Iraqi resolve against the invaders. If American forces are successful in these engagements, the war may be over sooner rather than later. But if these battles stagnate, guerrilla warfare could well become pandemic, not only in Baghdad but also across Iraq. And even considering the strong likelihood of an allied victory, it is hard to imagine an end point without an extremely difficult period of occupation. In fact, what will be called an occupation may well end up looking like the images we have seen in places like Nasiriya. Do Iraqis hate Saddam Hussein's regime more deeply than they dislike the Americans who are invading their country? That question will still be with this administration, and the military forces inside Iraq, when the occupation begins, whether the war lasts a few more days or several more months. Or worse, the early stages of an occupation could see acts of retribution against members of Saddam Hussein's regime, then quickly turn into yet another round of guerrilla warfare against American forces. This point was made chillingly clear a few days ago by the leader of Iraq's major Shiite opposition group, who, according to Reuters, promised armed resistance if the United States remains in Iraq after Saddam Hussein is overthrown. Welcome to hell. Many of us lived it in another era. And don't expect it to get any better for a while. James Webb, secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, was a Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam. He is an author and filmmaker -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030330/0c525843/attachment.html From rummanhameed at yahoo.com Mon Mar 31 10:46:44 2003 From: rummanhameed at yahoo.com (Rumman Hameed) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 21:16:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Posting: An Exploration of Conencted Spaces in Shahjahanabad Message-ID: <20030331051644.6979.qmail@web21110.mail.yahoo.com> Dear all My fieldwork has moved from the private domain of the family to the public domain of the streets. I have been mostly hanging out in the galis (streets), mostly in the evenings. Old Delhi is threaded with narrow galis (streets), which mean many splendoured things for the residents. A gali is strictly a male space. It is used by men in varied ways, as a club (to socialize and to relax), as a play ground (cricket and badminton having replaced gilli danda, pittoo and kanche) and as a work place too. Many of the conflicts between the newer residents and older ones can be noticed in interactions among people in the streets. However, these same galis are notorious for the outsiders for being dark, narrow, tortuous, filthy and even dangerous. None of the residents ever described their galis as any of these, except for being filthy. The older residents blame it on the "baahar ke log jo aa kar yahan bas gaye hain" (the people who have come from outside and made Delhi their home). One notices an undercurrent in almost all aspects between the dilliwallahs and newcomers. One notices a personalized nature of interaction in the streets. Women from their houses call boys standing/ walking in the streets and tell them to ask XYZ shop to deliver the grocery to their house and sometimes even those very boys are asked to bring the grocery. Sharing food has been a common medium through which communication has been maintained in Indian society, Old Delhi being no exception. What makes it interesting here is the manner in which it is exchanged, which I explained in the last posting. What makes Old Delhi more interesting is that there are many other unusual modes of interaction and communication. It is very common to 'borrow' things like bikes, cars and scooters, precious jewelry, and even houses for certain events from neighbours. For instance, for the functions preceding a marriage (such as those of ubtan and mehendi), people do not hire a community hall, they rather ask their neighbours to loan their house for a day, or if not the entire house, then a couple of rooms. Sometimes, the houses they 'borrow' are located in two different streets and consequently the guests are divided into two places. This does not create much difficulty because in Old Delhi rules regarding separate seating arrangements for women and men (zenana and mardana) are still observed. Often a broad gali is also used as a place where dinner may be served in such parties, after covering it with tents. One thing that is striking in Old Delhi, and probably in other old cities, is that people are conscious of being dilliwallah, of associating certain characteristics with Delhi. They display the identification with the place, its history and tradition and the pride in belonging. They are all among the oldest residents of the city living here for the last 350-400 years. This group of traditional elites is eminently and self-declaredly more 'cultured' and refined than other inhabitants of the old city. A few of the families have lived here for more generations than they remember and have almost no kinship or property-holding ties with rural areas. They call and consider themselves and their styles of life as 'urban' and as 'pure dilliwallahs'. The term 'dilliwallah', thus, holds a specific meaning and significance for them. One can not fail to notice a subtle tension between these new people who have made Old Delhi their home over the past 20-40 years. This migration in Old Delhi has occurred in waves. The emigration is invariably connected with violence; the mass exodus of Muslims obviously taking place during Partition with the majority of 'pure dilliwallahs' shifting to Pakistan, of Sikhs after the riots of 1984 following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and of Hindus after 1991 riots following the Babri Masjid demolition. The remaining population underwent a major shuffling within Old Delhi leading to the formation of distinct pockets of Hindus and Muslims. The immigration, on the other hand, has happened primarily because of economic reasons. Old Delhi is a wholesale market for many commodities that requires the presence of innumerable karkahanas (workshops) which translate into employment opportunities. Therefore, there is a deep presence of karkhandaari people in Old Delhi's population now. These people have come mainly from Uttar Pradesh (Meerut, Faizabad and villages around Lucknow), Bihar and West Bengal. Only women as domestic-help constitute the population from West Bengal. There is a large proportion of them from Bangladesh also, which one comes to know only during a drive by the authorities to remove illegal migrants. There is a seasonal sprinkling of Afghanis and Kashmiris, which come regularly year after year, but only for a few months and find cheap accommodation in Old Delhi. There are therefore obvious hierarchies in the neighbourhood. I plan to delve more into the nature of these hierarchies and differences in the forthcoming days. Rumman --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030330/2a95c90e/attachment.html From aiindex at mnet.fr Mon Mar 31 15:25:16 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 10:55:16 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Clueless in Kashmir by Muzamil Jaleel Message-ID: The Indian Express Sunday, March 30, 2003 The Sunday Story Clueless in Kashmir Last Sunday, the semblance of normalcy in Kashmir was shattered when unidentified militants killed 24 Kashmiri Pandits in Nadimarg. Muzamil Jaleel explains why this was like no massacre the Valley has ever seen before The what, where, when and the how of the Nadimarg massacre is by now well known. But a week later, the who and the why have begun to haunt the traumatised victims. The answers, they believe, hold the key to the future of both Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims in the Valley. ''These are uncomfortable questions'', says human rights lawyer Parvez Imroz. ''There has never been an in-depth probe (into these massacres). The issue dies down after a few weeks and there is no follow-up to the FIRs. In fact, such massacres suit every actor of this conflict, especially when they remain engulfed in mystery.'' Nadimarg is one of the most gruesome carnages in the 13-year-long history of violence in Kashmir. The midnight assassins crossed all lines by dragging out people, showering them with bullets, killing infants, women, old people and even the physically challenged. In acts of extreme brutality, they even disfigured the faces of the victims. And they looted as well, taking away valuables from the houses and gold rings from the ears of dead women. Who were these killers? Why did they commit such a gruesome carnage? Even as a week has passed and 24 bullet-riddled bodies have already been consigned to flames, security agencies and the police confess they have no clue about the perpetrators are, though the government blames the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e- Mohammad. ''There is absolutely no concrete proof and it is difficult to pinpoint the culprits,'' admits a senior army officer. ''We generally get clues from the intercepts of the militants; this time around, there were none. In fact, they blame us (the army). The only clue may lie in the stolen goods - the valuables may eventually lead us to the culprits.'' The obvious indicators - eyewitness accounts, relations of this Hindu village with its Muslim neighbourhood, the attire of the killers and even the way this carnage was executed - have all served to add to the confusion regarding the identity of the killers. Locals testify to the warmth of the relations between Nadimarg and its Muslim neighbours. ''People from more than 30 villages arrived here the morning after. We have been living here for generations. It is our home and we have never felt that we are different,'' says Sheela, who lost five members of her family including two infant grandsons. --- BOX--- Minority massacres in the valley 1998 Jan 25-26: 25 Kashmiri Pandits killed at Wandhama-Ganderbal, Srinagar Mar 20: Seven Kashmiri Pandits killed in Sangrampura, Beerwah in Budgam district April 18: 27 killed in Prankote in Udhampur district, Jammu June 19: 25 killed in Chapnari area of Doda district, Jammu July 28: 16 killed in two villages of Doda District, Jammu August 8: 35 labourers killed in Kalaban on Jammu-Himachal Pradesh border. 1999 Feb 20: Four killed at Muraputta-Rajouri, seven at Billala-Rajouri and nine at Barlyara-Udhampur, Jammu. June 30: Fifteen labourers killed in Anantnag district of south Kashmir. July 19: 15 killed at Layata in Doda district, Jammu. 2000 February 28: Five drivers killed near Qazigund in Anantnag district, Kashmir. Mar 20: 35 Sikhs massacred at Chittisinghpora in Anantnag. August 1: 31 people, including Amarnath yatris, killed at Pahalgam in Anantnag. August 1: 27 labourers gunned down in Qazigund and Achabal in Anantnag. August 2: Seven family members killed in frontier district of Kupwara in North Kashmir. August 2: 11 killed in Doda district of Jammu. 2001 February 3: Six Sikhs gunned down in Mahjoornagar in Srinagar. Feb 11: 15 members of nomad (Gujjar) families massacred in Kot-Chadwal in Rajouri district, Jammu. Mar 2: 15 policemen and two medical assistants killed in Manjkote area of Rajouri. March 17: Eight people massacred near Atholi in Doda. July 21: 13 people, including seven Amarnath pilgrims, killed at Sheshnag in Anantnag. July 22: 12 people massacred in Cheerji and Tagood in Doda district, Jammu August 4: 15 villagers killed in Ludder-Sharotid Har area of Doda. 2002 August 6: Nine Amarnath pilgrims killed and 29 injured at Nunwan base camp in Pahalgam area of Anantnag district in south Kashmir. ----BOX ends ----- Neighbours from Sheikhpora, a Muslim hamlet located a stone's throw away, address her as Bindre and it is not difficult to gauge the intensity of grief among them. ''In 1990, when Hindus all over left the state, they stayed back on our assurances that nothing will ever go wrong,'' says Mohammad Ismail Mir, an old farmer who has known Bindre since she came to the village after her marriage four decades ago. ''I feel so guilty. We should have not stopped them when we knew we cannot do anything. Aasman peyi na chali chali - Kus insaan haki ye kareith (How can a human being commit such an act? Even the heavens will weep).'' Bindre's only daughter Jyoti, who was fortunate enough to escape the bullets, was a witness to the massacre. ''Sanis gamas bano-vukh shamshaan (They turned our village into a crematorium),'' she says. ''They came, collected us one by one and then massacred everybody. My nephew was shot in his foot and he died in my lap. He was just two.'' The girl consoling her is Shahen, her friend since school. ''I just don't understand why will anybody kill a child in front of her mother''. What hurts the survivors the most is the fact that some of the killers spoke in Kashmiri. ''We know we have to spend the rest of our lives with our tears. But we will be always be haunted by the knowledge that there were Kashmiris among the killers,'' says Bindre. If they are unanimous on this count, everybody also agrees that the government has done little to assuage their pain. ''They (the government) says it was done by Pakistan. I want to ask just one question: If Pakistan has entered so deep as to access this remote village, what is India doing about it?'' says a middle-aged man, Bal Krishan, who had come all the way from Anantnag, to join the mourning. ''We don't know who is behind this massacre. But we know the government facilitated this massacre by their inaction. It is a conspiracy to deepen the wedge between Kashmiri Muslims and Hindus because we 9,000 Pandits, who still live here, can become the bridge between the two communities.'' The villagers have a point. Both Hindu and Muslim villagers say that they had smelled tension for three days before the massacre. ''The village head Avtar Krishan and his wife had seen some people moving around in the village two nights before the massacre,'' says Bindre's son Ramesh, who managed to evade the killers and ran 13-kms to seek help from the Zainpora police station. ''When we got suspicious, two villagers - Deep Kumar and Chandji - went to the deputy commissioner and asked for help. He was callous enough to ask for a written application, and then did nothing about it. We informed the police too - in fact, the SHO of the Zainpora police station visited us during the day preceding the massacre and asked his men to be alert.'' When contacted, Deputy Commissioner, Pulwama, Naseema Lankar said the ''villagers visited the DC, Anantnag, because half the village falls in Anantnag''. Deputy Commissioner, Anantnag, was not available for comments. Barely a hundred feet away from the room where Jyoti sits, the empty, sandbag-walled police picket has come to symbolise police inaction. Ramesh says that he reached the police station within 30 minutes of the intruders entering the village. ''They asked me to stay put in the police station, but took hours to leave themselves,'' he alleges. ''The policemen supposed to guard us here were sleeping in their room when it happened. Why did they surrender without any resistence whatsoever? We suspect them as well.'' SSP, Pulwama, Vipul Kumar admits that the policemen guarding the village did not react at all. ''The first police team arrived from Shopian around 3.30 am. The Zainpora police station doesn't have enough strength to react to such a carnage so we sent our people from Shopian,'' he says. The army, however, is located much closer to Nadimarg, so why did they fail to react immediately? ''I received the information around 12.30-12.35 am and alerted all the forces, including the camp of 1 Rashtriya Rifles that lies a few kms from Nadimarg,'' Kumar says. A senior army officer says that the army does take some time to react. ''We had to prepare ourselves, and then walk to the village, that too in the middle of the night. Our troops reached the village at the same time when the police reached,'' he told The Sunday Express. The pattern and the attire of the killers, too, adds to the confusion. All eyewitnesses admit that the killers were wearing army fatigues, bullet-proof jackets and helmets. Although militants do use army fatigues, never before have they been known to use bullet-proof vests and helmets. In fact, security agencies, too, admit that the presence of this paraphrenalia has come as a surprise. Among the victims and the security agencies, there is just one demand: an independent probe that will asnwer all these questions. At stake, after all, is the future of Kashmir and its people. From fred at bytesforall.org Mon Mar 31 20:12:13 2003 From: fred at bytesforall.org (Frederick Noronha (FN)) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 20:12:13 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] SHAHIDUL ALAM: It's for your own good (fwd) Message-ID: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 08:36:15 -0000 From: "Shahidul Alam" Subject: It's for your own good We will kill your children Destroy your mosques Grind to dust your citadels With your oil, we'll buy you food Believe you me, it's for your own good Regime change, that's what its about Jay Garner* instead, what more could you want You'll have Big Macs and Coke As we know you should Believe you me, its for your own good Forget your heritage, its so uncool Face the facts, the US rules Afghanis blew statues They were ever so rude We will raze Baghdad, for your own good CNN, BBC, they report for our cause Embedded journalists, they know the laws Al Jazeera is not cricket C'mon you dude You know we care, its for your own good US contracts, Haliburton rules Conflict of interest? C'mon you fools My interest in oil That's obscene, that's lewd Its Iraqis I care for, its for your own good It's freedom I want, get out of my way A new Middle East map, drawn as I say Imperialist expansion Must you be crude Are you not listening, its for your own good World opinion, who gives a damn My latest war cry, Saddam Saddam United Nations Step out if you would Don't get in the way, its for their own good US weapons of mass destruction? Don't be absurd, we're a peace-loving nation Hiroshima Nagasaki Why do you still brood? As my God has said, it was for your own good. I wish you'd believe me. I so wish you would Shahidul Alam 30th March 2003 Dhaka. * Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, proposed civil administrator of Iraq, who expressed in a 2000 letter that a strong Jewish state is an asset to the United States. The letter was sponsored by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news? tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030325/pl_nm/iraq_usa_reconstruction_dc&cid=615&nci d=1473 ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ From cugambetta at yahoo.com Mon Mar 31 22:55:52 2003 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 09:25:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] OnTheMedia Message-ID: <20030331172552.68632.qmail@web12203.mail.yahoo.com> http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/index.html I was sent this link to a radio show on National Public Radio in the US which is called 'On the Media' and concerns analysis and discussion of the news media. They post transcripts the week after, and I think you can hear it on the net. The list seems to be thinking a lot about the media and our alternatives for critique and reflection... it's good to see the volume of links and info passed around... I find it incredible to be able to actually piece together at least a semblance of critical reportage on what is happening. It also amazing to me how vastly different this cut and paste story we construct on our own is from what is running on BBC and CNN... I think the cracks are showing, though I fear the US public is looking the other way... -curt __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com