From anarrain at yahoo.co.in Thu May 1 15:42:12 2003 From: anarrain at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Arvind=20Narrain?=) Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 11:12:12 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] summary-outing Bangalore ... Message-ID: <20030501101212.19668.qmail@web8107.mail.in.yahoo.com> Please find below a brief about the project “Outing Bangalore: Intersections of Geographies, Law, and Sexualities” “Outing Bangalore” is a project that seeks to understand a hitherto marginalised, invisible part of BangaloreÂ’s cultural landscape. Specifically, this involves the subculture of sexual identities such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT). We seek to understand the emergence of these identity categories by looking at the colonial and post-colonial discourses of law and medicine and their role in constructing the homosexual subject. Global and local contexts Urban spaces are important sites of discourses on sexuality. Modernity/ capitalism contributes to the break down of traditional collective structures and creation/ suppression of LGBT spaces and cultures. In India also, it is the city that has provided spaces for the formation of LGBT cultures through the organization of city space. Research on LGBT issues in India tends to focus more heavily on public health approaches (i.e., HIV/AIDS, STDs, STIs etc. as the main issues) and concentrating specially on male-to-male sexual behaviour. Public health discourses have looked at LGBT people as ‘risk groupsÂ’ or sexually ‘promiscuousÂ’ people. LGBT as legitimate cultural identities are only now emerging in India. However the emergence of these identities in the current context faces particular difficulties with respect to the emergence of the Hindu right and the phenomenon of globalisation and its impact on the creation/definition and regulation of the spaces. Bangalore, a city of close to 7 million people, has emerged as an international city and offers more complex circulations of people and, therefore, of ideas. The accessibility of urban spaces catering to this diverse range of people depends upon social and economic power. What urban spaces can a ‘hijraÂ’ have easier access to than a heterosexual person? Is there any way in which hetero-normative nature of space is challenged by other emerging spaces? The study seeks to examine real (i.e., physical spaces), discursive (verbal and non-verbal) and cyber spaces and how sexuality is constituted in the Indian context. We will particularly look at medical spaces (and their interactions with sexuality) and LGBT spaces in their real, discursive, and cyber manifestations. Study objectives As with India in general, the emergence, in Bangalore, of the rights of LGBT people and cultures in India is a recent phenomenon with a few civil liberties groups actively recognizing and articulating them. Since those early beginnings, the fledgling LGBT rights movement has grown increasingly vocal and articulate. Systematic knowledge on some aspects of LGBT people is slowly emerging. In order to help address the lack of knowledge about LGBT spaces and issues in India, this projectÂ’s objectives are to: · Study selected spaces to understand how they function as sites of intersection of geographies, law, and sexualities, particularly LGBT peopleÂ’s sexualities. · Study how these spaces are also sites of LGBT resistance, celebration, and empowerment. The spaces to be studied in this project are: (a) medical space, and (b) LGBT spaces. · Study the impact on the private LGBT space of the LGBT discourseÂ’s move from the private to the public. · Describe and document how LGBT individualsÂ’ access, occupy, traverse, and shape, and are shaped by these spaces. · Prepare a set of intervention tools that can bring the results of the project to a variety of spaces and begin a process of dialogue to making these spaces (more) LGBT-sensitive and (more) LGBT-empowering. Intersections of geographies, law, and sexualities: the approach As an interdisciplinary area, cultural geography looks at issues in the context of space (space being the central focus of geography). In this study, the cultural geographic framework offers understanding about the spaces that LGBT people live in and from that, action can follow. Sexualities, particularly LGBT sexualities, and their spaces are among the many issues with which geographers have engaged. How has the figure of the homosexual as a deviant emerged in modern law? How does law construct what is natural sexual behaviour? What are the identities which get stabilized as ‘naturalÂ’ through constructing the ‘unnaturalÂ’? What are the roles of both criminal and civil law in constructing the homosexual as an (un)viable (un)subject in civil law and as a series of unnatural sexual practices when it comes to the criminal law? However, often operating in the sites of greatest regulation, LGBT people have forged cultures of resistance. LGBT people are today claiming the language of rights, which has so far been used in the context of heterosexual citizenship. It is in this context that human rights discourse can become important. Sexuality is the least discoursed issue in India. Moreover ‘sexuality discourseÂ’ includes both problematic as well as celebratory aspects of sexualities (whether heterosexual, homosexual or otherwise). Sexuality becomes a terrain that constructs notions of normality and abnormality. What are visible are the varieties of discourses on rape (forced sexual intercourse), prostitution (selling sex for money), child sexual abuse (having sex with children), or homosexuality (same-sex sexual behaviour). What gets strangely invisibilised in this variety of discourses is the supposed norm –– sex within the context of marital relationships. Through this process of sexual construction, norms of respectable behaviours and deviant behaviours emerge. Medical spaces The medical establishment in India — viz., The Medical Council of India, Indian Medical Association and Indian Psychiatric Association — has adopted the WHO system of classification of mental and behavioural disorders known as ICD -10 (1992) This system distinguishes between ego-syntonic and ego-dystonic homosexuality as psychiatric disorders where sexual preference is not in doubt, but the individual wishes it were different and seeks treatment. In such a case treatment is warranted. The syntonic / dystonic distinction is problematic and many doctors assume that any patient who comes to them is suffering from ego-dystonic homosexuality. In a context of a society where there is little information about same sex desires and relationships, LGBT people have been subject to a wide range of medical treatments, which include administration of drugs to induce nervous reactions, shock therapy and behavioural therapy all aimed at coercing heterosexual behaviour. Other systems of medicine such as ayurveda and homoeopathy also view LGBT people as perverted and needing cure. According to one reputed homeopathic doctor in Bangalore, homosexuality is curable in homeopathy and was invariably linked to dysfunctional families, sexual abuse, or boyhood sexual fantasies. Besides this, there are also numerous unqualified, unqualified, illegal medical practitioners (“quacks”) who ‘treatÂ’ homosexuality. In the context of medical space, this research will examine, among other things, (a) How the medical discourse constructs notions of normality and abnormality (b) How clinical category of ego-dystonic homosexuality is actually a product of societal attitudes (c) How medical discourse itself as a product of a hetero-normative framework (d) How this discourse impacts on the sense of self and identity (e) How the universal norms of human rights interact with this particular kind of modern suffering. (f) How traditional/non-allopathic medical systems (ayurveda, unani, homoeopathy) address homosexuality (g) How modern and traditional medical systems compare in accommodating LGBT lives. LGBT spaces Emergence of LGBT groups and emancipatory practices such as activism, groups, newsletters, help lines, demonstrations, public talks etc. which help create and define the spaces of hope will be studied. Sub-cultural identities are formed in a variety of ways, one of which is political assertion and, through occupation of public space, resisting invisibilisation. This occupation of public space is buttressed by an increasingly vocal civil liberties discourse. But the emergence of these groups though influenced strongly by their western counterparts, still assert their identity in ways unique to the local. This is not only because of difficulties and oppressions particular to the local but also due to a construction of the self that goes beyond sexuality. Thus a study of sexuality politics in India generally, and Bangalore particularly, involves studying its particular local history while simultaneously keeping an eye on its global influences. In this project, we will (a) Examine the role that BangaloreÂ’s LGBT spaces have played in the life-journeys of individual LGBT people and, in turn, contributed to the emergence of a larger movement towards developing a social and political community. (b) Examine the processes of sectoral developments such as NGOs, media, and others very visibly influence these LGBT spaces. (c) Examine the perceptions of these groups from both emic and etic perspectives. (d) Map the growth of these groups and their specific forms of assertion, which in turn would generate a reflexivity and theorisation. Chandra Shekhar Balachandran Arvind Narrain Vinay Chandran ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From hansathap1 at hotmail.com Thu May 1 17:21:11 2003 From: hansathap1 at hotmail.com (hansa thapliyal) Date: Thu, 01 May 2003 11:51:11 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] film screening Message-ID: i dont knwo if it alright to post the screening schedule of a film where i have one very small credit nad that is made by a friend- but it would be interesting to be able to discuss it. a film made by a film maker from bombay- a commissiond film about feminism in india, but i think one that pushes quite at its brief. so i am sending the synopsis and schedule- DATE: 2nd May, Friday TIME: 7:00 p.m. PLACE: India Habitat Centre, Gulmohar Hall UNLIMITED GIRLS Documentary, Digital Video, 94 min., English and some Hindi with subtitles; Director: Paromita Vohra, Producer: Sakshi Camera: Mrinal Desai, Editing: Jabeen Merchant Sound: Subir Das �Of course, girls should progress -as long as they do it within limits� but when they become�.un-limited, then something bad is bound to happen�� So, still want to be a feminist? That�s the question Fearless is asked and in turn asks others in the film Unlimited Girls. Starting accidentally in a chatroom, she embarks on a journey where she encounters diverse characters - feminists who remember the songs and actions of the Indian women�s movement, yuppies who discuss their modern marriage, a policeman writing films for �women�s upliftment�, women shopping at a bra sale, college kids practicing a dance, teachers who feel girls must not take injustice � or break a home; a woman cab driver, a priest, academics, activists, and unseen but much-heard women like Atilla_the_Nun, ChamkiGirl and Devi_is_a_Diva, in a feminist chatroom � all talking of their engagements with feminism and its place in their lives today. Using a personally reflective tone and playfully eclectic form, mixing non-fiction and fiction, Unlimited Girls follows Fearless� explorations and conversations: about why women must always lead double lives, being feminist but not saying they are. How do we remain politically engaged as individuals who will not join groups? If feminism changes the way we live, then do we change the meaning of feminism as we live it? And then how do we separate true feminists from false ones? Will X-ray vision work better, or female intuition - or is there a common set of principles in this multiply interpreted philosophy? How do we make sense of love and anger, doubt and confusion, the personal and the political, in this enterprise of pushing the boundaries, of being un-limited - the enterprise we call feminism. ABOUT THE FILMMAKER Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker and writer. Her films as director include Annapurna: Goddess of Food � a portrait of an organization of women food workers in Bombay�s textile mill area; A Woman�s Place - a documentary about women�s legal strategies in India, South Africa and the USA, and A Short Film About Time a short fiction about a woman with a broken heart, her therapist and his watch. Her films as a writer are Skin Deep, a film on women, body image and self-identity, Veru, about a woman whose life is transformed by growing fundamentalism in a Pakistani village and Kumari Shobha, about a former Kumari struggling to make sense of love in contemporary Kathamandu. Paromita. She is the India Project Co-ordinater of A Woman�s Place Project and is a PUKAR Associate. ABOUT THE PRODUCERS Sakshi is a violence intervention group located in Delhi. Their work includes gender sensitization and training, research and documentation, leadership building and outreach on issues of gender and feminism. ______________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ IIFA Awards. Vote now. http://server1.msn.co.in/msnspecials/iifa2003/index.asp Celebrate Indian cinema From rachel at rhizome.org Fri May 2 21:24:19 2003 From: rachel at rhizome.org (Rachel Greene) Date: Fri, 02 May 2003 11:54:19 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] looking for solid statistics on computers in India In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi -- I am looking for research on/numbers of computers in India from about 1997... particularly intersted in home computers, but need data on schools, businesses too. Please email me privately, and thanks very much in advance for any suggestions. -- Rachel From khergupta at hotmail.com Thu May 1 12:25:40 2003 From: khergupta at hotmail.com (khergupta) Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 12:25:40 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reader List: bharti kher..a project on the matrimonials Message-ID: Dear reader list After a long silence about my project on matrimonials and proposed video work; ' love , an absence of assignable cause" I send this second posting somewhat reluctantly..... Artist process (call it what you want...) somehow negates the process of discussion, until that is the work is made. But some information for you to interpret : A matrimonial posted by a friend on a popular Indian website has already some 3000 hits in 2 weeks.... Describing herself as an independent, ambitious and fun loving woman who wants to meets like minded people... her replies mostly consisted (about 85%) of already married men who were bored with their young families. On a meeting with one such bored husband, he admitted that he preferred that his wife remained as she was. Urban middle class India story. My friend's cousin has a PhD. She lives in South Extension. her engagement has just been announced to her long time boyfriend. her parents still posted a matrimonial incase they chanced upon someone even better. She now eats only when he arrives to meet her, however late. My brother in law flew from pillar to post in Bihar to get his daughter married. She is a class 3 teacher. Both he and her suffered what I would describe as humiliation as demands for dowry and all the usual politics of marriage came into play. I took some photos of her to show the proposed family...demure, homely setting and too much skin lightening foundation. Right hand placed over left. She was told that her teeth were not good enough and she is too short. Dowry is prefixed: IS officer: 20 lacs ; Government job (transfer officer): 10-15 lacs and for class2 or 3: 5lacs; Business man: 5\6 (depending on how much property he owns), Even the Pan Wallah:1 lac and teacher: 3 lacs at least . Class and caste rules are strictly followed in the whole of Bihar, U.P, Rajasthan.... There is always someone in the family who enjoys making matches and like myself (for different reasons) reads the matrimonials. Men travel great distances to meet prospective alliances. The Indian Sweet industry greatly benefits from such alliances. So as I sift through all the junk and paraphernalia of imagery and narrative that revolves around the great spectacle of Indian weddings, I'm wondering how the hell to put it all together without it being a documentary or a pastiche. The role of art is surely to move away from all that we know already and to present something that motivates an element of surprise, however small or profound. To present the image as one and turn the meaning into something else. Perhaps that is the reason i resist talking about the actual work. Any comments welcome. Bharti Kher -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030501/65559f9f/attachment.html From competitiva14 at videobrasil.org.br Sat May 3 04:34:15 2003 From: competitiva14 at videobrasil.org.br (videobrasil) Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 20:04:15 -0300 (EST) Subject: [Reader-list] Inscrições Online Submissions Message-ID: <20030502230415.CE01F1BFB79@far.insite.com.br> 14� International Electronic Art Festival - Videobrasil Southern Competitive Show WE ARE NOW SIX WORKING-DAYS AWAY FROM THE FINAL DEADLINE! Final date to receive your material at Associa� Cultural Videobrasil�s office: MAY 12, 2003 DO YOUR ON-LINE SUBMISSION NOW! www.videobrasil.org.br -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14� Festival Internacional De Arte Eletr�a - Videobrasil Mostra Competitiva Do Sul FALTAM APENAS 6 DIAS �EIS PARA O FIM DAS INSCRI�ES! Prazo final para receber seu material na sede da Associa� Cultural Videobrasil: 12 DE MAIO DE 2003 FA� J�SUA INSCRI�O ON-LINE! www.videobrasil.org.br -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ATEN�O ARTISTAS BRASILETIROS: Os artistas brasileiros selecionados para a Mostra Competitiva do Sul do 14� Festival Internacional de Arte Eletr�a - Videobrasil concorrem tamb�a uma resid�ia no centro de m�a Le Fresnoy, em Tourcoing, na Fran� Concebido e dirigido por Alain Fleischer, o Le Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains �m centro de produ�, pesquisa e p�radua� em arte audiovisual, que capacita jovens artistas a produzir trabalhos com equipamento profissional sob a dire� de artistas consagrados. No Le Fresnoy, o realizador premiado vivenciar�ma verdadeira imers�e usufruir�e uma das melhores infra-estruturas do mundo para a pesquisa e produ� audiovisual. Al�de serem artistas brasileiros selecionados para Mostra Competitiva do Sul, os concorrentes devem ter at�5 anos de idade e conhecimentos de ingl�e/ou franc� -------------------------------------------------------------- Se n�deseja mais receber estas mensagens utilize o endere� http://inmailing.insite.com.br/cgi-bin/i?del_user=reader-list at mail.sarai.net&id=481 From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Sun May 4 12:23:16 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 4 May 2003 06:53:16 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Michael Hardt Message-ID: <20030504065316.25975.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030504/d85d009c/attachment.pl From jamie.dow at pobox.com Mon May 5 15:52:32 2003 From: jamie.dow at pobox.com (Jamie Dow) Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 11:22:32 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] iraq political cartoons Message-ID: Dear Sarai-folks, I am looking for good political cartoons relating to the war in Iraq. (or, failing that, on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict) Can anyone help me find such cartoons on the web? Thanks in advance, Jamie From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue May 6 18:10:50 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 18:10:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] iraq political cartoons In-Reply-To: Message-ID: try this: http://www.ucomics.com/boondocks/ there's one every day, all current affairs-led. most over the past few months have had to do with iraq. R -----Original Message----- From: reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net [mailto:reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net]On Behalf Of Jamie Dow Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 3:53 PM To: Reader-List at Sarai. Net Subject: [Reader-list] iraq political cartoons Dear Sarai-folks, I am looking for good political cartoons relating to the war in Iraq. (or, failing that, on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict) Can anyone help me find such cartoons on the web? Thanks in advance, Jamie _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. List archive: From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Tue May 6 22:52:19 2003 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 13:22:19 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] iraq political cartoons Message-ID: also try getyourwaron.com also, look up cartoons from mark fiore... and also shahid mahmood on chowk.com best, zehra >From: "Rana Dasgupta" >To: , "Reader-List at Sarai. Net" >Subject: RE: [Reader-list] iraq political cartoons >Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 18:10:50 +0530 > >try this: > >http://www.ucomics.com/boondocks/ > >there's one every day, all current affairs-led. most over the past few >months have had to do with iraq. > >R > >-----Original Message----- >From: reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net >[mailto:reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net]On Behalf Of Jamie Dow >Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 3:53 PM >To: Reader-List at Sarai. Net >Subject: [Reader-list] iraq political cartoons > > >Dear Sarai-folks, >I am looking for good political cartoons relating to the war in Iraq. (or, >failing that, on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict) >Can anyone help me find such cartoons on the web? >Thanks in advance, >Jamie > >_________________________________________ >reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >Critiques & Collaborations >To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe >in the subject header. >List archive: > >_________________________________________ >reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >Critiques & Collaborations >To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe >in the subject header. >List archive: _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Wed May 7 00:43:53 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 20:13:53 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] US "expert" opinion on Said, Columbia, academia etc In-Reply-To: <20030504065316.25975.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <20030506191353.52471.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> hi all thought some you might be interested in this...just a small sampling of what's going on here in a not-so-small way... avishek (ps: i missed the msnbc telecast myself, but i believe this is all copyrighted material...so i'm not sure if we can cite any of this in any published news item, thanks.) _______________________________________________________ Columbia University Celebrates Edward Said © Daniel Pipes MSNBC: Scarborough Country April 16, 2003 You know every night we take a moment to highlight examples of liberal elitism in a segment we call, "There They Go Again," and tonight we're exposing an Ivy League school for celebrating a prominent anti-Semitic scholar on its payroll. Columbia University, there they go again. Now Edward Said is a Columbia professor who just happens to be the leading spokesman for the Palestinian cause against Israel. Today Columbia's celebrating the 25th Anniversary of his book "Orientalism" and which he describes as "an examination of the way the west perceives the Islamic world." With me now from Philadelphia is Daniel Pipes. He's a Director of the Middle East Forum and Director of Campus Watch, which monitors and critiques the way Middle Eastern studies are taught on college campuses. I'd like to thank you for being here with us tonight. DANIEL PIPES, DIRECTOR OF THE MIDDLE EAST FORUM, DIRECTOR OF CAMPUS WATCH: Thank you Joe for the invitation. SCARBOROUGH: Let's begin. Let's talk about this professor who's been caught on filming throwing rocks at settlements and over into Israel and he allegedly attempted to hit Israelis on the other side. Is this guy a hate monger? Is this the type of guy we want our students to be learning from in America? PIPES: No, Joe. Edward Said is not just your ordinary professor. He is first of all a university professor, meaning he's reached the highest ranks at the prestigious university of Columbia. Secondly, he is a demi- god in the eyes of many academics. He has redefined the study of the Middle East and other parts of the world. He has to a certain extent redefined the study of English literature and comparative literature. Thus the jubilee celebration today of the 25th anniversary of his book Orientalism. For the rest of us not at the universities, this is fringe figure who - as you suggested - is a leading spokesman for not just the Palestinian cause but someone so radical that he has turned against Arafat for being too gentle on Israel. SCARBOROUGH: That's unbelievable. Now he's written this also about the United States. "The stones and slings of young men are now offering courageous resistance to a demeaning fate meted to them by Israeli soldiers armed by the United States, policed by Arafat's apparatus with U.S. military and financial aid." Excuse me Daniel,but doesn't this sound like something that could come out of the mouth of Osama Bin Laden. PIPES: It certainly could and the trouble is that Mr. Said's influence has been profound. I did an article just a few weeks ago on, you may remember, the "million Mogadishus" professor of Columbia [Nicholas De Genova]. SCARBOROUGH: Exactly. PIPES: He is a younger - a junior professor who a few weeks ago at a teach-in at Columbia called for the death of American soldiers. SCARBOROUGH: What's wrong - let me ask you. What's wrong with Columbia University where they let somebody like Said teach there and they celebrate his teachings and they also allow another professor to root against America in their war in Iraq. PIPES: Well, this in a way follows from your discussion [in the previous segment] about CNN [and its view of itself as not American but international]. They're too superior to feel patriotism for the United States. These are internationalists who look at the world from, you know, a kind of lunar position, you know, far away, no allegiances. They feel genuinely distant from the United States. They don't like this country very much. SCARBOROUGH: Yeah. Let's look at some other people that Columbia employs. Obviously a professor who called for America's defeat in Iraq, a professor who organized a Palestinian film festival that featured several films calling for the destruction of Israel and a professor who labels Israel a Jewish supremacist and racist state. Now listen, I'm not on here defending Israel. I mean if they were saying that - if the university was saying that about any country that would be very troubling. Is this something that's happening at Columbia University in particular or does it happen in the elitist universities all over America? PIPES: In general, I would say more at elitist universities than at your average university and it happens probably more at Columbia than at the others. But it is representative of a trend, which is that the universities in general are far left institutions. It is my generation, the 60s generation, that has taken over the universities and yanked them far to the left. What's interesting now is that the students are somewhat rebelling against this. SCARBOROUGH: I wanted to ask you that question because I read a New York Times article last week and it's a great piece talking about that. Doesn't it make sense if the media's turning around and Congress is turning around, the presidency, that maybe these liberal institutions may be moving a bit more to the middle politically? PIPES: Not yet, Joe. They are dominated by the administrators and the faculty who are generally on the far left. But the students coming up are not quite agreeing with that, so you have this interesting reverse of roles. It used to be the students who were the radicals, the leftist radicals, and the faculty were the centralists. Now to a certain extent it's the reverse and we'll see where it goes. My hope is that we can bring - we can bring back these institutions. They are very important institutions for American life. We need them to be centrist institutions again. SCARBOROUGH: I agree with you Daniel Pipes. It looks like the revenge of Alex Keaton. Thanks for being with us. ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From anjalisaga at blueyonder.co.uk Wed May 7 03:00:45 2003 From: anjalisaga at blueyonder.co.uk (Anjali Sagar) Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 22:30:45 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Reasons to bomb Iraq: In-Reply-To: Message-ID: In response to Jamie Dow, Here is a good one Reasons to bomb Iraq: http://www.markfiore.com/animation/corrections.swf Best Anjalika Sagar From oga at ihug.co.nz Wed May 7 04:16:10 2003 From: oga at ihug.co.nz (Peter Fogarty) Date: Wed, 07 May 2003 10:46:10 +1200 Subject: [Reader-list] iraq political cartoons Message-ID: <5.0.0.25.2.20030507104603.02f63860@pop.ihug.co.nz> Don't forget Nowhereland http://www.pheline.com/grrl/nowhereland.htm At 01:22 PM 5/6/2003 -0400, you wrote: >also try getyourwaron.com > >also, look up cartoons from mark fiore... >and also shahid mahmood on chowk.com > >best, >zehra > > >>From: "Rana Dasgupta" >>To: , "Reader-List at Sarai. Net" >>Subject: RE: [Reader-list] iraq political cartoons >>Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 18:10:50 +0530 >> >>try this: >> >>http://www.ucomics.com/boondocks/ >> >>there's one every day, all current affairs-led. most over the past few >>months have had to do with iraq. >> >>R >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net >>[mailto:reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net]On Behalf Of Jamie Dow >>Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 3:53 PM >>To: Reader-List at Sarai. Net >>Subject: [Reader-list] iraq political cartoons >> >> >>Dear Sarai-folks, >>I am looking for good political cartoons relating to the war in Iraq. (or, >>failing that, on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict) >>Can anyone help me find such cartoons on the web? >>Thanks in advance, >>Jamie >> >>_________________________________________ >>reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >>Critiques & Collaborations >>To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe >>in the subject header. >>List archive: >> >>_________________________________________ >>reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >>Critiques & Collaborations >>To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with >>subscribe in the subject header. >>List archive: > > >_________________________________________________________________ >The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* >http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail > >_________________________________________ >reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >Critiques & Collaborations >To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with >subscribe in the subject header. >List archive: From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Wed May 7 08:08:57 2003 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 22:38:57 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] US "expert" opinion on Said, Columbia, academia etc Message-ID: for those who dont know who this weirdo is..(daniel pipes) http://www.cair-net.org/misc/people/daniel_pipes.html _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From eye at ranadasgupta.com Wed May 7 10:41:50 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 10:41:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] May 1st was "Loyalty Day" Message-ID: This annual fear of protests is obviously getting a bit of a drag. Remember the old values people? R Loyalty Day, 2003 By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/04/20030430-26.html To be an American is not a matter of blood or birth. Our citizens are bound by ideals that represent the hope of all mankind: that all men are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. On Loyalty Day, we reaffirm our allegiance to our country and resolve to uphold the vision of our Forefathers. Our founding principles have endured, guiding our Nation toward progress and prosperity and allowing the United States to be a leader among nations of the world. Throughout our history, honorable men and women have demonstrated their loyalty to America by making remarkable sacrifices to preserve and protect these values. Today, America's men and women in uniform are protecting our Nation, defending the peace of the world, and advancing the cause of liberty. The world has seen again the fine character of our Nation through our military as they fought to protect the innocent and liberate the oppressed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. We are honored by the service of foreign nationals in our Armed Services whose willingness to risk their lives for a country they cannot yet call their own is proof of the loyalty this country inspires. Their service and sacrifice are a testament to their love for America, and our soldiers' honor on and off the battlefield reaffirms our Nation's most deeply held beliefs: that every life counts, and that all humans have an unalienable right to live as free people. These values must be imparted to each new generation. Our children need to know that our Nation is a force for good in the world, extending hope and freedom to others. By learning about America's history, achievements, ideas, and heroes, our young citizens will come to understand even more why freedom is worth protecting. Last September, I announced several initiatives that will help improve students' knowledge of American history, increase their civic involvement, and deepen their love for our great country. The We the People initiative will encourage the teaching of American history and civic education by providing grants for curriculum development and training seminars. The Our Documents initiative will use the Internet to bring infor-mation about and the text of 100 of America's most important documents from the National Archives to classrooms and com-munities across the country. These initiatives are important, for it is only when our children have an understanding of our past that they will be able to lead the future. This Loyalty Day, as we express allegiance to our Nation and its founding ideals, we resolve to ensure that the blessings of liberty endure and extend for generations to come. The Congress, by Public Law 85-529, as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as "Loyalty Day," and I ask all Americans to join me in this day of celebration and in reaffirming our allegiance to our Nation. NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2003, as Loyalty Day. I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance. I also call upon government officials to display the flag of the United States on all government buildings on Loyalty Day. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-seventh. GEORGE W. BUSH From fred at bytesforall.org Wed May 7 12:43:52 2003 From: fred at bytesforall.org (Frederick Noronha (FN)) Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 12:43:52 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] US "expert" opinion on Said, Columbia, academia etc In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I would request members of this list to send more text-content rather than just URLs. I live in a village in Goa, and use a dial-up line. It's is extremely difficult to go online to check URLs. Usually I travel 8 kms to Panjim, to do surfing at a decent speed (thought I can do a lot of emailing though from home). Sometimes, I surf the Net via email (yes, it's possible... one can download particular pages via email commands... but it's time consuming). Guess those who have fast lines would not complain anyway. If you could send the text, it would help us with slow lines. I would, for instance, really like to know who this wierdo is... FN On Tue, 6 May 2003, zehra rizvi wrote: > for those who dont know who this weirdo is..(daniel pipes) > > http://www.cair-net.org/misc/people/daniel_pipes.html -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) | http://www.fredericknoronha.net Freelance Journalist | http://www.bytesforall.org http://goalinks.pitas.com | http://joingoanet.shorturl.com http://linuxinindia.pitas.com | http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks ------------------------------------------------------------------------- T: 0091.832.2409490 or 2409783 M: 0 9822 122436 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From kundankaushav at indiatimes.com Mon May 5 20:38:02 2003 From: kundankaushav at indiatimes.com (kundankaushav) Date: Mon, 05 May 2003 20:38:02 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 3rd posting on upanyason ka shahar Message-ID: <200305051423.TAA16031@WS0005.indiatimes.com> This is my third posting on upanyason ka shahar: its images and economy. This is my 3rd posting on upanyason ka shahar: its economy and its images. The most compelling reason for paying attention to popular literature is its popularity. And the most popular among the popular literature remain those associated with crime and detection. Now the central question remains, why do great numbers of people choose to read the tales of crime and detection, if they read any book at all? And to find an answer we have to go beyond Edmund Wilson�s "who cares who killed Rodger Ackroyd?". His analysis is a determined effort to defend high literary art against the various forms of philistinism operative in his time. It�s almost carried even today. John G. Cawelti has summed up the reason for this rejection in his book "Adventure, Mystery and Romance". He writes of " their essential standardization and their primary relation to the needs of escape and relaxation." What critics generally find in detective fiction are predictable problems of no intrinsic interest, stereotyped characterizations, and undistinguished writing-in short, a literat! ure for puzzle addicts and thrill seekers produced at best by "ingenious purveyors of commodities" (Dennis Poter, 1981). Whether the same reason and understandings are applied for Hindi popular fictions, more commonly called Hindi pocket books or Hindi upanyas, is not difficult to find out, they are not considered even worthy of being read. Edmund Wilson and his argument would be dealt in length in the subsequent postings. However his views regarding these fictions become very clear when he finds that literature is on his side and with so many fine books to read, so much to be studied and known, there is no need to bore ourselves with these rubbish. I am not writing this posting or subsequent postings to refute Mr. Wilson. His arguments are well taken care of. I am trying to find out how a popular literary genre caters to reader pleasure. Why, in other words, do a great many people escape into detective fiction reading as opposed, say, to other recreational activities such as making love, watching football, vacationing, buying clothes, listening to music, or simply walking the dog? In this posting I will simply try to explore the so-called formulas, which are essential and indispensable for popular fictions. It is important to understand these formulas as it provides the entry point to the vast corpus of literature in English as well as in Hindi. Before going into detail it is important to understand that popular fictions consist of specific categories such as mystery story, crime story, problem story, detective adventure story, police novel, thriller or spy thriller. Since I am concentrating on those upanyas that are related to crime and detection, I am obviously omitting those love stories and social novels, which too are the part of popular literature, both in Hindi as well as English. However there is a constant overlapping among different crime popular fictions and so there is a general tendency to call all these fictions either as detective fictions or simply as thrillers. "Detective novel" therefore implies the generic term for all novels whose principal action concerns the attempt by the specialist investigator to solve a crime and to bring a criminal to justice, whether the crime involved be a single murder or the endeavor to destroy a civilization. The basic formula of "a Whodunit," is this: a murder occurs; many are suspected; all but one suspect, who is the murderer, are eliminated; the murderer is arrested or dies. The definition excludes: Studies of murderers whose guilt is known. These are the borderline cases in which the murderer is known and there are no false suspects, but the proof is lacking, e.g. many of the stories of Amit Khan, Freeman wills crofts. Thrillers, spy stories, stories of master crooks, etc., when the identification of criminal is subordinate to defeat of his criminal designs. However in Indian context there is a new emerging trend in which the hero is the biggest criminal in India like Vimal of Surendra Mohan Pathak, and Devraj Chuhan and Mona Chaudhuri of Anil Mohan who are the most wanted for the police force of India but they are the real life heroes. This trend will be discussed in greater length in the subsequent postings. The interest in the thriller is ethical and eristic conflict between good and evil, between Us and Them. The interest in the study of a murderer is the observation, by the innocent many, of sufferings of the guilty one. The interest in the detective story is the dialectic of innocence and guilt. W. H. Auden in his article "The Guilty Vicarage" tries to finds that as in the Aristotelian description of tragedy, there is Concealment (the innocent seem guilty and the guilty seem innocent) and Manifestation (the real guilt is brought to consciousness). He has also given a formula to help understand the entire structure detective stories: a)Peaceful state before murder b) False innocence | | False clues, secondary murder, etc. Revelation of presence of guilt | | Solution False location of guilt | | Arrest of murder Location of real guilt | | Peaceful state after arrest Catharsis | True innocence The formula may be helpful in understanding the structures and contours of the classical detective stories but the same could be applied to dissect Hindi Jasusi upanyas or for that matter modern English detective story is slightly doubtful. Detective stories and the structures on which they should stand has undergone a tremendous change. Though there is a tendency among Hindi writers to copy the set formula while writing Jasusi stories but they in the process have created or used those patterns, which give a uniqueness to their stories. And these new patterns are neither invisible nor there is an attempt to disguise them. The languages, metaphors, characters, use of events and places are not only different from Premchands or Bhagwati charan Vermas they are also different from Christies and Doyles. These changes and differences would be discussed in the subsequent postings. The detective story (whodunit) has five elements � the milieu, the victim, the murderer, the suspects, and the detectives. The classical understanding of a detective story requires the milieu to be a closed society so that the possibility of an outsider murderer (and hence the society being total innocent) is excluded; and a closely related society so that its entire member are potentially suspect. The victim has to try to satisfy two contradictory requirements. He has to involve every one in suspicion, which requires that he be a bad character; and he has to make every one feel guilty, which requires that he be a good character. Murder is a negative creation, and every murderer is therefore the rebel who claims the right to be omnipotent. His pathos is his refusal to suffer. The problem for the writer is to conceal his demonic pride from the other character and from the reader, since, if a person has this pride, it tends to appear in every thing he says and does. To surprise the reader when the identity of the murderer is revealed, yet at the same time to convince him that everything he has previ! ously been told about the murderer is consistent with his being a murderer, is the test of a good detective story. There must be enough suspects who should have or appear to have the motif to kill the victim. The detective would be either professional or amateur one who uses his skills and intellect to solve the case and identify the real criminal. Now how our hindi upanyas differ from the above set pattern of the detective stories, how the elements of other genre of crime stories differ from the classical whodunit and how and why the art of suspense works would be dealt in next posting. Kundan Kaushav. Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com Buy The Best In BOOKS at http://www.bestsellers.indiatimes.com Bid for Air Tickets @ 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/20030505/a70fc1fd/attachment.html From isast at well.com Tue May 6 00:36:13 2003 From: isast at well.com (LEONARDO (mk)) Date: Mon, 05 May 2003 12:06:13 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Arts Lab Report Released Message-ID: PRESS RELEASE 5/5/03 Leonardo/ISAST "Arts Lab" Report Released for Community Discussion and Debate http://www.artslab.net A study released today proposes innovative new approaches and models for art and technology institutions. The study, sponsored by Leonardo/ISAST and funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, assesses the current international landscape, lessons learned from recent programs, and new opportunities that would allow art and technology development in a viable and sustainable way. "Arts Lab," proposes a unique hybrid art center and research lab designed to be "fast, competitive, market-savvy, and not-for-profit." Its goal is to be financially sustainable with little compromise of artistic or research values. "Can it work?" asks the Arts Lab website, where researchers and students have been accumulating data since last September. "Almost" answers project director Michael Naimark. "Several unique opportunities exist for supporting tech-based art, such as commercializing invention and tapping a new generation of sponsors and collectors," Naimark explains. "But having art and research 100% dependent on the commercial marketplace misses even larger opportunities. There are examples in Europe, Japan and Canada where a dose of public or not-for-profit support leverages more ambitious things to happen, both culturally and commercially. Almost nothing like these exist for tech-based art in the US." Naimark, who spent 7 months last year in Japan, has since visited eight European cities plus several in Canada and the US to visit art centers with an interest in technology and research labs with an interest in art. "They come from different pasts and have different cultures," he said. "Also,these are particularly challenging times in terms of the economy. Everyone seems excited about the future but uncertain about the present." "We've decided to make Naimark's report available online immediately," says Leonardo Executive Editor Roger Malina. "It's very timely, and we feel this is the time to rethink what works and what doesn¹t. This report will encourage healthy discussion and debate. Naimark has written it from the perspective of an artist and researcher who has worked within several of the key institutions in the field. His conclusions are based on this experience." "Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Money: Technology-Based Art and the Dynamics of Sustainability," a 40 page report, is now available at http://www.artslab.net Leonardo/ISAST, whose publications are published in partnership with MIT Press, promotes the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology and seeks to stimulate innovative work between artists, scientists and engineers. For further information, please see http://www.leonardo.info. * * * From competitiva14 at videobrasil.org.br Tue May 6 17:34:55 2003 From: competitiva14 at videobrasil.org.br (videobrasil) Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 09:04:55 -0300 (BRT) Subject: [Reader-list] prorrogação extended deadline Message-ID: <20030506120455.0498D1B3A6C@sabato.labone.net> ATEN�O! O PRAZO PARA INSCREVER SUA OBRA NA MOSTRA COMPETITIVA DO SUL FOI PRORROGADO PARA O DIA 12 DE MAIO DE 2003* Para obter o regulamento e a ficha de inscri�, acesse www.videobrasil.org.br. Esclare�suas d�s no e-mail competitiva14 at videobrasil.org.br * Data de RECEBIMENTO do material (n�de postagem) na sede da Associa� Cultural Videobrasil 14th INTERNATIONAL ELECTRONIC ART FESTIVAL � VIDEOBRASIL ATTENTION! THE DEADLINE TO SUBMIT YOUR WORK FOR THE SOUTHERN COMPETITIVE SHOW WAS EXTENDED UNTIL MAY 12, 2003* Rules and entry form can be found at www.videobrasil.org.br. Clarify your doubts through e-mail competitiva14 at videobrasil.org.br * Dedline to RECEIVE your material (not postage date) at Associa� Cultural Videobrasil�s office -------------------------------------------------------------- Se n�deseja mais receber estas mensagens utilize o endere� http://inmailing.insite.com.br/cgi-bin/i?del_user=reader-list at mail.sarai.net&id=474 From eye at ranadasgupta.com Wed May 7 19:06:10 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 19:06:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] iraq political cartoons, or, "CIA: Syria harboring more than 15 million known Arabs within its borders" In-Reply-To: <5.0.0.25.2.20030507104603.02f63860@pop.ihug.co.nz> Message-ID: and of course we should not forget the onion. not a cartoon, but still: CIA: Syria harboring more than 15 million known Arabs within its borders http://www.theonion.com/onion3916/syria_harboring.html R -----Original Message----- From: reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net [mailto:reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net]On Behalf Of Peter Fogarty Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 4:16 AM To: Reader-List at Sarai. Net Subject: RE: [Reader-list] iraq political cartoons Don't forget Nowhereland http://www.pheline.com/grrl/nowhereland.htm At 01:22 PM 5/6/2003 -0400, you wrote: >also try getyourwaron.com > >also, look up cartoons from mark fiore... >and also shahid mahmood on chowk.com > >best, >zehra > > >>From: "Rana Dasgupta" >>To: , "Reader-List at Sarai. Net" >>Subject: RE: [Reader-list] iraq political cartoons >>Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 18:10:50 +0530 >> >>try this: >> >>http://www.ucomics.com/boondocks/ >> >>there's one every day, all current affairs-led. most over the past few >>months have had to do with iraq. >> >>R >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net >>[mailto:reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net]On Behalf Of Jamie Dow >>Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 3:53 PM >>To: Reader-List at Sarai. Net >>Subject: [Reader-list] iraq political cartoons >> >> >>Dear Sarai-folks, >>I am looking for good political cartoons relating to the war in Iraq. (or, >>failing that, on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict) >>Can anyone help me find such cartoons on the web? >>Thanks in advance, >>Jamie >> >>_________________________________________ >>reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >>Critiques & Collaborations >>To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe >>in the subject header. >>List archive: >> >>_________________________________________ >>reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >>Critiques & Collaborations >>To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with >>subscribe in the subject header. >>List archive: > > >_________________________________________________________________ >The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* >http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail > >_________________________________________ >reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >Critiques & Collaborations >To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with >subscribe in the subject header. >List archive: _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. List archive: From bea at nungu.com Wed May 7 19:11:07 2003 From: bea at nungu.com (::bea:) Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 19:11:07 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Soundscapes, NCPA, Mumbai, Message-ID: >if anyones in town please do come ;] > > > >transmit audio lab and beatrice gibson >present > >sound_scapes > >an exploration of local and global sounds and their influence on >mumbai's urban texture. a sound art performance using ambient / >sound sound as raw material for the sample mill. > >6:30pm, 09/05/03, little theatre >national center for the performing arts, mumbai >email bea at nungu.com for passes >www.transmitaudio.com >www.nungu.com > From bea at nungu.com Wed May 7 19:08:01 2003 From: bea at nungu.com (::bea:) Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 19:08:01 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Soundscapes, NCPA, Mumbai, Message-ID: if anyones in town please do come ;] transmitaudio and beatrice gibson present Soundscapes an exploration of local and global sounds and their influence on mumbai's urbantexture. a sound art performance in using ambient / sound sound as raw material for the sample mill. 6:30pm, 09/05/03, little theatre national center for the performing arts, mumbai email bea at nungu.com for passes www.transmitaudio.com www.nungu.com From aiindex at mnet.fr Thu May 8 00:13:23 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 19:43:23 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] The scars of nationalism In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The Daily Herald (Chicago, USA) 7 May 2003 http://www.dailyherald.com/special/passagefromindia/hindu.asp The scars of nationalism Suburban Hindu nationalists say their shakhas promote pride, but in India similar groups are linked to atrocities Story by Rukmini Callimachi Photos by M. Scott Mahaskey A stunned Shajahan Sheikh, 18, listens as her mother asks "Who will take her now?" referring to the scars she wears across her face after she was burned during the 2002 riots in Ahmedabad.AHMEDABAD, Gujarat - In his last hour, witnesses say, Ahsan Jafri knew he would not leave his house alive and so he delivered himself to the mob. Already, houses all around his bungalow were in flames. Jafri, this city's 74-year-old Muslim statesman, had provided refuge inside his two-story residence to more than 150 of his Muslim neighbors. When the Hindu mob turned violent, the Muslims had taken cover inside, thinking no harm would come to a retired member of the Indian parliament - even if he was a Muslim. It was Feb. 28, 2002, a day after Muslims armed with stones and kerosene set four train cars on fire in Godhra, trapping the passengers inside. Fifty-eight Hindus were burned alive, including more than a dozen children. Dozens of others were horribly scarred. The train was carrying hundreds of Hindu activists returning from a pilgrimage to the city of Ayodhya, where in 1992, hard-line Hindus tore down a 475-year-old Muslim mosque, claiming it stood on the birthplace of the god Ram. As relief workers gingerly untangled the limbs of the charred bodies on that February day, Hindu mobs erupted in a frenzy of vengeance. Now, reportedly 10,000 circled Jafri's home, chanting his name. When repeated calls to the police brought no help, some who survived said, Jafri decided to sacrifice himself in the hope others would be spared. He walked onto his doorstep. The mob demanded he say "Jai Shri Ram," or "Victory to Lord Ram," one of the gods in the Hindu pantheon. When he refused, they cut off his hands. Tanveer Jafri, son of former Indian Parliament member Ahsan Jafri, walks through his former home. Indian Security Forces are using the house as a dormitory.Survivors said the attackers wore saffron bandanas, the signature orange color of Hindu nationalism, which holds that because most Indians are Hindu, India should be a Hindu nation. They carried tridents, the three-pronged weapon of Shiva, the god of destruction. The mob asked Jafri again to honor their god. Again he refused, and they cut off his legs. When he declined a third time, the mob cut him down his middle and dragged his body into the street. There, they set him on fire on a road 10 miles from the ashram where half a century ago, Mohandas K. Gandhi perfected his doctrine of non-violence. After killing Jafri, the mob set fire to his house. At least 40 Muslims died. Ahsan Jafri has become the icon of the three-day rampage in which at least 2,000 Muslims were killed while another 100,000 became homeless, according to the U.S. State Department's 2002 human rights report on India. About 20,000 Muslim businesses were destroyed, said India's Concerned Citizen's Tribunal. Unlike the Godhra murders, which a Human Rights Watch investigation said appeared to be spontaneous violence, there was evidence the three-day attack on Muslims was premeditated, the report said. That opinion was echoed by India's National Human Rights Commission and the Concerned Citizen's Tribunal, the latter a commission of mostly retired Indian judges. Mobs, organized into "militia-like units," fanned out across the state, carrying printouts identifying addresses of Muslim homes and businesses, researchers said. Moreover, Smita Narula, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch and a Hindu, believes the violence against Muslims was masterminded by a family of Hindu nationalist organizations, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which all fall under the umbrella of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS. The National Human Rights Commission concurs. International outrage over the Gujarat violence was swift. In the United States, a federal agency commissioned by Congress recommended India be placed on the list of Countries of Particular Concern. Meanwhile, scholars and non-nationalist Hindus in the United States increasingly are concerned about the proliferation of RSS branches in this country, known here as the HSS, called shakhas. In 1991, there were just three shakhas in the United States; now, there are more than 50, according to the HSS web site. There is no evidence that connects the nationalist movement in the United States with the violence in Gujarat. But scholars, many of them Hindu, say local nationalists help support an atmosphere of hate - both ideologically and financially - in the mother country. Two local shakhas meet weekly in Schaumburg and Wheeling while a third Chicago-area one is being formed, organizers say. The Hindu Students Council, the HSS student wing, holds meetings at Northwestern University and the Illinois Institute of Technology. Their foremost symbol is the saffron flag, posted at every meeting. Before the Ahmedabad mob dispersed, it planted a saffron flag in the courtyard of Gulbarg Society, the subdivision that Ahsan Jafri had built as a refuge for Muslims everywhere. Suburban saffron "Just seeing it fills you with joy," said Vasant Pandav, 59, president of the Chicago-area HSS, referring to the orange-hued flag that has just been posted on a portable stand inside the Schaumburg Park District Community Center. It's early on a Sunday morning, and 19 members of the local HSS, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, are playing a traditional game called kabbadi, which resembles team tag. The flag is orange, Pandav said, because that is the color of the sun at dawn. It is a symbol of Hinduism meant to dispel ignorance, just as the morning sun dispels the darkness of night. Members like Shridhar Damle reject the idea that they promote an atmosphere of hate. Damle, of Villa Park, is a member of the local HSS and co-author of an authoritative account of the organization, "The Brotherhood in Saffron." "Our function is to organize Hindu society in America," Damle said. "We do not have time or energy to think about other things. "Our motto is 'The whole universe is one family,' so there is no room for hating each other." The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the "National Volunteer Corps," was founded in India in 1925, two decades before India won independence from Britain. India is a secular state, but the RSS holds that Hindus, 81 percent of India's 1 billion population, are the rightful heirs of the subcontinent. In India, young men meet daily in the early hours before dawn for shakha. They salute the saffron flag. They partake in games, drills and discussions. On this Sunday in Schaumburg, families are nearing the end of a 1_-hour session. They gather in a half-moon on the floor. "For all of history, Hindus have been kicked around and bullied," Pandav said, opening the discussion. "We need to unite so no one can beat us around. What are the latest examples of this?" The group mentions Maxim, the men's magazine that ridiculed Gandhi in a recent cartoon. It sparked an online campaign, forcing the editors to apologize. There's also the Seattle manufacturer who made a line of toilet seats embellished with Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction. "Should we take this kind of insult lying down? No!" said Pandav. "A thousand protest e-mails were sent. This is what we can do if there is unity." Pandav, who immigrated to Illinois in 1965 and lives in Downers Grove, says the suburban shakhas promote Hindu unity and pride in their heritage. Most of the attendees say they joined to reconnect with the homeland they miss. Sarifa Ajmeri, 35, recalls the night in which Hindu rioters passed by her window."English is the language of instruction in India. I grew up reading the Hardy Boys," said Saurabh Jang, 29, a former member of the Schaumburg shakha who came to Hoffman Estates in 1996. "I always felt that I didn't have a firm enough grounding in my own culture." Second-generation members like Ami Soni, 16, who was born in Libertyville, see it as a kind of Hindu Sunday school. "There's a lot of things I didn't know, like why does Ganesh have a trunk? Or why does Hanuman have the face of a monkey?" the Mundelein High School junior said. Hinduism, the world's third largest religion with 900 million practitioners, is a polytheistic faith with several thousand gods. It has no single sacred text, nor does it prescribe a single moral way of life. "Just as all rivers lead to the sea, eventually all paths lead to God" is a common Hindu saying that implies it is among the world's most tolerant religions. But scholars in the United States say the Hindu nationalist groups, however benign they may seem, support bigotry. "Americans should be concerned. Any religious organization that promotes what could be construed as bigotry is undesirable in this country," said Sumit Ganguly, a professor at the University of Texas and a Hindu. "They seem benign, but they're not. They extol Hindu virtues in a way which denigrates other faiths." Supporters of Hindu nationalism in the Chicago area are only a fraction of the nearly 125,000 Indian immigrants living here. According to Pandav, the greater Chicago HSS chapter has 50 active members and 3,000 supporters. Many Hindu immigrants are suspicious of nationalist groups, said Padma Rangaswamy of Clarendon Hills, author of "Namaste America." One local temple declined to host a VHP function, she said. "Most of the established religious institutions here want to separate themselves from extremist elements," she said. "The majority of Indians here don't even know they hold shakhas." Chicago-based scholar Lise McKean, author of "Divine Enterprise, Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement," said she fears the Hindu nationalists in this country "are creating another generation led to think that being Hindu somehow means that you're against Muslims." Rangaswamy said, however, there is growing concern within the Indian community about the rise of a Muslim-backed insurgency in Kashmir, where a reported 34,000 people have been killed since 1989. The recent spurt in shakhas goes hand-in-hand with the beginning of this conflict and the post-1990 wave of immigrants who came here to work in the tech industry, she said. "If things simmer down at home," she said, "these kinds of organizations would not have a breeding ground here." Pandav said the real issue is the general victimization of Hindus, like the 58 Hindus killed in Godhra. The retaliatory attack against Muslims, Pandav said, was a reaction to years of pent-up pain. He denies it was organized or that the RSS played a role. Damle, meanwhile, said it is possible some fringe nationalists may have been involved, but said that should not reflect on the Hindu nationalist movement. "If you're a member of a church, and you kill someone, does that mean that the whole church should be blamed?" Damle said. "Both what happened in Godhra and what happened in Ahmedabad is to be condemned, it was a 'mobocracy,'" he added. "But when somebody tries to attack me or my society, then it's my right to defend myself." At the Schaumburg shakha, there is another component besides games and talk. As the group discussion wraps up, one member calls, "Takhsat!" - Sanskrit for "Attention!" Immediately, the 19 men and women form a single-file line in front of the saffron flag. They stand alert, military-like. Their hands are clenched at their sides. On cue, they pivot. One by one, they march forward and salute the flag, hands raised to their hearts. No photography is allowed. A Hindu land On Jan. 30, 1948, Mohandas K. Gandhi was killed in New Delhi with three pistol shots to the chest. Gandhi had enraged Hindu nationalists by reluctantly supporting the creation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which was carved out of India in 1947. His killer, Nathuram Godse, was a former member of the RSS. As India grieved for Gandhi, the government banned the RSS for 18 months. Hindu nationalism instantly became a pariah movement. Scholars say the dangers of the movement were evident long before 1948. The RSS was founded with the explicit aim of creating a Hindu rashtra, or Hindu nation, McKean said. "The ideology of the RSS is fascist. It explicitly modeled itself after Mussolini and Hitler. There's plenty of scholarship to back that up," McKean said. "So when one uses the term, it's not some kind of name-calling." After nearly half a century on the fringe, RSS fortunes changed dramatically in the late 1980s when the Congress Party, which had governed India since independence, fell into disarray amid charges of corruption. In 1998, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which many contend is the RSS's political arm, won the general election. "What was once a fringe movement became politically mainstream," said Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan and a Hindu. Inauguration of Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat. It was the largest inauguration ceremony for any chief minister in Indian history.A year later, India tested nuclear weapons in a show of military might against Pakistan. Elementary school textbooks began to reflect a history that portrayed Muslims as aggressors, Varshney said. The State Department says that since the BJP's rise to power, some government bureaucrats began to enforce laws selectively to the detriment of religious minorities. The "Hinduization" of education and the revision of history books included hate propaganda against Muslims and Christians. But the BJP never had a secure grip. In Gujarat in the months preceding last year's violence, the BJP was losing ground, Varshney said. "Riots, when they can be blamed on Muslims, help the Hindu nationalist parties," said Varshney. The districts hardest hit by anti-Muslim violence last February voted overwhelmingly for the BJP, he said. Narendra Modi, the BJP-backed chief minister of Gujarat, was easily re-elected. In December, more than 120,000 people dressed in saffron crowded into the Ahmedabad stadium to bless Modi's inauguration. One young man held up a sign: "Narendra Modi = Chief Minister = Prime Minister = Hindu Rashtra." Funding hate Indian academics in the United States have voiced concerns about money raised here and sent to support Hindu nationalist activities in India. The India Development and Relief Fund, based in Maryland, says it serves economically disadvantaged people in India. It raised more than $10 million since its inception in 1989, according to the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, a group of Indian academics and activists in the U.S. The campaign says 82 percent of the money went to projects managed by groups that are explicitly part of the RSS family. The RSS has undertaken thousands of development projects, medical clinics, orphanages and schools in India. "But they're not exactly the Salvation Army," said Stephen P. Cohen of the Brookings Institute. He argues the majority of the relief work comes with an ideological price tag. The "Foreign Exchange of Hate," a report written by the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, claims the money went to RSS-affiliated charities that helped create the ideological environment that allowed the Gujarat violence to occur. After the report was released in November, 320 academics in the U.S. who specialize in South Asian studies independently circulated a petition supporting the conclusions. Motorola software engineer and former shakha member Jang, for instance, designates a portion of his $29.58 a month IDRF contribution to Ekal Vidyalayal, the "One Teacher Schools." "Sure, they run educational institutions that teach arithmetic and reading," said Shalini Gera of the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate and herself a Hindu. "But these schools, under the cover of relief work, are also teaching that Muslims and Christians are foreigners. It teaches them to hate." Children in a youth shakha march in a local gymnasium.Jang argues that Hindu schools merely counter what Christian missionaries already have been doing in India's tribal districts. "Christian missionaries never give something for nothing," he said, remembering the day Jehovah's Witnesses showed up at his mother's doorstep. In 1999, the State Department documented a wave of apparently organized attacks against Christians in the tribal belt of Gujarat, including forced conversions to Hinduism. A report released this March said Hindu nationalists in 2002 "began an ideological campaign to limit access to Christian institutions and discourage or, in some cases, prohibit conversions to Christianity." Until recently, employees at Sun Microsystems, Oracle and CISCO could donate to IDRF through payroll deductions matched by company donations. Oracle and Cisco halted matching contributions following the release of the "Foreign Exchange of Hate" report. Sun Microsystems is investigating, but has kept the charity on its payrolls. The Illinois chapter of the IDRF is run out of the Bloomington home of Shrinarayan Chandak. He said the IDRF "rejects violence of any kind" and described the foreign exchange report as "totally false" and "Hindu bashing." Jang is disturbed by the allegations and says they are false. "If I thought that the IDRF had anything to do with the riots, I would not give to them," he said. "If I thought the RSS had anything to do with it, I would stop being a member." Suicide squad On the outskirts of Bombay, in the district of Thane, is the Hindusthani Suicide Squad training ground. "There is nothing secret about what we are doing," said Col. Jayantrao Chitale, the founder of the camp that opened last fall. "A thousand years ago, we fought with sticks and stones. Then we fought with tanks. Now the new war is terrorism, and we plan to fight terrorism with terrorism." His target is not Gujarat's Muslims. It is Pakistan. For decades, Hindu nationalism has been fueled by Pakistan's aggression in Kashmir and acts of terrorism within India, such as the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 and on New Delhi's Red Fort in December 2000. So far, Chitale said, 40 young men have signed the "suicide bond" that binds them to give their life for Mother India. The camp once was closed by the Maharashtra state government. It was quietly allowed to reopen. Chitale said he is informing every member of the Lok Sabha, India's parliament, that he intends to train the suicide squad and keep it ready. It will only be deployed, he said, with government approval. "Gandhi was a very weak person," said Chitale, "and Indian people are like cattle. You drive them and they will be driven. We need to send the message to Pakistan that if you blow off one bus, we'll blow off five." Coming home "There were bodies in every single room," said Tanveer Jafri, 40, Ahsan Jafri's eldest son and the first family member to get to the house after the massacre. "Ahsan Jafri's son, Zuber, holds out the last photograph of his father.The first floor of Ahsan Jafri's house, with its bare cement and exposed wires, now is a dormitory for India's Central Reserve Police Force. Police were sent here last December to "protect minorities," 10 months after the riots. The 2002 State Department report said that during the Gujarat riots, the police reportedly told frantic Muslim callers, "We don't have orders to save you." "When we called for them, they wouldn't come," Tanveer Jafri said. "Now that we don't need them, they are here." The second floor of Jafri's house withstood the burning. More than 70 women and children, including Jafri's wife, huddled there in terror, waiting for it to end even as the walls became so hot that posters began to warp. A dozen crumpled Indian flags are buried in the rubble here, under a heavy coat of soot. The flags are relics from Ahsan Jafri's days as a leader of Gujarat's Congress Party. Tanveer Jafri bent down to inspect a flag that, by a dark coincidence, had crumpled into a shape like the outline of the subcontinent. One year later, no one has been convicted in connection with the deaths of the Muslims in Gujarat, said Human Rights Watch's Smita Narula. Tanveer Jafri collected 22 signed affidavits from the survivors of Gulbarg Society, naming specific attackers. All are out on bail, Jafri said. After taking testimony from survivors of the massacre, including Ahsan Jafri's daughter Nishrin Hussain, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended India be placed on the list of Countries of Particular Concern. The Bush administration responded this spring with "no." "The commission was deeply disappointed," Commission Chair Felice D. Gaer said. "There is credible evidence that orders were given to police not to interfere. Muslim homes were singled out for death and destruction." But the violence also gave birth to activism, including the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate. In the Chicago suburbs, a group of Muslim and Hindu residents began meeting at the Darien Public Library, forming the Coalition for a Secular and Democratic India. A tattered Indian flag lies on the third floor of Ahsan Jafri's home.The Indian Muslim Council also was formed. In March, it sponsored Nishrin Hussain, Jafri's daughter, to speak to the Islamic Foundation of Villa Park on the anniversary of the riots. She spoke to a packed hall, many of them members of the Gujarati Muslim community. About 2,000 Gujarati Muslims live in the Chicago area, said Akhtar Sadiq, president of the Gujarati Muslim Association of America, headquartered in Downers Grove. In Villa Park, the crowd surrounding Hussain supported her as she struggled at the podium, clasping a poem written by her father. It compares India to a beautiful woman whose hair was trimmed by a Hindu saint, whose form was called out by Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, and whose vibrant garments were painted by Buddha and an Islamic poet. Hussain broke down and couldn't read the final line. "This is my land," says the English translation. "This is my land. This is my land." Shridhar Damle's house is just three minutes from the Islamic Foundation. On a side table in his living room is a tiny saffron flag - a 2-inch version of the one ceremoniously installed each week in Schaumburg, in 50 shakhas nationwide and in 25,000 shakhas around the globe. It is the pilot light of a movement. "Everywhere you went in Gujarat, there were saffron flags," said Smita Narula. "You were literally tripping over them." For Damle, it stands for Hindu pride. For Hussain, it might be the last color her father saw. From subhajitc at rediffmail.com Thu May 8 11:52:08 2003 From: subhajitc at rediffmail.com (Subhajit Chatterjee) Date: 8 May 2003 06:22:08 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Sarai Independent Research Posting 4 Message-ID: <20030508062208.27765.qmail@webmail31.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030508/38c885c3/attachment.pl From oisika at yahoo.com Wed May 7 19:27:18 2003 From: oisika at yahoo.com (oisika chakrabarti) Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 06:57:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [DFN] Nominate a human rights activist Message-ID: <20030507135718.40625.qmail@web9805.mail.yahoo.com> Might be of interest to some on this list. Please nominate! Best, Oisika > > DIGITAL FREEDOM NETWORK: Events and Alerts > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > Nominate a human rights activist > URL: www.dfn.org/contact/hrdangers-form.htm > > (April 24, 2003) As part of our ongoing work in > support of human rights > activists around the world, the Digital Freedom > Network will be profiling a > series of human rights activists whose work > highlights the difficult > circumstances and dangers that human rights work > often entails. > > DFN is now accepting nominations for our Dangers of > Human Rights Work series > from which eight will be chosen to be featured in > stories on our Web site. > By submitting a nomination, you can help to > publicize the work of human > rights activists who have inspired you with their > dedication to their work. > > While we are interested in receiving a wide range of > nominees, we are > particularly interested in profiling activists whose > work focuses on the > following issues: children's rights, economic and > social rights, eradication > of poverty, media, population, refugee and IDP > issues, small arms, > technology and development, transitional justice, > and violence against > women. > > The deadline for submitting nominations is June 1, > 2003. > > Please submit your nomination at URL: > www.dfn.org/contact/hrdangers-form.htm. > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > From the Digital Freedom Network (www.dfn.org). This > article may be > reproduced or redistributed for online > not-for-profit use without prior > written consent as long as DFN is recognized with > this credit. > If you wish to SUBSCRIBE to this or other DFN > newsletters, please go to this > URL: www.dfn.org/subscribe > > > ===== __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com From dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org Thu May 8 02:41:38 2003 From: dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org (Dominique Fontaine) Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 17:11:38 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Press release Message-ID: Pour la version française: http://www.fondation-langlois.org/f/informations/nouvelles/index.html [ Apologies for cross-posting / veuillez excuser les envois multiples ] **************************************************************************** *** **Press Release** THE DANIEL LANGLOIS FOUNDATION AND THE GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM LAUNCH THE BOOK PERMANENCE THROUGH CHANGE: THE VARIABLE MEDIA APPROACH Montreal, May 7, 2003 - The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology and the Guggenheim Museum held a book launch at Ex-Centris today for PERMANENCE THROUGH CHANGE: THE VARIABLE MEDIA APPROACH. This bilingual publication was produced as part of a research partnership on variable media and published under the supervision of Alain Depocas, Director of the Foundation's Centre for Research and Documentation, Jon Ippolito, the associate curator of media arts at the Guggenheim Museum, and Caitlin Jones, a Foundation fellow working to preserve variable media at the Guggenheim. The book contains the proceedings of a conference held at the Guggenheim in New York in the spring of 2001 as well as texts by such authors as Bruce Sterling, Jon Ippolito, John Handhardt, Steve Dietz and Nancy Spector. It presents viewpoints, methods and case studies concerning the preservation of artwork created using non-traditional material, tools and technologies. Among the works explored are Nam June Paik's TV Garden, Meg Webster's Stick Spiral, Ken Jacobs' Bitemporal Vision: The Sea, Felix Gonzalez-Torres' Public Opinion, Grahame Weinbren and Roberta Friedman's The Erl King, and Mark Napier's net.flag. Those attending the book launch included Jean Gagnon and Alain Depocas for the Daniel Langlois Foundation and Jon Ippolito and Caitlin Jones for the Guggenheim. They presented the variable media concept for preserving artwork created using non-traditional means and also spoke about the Variable Media Network. Mr. Gagnon emphasized that one of the Foundation's key interests is research into preserving our digital artistic and cultural heritage, in other words, artworks commonly produced today via new technological means. "That's why we wanted a hand in developing a variable media network," Mr. Gagnon said. "The book marks the first milestone in this project." A Web site, *www.variablemedia.net*, has been created to inform people interested in the variable media concept. The site offers the book Permanence Through Change: The Variable Media Approach in PDF format. Also available are texts outlining the main aspects of the concept as well as full transcripts and video excerpts from the 2001 conference. In addition, video interviews with artists and answers to a questionnaire on variable media will later be added. As part of the same research, an experimental database is in the works and will be available to members of the Variable Media Network. This database will help preserve and share information taken from a questionnaire that artists are invited to fill out. Starting this fall, a version of this database will be offered on the variable media Web site. *About the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology* The Daniel Langlois Foundation's purpose is to further artistic and scientific knowledge by fostering the meeting of art and science in the field of technologies. The Foundation aims to nurture a critical awareness of technology's implications for human beings and their natural and cultural environments and to promote the exploration of aesthetics suited to evolving human environments. The Centre for Research and Documentation (CR+D) seeks to document history, artworks and practices associated with electronic and digital media arts and to make this information available to researchers in an innovative manner through data communications. - 30 - Sources Alain Depocas, adepocas at fondation-langlois.org Director, Centre for Research and Documentation, Daniel Langlois Foundation (514) 987-7177 www.fondation-langlois.org Information Marie&June Inc. (514) 270-5005 Marie at mariejune.com **************************************************************************** *** We've sent you this press release to keep you abreast of activities at the Daniel Langlois Foundation. If you wish to be taken off our mailing list, simply reply to this message with REMOVE in the subject line. Thank you. **************************************************************************** *** From bharatich at hotmail.com Thu May 8 09:20:03 2003 From: bharatich at hotmail.com (Bharati) Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 09:20:03 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] alleged bad charecters Message-ID: No Entry into Public Space for Suspicious Characters Who do you reckon is a suspicious character? Or, an alleged bad character, a possible thief? And does this person allowed to share the roads and parks with the Others? An interaction with the Lodi Road Police Station (PS) last evening offered some clues. The PS contentedly lies in the shadow of the ubiquitous Habitat Centre, where in fact, last week, seminars about the city and one dedicated to its waste were conducted. The PS also attracted visitors as the pavement crawling BMW lay parked there for a while. To cut a long story short, a group of wastepickers called up in office to let us know that at least 2 persons , also wastepickers whom we know rather well, had been picked up by the police. Before this, they had already grouped up and made one visit to the police station themselves, a practice followed with generous success. Then, pissed off with a system invincible except by class and contacts, they asked us to help. Their problem began as they entered. As they walked in , 5-6 of them, a policeman (one presumes) in plainclothes handed them a duster and asked them to start cleaning a posse of cars (towed away, or recovered) parked outside. They protested, saying they had come for work. He slapped them and said that this didn't matter : he needed them to clean up a few cars. They cleaned one and escaped inside, to find their friends seated, on the floor, well slapped. Nobody would tell them anything. Their friends got them to take away their bags and sell off any waste. Wastepickers typically survive on a day's earning. Burn his bag, or lock him up and the day is lost. If he is unlucky, he'll be locked in for a long time. I went to the Police Station because I was both fearful (visions of beatings that never show on the skin) and curious about the absence of any obvious allegation. Here is what happened : A row of persons were sitting hunched on the floor, including our 2 ragpickers : Munir and Malik Mullah. Better slapped and with further work experience : they had spend at least an hour cleaning the cars and pushing them so that there was place for new ones. A team of 3 policemen were sitting on chairs, making notes in giant registers. It took 5 minutes to grab their attention; They directed us to the Sub Inspector In charge. Something Sunil, who explained why . Apparently, Lodi Colony is inhabited by 'good families' whose houses have been robbed in the last few weeks , mostly in the day . Today, the police decided to go and fix this problem Big Time. The sent out vehicles and picked up anyone sitting, standing or walking in the back lanes. Why? Because only suspicious characters hang around in backlanes - they want to be hidden. The waste pickers had a Chintan I-Card, which often helps them negotiate. Not this time. " Whether a man has a CBI card, an IB card or a Chintan card, we will not let him off. " SI Sunil declared, in a contorted, perverse understanding of equality and justice that could only have been so finely honed after years of practice Pardon my legal illiteracy. The norm SI Sunil said was that persons could be detained for upto 23 hours and that they would be given a meal. (madam, I also eat at erratic hours). The SHO-tough, aggressive Omwati Malik, finally allowed the 2 to leave on condition that I (alleged good character) undertook a written verification saying that these persons were not thieves. So I vouched for them. Good character transmitting goodness. The other policemen were livid and loudly grumbled about making a mountain of a molehill. And the other back-laners stayed put. As I left, the Sub Inspector asked me to tell everyone this : (Take Heed!) 1.. No one should be found idling their time by the police. 2.. No one should be found in back lanes, or they will be caught again. (what about those who venture there to chuck their garbage which attracts ragpickers? We will be discussing this backlane duality later today in a meeting with the police. Yesterday, they were busy with a VIP route. ) 3.. All wastepickers must also carry a bag of waste at all times to authenticate their occupation. I presume therefore that an environmentalist must carry a plant, a doctor a stethoscope and students a bag of books. Maybe a list exists for alleged respectable occupations and their insignia. Wastepicking could never qualify, but maybe it now has an honorary inclusion under public pressure. Our friends, Our Alleged Bad Characters revealed more , after they were released, in a spontaneous meeting just behind The Habitat Centre: 1.. Neither of them were in back lanes. One was in a market. The other was sitting on a pavement, exhausted by the heat, waiting for his wife to collect waste from across the road in their cycle rickshaw (sorry, they were fund to be in possession of another banned item. Rickshaws are not allowed in the area). 2.. Both had bags of waste which their friends took away to sell. 3.. Both felt that there was a dual purpose in their detention : slave labour and pleasing the officials who live in Lodi Colony. Anyone who is the opposite of middle class is not only being thrown out of their homes (mass slum demolitions without notice as per the High Curt Order) but off the roads, pavements, parks, and everywhere where they can 'contaminate' the city. The drive is moving at a frantic pace. It's an epidemic. It's spreading rapidly within all the arms of the government. How does one contain it? PS : the msg was still in the outbox, so let me add. We've had the meeting. The SHO has demanded a list of 'thieves' from the ragpickers coz she is convinced they know all of them and that all of them, like the ragpickers, are not residents of the area. Even I, with no lofty expectations, found myself stupefied. All the beat walas were shown the cards and asked to respect them, and to call on the nos (Chintan office) in case of problems. We said we wd let her know if we found thieves (actually the wastepickers know a few for sure but their dilemma is of handing them over and then letting them be beaten up.) She pointed out persons she thot were substance abusers from the group (I can tell from your looks) which was totally ridiculous. They screamed back at her and then, she was a bit taken aback. Let's see now. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030508/93a786ff/attachment.html From rakesh at sarai.net Thu May 8 13:41:16 2003 From: rakesh at sarai.net (rakesh) Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 13:41:16 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Fw: Job Vacancy Message-ID: <200305081341.16248.rakesh@sarai.net> Friends Here I am forwardng is a job vacancy for the post of president of Iraq go through it. rakesh ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Fwd: Fw: Job Vacancy Date: Wed, 07 May 2003 06:24:42 +0000 From: "samar anarya" To: alok_marx at rediffmail.com, alokgupta55555 at indiatimes.com, bela at csdsdelhi.org, bhombol at rediffmail.com, binusundas at yahoo.co.in, chrdkkr at sancharnet.in, dadeepti at yahoo.co.in, disha_jnu at rediffmail.com, dsp_udr at sancharnet.in, harishd at vsnl.net, hiren402 at yahoo.com, j_dreze at hotmail.com, mayurchetia at rediffmail.com, mickymagic7 at yahoo.co.in, naga at giasdl01.vsnl.net.in, nilanjana_seng at yahoo.com, panini_anand at rediffmail.com, pvchr at rediffmail.com, pvchr_5 at sify.com, rajeevkeshav at yahoo.co.in, rakesh at sarai.net, rashjnu at rediffmail.com, rehana_762003 at yahoo.com, renukabir at yahoo.co.in, sambit222 at yahoo.com, sandip.anand at nfoindia.com, sarc at rediffmail.com, saudaminiunlimited at rediffmail.com, gshail7 at rediffmail.com, smandir at vsnl.com, sonjoy at sancharnet.in, surabhi_23 at rediffmail.com, swaps_v at yahoo.com, moirangi at yahoo.com, ustiwary at homail.com, ustiwary at sancharnet.in, vinaykshukla at yahoo.com, vinayranjan at hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Attention Taureans! See what's in store. http://server1.msn.co.in/features/taurus/index.asp Read on. ------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: wez.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 101998 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030508/b09422db/attachment.jpg From eye at ranadasgupta.com Thu May 8 14:53:17 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 14:53:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] More Argentina Message-ID: Posted to Nettime by eleusa at riseup.net. R [RE:] magazine / Argentina <<>> U.S. Contents: 1. Coordination and Cooperation by MTD Solano 2. the Piquete by the Collectivo Situaciones and MTD Solano 3. Occupy and Resist by Tierra del Sur Cultural Center, Buenos Aires 4. Two Companions are on Their Way by MTD Luagno Coordination and Cooperation: Methods of Our Struggle (translation from Spanish by Veronika) On August, 8th of 1997 we created the Movement of Unemployed Workers of Solano (Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados Solano) to be able to search for a collective solution to the problem of unemployment. We made our first assembly with 30 neighbors. After the fourth assembly we talked about what sort of organization we would build. After a lot of discussion, we agreed on our organization principles: “AUTONOMY, HORIZONTALITY AND DIRECT DEMOCRACY”. AUTONOMY: against the state, union centers, political parties and institutions. But autonomy means also the space that we build from a practice that leads us to new relationships, to a new world radically opposed to the world of capitalism. From the confrontation with reality grows a new subjectivity, a new thought. The new that we are living is what motivates us. This new way of working is above all else inside the movement, where daily we are confronted by an enigma and, since it is something new, we have to think a great deal. HORIZONTALITY AND DIRECT DEMOCRACY: because in the movement there are no places of hierarchy, there are no members above any others. Decisions are taken in assemblies where each of us has the right to participate, give opinions and decide through consensus. In these five years that weÂ’ve been advancing together we have been learning that the only way to achieve our rights and demands is struggle, organization, collective elaboration and direct action. In this course rose the statement that identifies us: “For Work, Dignity and Social Change”. We believe that social change is the only way to get out of our situation of hunger, misery, unemployment; all products of this system. Currently, the Movement is composed by seven neighborhoods (Florida, Sarita, Monteverde, San Martín, Iapi, Berazategui, Claypole) with around 1,200 organized members. Decisions are taken in neighborhood assemblies by consensus, which delegate to some members the duty of carrying that neighborhoodÂ’s concerns to the general table. At this table are joined the delegates of each neighborhood who carry the voice of theirs and other represented neighborhoods. Participation is equal among all the delegates of the different areas (administration, security, political relations, training, health, community purchases, economy, press, productive workshops, etc.) who bring proposals, questions or information about these areas to be evaluated in the neighborhoods. On the other hand, each neighborhood has a neighborhood table in which the neighborhood delegates, delegates from work-groups and the different areas of the Movement take part to discuss on their specific problems. It works in the same way as the general table, everybody brings the voices of their group and that of others as well. Each area and each neighborhood is autonomous in its functioning; that autonomy is necessary but it canÂ’t contradict the principles, criteria and agreements of the Movement. Our Movement couldnÂ’t have advanced and grown in this rich experience of fight without the coordination with other sectors of the popular field. We took part in the Coordinadora de Trabajadores Desocupados “Aníbal Verón”. It is difficult to coordinate; sometimes different forms of construction get confused and warped making it difficult to advance. This happened in the Coordinadora and it was decided that the coordination would be divided in two, forming on the one hand the CTDs (Coordinadora de Trabajadores Desocupados) “Aníbal Verón” and on the other the MTDs (Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados) “Aníbal Verón”. Even though we reasserted that we are companions and we go on fighting in coordination. Now, we are taking part in the MTDs “Aníbal Verón”. We have political agreements that have been useful to coordinate different fighting plans, often with success; these agreements are: * Respect for the autonomy of each organization, its identity and form of construction. * Autonomy against the state, union centers, political parties and institutions (churches, NGOs, etc.). * As the method for our struggle, direct action, as a mechanism to make demands before the state. This is so because no government official is concerned about our needs as people. * None of the movements that take part in the Coordinadora can take part in any electoral process of any kind. Although we respect the free decision of the members of every movement to support a candidate or vote, the Coordinadora calls for non-participation. * The identity of the Coordinadora is one of organized unemployed workers in struggle with real insurrection in the neighborhoods. * As a front of battle apart from work and dignity, the struggle for human rights: for the freedom and amnesty of all popular fighters, trial and punishment for the oppressors and repressors of the people. Movements that constitute the MTDs “Aníbal Verón”: M.T.D. “Darío Santillán” Alte. Brown (Bs. As.), M.T.D. Lanús (Bs. As.), M.T.D. Lugano (Cap. Federal), M.T.D. Quilmes (Bs. As.), M.T.D. J.C. Paz (Bs. As.), M.T.D. Varela (Bs. As.), M.T.D. Guernica (Bs As.), M.T.D. “Darío Santillán” (localidad de Cipolletti en Río Negro), M.T.D. Solano (Bs. As.), M.T.D. Esteban Echeverría (Bs. As.), M.T.D. Berisso (Bs. AS.), M.T.D. 22 de Julio (localidad de Allen en Río Negro). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ Colectivo Situaciones: A conversation with MTD Solano* situaciones at sinectis.com.ar (Translated from Spanish by Ivan A. Ramirez) The Piquetes Solano: -I think that the piquetes blasted away our sense of helplessness, but in a new way. We shook the country out of the lethargic dream that Menem and his politics were selling, like a bolt of bright new light. Together with many other struggles, we woke the country from the sweet dreams of post- modernity. They branded us with a name—the Piqueteros--but for us the piquete became the only way in which we could talk with the rest of the country, our way of telling them that there were other methods of struggle, other ways to fire-up our lives with dignity. Situationes: -How did this idea arise? How did you get organized? Solano: -The piquetes began in the interior, in Cutralco, Tartagal, Mosconi, Santiago del Estero, and they spread throughout the country, blocking the trade routes that fed the most important cities. Once that had started, people started to take the piquetes seriously as a way fighting, even here, in Buenos Aires, but there were tremendous arguments over the plans; over whether it was correct to ask for the work plans or not [The “plans” are worker´s benefits. They are obtained from the government by demand from the piqueteros. They are used by the piqueteros to install and support communty run bakeries, kitchens, popular education projects and more (translatorÂ’s note)]. Some said that we were only up to reformist self-help schemes. Instead of getting embroiled in that argument, we decided to put it into practice. At that point our organizing had only reached the level of church groups, but we were always talking about a greater struggle. We were always talking about taking over the Municipality, raising the stakes, and then there was the first road blockade. The first was somewhat improvised, and some of our compañeros were arrested. But, little by little, it started to come into evidence that a new way of fighting had been developed. The most important thing, however, was that our numbers started to grow; we started to build productive workshops, to enable people, to teach what we were learning, all of those things that are so much more important than the blockades. The blockades are only the most visible element, and so it seems that they are all there is to see, but the struggle is really what we had been doing before. In reality, we only started the blockades once we had already gotten organized. Yet the press still insists in disparaging us, talking about unemployed hoodlums, masked criminals, entirely marginal people, bums -ItÂ’s important to make it clear that from the beginning all of the left, including the progressives, accused us of begging, self-help, reformism, and did not see what the central demands of the organization entail: work, dignity, social change. It was obvious that many things went beyond the plans; even if many organizations did not, because once they had gotten the plans they would call it quits. The piquetes have changed a lot. At first, in the first blockades, we kept our faces completely uncovered, we did have some rocks, kept hidden, and we did not reveal them because we did not want to frighten people. It was a process; we suffered escalating repression and we started to cover our faces, so that we could not be identified. We only used violence as self- defense. We did not start to throw sticks and stones in order to attack, but to defend ourselves. It is also essential to point out that the piquetes and the plans are just another factor in our struggle; they are not fundamental. -The plans are the reality that allows us to organize ourselves. Clearly, we canÂ’t take control over a factory. We are very different from other kinds of organizations, groups that do very real work, because we cannot use the neighborhood organizations as an “excuse” that leads to other goals. -There were some hard moments in the first blockades, but things changed after Mosconi [This is a reference to the rebellion of the people of Gral Mosconi; which is in the province of Salta. The rebellion took place in June 2001; strong repression left a count of two dead. ]. From then on the consciousness of our compañeros changed. At first we had to insist that everything was going to be alright, we had to struggle to keep our compañeros from being frightened, and more often than not we had to keep our sticks and our slingshots hidden. We had strong disagreements on whether to keep our faces covered or not. It took time for people to understand that we needed some kind of self-defense, that the security compañeros could not show their faces to the militias. In the blockades that we did with the congress of La Matanza, the people of the CTA [Central de los Trabajadores Argentinos (translatorÂ’s note).] would demand that we remove our hoods. We took that to the assembly, and the assembly decided that we might as well abandon the piquete if we were forced to go unmasked. The system considers the blockades as crimes, they are illegal, but to us they are entirely legitimate. We finally understood this, and it changed our organization fundamentally. Situaciones: -We understand that what makes you different from other organizations of the unemployed is that you organize workshops, projects, task groups, that you have a burgeoning collective life: how does this difference manifest itself in the conception of the piquetes? Solano: -I have been to other piquetes and our organization is different to theirs, our security criteria are different, and our compañeros have a different notion of discipline. It would be very surprising to catch one of our compañeros drinking at one of our piquetes; that someone is asked to leave because he is a security risk. There have been a lot of changes in the neighborhoods, in the lives of our compañeros, because you have to keep in mind that these were compañeros who, a year ago, would take 30 pesos in bribes for their vote, who were forced to steal in order to survive. -Our common development, our formation, holds all of this together. ThatÂ’s its bedrock. Nobody imposes a drinking ban, or stops a compañero from drinking; we talk about these things at the assemblies. Basically, the coordinators donÂ’t get to decide whether drinking is forbidden or not, rather, we look for a consensus; we discuss the reasons why it might not be prudent. ThatÂ’s the great difference; itÂ’s not because you happen to wear a hood, or carry the biggest stick. Situaciones: -When did you get the first plans, the ones that helped you to organize? Solano: -In 1997, as soon as we started marching onto the Municipal Hall, we got 50 plans. We didnÂ’t do any blockades then, we marched to the Department of Labor. So, we got our first plans through our actions on the Municipal Hall. We achieved autonomy in the handling of the plans after two blockades. Situaciones: -This idea, to transform this relationship with the State: was this a conscious decision at the time? Solano: -Yes, and this is what made us different to other organizations, now there are many organizations that are beginning to do the same thing. The problem, basically, was that the municipality would put pressure on the compañeros to keep them from organizing. 120 workers got work under the StateÂ’s plan; only 5 or 6 of them are still part of the MTD. We soon realized that it made no sense to promote a project that would extend the process we wanted to redress. Situaciones: -We have discussed the heterogeneity of the piquetero movement on several occasions. How do you explain this heterogeneity? Solano: -Our difference to that of other movements is becoming increasingly apparent, that is, above all, because many others still work in the classical way: they say, “we seize power from above and then we change things;” while we say: from below, without any desire to seize power, we struggle. Those other organizations see themselves as political actors and they have revolutionary strategies; we see ourselves, like the Subcomandante Marcos says, as rebels seeking social change. For example, they say that what we call popular education de-forms people rather than in- forming them. They donÂ’t make any attempt to tie popular education to political education, on the contrary. We were below, at the bottom, and we donÂ’t want to rise, we want to stay there, we will always be rebels. We are at the bottom and we donÂ’t want to come up. We have a lot of compañeros that stand out, but none that aspire to lead. We all lead, all of the time. -In any case, these differences wonÂ’t let us lose sight of the fact that we have to organize, that we have to coordinate and articulate, that it is necessary to go on discussing things and coming to agreements, struggling together. We are not saying that we know the truth and the others donÂ’t. We know that we build things differently; but these differences can be coordinated, just as long as we keep raising the call for social change, for dignity, and that we donÂ’t take advantage of people, say, by using them to win elections. Situaciones: -I have heard some piquetero compañeros complain that they felt “useless,Â’ “forgotten,” “left behind,” in their everyday lives, yet, at the blockades they feel different; “empowered,” they feel that “they have a choice.” Solano: -ItÂ’s true; itÂ’s a liberated zone, the only place where the cop wonÂ’t treat you like trash. There, the cop says to you, “pardon me, we come to negotiate.” That same policeman would beat you to death if he saw you alone on the street. -ItÂ’s true that you feel yourself to be in control of an area during a blockade, but I believe that the compañeros are aware that organizing empowers them; that it is not only the blockade, but the organization that makes you strong. For example, today the compañeros are putting up signs on the street, they put up MTD signs, with an small arrow, indicating how to get to the shelter. These are the strong signs of an emerging counter-power. Situaciones: -People say that some of the compañeros have a purely pragmatic relationship with the movement; that they only come to get the plan. How does this actually work out in the piquetes? Solano: -The majority of the compañeros that join the movement--more than eighty percent--start out only because they have concrete necessities. They need something to eat, they donÂ’t have groceries, they donÂ’t have work; they have nothing. At first they come for the plans, but once there is a real process, things change, they begin to feel the excitement and the need to get organized. But yes, some compañeros only go because the assembly voted that those failing to attend the blockade don't get a plan. Situaciones: -Some say that taking to the streets is a way of saying “no” to a model, “no” to a system. I think that this can be understood in two different ways: in the first we speculate that the model failed and that you represent the moment when the victims stand forth, like with “Farinello,” [Luis Farinello is a priest who is dedicated to the cause of the poor and the chronically unemployed in Argentina (translatorÂ’s note).] whose “people” never step out of their role as the witnesses of misery: those that are “left-out,” those that beg, the impoverished, the forgotten. But, there is another way to see the issue, one where the model did not fail, where exclusion simply does not exist because there is no place of inclusion, where exploitation is merely a desirable variable in the system. Things being as they are, we feel that the stance taken by most of the people that participate in the piquetes is not that of the victims, rather, they present a very clear subjective desire to work and think actively. Solano: -We donÂ’t want to be included. At least, I know that I donÂ’t want to be exploited ever again, to have Fortabat or Macri as bosses again, thatÂ’s for sure. I have not struggled just to return to exploitation. I believe, personally, and I believe that many compañeros share this belief in regards to themselves, that I am not made to be included, but this is something else altogether. -One of the things that we know with certainty is, precisely, what we donÂ’t want; getting organized makes this clear. To discover where we want to go, what it is that we are building, that is what is uncertain, new, and this is something that has not been closed-off, itÂ’s unfinished, something that we think anew every day. The organization is dynamic, it changes and it reflects upon its changes. ItÂ’s true that the blockades are exciting, but what is truly exiting about the organization is that it brooks no dissociation between that excitement and our everyday lives. ThatÂ’s where the reality of the organization lies; the piquete can only express what we have managed to build in our everyday life, otherwise it is useless. The system has nothing to offer us in regards to this task, and we are forced to build an alternate history. We donÂ’t demand things because we want to be included; we only demand things in order to continue getting organized. Situaciones: -How is a piquete agreed upon, how and where do you block the road; who makes the decisions? Solano: -Each and every zone reports on their situation. Then, depending upon each neighborhoodÂ’s situation, a battle plan is proposed. We discuss whether we will march or blockade. Each neighborhood assembly decides upon their action first, then, at the table, we try to reach a consensus based upon the choices made by the different assemblies. We begin to see what we may be able to achieve as the proposals are presented. We never talk about the specific location that we intend to block at the assembly, for security reasons. We choose the method but not the details. -In the assemblies we determine the roles and the zones. For example, we determine which of the compañeros will take care of food, security and any injuries. That is to say, the different zones coordinate particular activities and then there is someone who is elected to serve as a nexus for all these zones. In contrast, other organizations have leaders who decide who does security; yet the location of the blockade and, therefore, the security zone itself—in our experience it is security that decides where a blockade will occur—remains unclear to the leaders. There are many different kinds of organization. Situaciones: -It seems as if security and the political criteria of the blockade always respond to the internal needs of the organization, rather than to the political conjuncture or to any possible external support. Solano: -Yes, but these internal necessities entail much more than our “economic needs.” For example, we blockaded because of the events at Mosconi; those events implicated our identity, because if a compañero is affected in Mosconi, well, that also concerns us, even if it is something that does not seem to affect us directly in Solano. -Likewise, we blockaded the Pueyrredon Bridge because the compañeros at La Matanza were under the threat of repression; we said to the government, “to repress over there, youÂ’ll have to also repress over here.” We saw that they were beating our brothers (despite DÂ’Elia and Alderete), so we had to come out to fight for them. Keep in mind, though, we do not build toward the conjuncture. We are not interested in elections, whether people should vote or not. -Another example; when Patricia Bullrich [Patricia Bullrich is the head of ArgentinaÂ’s Department of Labor (translatorÂ’s note).] organized an offensive, we said, “we have to come out because they want they want to cut our plans, they don´t want to renew them." It was an attempt to put a stop to our organization. What we never do is to come out when a super- structural power tries to convene us, when an organization with a pre- determined political agenda tries to mobilize us; we analyze and decide upon a situation according to our own agenda. - We donÂ’t want to foreclose anyoneÂ’s space; we donÂ’t want to be a vanguard. We build because there is a reality that needs to be transformed, and we organize and join-up with those that are changing their situation. We are not interested in going to La Matanza to harangue and agitate, just in order to gain space. We donÂ’t conceive politics in that manner. Yes, we believe that the base needs to be organized, but it is up to the compañeros at La Matanza to organize their own area. We want to coordinate our movement with those that are building theirs, but we donÂ’t dispute them any political space. -It canÂ’t be said, as others claim, that we are just a “base” movement. We do have a political project. In fact, we do know how to read the current political conjuncture, but our project occurs at the neighborhood level, with the people. Our analysis is more comprehensive, precisely, because we work in this manner. They canÂ’t reproach us for lacking a strategy and a guiding political structure; thatÂ’s a lie. The movement itself is a political tool; all of us, all the compañeros in the movement, constitute this tool and we all work on the analysis. When we are asked what our political project is, we explain that it is this: politics from below, a comprehensive politics from below. Our goal is the complete formation of the person, in every possible sense. Everything counts, everything is important. -We donÂ’t believe that we need a national front, one that encompasses the entire country, in order to succeed. I donÂ’t believe that there will be an alliance or a front that will take power; there will be many fronts. *This brief excerpt of a conversation between Collectivo Situaciones and MTD Solano is taken from the book La Hipótesis 891: Más allá de los Piquetes, Ediciones de mano en mano, November 2002, pages 54 to 62. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Buenos Aires, Argentina 08/12/2002 In the past year and a half, Argentina has seen the birth of at least four squatted social and cultural centers. Two are located in the capital district, one in the outskirts and one in Cordoba City. The squatted social and cultural centers are all places that were left abandoned and taken over by groups of people to serve as communal living space and to hold events and activities accessible to the surrounding community. Those who squat and maintain these spaces see them as partial answers to the social and cultural dilemmas in the cities of Argentina, as well as the most direct and concrete way to actualize the struggle against speculation and private property. The dominant culture in Buenos Aires is that of television, pop music, and (even though more than half the population live in poverty) consumerism. The entertainment industry is owned by the same people who operate the largest enterprises and the government, so the end product has a dual purpose: to earn money, and to manipulate the state of mind and political conscience of the people. The squats offer independent shows, theatre, poetry, music and parties (for which they rarely, if ever, charge entry fee) as well as an open forum for people from outside the squat to put on their own events. Many times the performers are members of the squat or the surrounding community. Artistic and musical programs have been cut from almost all public schools, and the subjects are rarely taught in such a way that people learn them well. Many people either finish or drop out of school lacking the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. The social and cultural centers provide free classes including foreign languages, school help, juggling, drawing, welding, theater, and yoga to name a few. The squatters struggle for a society in which all resources, including knowledge, are freely exchanged. Many would like to create full- fledged free schools, but few people trained in teaching have shown enough interest to start such a project yet. Food scarcity is a fact of life in a country where the food prices have quadrupled in the last six months. In the same time period, more than 300,000 workers have been laid off, putting more and more people below the poverty line each month. The squatters live in community, not only to fulfil social needs, but also to lighten the burden of obtaining the necessities of life on the individual, and are almost always able to put food on the table. They are horizontaly organized and make decisions in assembly by consensus. For the most part, these assemblies take place weekly and function to better the organization of the activities and community. Squatting movements date back centuries, but the trend to create free artistic, cultural, and social spaces has its roots in the anarcho-punk movement in Europe during the last 30 years. Nowadays there are thousands of squats in European cities being operated this way, with well-developed networks of information exchange and mutual aid. Notwithstanding the lack of affordable housing, the act of taking over abandoned spaces is a political act for the squatters. Their ideological background is mostly anarchistic; they see private property as one of the bases of inequality. A slogan frequentley seen on the walls of the squats is: “If housing is a privelege, squatting is a right!”. The squatters, many having formed their ideology through immersion in or contact with the anarcho-punk culture, differ from traditional anarchists in that they want not only societal, political and economic revolution, but complete cultural change as well. They want not to not only topple all power-based relationships in the public and commercial sphere, but also abolish them on a personal level: between men and women, adults and children. Since they have no faith in reformist or systematic change, they plan their lifestyles and the activities they generate to confront the structures of inequality and oppression in society, and doing so make political and social resistance a daily part of their lives. For example, the free classes are directly in contrary to the hierarchical educational system. The communal lifestyle confronts a culture based on the family structure, which in their experience and opinion is oppressive. The ideology is basically the same in all of the squats, but the experience is lived out differently in each place. In the Social Center in Laferrere, the original idea was to create a community center with open, free space for nearby residents to put on activities. Due to the lack of interest in the adults of the surrounding community, the squatters had to create their own, and now, after a year and a half, there are free classes offered every day, now attended by people of various ages. The rest of the time the space is used by children from the neighborhood as an alternative to spending the days in the street, the most common way for kids to pass the time in that area, one of the poorest in Greater Buenos Aires. According to them, "The idea that motivates us the most is that of generating an anti-authoritarian conscience, fomenting free education and denying the oppressive values of the established society. There is no property law to respect; it's all about recuperating stolen and abandoned spaces, freeing them. Occupy to liberate souls and minds. Solidarity, respect, and mutual aid are indispensable, conscience and ideas are essential." The Trivenchi Brothers Circus was squatted about a year ago. The group entered the space with very concrete ideas about creating a training space for circus related skills, putting on events and holding free classes in the field. They have put together a real circus that puts on functions each week, and have daily classes. The Social and Cultural Center Tierra del Sur existed as a cultural center in a rented space for three years until the cost of the rent upped and forced them to look for an alternative way to create space for the classes, activities, parties, and performances they generate last December. "The proposal was to generate a space for free expression, calling together everyone to participate in the construction of a place where another way of life would be possible." They have a photoduplicator which most of the anti-authoritarian collectives in Bs. As. use to print material. One can see in the relatively smooth functioning of the community and the activities that the group has been maintaining such a project for years. Kasa Las Gatas, in Cordoba was squatted as much for the participants' need for a place to live as to create a social and cultural center. "Squatting is a conscious act of rebellion that destroys the chains that impede our road toward liberty and constructs a better world, takes what is ours and advances along this road, step by step, with no fear that dignity won't win out." Tierra del Sur and the Trivenchi Brothers Circus are under constant threat of eviction. The courts are currently hearing their cases, and if and when the judges decide, the police come to evict. Most of the people involved in the squats have been aqainted for years, through social events and political organizing. In the past few months they have begun to come together in a more formal manner. In September they will hold the first regional squatter convention of the southern cone, the idea being to exchange experiences and skills to strengthen their functioning and doing so infect others so they also open such spaces. What was a few years ago isolated deeds is beginning to constitute a true movement. The call is clear: “Dream, Live, Strugle. Occupy and Resist!” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Two Companions Are On the Way by MTD Lugano (Translated from spanish by El Viejo) Two companions are on the way Falling because of the blood, Their shouts of protest With bullets in their bodies. We were all there and that day, With wounds of hatred, Remained in our memory, Two companions are on the way. Collapsed, Through the dark station Amid the shouts and the running Of innocent people Stepping in pools of blood. Two companions are on the way Falling because of the wounds, let's not blind our eyes, let's not deafen our ears they want to tell us something There's a world of people Asking... Where were we all How is it that we allowed that they be harmed? The answers given Will not return the life To our companions I replied with sadness on my Face. Let's not blind our eyes Let's not deafen our ears They want to tell us something That along the road will arise Their shouts of protest And there will be among us Dario and Maxi, Ready for the fight Yohanna ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- eleusa2: R:adical E:xchange all translations coordinated by the Eleusa Production Initiative contact eleusa at riseup.net the RE: Magazine spanish version available # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo at bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime at bbs.thing.net From manjupannu at rediffmail.com Thu May 8 15:05:25 2003 From: manjupannu at rediffmail.com (manju singh bhati) Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 15:05:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] April posting. Message-ID: Government Hospital se! These days I have been visiting a government hospitals.Quiet often i sit on the row of the benches in OPD meant for pregnant women.The most fascinating thing i saw during these visits was exclusive range of colours of their lipsticks.I have never seen those shades anywhere else.These shades may be a hinderance for attending doctors to diagnose if the patient was anaemic or not but for me theye were quiet interesting. Another thing i noticed was the large number of teenagers sitting in the queue for their turn.Kaushalya Devi was unsuccesfully trying get pregnant for the last 6 years.It is interesting to note that her age is just 19 and that she got married at the age of 13.Only thing she knew was that pregnancy follows marriage.She did not have an iota of an idea about puberty and birth control.And she was not an isolated case there. Gulnar,19 had given birth to a girl two days before I met her.This was her second child and that too within two years of marriage.Needless to say that she was very weak and needed blood but not even her husband was willing.Her own opinion was that in the case of she giving birth to male child,things would have been better for her.There several other similar cases where even family members had refused to donate blood to the suffering woman. In the labour ward I met expecting mothers who were very much sure about the gender of their would be babies,not because they had undergone sex determination test but because of the kind of food they had taken. I had this idea that emotional support is needed during labour.Husband or a chosen member of the family should be allowed in the labour room,but i found out that this was just my opinion.Ironically most of the women had chosen Kasturba Gandhi Hospital because here no one was permitted to have their husbands or relatives by their sides.The unanimous opinion was ,"unhen ghar pe roj jhelte hain ,wo kya kam hai!yahan roz ki afat se to bache hue hain".About labour pain they said,"Ye dard bhi to usi ne diya hai,yahan aake kaun sa marham lagayega".All of them laughed in approval. From rajarambhadu at yahoo.co.in Thu May 8 14:59:50 2003 From: rajarambhadu at yahoo.co.in (rajaram bhadu) Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 14:59:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Independent Rearch Fellowship-Posting 4 Message-ID: Study of cultural transition in urban slums of jaipur city Posting-4 To all for comments and suggestions Cultural forms and practices are not commonly visible in urban slums as we stated earlier. We can see these processes on some special occasions only. Whereas the assumptions, beliefs and values of slum-dwellers are manifest in their routine behavior. In Nagtalai basti wedding ceremony of kumhar and balai Community still having a traditional pattern. Most of these families followed the traditional customs, women used to sing songs, make rituals and perform dance in groups. The residents of the slum belong to the various villages but common cast-base linked them primarily as community. Secondly, in which villages these people have came here; that area have same lingual and cultural background so it was quite natural to acquire as a cultural community in a place like slum. Kumhar, balai and other hindu resident of the basti celebrate holi, deewali, gangour and other festivals in a same manner and modes. Balai and kumhar community have some particular festivals. Balai celebrates navaratra as a special festival. In navaratra they pray the god bharoonji, they give bali of he goat and distribute pieces of the meat as prasad bhog and eat it collectively. During the nine days of navaratra, they did jagaran. In jagaran, they did whole night pray with a team with singing bhazans in the praise of bharoonji, they called it bhagtai. The bhazan mandli (A particular group of singers) used different musical folk instruments such as daffs, chung, manjire, ghanti and thal etc. At the climex point of the jagaran some bhagats (preachers) feel bhav (incarnation) of bharoonji, then other people request him to solve their problems. Kumhars celebrates sheetalastami in a different way. Kumhars are worshiper of sheetla mata (a goddess). A fair is organized yearly in Chaksu on the occasion of sheetalastami in the temple of sheetla mata. Kumhar families of the slum attended this fair respectively. One and of Nagalai, an old temple of lord shva is situated. Some hindu residents participated in this temple at the time of puja-archna. The hindu community of basti established one another temple of lord shiva and hanuman collectively. The preparation and distribution of posh bada (a type of prasad prepared in the holy month of posh-January) is an annual collective activity of local people. Every body participated in this procession without any discrimination of cast and religion. In the muslim community, wedding ceremony generally arranged outside the slum. Women played major role in the rituals and cultural processions of marriage. In the Id (festival) of muslim community, hindu families also shared their greetings. Recently, muslim community of this slum prepared tazia in a collective manner. Prahlad, a resident of Nagtalai is a teacher in govt. school. Before this service he was a teacher is bodhshala running by Bodh shiksha samiti. Bodhshala is an innovative school in which teachers circulated lots of books other than prescribed textbooks to the children as reading materials. In bodhshala, teachers motivated children for creative writing, painting, singing, dance and handicrafts. But after the schooling, children would not be able to continue these things. The factor behind this is lack of continuity in their further education after the completion of primary education given by bodhshala. Another factor is that, there are not any opportunity and space available to enhance their aptitudes and such type of creative interests. In this condition they also become a part of slum's ordinary youth or develop as a peculiar type of character who would not adjust themself with other. If this young generation got the proper guidance and encouragement for creative direction, they could be change agents in the cultural scenario of the slum. Cultural support for children and youth should be a continuous process. Here child marriages a prevailing practices in the slum, although in these days it is declining. Prahlad told about a case. One student of bodhshala has engaged for marriage. He opposed it in his family and community with the support of his collegues. Now the boy is a lecturer and gets married after getting the job. In reduction the cast discrimination, children taught from bodshala have played a mazor role in the slum. Earlier when the bhattas (Furnace of limestone) were running at that time total family was engaged in a particular work place. After the closing of these bhattas, people were pressurized to search the jobs from other place for their liveihood. In changed situation, it was not possible that whole family could found the work at the same place. Then wherever one found work, he joined it. This new condition weakened the family institution. This affected the intense family relationship and broken the joint family system. Now nuclear family trend have increased. When TV serials i.e. ramayan and mahabharat telecasted first time, number of TV sets in the slum was very few at that time. People used to see these serial at some certain places collectively and during this period they discussed the episodes. At present 90 percent families have their own TV sets. Now the world of entertainment has personalized, but number of coloured TV sets and VCR'S are not more, so people see the new feature films on VCR collectively. In film viewers, youth have in a majority. From slum 20 percent young people attended film shows at cinema halls in the city. More than 100 newspapers have circulated in the slum. It is obvious that the number of newspaper readers will be multiplied. In recent years, we find the crime rate have risen in the slum, simultaneously indulgence of police thana also increased. In crimes, the illegal distribution of liquor, gambling, theft and inter conflicts are included mostly. There are not such cultural form are generally in pratice in the slum in which there any scope or space will be available for self expression and collective interactions. Exclude the singing and dancing programme performed in marriage ceremonies and festivals, TV programmes and films are the only medium of entertainment. The visual media is not interactive in it's nature, so audience have only passive role as viewer. Last year a group of youth have played some street drams in the slum. The residents of the slum enjoyed the performance, but they were not able to understand the inherent message of the plays because they were not familiar with this cultural form. The status of women is not better in the slum. The majority of women earn livelihood like their male partners. They have to work for earning as well as at the home. The use of liquor is very common in the basti; women are the sufferer of the consequences of liquor. Some women also victimized by male violence. In spite of it, women fully participated in the activities of the slums. They are also articulated. As the recent development, a feeling of independence is also growing in the slums women toward sexual relationships. The people of the slum assumed that the moral values are decayed in these days. The collective's spirit has reduced and individualism is increasing rapidly. The family and marriage institution have weakened. The feeling of respect for elders have also reduced in younger generation. People are not caring toward social accountability. The slum people, especially younger considered inferior their life conditions in the comparison with urban life style. In Paldimeena slums rehabilitation scheme 148 families of university kacchi basti are shifted and settled in D-block of the scheme called Ashok vihar. There families belong to koli, dhobi, rana, kharawat, thakur, balai and harizan castes. The most interesting case is that two harizan (sweepers) families told to the people, that they can allot him two houses at the corner of the colony but the people prefer him and allotted the houses of center place of the colony. The practice of untouchability or cast discrimination is not accepted by anybody in this habitation. These families have passed two years after resettlement. In this period more than 10 marriages have took place in this habitation. Every family participated in the rituals and bhoj etc. Meanwhile at one marriage time, the father of groom have died, people manage the death ceremony as well as wedding process simultaneously in cooperative manner. There is a triangle park in the block in which a temple of lord shiva have constructed by a sikh factory owner. Actually factory owner contributed for his affection toward the residents in which some people are labour in his factory. Now people use to pray and pooja in this temple without any discrimation. Children used the park as ground for playing. One voluntary agency is operating a Janshala for children. Unemployment is an acute problem for the people at this sight. In university slum; they were engaged in their particular occupations. Most of them were involved in handicraft, gardening and labour work. Women were engaged in agarbatti work, tailoring, weaving and working as housemaids. But now all routine have disturbed. One person have to spent 25 rupees daily for conveyance if he want to find a job in city and there is not certainty to get the job. Sitaram Sisodia (30) who was a screen painter, is now unemployed. The unemployed youth and group of women either play cards or pass their time in gossiping and watching TV at home. The use of liquor is also catching the younger generation because the liquor is so cheap in this area that a bottle is available here in only 30 rupees. After drinking, people criticize the incidence of shifting the basti at this place. Moolchand Bunkar was the leader of the slum. When the matter of shifting was raised in university slum, he leaded the people and fought a long struggle to rehabilitate properly. People won in the struggle but Moolchand loosed his dairy service in this fight. Now he also faced the bitter anger of unemployed youth everyday who charged him for shifting and present misfortune. According to a recent survey, there are 2657 families in Manoharpura slum in which 250 families are muslim. In this slum more than 20 such persons are living who use tantras to cure their patients. They claimed that they have some supernatural power that helps him in the treatment. In these persons there are three muslim peers. Every peer, ojha and tantrik used his particular way and style for treatment of their patients. A.R. Rehman is a peer. His main occupation is making utensils of alloy in old city. Since the morning, lots of sufferer gathered in front of his door. Most of them are children and women. Every sufferer came there with a stem of neem tree in his hand and sit in the queue. Rehman sit on their knees and starts to attend them one by one, take the stem from the sufferer and whisper some mysterious words while doing the jhada with neem branch. One can see a pile of neem stems in front of Rehman's house. Earlier Rehman was the resident of old city at Ajmeri gate. He studied till secondary. In 1986 his family shifted in this slum. Rahman's parents were died in his childhood. After leaving the school, Rehman started to sale the ice crème candy. Then he worked as driver. In job of driving he used to drink alcohol and gambling. In 1997 he met an ustad who taught the koran to him. In the influence of the ustad and teaching of the koran he left alcohol. Subsequently he met a hajji and visited Muradabad. He did not find himself satisfy there and came back at Jaipur . Then he started to work at a shop of alloy utensil and still working the same job. In 1976 Rehman got married and in 1979 he opt the silsila community (a commune of sufi followers). With the effect of new following, he left the gambling practice. During this time, a bengali women told his wife about the Manoharpura kachchi basti, where both husband and wife make their hit. After shifting here, his wife started the embroidery work. Now they have a pakka house. In 1989 Rehman got khilaphat from his peer. Then he started to treat the sufferers. He is having fame in and outside of the slum. According to Rehman, two types of powers exist in the universe-one physical and second spiritual. He helps to the people in spiritual matters. In patients, mostly ill children, harassed and tensed persons and the people having sexual problem, especially young girl came to consult him. People pay him for his dua (treatment) willingly. He utilizes the money in the maintenance of peer baba's mazar (tomb) and on organization the urse (a religious programme). Silsila organized three urses in a year in which kabbalis and mahfils are the mazor activities. What is the mystery of his miracle? Rehman replies that he attended five times namaz regularly and used to jikra (discussion) of malik (Allah) and regards the raza and sufi-sizra as holi rituals. Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Fri May 9 00:39:38 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 20:09:38 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Bush, Blair Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030508190938.7828.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> Bush, Blair Nominated for Nobel Prize for Iraq War Thu May 8, 2003 10:28 AM ET By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - A Norwegian parliamentarian nominated President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday, praising them for winning the war in Iraq. 'Sometimes it's necessary to use a small and effective war to prevent a much more dangerous war in the future,' Jan Simonsen, a right-wing independent in Norway's parliament, told Reuters. 'If nobody acted then Saddam Hussein could have produced weapons of mass destruction and, in five or 10 years, could have used them against Israel,' he said. An award to Bush and Blair would be a U-turn after the Nobel Committee awarded the 2002 prize to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter last October. At the time, the committee chairman called it a kick in the shins to Bush's Iraq policies as Carter had been calling for a diplomatic solution. Simonsen said the war had 'made it possible to create democracy and respect for human rights in a country which for so many years has been ruled by one of the worst dictators in modern times.' However, Geir Lundestad, the director of the Nobel Institute where the five-member committee meets, said Simonsen's proposal would have to wait for the 2004 award because the deadline for nominations for 2003 passed on February 1. The secretive five-member committee names the annual winner in mid-October. More than 160 people and organizations have been nominated for the 2003 prize, including Pope John Paul, Irish rock star Bono and Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya. 'I'm not especially optimistic that Bush and Blair will win but I think it's worth a try,' Simonsen said. He said he would encourage like-minded parliamentarians in other countries to also nominate Bush and Blair. Nobel committees have frequently honored the United Nations instead of unilateral action by member states. The United Nations did not give an explicit mandate for the war amid opposition from countries including France, Germany and Russia. The 2001 Nobel Peace Prize went to the United Nations and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Thousands of people around the world, including members of national parliaments, professors of history, law and politics and former laureates can make nominations for the prize. The nomination process is secret, but people sometimes publicize their choice. ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org Thu May 8 20:09:05 2003 From: dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org (Dominique Fontaine) Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 10:39:05 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] RECENT NEWS - MAY 2003 Message-ID: Pour la version française: [ Apologies for cross-posting / veuillez excuser les envois multiples ] ************************** RECENT NEWS - MAY 2003 Summary: Permanence Through Change: The Variable Media Approach, a new book from the Daniel Langlois Foundation (Montreal) and the Guggenheim Museum (New York) Finding Aids for the Steina and Woody Vasulka Fonds A June 30 Deadline for the Strategic Grants Program for Organizations The CR+D's Current Acquisitions: Selection of the Month Honours for anarchive 2: Digital Snow Permanence Through Change: The Variable Media Approach, a new book from the Daniel Langlois Foundation (Montreal) and the Guggenheim Museum (New York) As part of a research partnership on variable media, the Daniel Langlois Foundation and the Guggenheim Museum have published together a new book in English and French. Permanence Through Change: The Variable Media Approach was published under the supervision of Alain Depocas, the Director of the Foundation's Centre for Research and Documentation, Jon Ippolito, the associate curator of media arts at the Guggenheim Museum, and Caitlin Jones, a Foundation fellow working in variable media preservation at the Guggenheim. The book contains the proceedings of a conference held at the Guggenheim in New York in the winter of 2001 as well as texts by such authors as Bruce Sterling, Jon Ippolito, John Handhardt, Steve Dietz and Nancy Spector. It presents viewpoints, methods and case studies concerning the preservation of artwork created using non-traditional material, tools and technologies. Among the works explored are Nam June Paik's TV Garden, Meg Webster's Stick Spiral, Ken Jacobs' Bitemporal Vision: The Sea, Felix Gonzalez-Torres' Public Opinion, Grahame Weinbren and Roberta Friedman's The Erl King, and Mark Napier's net.flag. To read the press release: To find out more about the Variable Media Network project: Finding Aids for the Steina and Woody Vasulka Fonds The Foundation has developed a series of on-line finding aids including a detailed description of the Steina and Woody Vasulka Fonds, descriptions of each series within the fonds, and complete lists of the collection's contents in the form of bibliographic notes. Other finding aids developed from the indexing done in the CR+D database complement the fonds' description. These aids help draw up lists of bibliographic notes on solo shows by Steina and Woody or group events they took part in (exhibitions, conferences, festivals) as well as lists related to works (videos and installations) created since 1970 and to instruments and softwares. These finding aids complement an already existing section, Steina and Woody Vasulka: Instrumental Video, which features a biographical timeline and detailed descriptions of a selection of works by the two artists. To access the finding aids for the Steina and Woody Vasulka Fonds: To link to Steina et Woody Vasulka: Instrumental Video: A June 30 Deadline for the Strategic Grants Program for Organizations Organizations wishing to submit a proposal within the Foundation's Strategic Grants Program for Organizations must do so by June 30, 2003. This program's aim is to foster the development of organizations so they can better fulfill their mandate and goals. The proposals should demonstrate the strategic nature of the developments planned. For full details on the program, definitions, criteria and evaluation procedure, consult our guide: The CR+D's Current Acquisitions: Selection of the Month As we do every month, we're publishing a bibliography of the latest current acquisitions made by the Foundation's Centre for Research and Documentation : Our monthly selection is a catalogue published for Lanterna Magika: New Technologies in Czech Art of the 20th Century, Espace Electra, Paris, France, October 26, 2002 to January 19, 2003, organized by Camille Morineau and Vit Havránek as part of the event Bohemia Magica, une saison tchèque en France : Honours for anarchive 2: Digital Snow Launched last October in Montreal, this DVD-ROM showcasing artist Michael Snow's body of work has garnered several prizes. Among them are three Graphika awards given out by the Société des designers graphiques du Québec (overall grand prize for 2003, best DVD-ROM and best book design). The disc also earned honourable mentions at the Creative Review Annual 2002 in London, at the How Interactive Annual in Cincinnati, and from the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA). ARLIS's Canadian chapter cited the disc as an exceptional search and reference tool in the field of Canadian art. In addition, the work is included in the major exhibition The Future of Cinema organized by the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Technologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany and will travel with the exhibit to the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki, Finland), the InterCommunication Center (Tokyo, Japan), and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Melbourne, Australia). ************************ *About the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology* The Daniel Langlois Foundation's purpose is to further artistic and scientific knowledge by fostering the meeting of art and science in the field of technologies. The Foundation aims to nurture a critical awareness of technology's implications for human beings and their natural and cultural environments and to promote the exploration of aesthetics suited to evolving human environments. The Centre for Research and Documentation (CR+D) seeks to document history, artworks and practices associated with electronic and digital media arts and to make this information available to researchers in an innovative manner through data communications. * From bulle_shah at hotmail.com Thu May 8 21:09:33 2003 From: bulle_shah at hotmail.com (Anand Vivek Taneja) Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 21:09:33 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] salam pax returns. Message-ID: Pardon the sentimentality, but it seems like a long-lsot friend has returned from the dead. Salam Pax, the blogger from baghdad - whose postings on life in baghdad had ceased since the 24th of march, a few days into the war, is now back! visit www.dear_raed.blogspot.com his blog is now updated till may 1.... Cheers, Anand Come, let us weave a dream tonight Otherwise the darkness of this hard age... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030508/13dac9aa/attachment.html From iims_delhi at hotmail.com Thu May 8 21:59:19 2003 From: iims_delhi at hotmail.com (Marxist Institute) Date: Thu, 08 May 2003 16:29:19 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] A DISCUSSION ON Fascism and Aesthetics Message-ID: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MARXIST STUDIES (DELHI CHAPTER) E-Mail: iims_delhi at hotmail.com A DISCUSSION ON Fascism and Aesthetics FACILITATOR: POTHIK GHOSH "When fascism aestheticises politics, communism responds by politicising art." Walter Benjamin, 'Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' The highest form of aestheticised politics, to cite Benjamin once again, is war. And don't we know that well enough! The belligerence on our borders with Pakistan--the Indian army well turned-out in its menacing regalia with its array of ordered sophisticated weaponry (artillery, tanks, et al). That is the beauty of militarised order. Something the khaki shorts of the RSS brilliantly embody--in the domain of 'civil society' and now, with the BJP-led NDA in the saddle, in the realm of state power. There is but a thin line that separates Praveen Togadia's trishul diksha, the orderly, disciplined and 'aesthetic' drill at the shakhas and the Saraswati Shishu Mandirs and the orchestrated and organised dance macabre of the Bajrangi and Sanghi death squads on the streets of Gujarat, post Godhra. It is this fascist spirit--of its obsession with aesthetic beauty, going to the extent of aestheticising its violent credo--that was so tellingly captured by Leni Riefenstahl's 'artistic' films, which relied heavily on its footage of the militarised, (and I am sure all will agree) murderous Nazi order on German streets. The ascendancy of the Hindu Right continues unabated and its fascist credentials, particularly with regard to its politics-aesthetics kinship, is rather well emphasised by the fact that we have a poet Prime Minister who is also the liberal facade of the rightwing BJP. It's here that we, as practising Marxists, need to intervene and discover what aesthetic sensibilities are all about. Fascism, as a form of bourgeois regime, thrives on the synchrony it achieves with the petty-bourgeois fascistic tendencies that are present in a society where various forms and stages of capitalism co-exist. Consequently, violence remains no longer merely a function of the repressive state apparatus (Althusser), but extends itself into the domain of ideology and 'civil society'. This movement is actually dialectical and the other half of this dialectic is the ideologisation of the polity that is essentially constituted by the various repressive state apparatuses. This perhaps explains how a fascist regime manufactures consent for its politics. And it's precisely at this juncture that we need to understand the bourgeois ideological moorings of art and aesthetic sensibilities so that we comprehend the process of ideological consensus-generation at work vis-�is our own home-grown variety of fascism. We will try to examine and bring to light the ideological character of what is commonly perceived and accessed as art. In the process, we will also attempt to lay bare the ideological reifications inherent in the preponderant aesthetic sensibility of our times by treating it in historical-materialist terms. That said, we will then try to come up with a formulation what art and aesthetics can mean in Marxist praxis in a fascist conjuncture. GANDHI PEACE FOUNDATION (Basement), Deendayal Upadhyaya Marg (Near ITO), New Delhi 3.00-6.00 PM, 11TH MAY 2003 (Sunday) _________________________________________________________________ Mega movies. Mega prizes. http://server1.msn.co.in/sp03/hallmark/index.asp Switch to Hallmark channel. From info at nmartproject.net Fri May 9 14:36:16 2003 From: info at nmartproject.net (NewMediaArtProjectNetwork) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 11:06:16 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Call for submissions - Le Musee di-visioniste Message-ID: <021901c3160a$47b90e20$0600a8c0@NMARTPROJECTNET> *[Self]-representation* Call for submissions Deadline: 30 June 2003 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Le Musee di-visioniste www.le-musee-divisioniste.org is looking for submissions of net based art projects going down to the theme of artistic self-representation. In 2002, le Musee di-visioniste realized a first version of "[self] - representation" which can be visited on www.le-musee-divisioniste.org (Edition 5 of Featured Artists series, including the exhibition "Mirror at the Bottom - artists portraiting themselves"). The new version will be extended by a selection of new exciting projects. What is wanted: Projects, in which artists reflect themeselves in very individual ways of presentation by using digital media. What is not wanted: A simple artists' portofolio on a homepage or a single, separate images. Please submit only one single project in following accepted digital formats: 1. URL (no size limit) or 2. media files (size limit: a single art work may not exceed 2Mb) 2.1) webpage: HTML 2.2) text: plain email, .txt, .doc, .rtf 2.3) image: .jpg,.gif,.png (max. dimensions 800x600 pixels) 2.4) video/animation/movie: .mpeg, .mov (Quicktime), Flash .swf, Shockwave .dcr (max. dimensions 800x600 pixels) 2.5) sound: .mp3 Please include in your proposal (in English language): 1. firstname/name of artist, email, URL 2. title and URL of the project/work, 3. a short work description (not more than 300 words), 4. a brief bio (not more than 300 words) 5. a screen shot (max 800x600 pixels, .jpg) Deadline: 30 June 2003 Please send your submission to info at le-musee-divisioniste.org subject: self-representation Le Musee di-visioniste www.le-musee-divisioniste.org info at le-musee-divisioniste.org corporate member of NewMediaArtProjectNetwork From sarang at flomerics.com Fri May 9 16:58:43 2003 From: sarang at flomerics.com (Sarang Shidore) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 16:58:43 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] ** In a barn, slavery's past is laid bare ** Message-ID: In a Barn, a Piece of Slavery's Hidden Past By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN, New York Times GERMANTOWN, Ky. - Even now, slowed by a stroke and 70 years past his boyhood toiling in the fields as a tenant farmer, Isaac Lang Jr. can still recall the terrible secrets hidden inside the old tobacco barn. "Dad told us never to go in there," Mr. Lang, 84, recalled, sitting up in his bed in a nursing home here. "He said, `Boys, I'm going to tell you the truth. It's all right to play around that barn, but don't go inside.' He said it just wasn't right. That it was pitiful. He never did tell us why." The building resembled the hundreds of long, low tobacco barns with rusting roofs that mark these winsome rolling hills along the Ohio River, except for a log structure concealed inside. Its windows were fitted with thick, crisscrossed wrought-iron bars ordered by Capt. John W. Anderson, a Kentucky slave trader. In the forced westward migration of slaves in the years after 1790, historians say, Captain Anderson held an unknown number of African-Americans in the log house, which has recently been identified as the only known surviving rural slave jail. For years, the slave jail, or holding pen, was encased and largely concealed within the tobacco barn, a later addition that screened it from the elements and ensured its survival. It was the stuff of lore, a public secret. Now in storage, its logs awaiting reconstruction, this environment of confinement will take its place in a museum dedicated to freedom, as the centerpiece of the $110 million National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. With artifacts from the slave era difficult to find and authenticate, and counterfeit shackles and slave identification tags swirling through eBay, the survival of the holding pen and its subsequent identification by historians and curators is a landmark in the material culture of slavery. The insidious byways traveled by the traders and their slaves - rivers, oceans and roads - were served by a transcontinental network of holding pens, jails and yards built to warehouse and secure human cargo in transit. Among the few slave jails that have survived is one in the basement of 1315 Duke St. in Alexandria, Va., once the headquarters of Franklin & Armfield, among the country's largest slave trading companies. It is now a National Historic Landmark. "That the slave pen still exists is miraculous," said John Michael Vlach, a professor of American studies and anthropology at George Washington University and the author of "Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery". "Slavery used up artifacts the way it used up people." The movement to preserve vestiges of the internal slave trade is relatively recent. For example, with a $200,000 grant from the state Department of Archives and History, the city of Natchez, Miss., is trying to buy a quarter-acre section of the Forks of the Road, the second-largest market in the South, where roughly 1,000 slaves were sold a year, and transfer it to the National Park Service. An empty tavern and a parking lot are now at the site. In a historic part of Lexington, Ky., known as Cheapside, once home to the state's leading slave market, markers honor Kentucky's vice presidents and Confederate heroes but do not mention the area's slave roots. Doris Wilkinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Kentucky, calls such omission "psychological concealment." The Underground Railroad museum in Cincinnati is spending about $1 million on the slave jail, including disassembly and reconstruction. Next summer, when the museum opens, its 450,000 or so expected visitors will be able to walk through the holding pen and touch its walls. "We're just beginning to remember," said Carl B. Westmoreland, a senior adviser and curator at the museum who has spent the past three and a half years uncovering the story of the slave jail. "There is a hidden history right below the surface, part of the unspoken vocabulary of the American historic landscape. "It's nothing but a pile of logs," Mr. Westmoreland said. "Yet it is everything." The jail languished for years as the barn around it slowly collapsed. In its dark attic lay a row of wrought-iron rings - five have survived - through which a central chain ran. Men were tethered on either side of the chain. "It was a slave ship turned upside down," said Mr. Westmoreland, a trustee emeritus of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and himself the great-grandson of slaves. The jail's original chimney faced the Ohio River, the boundary between slavery and freedom and the same fickle water to which Captain Anderson, who is buried 100 yards from where the jail stood, marched his slave coffles. It was an eight-mile trek down the Walton Pike to the landing at Dover, Ky., where they would board flatboats for a perilous 1,150-mile journey: Dover to Covington, Covington to Louisville, Louisville to Henderson, Henderson to Smithland, Smithland to Memphis, Memphis to Vicksburg, Miss., and on to the infamous Natchez slave market. The vague outline of the barn's foundation is still imprinted in the alfalfa fields owned by Raymond Evers, 72, a retired Cincinnati steel contractor, and his wife, Mary, 75. They purchased the 280-acre farm and what they heard referred to as a "jail cell" in 1976. Mr. Evers spends weekends on the farm, growing alfalfa, corn and soybeans. He used the barn to store machinery and would occasionally unearth chains while plowing. Mrs. Evers grew up in nearby Minerva and Maysville. In 1998, when the couple learned of plans for an Underground Railroad museum in Cincinnati, they asked museum officials to look inside their barn. "It was something I'd read about - past tense," Mr. Westmoreland said. "It was something that used to exist - past tense." The Everses gave the structure to the museum in exchange for a new barn. Then Mr. Westmoreland and historians, curators and archaeologists set about to determine whether the stories of a slave jail were merely folklore. What they knew was that Mason County, and nearby Maysville in particular, had been a hemp and tobacco center and a mecca for slaveholders from Virginia and Maryland wanting to sell slaves into the deep South. In the last decade of the 18th century, the geography of slavery, which was largely confined to the Eastern seaboard and the Appalachians, shifted profoundly, crossing the easternmost Blue Ridge mountains and expanding into the Shenandoah Valley, Kentucky and Tennessee. Surplus slave labor in Virginia, the result of depleted soil and crop failure, made it relatively easy for Kentucky pioneers to purchase black slaves at favorable prices. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and cotton planters' insatiable thirst for labor set in motion the forced westward deportation of slaves, most of them on foot. It was an event, the historian Ira Berlin wrote in his recent book, "Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves," that would tear families apart and displace more than a million people, "dwarfing the transatlantic slave trade that had carried Africans to the mainland." There is as yet no known photograph or obituary of Captain Anderson, who died in July 1834 at age 41, according to his tombstone. In contrast to the antebellum stereotypes of slave traders as coarse and ill-bred characters "with a whiskey-tinctured nose, cold hard-looking eyes, a dirty tobacco-stained mouth and shabby dress," as one writer put it, they were often respected members of society. In Kentucky, they included Stephen Chenoweth, tax commissioner in Jefferson County, and Littleberry P. Crenshaw, a minister in Louisville. Captain Anderson left an extensive paper trail of business dealings and legal disputes that described his slave trading. By piecing together information from estate inventories, court records, tax receipts and newspaper advertisements, historians have begun to assemble the story of Captain Anderson and his slave jail. The first breakthrough was a Mason County probate document referring to a "jailhouse" on the property. Pen Bogert, a historical researcher in Louisville, discovered in the Adams County, Miss., courthouse copies of 1832-1833 tax receipts signed by a John W. Anderson for the sale of blacks. And in 1833, Captain Anderson offered a reward in a Maysville newspaper for the capture of four runaway slaves. Among them was "Carter, aged 25 years, about five feet four inches high, very bright mulatto, bush head; very stout, heavy made, and stammers when interrogated; full round face; he professes to be a shoemaker and rough carpenter." At the time of his death, researchers say, Captain Anderson had become wealthy enough to invest in a silver-trimmed saddle and 42 thoroughbreds. He owned 37 slaves, far more than he typically claimed at tax time. Research indicated that Captain Anderson converted a plain log building into a slave jail. Over the past few years, archaeologists have unearthed about 6,000 artifacts, including crockery, tools and kitchen utensils. As the building was being dismantled last fall, they discovered a log on the second floor, beside the rings, bearing the stamp of J. W. Anderson. But the decision to move the holding pen from Kentucky to Ohio was controversial locally. "By the time the public found out about it it was a done deal," said Alicestyne Adams, an assistant professor at Georgetown College in Kentucky and the director of the Kentucky Underground Railroad Research Institute. But the priority was preservation, she said. "African-Americans have become used to having other people tell our stories," Professor Adams said. "Having an artifact that speaks to the magnitude of what occurred, and where it occurred, is extremely important." In and around Mason County, some people wanted it to stay. "It's part of the history of the area, but not the pretty part," said Caroline R. Miller, an English teacher in Germantown who has done extensive research on local court documents pertaining to slavery. But many residents, Ms. Miller said, would prefer to be identified with the heroes of the underground railroad like Arnold Gragston, who was born a slave on Walton Pike and began rowing slaves to freedom in Ripley, Ohio, in 1859. "There is a fear of being stigmatized," she said of the ambivalence. "It's not easy to learn that the history of where you live is more than unpleasant." The green hills in and around the Everses' farm are dotted with white porticoed homes, but the original cookhouses and slave quarters out back remain hidden from public view and await historical reckoning. "They bring up very painful memories," said James Oliver Horton, a professor of American studies and history at George Washington University who has been an adviser to historic sites like Monticello. "So even though they're out there, we don't want to find them." Nonetheless, landscapes have memories. Carol Yates Bennett, 66, who grew up in Maysville, remembers her great-grandmother's story of a slave mother so bereft at her forced separation from her daughter, who was being sold downriver, that she cut off her hand in despair. Ms. Bennett went to visit the jail on the Everses' farm before it was dismantled. "You just sensed the presence all around you," she said. "It felt like hallowed ground." From renu at mail.sarai.net Fri May 9 19:10:33 2003 From: renu at mail.sarai.net (renu) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 19:10:33 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Juniradio-first call Message-ID: The Juniradio - free/open radio project sounds interesting. Would be great if readers, practitioners, researchers from outside and from within sarai can contribute to the project. best, Renu. (*) JUNIRADIO - FIRST CALL JUNIRADIO Juniradio (http://juniradio.net) is a free and open radio that will broadcast from June 8 until June 29 2003, 24 hours per day, on 104.1 FM in Berlin and as a live stream on the internet. Juniradio is a free radio since it lacks the commercial or institutional constraints that, in Berlin and elsewhere, prevent almost anything unforseeable from happening on the radio, and it is an open radio since it will not be produced by editors, professionals or experts, but by a wide network of local and international groups, initiatives and persons. Juniradio will be a political radio as well, since it addresses a certain social imagination: the desire and the demand for a permanent free and open radio in Berlin that would not emerge as a speculation about a defined market niche or target group, but as a bet on real, meaningful and productive connections. Connections between the artistic, political, or whatever work of the participants, as well as, finally, connections between the production and the consumption of radio, and between the radio program and the life of the people. BROADCASTS This is, above all, an invitation to participate in the Juniradio project, and to produce transmissions. A broadcast can be a lot of things: radio plays, dj sets, short monologues, endless discussions, your favorite record revisited, radio mangas, audio tracks of Belgian nouvelle vague movies, phone interviews, cooking courses, computer-generated lectures, field recordings, 8-bit tracks, news tickers of censored headlines, Chinese hip hop, live reports from personal crisis areas, atmospheres, transmission breaks, audio salads. A broadcast can reach us as a pre-produced audio file, can be recorded beforehand in our studio or be produced live. Before your transmission please check out the technical details (http://juniradio.net/faq.txt) or show up at one of our workshops (see dates, below). Normally a broadcast should have a length of 55 minutes -- while for sure there may be good reasons why a certain program must last 3 hours or just 15 minutes. Serial formats are imaginable as well. The transmissions will be broadcast between June 9 and 29, even though some programs may already air between June 2 and 8. The definte dates and times will only emerge during the very process we are inviting you to -- while for sure there may be good reasons why a some programs have to happen on a certain day or at a certain time. Your ideas, proposals or concepts should reach us until May 9 2003 -- while for sure there may be good reasons why certain things take more time. Anyhow we are inviting you to a first meeting on May 9 (see dates, below). Until then, any feedback should be sent to alle at juniradio.net, or to the sender of this invitation. NET/RADIO Another connection on which Juniradio will rely is the combination of radio and internet. This means both the collaborative connections between local and international initiatives and the productive relations between the techniques and cultures of two different media. The archive that the radio contributions will constitute is to remain free and open and will be available to other independent radio projects for non-commercial use. The legal model that we are tending towards is the Creative Commons License (see http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses) -- while for sure there may be good reasons why certain material should be handled under different conditions. Additionally the radio program will be streamed live on the internet during the whole month of June, and may be repeated afterwards. CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION Fortunately or unfortunately, Juniradio is working within a gift economy. While time and knowledge resources are present in abundance, there is an almost absolute lack of financial means. Just as the organisation of the radio is based on unpaid work, we can neither refund any costs or disburse any fees. All we have to offer is the kind of surplus value that is generated through exhaustive collaboration in a temporarily autonomous area -- as well as, certainly, through collective sending and receiving. DATES Workshop: free formats / listening models Thursday, April 24, 5 pm First meeting of everyone remotely involved Friday, May 9, 8 pm Workshop: radio techniques: cut and mix Saturday, May 17, 2 pm Workshop: speaking and reading Saturday, May 24, 2 pm / Sunday, May 25, 2 pm Location: Bootlab, Ziegelstrasse 20, Berlin Mitte (separate invitations will follow) WHOIS Juniradio (http://juniradio.net) is a project at Bootlab (http://bootlab.org), organized by radiokampagne.de (http://radiokampagne.de), Klubradio (http://klubradio.de), TwenFM (http://twen-fm.de), Radio Internationale Stadt (http://orang.orang.org), Partner gegen Berlin (http://partnergegenberlin.de) and others. TRACEROUTE Juniradio is part of a cooperation with Ersatzradio (http://ersatzmedia.info), a temporary radio station presenting within a period of one week (June 1 - 7) a thematic atlas on the production and control of space. Ersatzradio is an Ersatzstadt production - an initiative project of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes in cooperation with the Volksbuehne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. The Ersatzstadt presentations will be directed by two teams of curators, Metrozones (Jochen Becker, Stephan Lanz) and Tulip House (Anselm Franke, Hannah Hurtzig). Thank you. -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From ravik_rk at hotmail.com Fri May 9 10:49:52 2003 From: ravik_rk at hotmail.com (Ravi Kumar) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 10:49:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Discussion Message-ID: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MARXIST STUDIES (DELHI CHAPTER) E-Mail: iims_delhi at hotmail.com A DISCUSSION ON Fascism and Aesthetics FACILITATOR: POTHIK GHOSH "When fascism aestheticises politics, communism responds by politicising art." -Walter Benjamin, 'Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' The highest form of aestheticised politics, to cite Benjamin once again, is war. And don't we know that well enough! The belligerence on our borders with Pakistan--the Indian army well turned-out in its menacing regalia with its array of ordered sophisticated weaponry (artillery, tanks, et al). That is the beauty of militarised order. Something the khaki shorts of the RSS brilliantly embody--in the domain of 'civil society' and now, with the BJP-led NDA in the saddle, in the realm of state power. There is but a thin line that separates Praveen Togadia's trishul diksha, the orderly, disciplined and 'aesthetic' drill at the shakhas and the Saraswati Shishu Mandirs and the orchestrated and organised dance macabre of the Bajrangi and Sanghi death squads on the streets of Gujarat, post Godhra. It is this fascist spirit--of its obsession with aesthetic beauty, going to the extent of aestheticising its violent credo--that was so tellingly captured by Leni Riefenstahl's 'artistic' films, which relied heavily on its footage of the militarised, (and I am sure all will agree) murderous Nazi order on German streets. The ascendancy of the Hindu Right continues unabated and its fascist credentials, particularly with regard to its politics-aesthetics kinship, is rather well emphasised by the fact that we have a poet Prime Minister who is also the liberal facade of the rightwing BJP. It's here that we, as practising Marxists, need to intervene and discover what aesthetic sensibilities are all about. Fascism, as a form of bourgeois regime, thrives on the synchrony it achieves with the petty-bourgeois fascistic tendencies that are present in a society where various forms and stages of capitalism co-exist. Consequently, violence remains no longer merely a function of the repressive state apparatus (Althusser), but extends itself into the domain of ideology and 'civil society'. This movement is actually dialectical and the other half of this dialectic is the ideologisation of the polity that is essentially constituted by the various repressive state apparatuses. This perhaps explains how a fascist regime manufactures consent for its politics. And it's precisely at this juncture that we need to understand the bourgeois ideological moorings of art and aesthetic sensibilities so that we comprehend the process of ideological consensus-generation at work vis-à-vis our own home-grown variety of fascism. We will try to examine and bring to light the ideological character of what is commonly perceived and accessed as art. In the process, it will also attempt to lay bare the ideological reifications inherent in the preponderant aesthetic sensibility of our times by treating it in historical-materialist terms. That said, it will then try to come up with a formulation what art and aesthetics can mean in Marxist praxis in a fascist conjuncture. GANDHI PEACE FOUNDATION (Basement), Deendayal Upadhyaya Marg (Near ITO), New Delhi 3.00-6.00 PM, 11TH MAY 2003 (Sunday) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 96 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030509/6f3d958b/attachment.gif From broadcaster at syhlleti.org Sun May 11 20:15:49 2003 From: broadcaster at syhlleti.org (broadcaster at syhlleti.org) Date: Sun, 11 May 2003 20:15:49 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] KOKBOROK FILM TO BE SCREENED IN FOREIGN FESTIVAL (Courtesy: www.tripurainfo.com) Message-ID: <1214.219.65.253.27.1052664349.squirrel@smtp.spectrum.in> Kokborok film to be shown in international festival By Our Correspondent Agartala,May 11: For the first time a feature film based on an acute problem afflicting Tripura´s tribal society-the accursed practice of witch hunting and killing-in tribal kokborok language is all set to figure as one of the entries in the weeklong 18th international film festival at Warsaw from May 19 to 25th. ´Mathia´ (witch), a perceptive feature film authored and directed by catholic priest Joseph Pulinthanath , revolves round the love-affair of a young tribal boy Banthu and a girl Kwchwngti , suspected by villagers to be a witch . The lovelorn duo had decided on marriage much against the will of the villagers who finally picked on comely Kwchwngti as the deadly witch casting her evil spell on the residents of the village . Barred by village elders from interacting with his paramour Banthu met Kwchwngti for the last time in her ´tong´ (elevated wooden hut) beside the forest . ´I may not live long but please remember me as a normal good girl and cry after my death´-was Kwchwngti´s last entreaty to her beloved. In the film´s moving last scene Banthu was seen crying disconsolably even as the girl he had loved so dearly was being led to a cruel death at the village´s ceremonial altar for witch killing. ´Mathia´ was released at Agartala on May 18 last year and it was first shown to an audience outside the state in Kolkata´s ´Nandan´ auditorium in the course of International Cinema Conference (ICC) organised by ´Roopkala Kendra´ in February this year to the acclaim of the viewers and critics . ´The international film festival held in Warsaw every year always focusses on value-based films with a social theme and Mathia has been selected for the attempt it makes to focus on a social evil ´said the director of the film Mr Joseph Pulinthanath. He said that the director of the film festival at Warsaw , Mr Andrez Januszewski , had sent a formal communique to the office of the ´Sampari pictures´ at Bishramganj under Bishalgarh subdivsion informing them of the admission of ´Mathia´ as a film for showing in the festival . Mr Pulinthanath said that he would go to the festival with two other members of the team as ´it is the first time that a film in tribal Kokborok language has been accepted as an entry in an international film festival. From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Mon May 12 12:02:52 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 07:32:52 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Tariq Ali Lectures 14th/15th/17th May Message-ID: <20030512063252.14086.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> You are cordially invited to the Eqbal Ahmad Distinguished Lectures 2003 by: TARIQ ALI Noted activist, journalist and novelist. Schedule of Lectures: Lahore: Wednesday, 14th May 2003, 3:30 pm at Shalimar Hall, Pearl Continental Hotel, "Infinite War And The American Empire". Islamabad: Thursday, 15th May 2003, 4:00 pm at National Library Auditorium, "The Future Of South Asia After The Iraq War". Karachi: Saturday, 17th May 2003, 5:30 pm at Hotel Regent Plaza,Shahrah-e-Faisal, "United States and Europe - A Breaking Partnership". ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored by the Eqbal Ahmad Foundation in association with the Daily Times and Badalti Duniya. Punctuality essential. Refreshments will be served after the lecture. Please bring a printout of this email invitation. Thank you. RSVP: Najam Sethi [The Daily Times ] Hidayat Husain [ Badalti Duniya, monthly ] Pervez Hoodbhoy [ Eqbal Ahmad Foundation ] ===== _________________________________________________________________ "In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates." - Foucault ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From lehar_hind at yahoo.com Mon May 12 16:30:37 2003 From: lehar_hind at yahoo.com (Lehar ..) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 04:00:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] new book on sanjhi virasat Message-ID: <20030512110037.50914.qmail@web20904.mail.yahoo.com> Penguin has released this much awaited book by Yoginder Sikand, who is a member of Sanjhi VIrasat. the author can be contacted on: ysikand at hotmail..com or http://www.islaminterfaith.org/publications.html ---- http://www.vedamsbooks.com/no30294.htm Sacred Spaces : Exploring Traditions of Shared Faith in India/Yoginder Sikand. New Delhi, Penguin, 2003, x, 273 p., $13(pbk) Contents: 1. Introduction. 2. The God of the mountain. 3. The star of the seas, our lady of health of Vailankanni. 4. Sri Guru Dattatreya Baba Budhan Dargah. 5. The Sufi-Sadhus of Northern Karnataka. 6. The Deendar Channabasaveswara of Asif Nagar. 7. The Sai Baba of Shirdi. 8. The Imam Mahdi and the Buddh Avatar of Panna. 9. Goga, the �Pir of Poison�. 10. Sarmad Shahid, the �Martyr for Love�. 11. The Baba of Bhatinda. 12. The Sufis of Jammu. 13. Nund Rishi, the �Flag-Bearer of Kashmir�. Conclusion: and the journey must continue. References. "The politics of communal hatred in recent times has brought under attack the heterodoxy of our religious life. This book explores popular religious cults from various parts of the country that defy the logic of communities as neatly separated from and necessarily opposed to each other. Travelling from Kerala to war-torn Kashmir, and from Punjab to Madhya Pradesh, through twenty-five places of popular pilgrimage�dargahs, temples and shrines�Yoginder Sikand finds followers from different communities flocking together in common worship. "At Hazrat Nund Rishi at Charar-e-Sharif, or the Wavar shrine at the Ayyappa pilgrimage of Sabarimala, at the temple of Goddess Elamma of Sauditti, or the Dargah of Sarmad of Delhi, Sikand meets saints, keepers and devotees to discover how traditions associated with these places have historically challenged religious as well as secular elites, and offered their adherents a powerful and deeply humanist vision of the sacred, freed from the narrow boundaries of caste and creed. But it is also noteworthy that some of these shrines, such as the Swami Dattatreya Budhan Baba in Karnataka, have been transformed over time and become sites of communal contestation. "Weaving together legend, history, ethnography and reminiscences with critical insights, Sacred Spaces affords us a rare glimpse of religious traditions outside the mainstream. This rich legacy could well be invaluable in promoting alternate ways of understanding religion and the notion of community identity, a need that has never been more urgent than it is today." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ - Religions are all limited because they concentrate on only one aspect of the Truth. That's why they are always fighting amongst each other. There is no end to the Truth, so you cannot confine it to one scripture. When asked what religion I follow, 'I don't believe in sampradaya-sect. I believe in Sampradaha- incineration.' Burn down everything which gets in way of the Truth. - Aghori Vimalananda; At the Left Hand of God Organised religion is the prop of a man who has not found his Self/ God within. - Shaheed Bhagat Singh __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com From lehar_hind at yahoo.com Mon May 12 16:16:36 2003 From: lehar_hind at yahoo.com (Lehar ..) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 03:46:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: The Sanjhi Mutiny/Shared Revolt Message-ID: <20030512104636.80484.qmail@web20914.mail.yahoo.com> fyi.. Note: forwarded message attached. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Lehar sethi zaidi" Subject: The Sanjhi Mutiny/Shared Revolt Date: Sat, 03 May 2003 13:12:05 +0530 Size: 2146 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030512/b1782052/attachment.mht From dulallie at yahoo.com Tue May 13 04:42:51 2003 From: dulallie at yahoo.com (Alice Albinia) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:12:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] ongoing protest In-Reply-To: <20030512110037.50914.qmail@web20904.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20030512231251.39968.qmail@web12507.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Reader List, I�m writing from London on the eve of the resignation of Britain�s International Development Secretary, Clare Short, over the British government�s �handling of the war with Iraq�. In her resignation speech Clare Short accused the British Government � and in particular Tony Blair and Jack Straw � of many things that others have said more eloquently (and with better timing) before. But I thought it was worth writing to voice some of the sense of delight that many British citizens � particularly those who protested, angry and ashamed, at what our Government has done in Iraq � will be feeling tonight as her grim accusations are uneradicably beamed into millions of living rooms across the country. The resignation of a not particularly bright British politician may not seem hugely significant as millions of Iraqis die for want of proper hospital care and food, and as Coalition Forces, armed with state-of-the-art technology, commit crimes against humanity. Clare Short of course said what everybody who protested against the war in Britain and elsewhere has long maintained � that the war is illegal, that the British-American post-war Iraqi �interim government� is illegal. (She also claimed that she was �deceived� by Jack Straw and Tony Blair; that the Prime Minister is �obsessed by his place in history�; that he has �undermined the people�s respect for our political system�.) And thus, I can�t help celebrating tonight, at another well-aimed attack on the catastrophic behaviour of the British Prime Minister. If there is a predominant feeling, as a reluctant British citizen, of deep shame, anger and despair at our elected leader�s War, I also think that there is a slight, tenuous glimmer of hope at the movement for peace which this Bush/Blair machine gun of war has simultaneously set in motion. During the most recent march against the war in London, veteran protestor and Labour MP Tony Benn described this Peace Movement of 2003 as the biggest in his lifetime. That is surely a pretty significant � nay, hopeful � statement. The CND spokeswoman was clearly delighted by the sea of cheering faces and wave of applause that greeted her demand that Bush/Blair �destroy their own weapons of mass destruction�. Three girls from the group �Schoolchildren Against the War� spoke passionately of the turning tide of youth apathy � and warned Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Geoff Hoon that �we are the future generation� and �your end will come soon�. Most striking of all, perhaps, was the vocal Muslim representation. When the overtures to war began, and the Stop the War Coalition was formed, my London borough of Stepney was postered, flyered, stickered with peace-slogans and war-information in English, Bangla, Urdu and Somali. There were volunteers handing out leaflets in Whitechapel High Street every weekend, and on the Peace marches, the blue and red �Muslim Association of Britain� banners were among the most prominently displayed. Any of the other marches or protests I have attended in Britain over the last seven years have been marred, for me, by a sense of cliquey-ness, or exclusivist extremism. But on the massive February 15th London Protest all my friends in Britain marched � including (a random selection) my mother, my landlady, the cashier from my bank on Whitechapel High Street, and Naj, a �Bangladeshi-Briton� (his words) who runs a grocery shop at the end of my road. This is truly inspiring. The marriage of Tony Blair�s deceptive smooth-talk with George Bush�s leers and jeers has worked wonders for the average citizen�s appreciation of politics ('they tell lies'... 'it's shit'...). Michael Moore, who made the Oscar-winning documentary 'Bowling for Columbine' about America�s gun culture (and who was booed by the glitterati at this year�s Oscars for criticising Bush in his acceptance speech), pointed out the correlation between the US�s neo-imperialistic bombing campaigns and its horrifying record of domestic gun-murders in this excellent documentary film. On the day that the Columbine high-school massacre happened, America had just dropped more bombs over the Balkans than any other day in the conflict. Moore makes it abundantly clear that a country�s foreign affairs � as well as its enormous Defence Budget � does have a dangerous and unfactored impact on national pysche. (It is possibly no coincidence that London has recently seen a massive increase in gun-crime.) And so, if warniks round the world need reasons other than the deaths of countless Iraqis for why Britain/America should not have gone to war, then maybe Peace as a form of mental development and internal self-defence might persuade them. On April�s March for Peace through London�s Parliament Square, past Downing Street, down the Mall � and under statue after statue of British soldiers and statesmen sitting on horses, brandishing guns and waving swords in the air � banner after banner showed grainy blow-ups of horrific scenes from Baghdad and Basra, downloaded from Al Jazeera � not the BBC � stapled onto sticks and waved in the sun. (Meanwhile, you outside Britain who probably despair at the partiality of the BBC probably would also not believe the level of criticism it received in UK, during the war, for being �too pessimistic�, �too depressing�, even too �pro-Iraq�. One tabloid labelled it the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation.) My point is that if a March for Peace which brings together people who get (and understand) Al Jazeera, and those who don�t, as well as Muslims and non-Muslims, grannies and bank cashiers, bankers and anti-capitalist protestors, and all sorts of other people who probably would never have had the chance, let alone the inclination, to meet on London�s streets before, then I think we are on to something good � instead of something unremittingly, unbelievably, undemocratically dreadful. At the moment, it may seem like meagre compensation for British/US foreign policy. But popular protest has in the past achieved acts that far surpass the simple task of ousting two war-mongering political leaders. We can do it if we want to, and much more besides. Alice __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com From amitbasu55 at hotmail.com Wed May 14 12:32:57 2003 From: amitbasu55 at hotmail.com (Amit R Basu) Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 07:02:57 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: JSS armed members burn doen UPDF,HWF and PCP office. Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030514/dfcccb76/attachment.html From sadan at sarai.net Wed May 14 23:31:22 2003 From: sadan at sarai.net (sadan) Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 14:01:22 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] some inetresting practicesw ith orient/al/ism In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200305141401.22846.sadan@sarai.net> Dear friends, i found this posting interesting enough to refer to you. sadan. On Tuesday 13 May 2003 12:57 pm, you wrote: > H-ASIA > May 13, 2003 > > Does "the Orient" still exist? An aspect of a current debate > ----- > Ed. note: This post arises from discussions regarding use of terms such > as "Oriental" and "Orient" in a particular context and from a particular > perspective. I delayed its post by a few days seeking further views, but > was unsuccessful. Perhaps this post will produce discussion. FFC > ************************************************************************ > From: "Tobias Hýbinette" > > I need help to find strong arguments for a change of name of Sweden's > main Asian studies department, the Department of Oriental languages > at Stockholm University, where many faculty members proudly and > gladly use academic terms like "oriental", "the Orient" and > "orientals". > > After having proposed a change to the Department of Asian languages a > discussion has started with the faculty members being divided according > to the following more or less expected lines where the former group > influenced by postcolonial thinking wants a change in the name of > antiracism, while the latter sees themselves as defenders of the Western > academic tradition of "Orientalism": > > Very strong divisions: > - ethnic Asians against ethnic Westerners > - PhD candidates and research assistants against associate professors > and professors > - people born in the 1960s/1970s/1980s against those born in the > 1930s/1940s/1950s > > As so many of the defenders refer to the countries of England and > France where "Oriental Studies" and "Orientalism" still is the > accepted scientific term, could someone help me with the background > on how Oriental Studies was transformed into Asian Studies in a North > American setting (including a possible parallel to how "Negro > Studies" was transformed into African Studies already some 30 years > ago) as well as some information on how the term is perceived outside > the West among the Asians themselves? Or is it that I am wrong - that > terms like "oriental", "the Orient" and "orientals" aren't that > contested and controversial as I presume? > > > Best, From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Thu May 15 07:00:31 2003 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 21:30:31 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] sign the romila thapar petition...urgent Message-ID: please see :) -z. --- >From: Avishek Ganguly >To: zehra rizvi >Subject: Re: sign the romila thapar petition...urgent >Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 15:59:43 +0100 (BST) > >hi zehra, > >the sarai list is rejecting postings due to unfathomable (to me) techinal >resons...so i thought i will fwd this to you, that is, if you haven't got >it already! > >(may be you can write a brief intro before circulating it further, or, in >the worst case, use mine!) >thanks >avishek >______________________________________________________________ >dear everyone, > >probably many of you already know about this another, alarming, yet as >always mindless, attempt by the hindu rightwing in india to throttle >progressive voices, politics and practices in the country. vilification of >prominent academics with accusations of being 'marxist', 'unpatritotic'. >'anti-hindu' etc is only one of the many dangerous methods this madness can >take. > >i'm forwarding a msg from neeladri bhattacharya, professor of history at >jnu, new delhi, regarding the latest hindu right campaign in the usa >against the appointment of prof romila thapar, one of the greatest >historians of post-independence india, to a recently created prestigious >chair at the library of congress in washington dc. >a model protest petition follows the letter. >you can mail in your name, affiliation and e-mail id to the following >address in order to be attched to the petition. > >thanks, >avishek > >[model letter is below message. please send the email address, name and >institutional affiliation of all those who agree to sign to >isha at ndf.vsnl.net.in.] > >_____________________________________________________________ > >As you may know there is a campaign organized by the Hindu right-wing >in USA against the nomination of Professor Romila Thapar to the Kluge >Chair at the Library of Congress. >I am sending you a letter protesting against this campaign. Could you >please mobilize as many signatures as you can and send me the email >address, name and institutional affiliation of all those who agree to >sign. The letter should come back to me by Thursday 15 May.We will be >sending the protest letter to the Library of Congress and release it to >the Indian press.. >I am sending you two attachments: one gives the details of the campaign >that is being organized in America, the second is the letter of protest >that is to be signed. >For more details on the Hindu right wing campaign against romila's >appointment to the Kluge Chair see the web site: >http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/IDRT300403.html > >Neeladri >_____________________________________________________________ > >We are shocked at the letter of protest that is circulating in on the >Internet against the appointment of Professor Romila Thapar as First Holder >of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South at the Library of >Congress, USA. Professor Thapar has been undoubtedly one of the most >eminent Indian historians, whose prolific scholarly contribution has opened >up new ways of looking at India's past. > >The petition shows an amazing lack of familiarity with Professor Thapar's >writings. Since the 1960s Professor Thapar has written powerfully against >the colonial stereotypes that India had no past, no sense of time, and no >historical consciousness. The petitioners attribute to her precisely those >ideas that she has spent a lifetime battling against. > >But clearly the problem is that Professor Thapar's conception of Indian >past is different from that of the petitioners. Professor Thapar has looked >at a variety of cultural traditions in the making of ancient India. To the >petitioners Indian past is monolithic, unified and unmistakably only Hindu. >Those who disagree with this notion are accused of committing cultural >genocide. > >This is a not just a shocking intolerance of perceptual differences. It is >a politics that seeks to silence critique, and battles for a notion of the >past that is homogeneously Hindu. It is part of a wider attack that we are >witnessing in India today against intellectual and artistic freedom, and >against cultural plurality. In a political milieu where dissent is being >regularly repressed through intimidation, this petition against Professor >Thapar and the hate mails that accompany it, become particular cause of >concern. > >We strongly protest against this attack on Professor Thapar. > > > > >_________________________________________________________________ > >"In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place >of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates." - Foucault > >Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From sdatta at MIT.EDU Thu May 15 07:29:35 2003 From: sdatta at MIT.EDU (S Datta) Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 21:59:35 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Reader-list] sign the romila thapar petition...urgent In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi all, I was under the impression that this matter was now, for all intents and purposes, resolved. Many of us got a message similar to this several weeks ago; a few days later the Library of Congress issued a formal statement acknowledging both the anti-Romila campaign and what it said was a large volume of correspondence in defence of her scholarship and in support of her appointment to the Kluge chair, and saying it stood by its decision and was honoured to have her at the LOC. So i'm not sure this is still pertinent, or at any rate, urgent, since there is no danger of the original petition against Prof Thapar having any real impact. -S ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Wed, 14 May 2003, zehra rizvi wrote: > please see :) > -z. > --- > > >From: Avishek Ganguly > >To: zehra rizvi > >Subject: Re: sign the romila thapar petition...urgent > >Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 15:59:43 +0100 (BST) > > > >hi zehra, > > > >the sarai list is rejecting postings due to unfathomable (to me) techinal > >resons...so i thought i will fwd this to you, that is, if you haven't got > >it already! > > > >(may be you can write a brief intro before circulating it further, or, in > >the worst case, use mine!) > >thanks > >avishek > >______________________________________________________________ > >dear everyone, > > > >probably many of you already know about this another, alarming, yet as > >always mindless, attempt by the hindu rightwing in india to throttle > >progressive voices, politics and practices in the country. vilification of > >prominent academics with accusations of being 'marxist', 'unpatritotic'. > >'anti-hindu' etc is only one of the many dangerous methods this madness can > >take. > > > >i'm forwarding a msg from neeladri bhattacharya, professor of history at > >jnu, new delhi, regarding the latest hindu right campaign in the usa > >against the appointment of prof romila thapar, one of the greatest > >historians of post-independence india, to a recently created prestigious > >chair at the library of congress in washington dc. > >a model protest petition follows the letter. > >you can mail in your name, affiliation and e-mail id to the following > >address in order to be attched to the petition. > > > >thanks, > >avishek > > > >[model letter is below message. please send the email address, name and > >institutional affiliation of all those who agree to sign to > >isha at ndf.vsnl.net.in.] > > > >_____________________________________________________________ > > > >As you may know there is a campaign organized by the Hindu right-wing > >in USA against the nomination of Professor Romila Thapar to the Kluge > >Chair at the Library of Congress. > >I am sending you a letter protesting against this campaign. Could you > >please mobilize as many signatures as you can and send me the email > >address, name and institutional affiliation of all those who agree to > >sign. The letter should come back to me by Thursday 15 May.We will be > >sending the protest letter to the Library of Congress and release it to > >the Indian press.. > >I am sending you two attachments: one gives the details of the campaign > >that is being organized in America, the second is the letter of protest > >that is to be signed. > >For more details on the Hindu right wing campaign against romila's > >appointment to the Kluge Chair see the web site: > >http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/IDRT300403.html > > > >Neeladri > >_____________________________________________________________ > > > >We are shocked at the letter of protest that is circulating in on the > >Internet against the appointment of Professor Romila Thapar as First Holder > >of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South at the Library of > >Congress, USA. Professor Thapar has been undoubtedly one of the most > >eminent Indian historians, whose prolific scholarly contribution has opened > >up new ways of looking at India's past. > > > >The petition shows an amazing lack of familiarity with Professor Thapar's > >writings. Since the 1960s Professor Thapar has written powerfully against > >the colonial stereotypes that India had no past, no sense of time, and no > >historical consciousness. The petitioners attribute to her precisely those > >ideas that she has spent a lifetime battling against. > > > >But clearly the problem is that Professor Thapar's conception of Indian > >past is different from that of the petitioners. Professor Thapar has looked > >at a variety of cultural traditions in the making of ancient India. To the > >petitioners Indian past is monolithic, unified and unmistakably only Hindu. > >Those who disagree with this notion are accused of committing cultural > >genocide. > > > >This is a not just a shocking intolerance of perceptual differences. It is > >a politics that seeks to silence critique, and battles for a notion of the > >past that is homogeneously Hindu. It is part of a wider attack that we are > >witnessing in India today against intellectual and artistic freedom, and > >against cultural plurality. In a political milieu where dissent is being > >regularly repressed through intimidation, this petition against Professor > >Thapar and the hate mails that accompany it, become particular cause of > >concern. > > > >We strongly protest against this attack on Professor Thapar. > > > > > > > > > >_________________________________________________________________ > > > >"In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place > >of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates." - Foucault > > > >Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker > > _________________________________________________________________ > MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* > http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus > > _________________________________________ > 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 kanti.kumar at oneworld.net Wed May 14 14:55:32 2003 From: kanti.kumar at oneworld.net (Kanti Kumar) Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 14:25:32 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] New discussion forum- Information Society: Voices from the South Message-ID: <302730-22003531485532667@oneworld.net> Dear All, We invite you to join the newly launched discussion list on 'Information Society: Voices from the South'. Digital Opportunity Channel of OneWorld South Asia is launching this email- and Web-based discussion forum in partnership with Bytes for All , a South Asian voluntary network. Even as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process continues with the organization of Preparatory Committee Meetings (PrepComs) and other regional consultation meetings, many of the Information Society proponents, specially community builders or networkers in the South, seem to be little aware of these developments and have a distant or little involvement in the processes. Our attempt is to bridge this gap, to ensure that even as an individual or as a grassroots organization, your voice is also heard. Though the present dynamics of Information Society are being held within the realms of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) practices that are entirely a domain of the North, we believe the South too has a significant role to play and valuable experiences to share. This platform, �Information Society: Voices from the South�, is based on a realization of these facts, and is therefore run from the South, by Southern organizations. It is open to anyone (even from the North) who is interested on ICTs and Information Society issues in the developing countries. WHAT DO WE WANT TO ACHIEVE? We aim to: � Help stakeholders from the South exchange ideas and debate issues about the emerging information society and the WSIS. � Provide them with a platform to take their voices to policymakers in order to influence national, regional and global strategies. In real terms, this would mean that, � It would be a time-bound, topic-based, objective-oriented discussion channel. � Each month we would select a topic and that topic would be critically analyzed, would be featured with examples and best practices, would be discussed with challenges and opportunities and would be highlighted with policy implications, preconditions, successes and failures. � All the discussions will be streamlined in a summary report each month and would be presented to concerned authorities and at various events where information society agendas are being discussed, so that these can influence national, regional and global strategies. WHAT WILL WE DISCUSS? There is a tentative theme line for the discussions. We would attempt to deal with several broad topics such as issues of access, gender and of rights and freedom in the context of the information society. Among the questions the forum is expected to debate are: 1. How does information society relate to development and poverty alleviation? 2. How can indigenous knowledge and local content be represented and preserved? 3. Why is it important to provide access to information to women? 4. Should access be free in all cases? What about sustainability of access-related projects? 5. Why and how diversity of opinions, cultures, languages and perspectives need to be addressed on information society agendas? IS THERE ANY SCHEDLUE? The discussions - which are likely to continue until December 2003 - will be broken into time-bound thematic modules. To begin with, we will focus on the following three themes: - Knowledge societies - Access/barriers - Gender issues Future themes for discussion will be announced subsequently in the forum. HOW TO JOIN? Joining this discussion list is very easy! Just send a blank email to: join-IS at dgroups.org On successful sign-up, you will receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription. Please follow the instructions in the email to activate your subscription. This is a security measure to prevent you from being signed up by someone else. Once you activate your subscription, you will start receiving mails posted to the discussion list. You can fully participate in the list through emails itself, or through the forum site at WHERE TO CONTACT? The discussion list is being moderated by Partha Pratim Sarker, Editor, Bytes for All. If you face any subscription problem, please contact Partha at or Kanti Kumar, Editor, Digital Opportunity Channel at . For more information about the forum, visit We look forward to your active participation in this discussion list. ABOUT BytesforAll Bytes for All is a voluntary online network from South Asia and tries to portray people-oriented alternative ICT practices in the region. ABOUT Digital Opportunity Channel Digital Opportunity Channel is a joint endeavor of OneWorld and the Digital Divide Network and is dedicated to ICT for development issues. Kanti Kumar Editor, Digital Opportunity Channel Partha Pratim Sarker Editor, Bytes for All From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Wed May 14 19:58:09 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 15:28:09 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Pls sign the Romila Thapar Petition - urgent! Message-ID: <20030514142810.29684.qmail@web8007.mail.in.yahoo.com> dear everyone, probably many of you already know about this another, alarming, yet as always mindless, attempt by the hindu rightwing in india to throttle progressive voices, politics and practices in the country. vilification of prominent academics with accusations of being 'marxist', 'unpatritotic'. 'anti-hindu' etc is only one of the many dangerous methods this madness can take. i'm forwarding a msg from neeladri bhattacharya, professor of history at jnu, new delhi, regarding the latest hindu right campaign in the usa against the appointment of prof romila thapar, one of the greatest historians of post-independence india, to a recently created prestigious chair at the library of congress in washington dc. a model protest petition follows the letter. you can mail in your name, affiliation and e-mail id to the following address in order to be attched to the petition. thanks,avishek [model letter is below message. please send the email address, name and institutional affiliation of all those who agree to sign to isha at ndf.vsnl.net.in.] _____________________________________________________________ As you may know there is a campaign organized by the Hindu right-wing in USA against the nomination of Professor Romila Thapar to the Kluge Chair at the Library of Congress. I am sending you a letter protesting against this campaign. Could you please mobilize as many signatures as you can and send me the email address, name and institutional affiliation of all those who agree to sign. The letter should come back to me by Thursday 15 May.We will be sending the protest letter to the Library of Congress and release it to the Indian press.. I am sending you two attachments: one gives the details of the campaign that is being organized in America, the second is the letter of protest that is to be signed. For more details on the Hindu right wing campaign against romila's appointment to the Kluge Chair see the web site: http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/IDRT300403.html Neeladri_____________________________________________________________ We are shocked at the letter of protest that is circulating in on the Internet against the appointment of Professor Romila Thapar as First Holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South at the Library of Congress, USA. Professor Thapar has been undoubtedly one of the most eminent Indian historians, whose prolific scholarly contribution has opened up new ways of looking at India's past. The petition shows an amazing lack of familiarity with Professor Thapar's writings. Since the 1960s Professor Thapar has written powerfully against the colonial stereotypes that India had no past, no sense of time, and no historical consciousness. The petitioners attribute to her precisely those ideas that she has spent a lifetime battling against. But clearly the problem is that Professor Thapar's conception of Indian past is different from that of the petitioners. Professor Thapar has looked at a variety of cultural traditions in the making of ancient India. To the petitioners Indian past is monolithic, unified and unmistakably only Hindu. Those who disagree with this notion are accused of committing cultural genocide. This is a not just a shocking intolerance of perceptual differences. It is a politics that seeks to silence critique, and battles for a notion of the past that is homogeneously Hindu. It is part of a wider attack that we are witnessing in India today against intellectual and artistic freedom, and against cultural plurality. In a political milieu where dissent is being regularly repressed through intimidation, this petition against Professor Thapar and the hate mails that accompany it, become particular cause of concern. We strongly protest against this attack on Professor Thapar. _________________________________________________________________ "In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates." - Foucault 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/20030514/70f44840/attachment.html From eye at ranadasgupta.com Thu May 15 19:00:22 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 19:00:22 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Romila Thapar Message-ID: >Some of you may be aware that Dr Romila Thapar, one of India's most >distinguished historians, was recently appointed as the the first holder >of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South at the US >Library of Congress. > >Unfortunately, this appointment was the subject of a vicious online >petition against Dr Thapar and the Library of Congress. That petition is >at http://www.petitiononline.com/108india/petition.html. The petitioners >level a number of false accusations against Dr Thapar, including this: "In >regards to India, she is an avowed antagonist of India's Hindu >civilization. As a well-known Marxist, she represents a completely >Euro-centric world view. I fail to see how she can be the correct choice >to represent India's ancient history and civilization. She completely >disavows that India ever had a history." > >As you know, this is totally untrue. I have prepared a counter-petition >which is at >http://www.petitiononline.com/thapar/petition.html > >May I trouble you for a few minutes of your time to sign my petition in >support of Dr Thapar and the Library of Congress? > >Thank you. > >With warm regards, >Gautam Patel From eye at ranadasgupta.com Thu May 15 19:17:38 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 19:17:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Microsoft offers free software... Message-ID: BRUSSELS, May 14 — At least 90 percent of the world's personal computers run on Windows software. But Microsoft wanted still more. Last summer, Orlando Ayala, then in charge of worldwide sales at Microsoft, sent an e-mail message titled Microsoft Confidential to senior managers laying out a company strategy to dissuade governments across the globe from choosing cheaper alternatives to the ubiquitous Windows computer software systems. Mr. Ayala's message told executives that if a deal involving governments or large institutions looked doomed, they were authorized to draw from a special fund to offer the software at a steep discount or even free if necessary. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, was sent a copy of the e-mail message. The memo on protecting sales of Windows and other desktop software mentioned Linux, a still small but emerging software competitor that is not owned by any specific company. "Under NO circumstances lose against Linux," Mr. Ayala wrote. This memo, as well as other e-mail messages and internal Microsoft documents obtained from a recipient of the Microsoft e-mail, offers a rare glimpse these days into the inner workings of Microsoft, the world's largest software company. They spell out a program of tactics that were carried out in recent years, ranging from steep price discounts to Microsoft employees lying about their identities at trade shows. The Microsoft campaign against Linux raises questions about how much its aggressive, take-no-prisoners corporate culture has changed, despite having gone through a lengthy, reputation-tarnishing court battle in the United States that resulted in Microsoft's being found to have repeatedly violated antitrust laws. Perhaps most important, certain discounts may run afoul of European market regulators, who are still investigating accusations that Microsoft abused their antitrust laws. Discounting is a perfectly normal corporate practice. But under European law, companies that hold a dominant market position like Microsoft are prohibited from offering discounts that are aimed at blocking competitors from the market. Microsoft has been concerned with the legality of its discounts in the past, consulting a London law firm on a specific discount plan in 1998, before it was determined in court that the company had a monopoly in desktop operating systems. In a telephone interview today, Jean-Philippe Courtois, the chairman of Microsoft's operations in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, defended the use of the special fund described in Mr. Ayala's e-mail message, saying it was part of a strategy to be "competitive" and "relevant" in the market for big government and education deals. "Linux is obviously a key competitor," Mr. Courtois said. Rivals use similar tactics, he said. Sun Microsystems, for example, "is giving away StarOffice to basically governments and schools," he said. The Sun suite of programs runs on both Windows and Linux operating systems. Mr. Courtois said that Microsoft sometimes gave software to "very low-income countries." He cited a program where Microsoft donated software in South Africa and helped train teachers to use it. Mr. Ayala's memo said that the discounts could be offered to "developed and developing countries," and that an "initial focus" was being put on Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, India and China. In his e-mail message, he focused on governments and large institutions buying mostly desktop software. A separate memo described a discounting program for corporate customers worldwide. Two days after Mr. Ayala sent his e-mail message, Michael Sinneck, the executive in charge of Microsoft's services department, sent a message giving details of a program to provide corporate clients with discounts on the hourly rates charged by Microsoft's consulting business. The memo said nearly $180 million had been allocated in the 2003 fiscal year, which ends in June, for this purpose alone. Of that, $140 million was earmarked for consulting services for server software, an area where Microsoft has a growing share of the market but still faces lively competition, particularly from big companies like I.B.M. that are promoting Linux as an alternative to Microsoft Windows. Servers are the powerful computers used by corporations to store data, manage Web sites and perform other network tasks. The software that runs servers is the subject of one of the two antitrust cases currently open against Microsoft in the European Community. In broad terms, Microsoft is accused of illegally leveraging its overwhelming dominance of the PC software market into the server market. European antitrust laws are generally stricter than comparable American laws, but the Microsoft practices described in the memos may raise red flags for regulators in the United States as well. In June 2001, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that Microsoft had violated antitrust laws by bullying business partners and rivals to thwart any competitive challenge to Windows. Later that year, Microsoft reached a settlement with the Bush administration, agreeing not to use its monopoly power in PC software, including pricing deals and contract terms, to effectively force PC makers to favor Microsoft products over competing offerings. Among the documents is an e-mail message from an outside lawyer, Bill Allan of the London-based firm Linklaters, to Microsoft that offers a precise interpretation of European Community law on the matter of discounts, including the view that short-term discounting would be more likely to escape scrutiny. The message, from 1998, advised Microsoft that its discounts should not discriminate between clients and that discounts could not be aimed at excluding competitors from the market. "Discounts are not per se unlawful," Charles Stark, a former antitrust official at the Justice Department and a partner at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Brussels, said in an interview. "It depends on the market circumstances and how they use them and what their impact is." Mr. Stark, who has not seen the documents, pointed out that under European law "pricing behavior can be viewed differently by a dominant firm than by a nondominant firm." Asked whether the discounting program for server software consulting was legal in Europe, given Microsoft's position, Mr. Courtois, the Microsoft executive, said that consulting was a "break even" business. "We are not a global services company," he said. "We need to compete against the big guys." Mr. Courtois cited I.B.M. and Oracle as companies with large consulting businesses. The Microsoft documents show the preoccupation among top managers with countering the open-source movement, a group of programmers who want the software that runs computers to be offered free of charge. The codes behind open-source software are developed openly by independent teams of programmers, allowing companies to customize their programs and paying for services to make the software perform better. This is in stark contrast to Microsoft, which keeps most of its source code secret — although governments and some corporations are increasingly allowed to view the code. Linux, the biggest open-source threat to Microsoft, has a tiny share of the market for personal computer software. But Linux was installed in 26 percent of the large data-serving computers sold last year that power corporate networks and the Internet, according to International Data, a market research company. Microsoft's Windows was the operating system on 44 percent of the servers. The server market is one area where Linux appears to have some momentum. The use of Linux is also being supported by a handful of Microsoft rivals and encouraged by many governments, especially in Europe, as a cheaper and perhaps more secure alternative to Windows software. The French, for example, have a Web site that recommends Linux systems for government departments. Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, once referred to Linux's licensing as "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." In the face of this competition, the Microsoft documents show the significant resources the company devotes — and the unconventional tactics it sometimes uses — to combat Linux. Chris O'Rourke, a Microsoft employee, described attending LinuxWorld, a trade fair in California, where he "purported to be an independent computer consultant" working with several public school districts, according to an e-mail message he sent on Aug. 20, 2002. "In general, people bought this without question," Mr. O'Rourke wrote. "Hook, line and sinker." He said his goal was to glean intelligence about the competition. His guise, Mr. O'Rourke said, "got folks to open up and talk." Mr. O'Rourke did not respond to a fax and voice mail message seeking comment. Another employee, Todd Brix, said in an e-mail message that he attended a Linux conference in June 2001 in San Jose, Calif., pretending to be an "ambivalent OEM." Original equipment manufacturers, or O.E.M.'s, are companies like Hewlett-Packard and Dell Computer that buy Windows software licenses. Reached at his office on Tuesday, Mr. Brix said that when attending such a show, "you don't broadcast that you're a Microsoft person." "You don't disguise that fact," he said. "You just don't lead with your chin." In his message, Mr. Brix described the technical issues discussed at the show and said the tone of the meeting "was an even mix of Local Union hall teamster gathering, Christian Scientist revival and Amway sales conference." Of all the Microsoft tactics described in the internal messages, the two discount programs appear to be the most aggressive — and perhaps the most legally questionable. Mr. Ayala sent his memo at 8:17 a.m. on July 16, 2002. In addition to Mr. Ballmer, the recipients included two Microsoft vice presidents — James Allchin and Jeffrey S. Raikes — along with some of the company's top lawyers and the general managers of Microsoft's operations in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Mr. Ayala wrote that in today's "difficult economic environment" some institutions and companies were focusing on cheaper software." "It is important," he continued, "that we have a way to address large PC purchases that involve low-cost/no-cost competitors in the education (and government) sectors, especially in emerging markets." The solution, he wrote, was to "tip the scales" toward Microsoft in these deals by using the special fund, which he called the Education and Government Incentive Program. The fund was to be used "only in deals we would lose otherwise," Mr. Ayala said. When he wrote the memo, Mr. Ayala was a quite high-level executive at Microsoft, reporting directly to Mr. Ballmer. He was in charge of sales and marketing and responsible for roughly 22,000 of the more than 50,000 Microsoft employees. In March, Mr. Ayala was transferred to lead a new division that focuses on small and medium-size companies. This new push is one of Microsoft's top priorities. Mr. Ayala was not available to comment. In his separate e-mail message, Mr. Sinneck, the Microsoft services executive, wrote that the consulting fund would be used to cover the difference between the "discounted customer rate and the standard services billing rate per hour." Reached this week, Larry Meadows, marketing manager for Microsoft's services group at company headquarters in Redmond, Wash., said the fund could be used "anywhere it needs to be." "There's not really a limit to say that you can use it only in certain geographies," Mr. Meadows added. He said the funds would be used again in the next fiscal year that begins in July. From zipzap_2k at yahoo.com Fri May 16 20:43:29 2003 From: zipzap_2k at yahoo.com (Anamika Bhatnagar) Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 08:13:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Can someone help? In-Reply-To: <20030515212801.18916.89252.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20030516151329.61536.qmail@web41602.mail.yahoo.com> Dear everyone at the reader list, We are a group of three students at Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia. We are completing our MA (Final) and wish to make a video documentary on the pornographic film base in Delhi. e are looking for research material as well as some academics or research associates or even laymen who have either worked on this issue or are familiar with this line. If there is anyone out there who can help us either in collection of material or give insights into this field, we would greatly apprecite the effort. Kindly contact any one of us on any of the following addresses: Anamika Bhatnagar (zipzap_2k at yahoo.com) Gaurav Singh (gauravagra at rediffmail.com) Asma Khan (asma_khan28 at yahoo.com) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com From aiindex at mnet.fr Sat May 17 05:16:29 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 00:46:29 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy - Arundhati Roy (May 13) + broadcast details Message-ID: http://www.cesr.org/roy/ has all the details. Roy's speech at Riverside Church in New York on May 13 will be on C-Span. As the CESR site says: The entire event was recorded by C-SPAN and will be broadcast nationwide beginning this Sunday, May 18 at 12:00AM EST (saturday night) and then again at 8:00AM EST. C-SPAN will continue these broadcasts over the next several weekends in different time slots. The broadcast schedule is available online: http://www.booktv.org/schedule/ May 18 midnight-2 am (saturday night) (all times eastern US) May 18 8 am - 10 am http://www.cesr.org/roy/royspeech.htm has a transcript of the speech as well as a link to pdf. ----------------------- Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free) by Arundhati Roy Presented in New York City at The Riverside Church May 13, 2003 Copyright 2003 by Arundhati Roy Sponsored by the Center for Economic and Social Rights www.cesr.org For permission to use or reprint, contact: arnove at igc.org. In these times, when we have to race to keep abreast of the speed at which our freedoms are being snatched from us, and when few can afford the luxury of retreating from the streets for a while in order to return with an exquisite, fully formed political thesis replete with footnotes and references, what profound gift can I offer you tonight? As we lurch from crisis to crisis, beamed directly into our brains by satellite TV, we have to think on our feet. On the move. We enter histories through the rubble of war. Ruined cities, parched fields, shrinking forests, and dying rivers are our archives. Craters left by daisy cutters, our libraries. So what can I offer you tonight? Some uncomfortable thoughts about money, war, empire, racism, and democracy. Some worries that flit around my brain like a family of persistent moths that keep me awake at night. Some of you will think it bad manners for a person like me, officially entered in the Big Book of Modern Nations as an "Indian citizen," to come here and criticize the U.S. government. Speaking for myself, I'm no flag-waver, no patriot, and am fully aware that venality, brutality, and hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state. But when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an empire, then the scale of operations changes dramatically. So may I clarify that tonight I speak as a subject of the American Empire? I speak as a slave who presumes to criticize her king. Since lectures must be called something, mine tonight is called: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free). Way back in 1988, on the 3rd of July, the U.S.S. Vincennes, a missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner and killed 290 civilian passengers. George Bush the First, who was at the time on his presidential campaign, was asked to comment on the incident. He said quite subtly, "I will never apologize for the United States. I don't care what the facts are." I don't care what the facts are. What a perfect maxim for the New American Empire. Perhaps a slight variation on the theme would be more apposite: The facts can be whatever we want them to be. When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC News poll said that 55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported Al Qaida. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because there isn't any). All of it is based on insinuation, auto-suggestion, and outright lies circulated by the U.S. corporate media, otherwise known as the "Free Press," that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy rests. Public support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded on a multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the U.S. government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media. Apart from the invented links between Iraq and Al Qaida, we had the manufactured frenzy about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. George Bush the Lesser went to the extent of saying it would be "suicidal" for the U.S. not to attack Iraq. We once again witnessed the paranoia that a starved, bombed, besieged country was about to annihilate almighty America. (Iraq was only the latest in a succession of countries - earlier there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Grenada, and Panama.) But this time it wasn't just your ordinary brand of friendly neighborhood frenzy. It was Frenzy with a Purpose. It ushered in an old doctrine in a new bottle: the Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strike, a.k.a. The United States Can Do Whatever The Hell It Wants, And That's Official. The war against Iraq has been fought and won and no Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found. Not even a little one. Perhaps they'll have to be planted before they're discovered. And then, the more troublesome amongst us will need an explanation for why Saddam Hussein didn't use them when his country was being invaded. Of course, there'll be no answers. True Believers will make do with those fuzzy TV reports about the discovery of a few barrels of banned chemicals in an old shed. There seems to be no consensus yet about whether they're really chemicals, whether they're actually banned and whether the vessels they're contained in can technically be called barrels. (There were unconfirmed rumours that a teaspoonful of potassium permanganate and an old harmonica were found there too.) Meanwhile, in passing, an ancient civilization has been casually decimated by a very recent, casually brutal nation. Then there are those who say, so what if Iraq had no chemical and nuclear weapons? So what if there is no Al Qaida connection? So what if Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein as much as he hates the United States? Bush the Lesser has said Saddam Hussein was a "Homicidal Dictator." And so, the reasoning goes, Iraq needed a "regime change." Never mind that forty years ago, the CIA, under President John F. Kennedy, orchestrated a regime change in Baghdad. In 1963, after a successful coup, the Ba'ath party came to power in Iraq. Using lists provided by the CIA, the new Ba'ath regime systematically eliminated hundreds of doctors, teachers, lawyers, and political figures known to be leftists. An entire intellectual community was slaughtered. (The same technique was used to massacre hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia and East Timor.) The young Saddam Hussein was said to have had a hand in supervising the bloodbath. In 1979, after factional infighting within the Ba'ath Party, Saddam Hussein became the President of Iraq. In April 1980, while he was massacring Shias, the U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinksi declared, "We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the United States and Iraq." Washington and London overtly and covertly supported Saddam Hussein. They financed him, equipped him, armed him, and provided him with dual-use materials to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. They supported his worst excesses financially, materially, and morally. They supported the eight-year war against Iran and the 1988 gassing of Kurdish people in Halabja, crimes which 14 years later were re-heated and served up as reasons to justify invading Iraq. After the first Gulf War, the "Allies" fomented an uprising of Shias in Basra and then looked away while Saddam Hussein crushed the revolt and slaughtered thousands in an act of vengeful reprisal. The point is, if Saddam Hussein was evil enough to merit the most elaborate, openly declared assassination attempt in history (the opening move of Operation Shock and Awe), then surely those who supported him ought at least to be tried for war crimes? Why aren't the faces of U.S. and U.K. government officials on the infamous pack of cards of wanted men and women? Because when it comes to Empire, facts don't matter. Yes, but all that's in the past we're told. Saddam Hussein is a monster who must be stopped now. And only the U.S. can stop him. It's an effective technique, this use of the urgent morality of the present to obscure the diabolical sins of the past and the malevolent plans for the future. Indonesia, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan - the list goes on and on. Right now there are brutal regimes being groomed for the future - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, the Central Asian Republics. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recently declared that U.S. freedoms are "not the grant of any government or document, but .our endowment from God." (Why bother with the United Nations when God himself is on hand?) So here we are, the people of the world, confronted with an Empire armed with a mandate from heaven (and, as added insurance, the most formidable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in history). Here we are, confronted with an Empire that has conferred upon itself the right to go to war at will, and the right to deliver people from corrupting ideologies, from religious fundamentalists, dictators, sexism, and poverty by the age-old, tried-and-tested practice of extermination. Empire is on the move, and Democracy is its sly new war cry. Democracy, home-delivered to your doorstep by daisy cutters. Death is a small price for people to pay for the privilege of sampling this new product: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (bring to a boil, add oil, then bomb). But then perhaps chinks, negroes, dinks, gooks, and wogs don't really qualify as real people. Perhaps our deaths don't qualify as real deaths. Our histories don't qualify as history. They never have. Speaking of history, in these past months, while the world watched, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was broadcast on live TV. Like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the regime of Saddam Hussein simply disappeared. This was followed by what analysts called a "power vacuum." Cities that had been under siege, without food, water, and electricity for days, cities that had been bombed relentlessly, people who had been starved and systematically impoverished by the UN sanctions regime for more than a decade, were suddenly left with no semblance of urban administration. A seven-thousand-year-old civilization slid into anarchy. On live TV. Vandals plundered shops, offices, hotels, and hospitals. American and British soldiers stood by and watched. They said they had no orders to act. In effect, they had orders to kill people, but not to protect them. Their priorities were clear. The safety and security of Iraqi people was not their business. The security of whatever little remained of Iraq's infrastructure was not their business. But the security and safety of Iraq's oil fields were. Of course they were. The oil fields were "secured" almost before the invasion began. On CNN and BBC the scenes of the rampage were played and replayed. TV commentators, army and government spokespersons portrayed it as a "liberated people" venting their rage at a despotic regime. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: "It's untidy. Freedom's untidy and free people are free to commit crimes and make mistakes and do bad things." Did anybody know that Donald Rumsfeld was an anarchist? I wonder - did he hold the same view during the riots in Los Angeles following the beating of Rodney King? Would he care to share his thesis about the Untidiness of Freedom with the two million people being held in U.S. prisons right now? (The world's "freest" country has the highest number of prisoners in the world.) Would he discuss its merits with young African American men, 28 percent of whom will spend some part of their adult lives in jail? Could he explain why he serves under a president who oversaw 152 executions when he was governor of Texas? Before the war on Iraq began, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) sent the Pentagon a list of 16 crucial sites to protect. The National Museum was second on that list. Yet the Museum was not just looted, it was desecrated. It was a repository of an ancient cultural heritage. Iraq as we know it today was part of the river valley of Mesopotamia. The civilization that grew along the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates produced the world's first writing, first calendar, first library, first city, and, yes, the world's first democracy. King Hammurabi of Babylon was the first to codify laws governing the social life of citizens. It was a code in which abandoned women, prostitutes, slaves, and even animals had rights. The Hammurabi code is acknowledged not just as the birth of legality, but the beginning of an understanding of the concept of social justice. The U.S. government could not have chosen a more inappropriate land in which to stage its illegal war and display its grotesque disregard for justice. At a Pentagon briefing during the days of looting, Secretary Rumsfeld, Prince of Darkness, turned on his media cohorts who had served him so loyally through the war. "The images you are seeing on television, you are seeing over and over and over, and it's the same picture, of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it twenty times and you say, 'My god, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?'" Laughter rippled through the press room. Would it be alright for the poor of Harlem to loot the Metropolitan Museum? Would it be greeted with similar mirth? The last building on the ORHA list of 16 sites to be protected was the Ministry of Oil. It was the only one that was given protection. Perhaps the occupying army thought that in Muslim countries lists are read upside down? Television tells us that Iraq has been "liberated" and that Afghanistan is well on its way to becoming a paradise for women-thanks to Bush and Blair, the 21st century's leading feminists. In reality, Iraq's infrastructure has been destroyed. Its people brought to the brink of starvation. Its food stocks depleted. And its cities devastated by a complete administrative breakdown. Iraq is being ushered in the direction of a civil war between Shias and Sunnis. Meanwhile, Afghanistan has lapsed back into the pre-Taliban era of anarchy, and its territory has been carved up into fiefdoms by hostile warlords. Undaunted by all this, on the 2nd of May Bush the Lesser launched his 2004 campaign hoping to be finally elected U.S. President. In what probably constitutes the shortest flight in history, a military jet landed on an aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which was so close to shore that, according to the Associated Press, administration officials acknowledged "positioning the massive ship to provide the best TV angle for Bush's speech, with the sea as his background instead of the San Diego coastline." President Bush, who never served his term in the military, emerged from the cockpit in fancy dress - a U.S. military bomber jacket, combat boots, flying goggles, helmet. Waving to his cheering troops, he officially proclaimed victory over Iraq. He was careful to say that it was "just one victory in a war on terror [which] still goes on." It was important to avoid making a straightforward victory announcement, because under the Geneva Convention a victorious army is bound by the legal obligations of an occupying force, a responsibility that the Bush administration does not want to burden itself with. Also, closer to the 2004 elections, in order to woo wavering voters, another victory in the "War on Terror" might become necessary. Syria is being fattened for the kill. It was Herman Goering, that old Nazi, who said, "People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." He's right. It's dead easy. That's what the Bush regime banks on. The distinction between election campaigns and war, between democracy and oligarchy, seems to be closing fast. The only caveat in these campaign wars is that U.S. lives must not be lost. It shakes voter confidence. But the problem of U.S. soldiers being killed in combat has been licked. More or less. At a media briefing before Operation Shock and Awe was unleashed, General Tommy Franks announced, "This campaign will be like no other in history." Maybe he's right. I'm no military historian, but when was the last time a war was fought like this? After using the "good offices" of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its people starved, half a million children dead, its infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons had been destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history, the "Coalition of the Willing" (better known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought) - sent in an invading army! Operation Iraqi Freedom? I don't think so. It was more like Operation Let's Run a Race, but First Let Me Break Your Knees. As soon as the war began, the governments of France, Germany, and Russia, which refused to allow a final resolution legitimizing the war to be passed in the UN Security Council, fell over each other to say how much they wanted the United States to win. President Jacques Chirac offered French airspace to the Anglo-American air force. U.S. military bases in Germany were open for business. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer publicly hoped for the "rapid collapse" of the Saddam Hussein regime. Vladimir Putin publicly hoped for the same. These are governments that colluded in the enforced disarming of Iraq before their dastardly rush to take the side of those who attacked it. Apart from hoping to share the spoils, they hoped Empire would honor their pre-war oil contracts with Iraq. Only the very naïve could expect old Imperialists to behave otherwise. Leaving aside the cheap thrills and the lofty moral speeches made in the UN during the run up to the war, eventually, at the moment of crisis, the unity of Western governments - despite the opposition from the majority of their people - was overwhelming. When the Turkish government temporarily bowed to the views of 90 percent of its population, and turned down the U.S. government's offer of billions of dollars of blood money for the use of Turkish soil, it was accused of lacking "democratic principles." According to a Gallup International poll, in no European country was support for a war carried out "unilaterally by America and its allies" higher than 11 percent. But the governments of England, Italy, Spain, Hungary, and other countries of Eastern Europe were praised for disregarding the views of the majority of their people and supporting the illegal invasion. That, presumably, was fully in keeping with democratic principles. What's it called? New Democracy? (Like Britain's New Labour?) In stark contrast to the venality displayed by their governments, on the 15th of February, weeks before the invasion, in the most spectacular display of public morality the world has ever seen, more than 10 million people marched against the war on 5 continents. Many of you, I'm sure, were among them. They - we - were disregarded with utter disdain. When asked to react to the anti-war demonstrations, President Bush said, "It's like deciding, well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus group. The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security, in this case the security of the people." Democracy, the modern world's holy cow, is in crisis. And the crisis is a profound one. Every kind of outrage is being committed in the name of democracy. It has become little more than a hollow word, a pretty shell, emptied of all content or meaning. It can be whatever you want it to be. Democracy is the Free World's whore, willing to dress up, dress down, willing to satisfy a whole range of taste, available to be used and abused at will. Until quite recently, right up to the 1980's, democracy did seem as though it might actually succeed in delivering a degree of real social justice. But modern democracies have been around for long enough for neo- liberal capitalists to learn how to subvert them. They have mastered the technique of infiltrating the instruments of democracy - the "independent" judiciary, the "free" press, the parliament - and molding them to their purpose. The project of corporate globalization has cracked the code. Free elections, a free press, and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities on sale to the highest bidder. To fully comprehend the extent to which Democracy is under siege, it might be an idea to look at what goes on in some of our contemporary democracies. The World's Largest: India, (which I have written about at some length and therefore will not speak about tonight). The World's Most Interesting: South Africa. The world's most powerful: the U.S.A. And, most instructive of all, the plans that are being made to usher in the world's newest: Iraq. In South Africa, after 300 years of brutal domination of the black majority by a white minority through colonialism and apartheid, a non- racial, multi-party democracy came to power in 1994. It was a phenomenal achievement. Within two years of coming to power, the African National Congress had genuflected with no caveats to the Market God. Its massive program of structural adjustment, privatization, and liberalization has only increased the hideous disparities between the rich and the poor. More than a million people have lost their jobs. The corporatization of basic services - electricity, water, and housing-has meant that 10 million South Africans, almost a quarter of the population, have been disconnected from water and electricity. 2 million have been evicted from their homes. Meanwhile, a small white minority that has been historically privileged by centuries of brutal exploitation is more secure than ever before. They continue to control the land, the farms, the factories, and the abundant natural resources of that country. For them the transition from apartheid to neo-liberalism barely disturbed the grass. It's apartheid with a clean conscience. And it goes by the name of Democracy. Democracy has become Empire's euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism. In countries of the first world, too, the machinery of democracy has been effectively subverted. Politicians, media barons, judges, powerful corporate lobbies, and government officials are imbricated in an elaborate underhand configuration that completely undermines the lateral arrangement of checks and balances between the constitution, courts of law, parliament, the administration and, perhaps most important of all, the independent media that form the structural basis of a parliamentary democracy. Increasingly, the imbrication is neither subtle nor elaborate. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, for instance, has a controlling interest in major Italian newspapers, magazines, television channels, and publishing houses. The Financial Times reported that he controls about 90 percent of Italy's TV viewership. Recently, during a trial on bribery charges, while insisting he was the only person who could save Italy from the left, he said, "How much longer do I have to keep living this life of sacrifices?" That bodes ill for the remaining 10 percent of Italy's TV viewership. What price Free Speech? Free Speech for whom? In the United States, the arrangement is more complex. Clear Channel Worldwide Incorporated is the largest radio station owner in the country. It runs more than 1,200 channels, which together account for 9 percent of the market. Its CEO contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bush's election campaign. When hundreds of thousands of American citizens took to the streets to protest against the war on Iraq, Clear Channel organized pro-war patriotic "Rallies for America" across the country. It used its radio stations to advertise the events and then sent correspondents to cover them as though they were breaking news. The era of manufacturing consent has given way to the era of manufacturing news. Soon media newsrooms will drop the pretense, and start hiring theatre directors instead of journalists. As America's show business gets more and more violent and war- like, and America's wars get more and more like show business, some interesting cross-overs are taking place. The designer who built the 250,000 dollar set in Qatar from which General Tommy Franks stage-managed news coverage of Operation Shock and Awe also built sets for Disney, MGM, and "Good Morning America." It is a cruel irony that the U.S., which has the most ardent, vociferous defenders of the idea of Free Speech, and (until recently) the most elaborate legislation to protect it, has so circumscribed the space in which that freedom can be expressed. In a strange, convoluted way, the sound and fury that accompanies the legal and conceptual defense of Free Speech in America serves to mask the process of the rapid erosion of the possibilities of actually exercising that freedom. The news and entertainment industry in the U.S. is for the most part controlled by a few major corporations - AOL-Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation. Each of these corporations owns and controls TV stations, film studios, record companies, and publishing ventures. Effectively, the exits are sealed. America's media empire is controlled by a tiny coterie of people. Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Michael Powell, the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, has proposed even further deregulation of the communication industry, which will lead to even greater consolidation. So here it is - the World's Greatest Democracy, led by a man who was not legally elected. America's Supreme Court gifted him his job. What price have American people paid for this spurious presidency? In the three years of George Bush the Lesser's term, the American economy has lost more than two million jobs. Outlandish military expenses, corporate welfare, and tax giveaways to the rich have created a financial crisis for the U.S. educational system. According to a survey by the National Council of State Legislatures, U.S. states cut 49 billion dollars in public services, health, welfare benefits, and education in 2002. They plan to cut another 25.7 billion dollars this year. That makes a total of 75 billion dollars. Bush's initial budget request to Congress to finance the war in Iraq was 80 billion dollars. So who's paying for the war? America's poor. Its students, its unemployed, its single mothers, its hospital and home-care patients, its teachers, and health workers. And who's actually fighting the war? Once again, America's poor. The soldiers who are baking in Iraq's desert sun are not the children of the rich. Only one of all the representatives in the House of Representatives and the Senate has a child fighting in Iraq. America's "volunteer" army in fact depends on a poverty draft of poor whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians looking for a way to earn a living and get an education. Federal statistics show that African Americans make up 21 percent of the total armed forces and 29 percent of the U.S. army. They count for only 12 percent of the general population. It's ironic, isn't it - the disproportionately high representation of African Americans in the army and prison? Perhaps we should take a positive view, and look at this as affirmative action at its most effective. Nearly 4 million Americans (2 percent of the population) have lost the right to vote because of felony convictions. Of that number, 1.4 million are African Americans, which means that 13 percent of all voting-age Black people have been disenfranchised. For African Americans there's also affirmative action in death. A study by the economist Amartya Sen shows that African Americans as a group have a lower life expectancy than people born in China, in the Indian State of Kerala (where I come from), Sri Lanka, or Costa Rica. Bangladeshi men have a better chance of making it to the age of forty than African American men from here in Harlem. This year, on what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 74th birthday, President Bush denounced the University of Michigan's affirmative action program favouring Blacks and Latinos. He called it "divisive," "unfair," and "unconstitutional." The successful effort to keep Blacks off the voting rolls in the State of Florida in order that George Bush be elected was of course neither unfair nor unconstitutional. I don't suppose affirmative action for White Boys >From Yale ever is. So we know who's paying for the war. We know who's fighting it. But who will benefit from it? Who is homing in on the reconstruction contracts estimated to be worth up to one hundred billon dollars? Could it be America's poor and unemployed and sick? Could it be America's single mothers? Or America's Black and Latino minorities? Operation Iraqi Freedom, George Bush assures us, is about returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people. That is, returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people via Corporate Multinationals. Like Bechtel, like Chevron, like Halliburton. Once again, it is a small, tight circle that connects corporate, military, and government leadership to one another. The promiscuousness, the cross-pollination is outrageous. Consider this: the Defense Policy Board is a government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon. Its members are appointed by the under secretary of defense and approved by Donald Rumsfeld. Its meetings are classified. No information is available for public scrutiny. The Washington-based Center for Public Integrity found that 9 out of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board are connected to companies that were awarded defense contracts worth 76 billion dollars between the years 2001 and 2002. One of them, Jack Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps general, is a senior vice president at Bechtel, the giant international engineering outfit. Riley Bechtel, the company chairman, is on the President's Export Council. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is also on the Board of Directors of the Bechtel Group, is the chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. When asked by the New York Times whether he was concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest, he said, "I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there's work to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it." Bechtel has been awarded a 680 million dollar reconstruction contract in Iraq. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bechtel contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican campaign efforts. Arcing across this subterfuge, dwarfing it by the sheer magnitude of its malevolence, is America's anti-terrorism legislation. The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in October 2001, has become the blueprint for similar anti-terrorism bills in countries across the world. It was passed in the House of Representatives by a majority vote of 337 to 79. According to the New York Times, "Many lawmakers said it had been impossible to truly debate or even read the legislation." The Patriot Act ushers in an era of systemic automated surveillance. It gives the government the authority to monitor phones and computers and spy on people in ways that would have seemed completely unacceptable a few years ago. It gives the FBI the power to seize all of the circulation, purchasing, and other records of library users and bookstore customers on the suspicion that they are part of a terrorist network. It blurs the boundaries between speech and criminal activity creating the space to construe acts of civil disobedience as violating the law. Already hundreds of people are being held indefinitely as "unlawful combatants." (In India, the number is in the thousands. In Israel, 5,000 Palestinians are now being detained.) Non-citizens, of course, have no rights at all. They can simply be "disappeared" like the people of Chile under Washington's old ally, General Pinochet. More than 1,000 people, many of them Muslim or of Middle Eastern origin, have been detained, some without access to legal representatives. Apart from paying the actual economic costs of war, American people are paying for these wars of "liberation" with their own freedoms. For the ordinary American, the price of "New Democracy" in other countries is the death of real democracy at home. Meanwhile, Iraq is being groomed for "liberation." (Or did they mean "liberalization" all along?) The Wall Street Journal reports that "the Bush administration has drafted sweeping plans to remake Iraq's economy in the U.S. image." Iraq's constitution is being redrafted. Its trade laws, tax laws, and intellectual property laws rewritten in order to turn it into an American- style capitalist economy. The United States Agency for International Development has invited U.S. companies to bid for contracts that range between road building, water systems, text book distribution, and cell phone networks. Soon after Bush the Second announced that he wanted American farmers to feed the world, Dan Amstutz, a former senior executive of Cargill, the biggest grain exporter in the world, was put in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq. Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's policy director, said, "Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission." The two men who have been short-listed to run operations for managing Iraqi oil have worked with Shell, BP, and Fluor. Fluor is embroiled in a lawsuit by black South African workers who have accused the company of exploiting and brutalizing them during the apartheid era. Shell, of course, is well known for its devastation of the Ogoni tribal lands in Nigeria. Tom Brokaw (one of America's best-known TV anchors) was inadvertently succinct about the process. "One of the things we don't want to do," he said, "is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq because in a few days we're going to own that country." Now that the ownership deeds are being settled, Iraq is ready for New Democracy. So, as Lenin used to ask: What Is To Be Done? Well We might as well accept the fact that there is no conventional military force that can successfully challenge the American war machine. Terrorist strikes only give the U.S. Government an opportunity that it is eagerly awaiting to further tighten its stranglehold. Within days of an attack you can bet that Patriot II would be passed. To argue against U.S. military aggression by saying that it will increase the possibilities of terrorist strikes is futile. It's like threatening Brer Rabbit that you'll throw him into the bramble bush. Any one who has read the documents written by The Project for the New American Century can attest to that. The government's suppression of the Congressional committee report on September 11th, which found that there was intelligence warning of the strikes that was ignored, also attests to the fact that, for all their posturing, the terrorists and the Bush regime might as well be working as a team. They both hold people responsible for the actions of their governments. They both believe in the doctrine of collective guilt and collective punishment. Their actions benefit each other greatly. The U.S. government has already displayed in no uncertain terms the range and extent of its capability for paranoid aggression. In human psychology, paranoid aggression is usually an indicator of nervous insecurity. It could be argued that it's no different in the case of the psychology of nations. Empire is paranoid because it has a soft underbelly. Its "homeland" may be defended by border patrols and nuclear weapons, but its economy is strung out across the globe. Its economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable. Already the Internet is buzzing with elaborate lists of American and British government products and companies that should be boycotted. Apart from the usual targets - Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds - government agencies like USAID, the British DFID, British and American banks, Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch, and American Express could find themselves under siege. These lists are being honed and refined by activists across the world. They could become a practical guide that directs the amorphous but growing fury in the world. Suddenly, the "inevitability" of the project of Corporate Globalization is beginning to seem more than a little evitable. It would be naïve to imagine that we can directly confront Empire. Our strategy must be to isolate Empire's working parts and disable them one by one. No target is too small. No victory too insignificant. We could reverse the idea of the economic sanctions imposed on poor countries by Empire and its Allies. We could impose a regime of Peoples' Sanctions on every corporate house that has been awarded with a contract in postwar Iraq, just as activists in this country and around the world targeted institutions of apartheid. Each one of them should be named, exposed, and boycotted. Forced out of business. That could be our response to the Shock and Awe campaign. It would be a great beginning. Another urgent challenge is to expose the corporate media for the boardroom bulletin that it really is. We need to create a universe of alternative information. We need to support independent media like Democracy Now!, Alternative Radio, and South End Press. The battle to reclaim democracy is going to be a difficult one. Our freedoms were not granted to us by any governments. They were wrested from them by us. And once we surrender them, the battle to retrieve them is called a revolution. It is a battle that must range across continents and countries. It must not acknowledge national boundaries but, if it is to succeed, it has to begin here. In America. The only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society. The rest of us are subjects of slave nations. We are by no means powerless, but you have the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests are being carried out in your name, and you have the right to refuse. You could refuse to fight. Refuse to move those missiles from the warehouse to the dock. Refuse to wave that flag. Refuse the victory parade. You have a rich tradition of resistance. You need only read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States to remind yourself of this. Hundreds of thousands of you have survived the relentless propaganda you have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your own government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the United States, that's as brave as any Iraqi or Afghan or Palestinian fighting for his or her homeland. If you join the battle, not in your hundreds of thousands, but in your millions, you will be greeted joyously by the rest of the world. And you will see how beautiful it is to be gentle instead of brutal, safe instead of scared. Befriended instead of isolated. Loved instead of hated. I hate to disagree with your president. Yours is by no means a great nation. But you could be a great people. History is giving you the chance. Seize the time. ARUNDHATI ROY Presented in New York City at The Riverside Church May 13, 2003 Copyright 2003 Sponsored by the Center for Economic and Social Rights www.cesr.org For permission to reprint, contact: arnove at igc.org. Center for Economic & Social Rights 162 Montague St., 2nd Floor¨Brooklyn, NY 11201 Tel: 718-237-9145¨Fax: 718-237-9147 E-mail: rights at cesr.org From eye at ranadasgupta.com Sun May 18 20:09:35 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sun, 18 May 2003 20:09:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] NYT on cheap Korean labour in Russia Message-ID: May 18, 2003 Russia Turns to a Poor Neighbor for Cheap Labor By JAMES BROOKE http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/18/internation al/asia/18SIBE.html?pagewanted=print&position = VLADIVOSTOK, Russia — Amid the construction dust of a faux Southern California shopping mall, where cream walls, marble floors and luxury boutiques were taking shape, a construction worker resolutely pushed his wheelbarrow, ignoring a poster of a lingerie model, dressed in little more than a black cowboy hat. "The North Koreans are great, they don't smoke, they don't drink," said Grigoryi T. Akhoyan, the Armenian developer of the new downtown mall here. "I have friends in California who employ Mexicans. I think North Koreans work just as hard." On May Day, Russians here were enjoying their holiday with a parade and concert by the docks of this Pacific port. But across an avenue, two North Korean stonemasons were working, tapping bricks with mallets to complete a sidewalk. "Koreitsi," Russian for Korean, announced 14 classified advertisements listing the availability of North Korean workers in a recent issue of the Dalpress newspaper. The advertisements included words like "fast," "cheap" and "quality." With their numbers rising here, North Korean construction workers are now so ubiquitous that one recent morning an American diplomat noticed a North Korean crew at work plastering the bomb-barrier flower boxes in front of the United States Consulate here. They were replaced with Russian workers. In an inheritance from Soviet days, as many as 10,000 North Koreans work in the Russian Far East under a contract worker system. North Korea provides cheap labor under tight controls to the Russian Far East, which is short of labor, but fears Asian immigration. By contrast, China gives no legal security to North Korean economic migrants. In a yearlong crackdown, China has forcibly sent back tens of thousands of North Koreans, often to harsh punishment at home. With North Korea now the poorest nation in Northeast Asia, all of its neighbors — China, South Korea, Russia and Japan — have adopted contingency plans to block a sudden outflow of migrants in the event of a collapse of the Communist government. But while Japan, South Korea and Russia lack workers willing to do dirty and dangerous jobs, only Russia has been willing to accept North Koreans as guest workers. "It is good the North Korean workers are here," Yuri M. Kopylov, Vladivostok's mayor, said in an impromptu interview on the edge of a children's folk concert. "They work all day long. There is no competition between North Koreans and Russians. There is work for everybody." The arrangement allows the North Korean government to milk the maximum money from the workers, who generally come here on three-year contracts. Most of their wages are retained or collected by the North Korean state companies that bring them here, workers and employers interviewed here said. Two North Koreans interviewed at an apartment renovation project here said their unit leader told them they must earn a minimum of $400 a month (close to the local minimum wage), which for most means moonlighting at private jobs. They are allowed to keep $100. This money, the men said, they either send home to their families or carry back on their yearly vacations. Although they often work 16-hour days, sleeping in apartments they are renovating, they said they considered themselves lucky to be working in Russia and hoped to renew their contracts. The men asked not be identified in any way, saying that they could be harshly punished for talking about North Korea to foreigners. One man drew his fingers across his throat in a universal sign of execution. "The men coming here realize they are prisoners of the system," Mr. Akhoyan said, referring to North Korea's hold over workers here. "But all the workers come here willingly. And when the contract is over, they seem to regret going." The Armenian developer said he paid "about the same amount of money" to his 60 North Korean workers as to Russians with the same skills. The advantage to him, he explained, "is that the Koreans do a greater volume of work." His North Korean foreman said in broken Russian that when his contract expired, he would "go home." Uneasy about talking with a foreigner, he said only that in North Korea he had a wife, son and daughter whom he only saw once a year during a monthlong vacation. One North Korean dormitory here is on the third floor of an old merchant marine training academy in an industrial suburb. On a recent morning, about 12 North Korean men were fishing for dinner off a pier. In a hallway leading to the dormitory's sleeping quarters, a red-and-gold banner brightened the drab interior. "Our great leader, Comrade Kim Il Sung, will be with us forever! Hurrah for Gen. Kim Jong Il, the son of the 21st century!" read the slogans, referring to North Korea's late leader and his son and successor. In the Russian Far East, North Korea's tightly controlled migrant worker system is welcomed by local authorities worried that uncontrolled Asian migration could end 150 years of European dominance here. On a visit to the region two summers ago, Kim Jong Il told an aide to President Vladimir V. Putin that the Russian authorities had his permission to shoot any North Koreans found dealing in drugs. North Korea's worker control system is especially harsh in remote Siberian logging camps which, according to Amnesty International, are directly run by North Korea's ruthless Public Security Service. Escapees interviewed in Moscow in recent years have told human rights researchers that the North Korean camp authorities maintain private prisons and prevent escapes by rationing food and punishing would-be escapees with torture and sometimes execution. During the Soviet era, most logging in Siberia was done by prisoners in forced labor camps. Viktor Ishayev, governor of Khabarovsk since 1991, has said in interviews with Russian reporters over the last year that the Russian authorities have regained control over the camps and have reduced the number of North Koreans loggers. There used to be 15,000 North Koreans in labor camps," he said in a news conference in January. "Now 600 is the quota, mostly in logging." On May 3, Ben Christie and Nicholas Wrathall, two documentary filmmakers, visited the Alonka camp, a 16-hour train ride and a 3-hour jeep ride from Khabarovsk, a regional capital. Even though the team had filming permits from Khabarovsk officials, Mr. Christie said, North Korean authority was made clear by a North Korean flag on a crane emblazoned with Korean slogans. Mr. Christie recalled in a interview what happened when the workers spotted the team filming. "The chief came running up to the car," he said. "He tried to pull the aerial off. Then, he tried to pull the door off. Then he reached inside the car for the camera." After the driver turned around, Mr. Christie said, "they threw a huge rock at the car." On their return train ride from the town of Chegdomyn, Mr. Christie and his crew found and interviewed a North Korean Communist Party secretary, in full uniform, who had been attending a meeting for camp overseers in Chegdomyn. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: "The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad." (&::Dalí) ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From gchat at vsnl.net Mon May 19 12:46:05 2003 From: gchat at vsnl.net (CHATTERJEE) Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 12:46:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] songs without boundaries Message-ID: Nasreen Rehman's piece in Himal circulated this morning (12.05.03) in Harsh Kapoor's posting (the URL only) raises interesting thoughts. There are these nations and their national anthems; but something amusing is happening here. Bangladesh has a national anthem and it is in praise of a 'Golden Bangla', much of which lies outside it. And there is the national anthem of India that mentions Punjab, Sindhu, and Banga (Bengal) - names that imply lands outside the nation and its limit. How wonderful! National anthems that defy the notion of clear boundaries! May be it is about a part thinking of itself as a whole - singing a song of wholeness that is fragmented. May be there is a whole; may be there is none ever! May be there is everything of everything, always! At a time when we are told not to worry too much about the purpose of the author, what does it matter what one had thought while composing these songs. Nor dose it matter what they were thinking, they who were building nations, choosing national anthems. It is so rare to have national anthems that remind one of lands outside or outsiders' lands! Let us then have plenty of such anthems that would be reminders of an-Other, of other times that was there before this. I have often sung or heard Aamar Sonar Bangla and have been startled into thinking of it also as Bangladesh-national-anthem. Imagine the situation: you could be singing an old song you have learnt in childhood, at the same time you are singing some other country's national anthem? I have often wondered how no one from West Bengal (not to my knowledge at least) has opposed this saying, 'No, this song belongs to us. We will not give it to any other nation for any such use.' Songs are not the only things that are such common properties between nations. I hear Shuddha say, 'There should be no nations and so no national anthems!' Should not be, but there are! Similarly, 'there should not be any wars!' but there are. We said so much recently, while resisting one in particular. Now that our opposition has meant not very much and the war (is that the right word?) has taken place, an important question before me is 'what do we say now'? We obviously and understandably perhaps are not saying as much as we said when US attack on Iraq was imminent. No doubt, to say 'No' to war was important. I signed all petitions, attended whatever meetings and marches I could. But when it comes to speaking, I can only speak 'in between'. I can hardly think and act right when there are wars - of any kind. But I need help - from Dear All. I cite again that sentence from 'Rules of the Game': 'I do not like rabbits and I do not like fences.' Renoir writes as he plans the film, just before WWII, 'War clouds are hovering over European skies and no one is paying attention'. Perhaps it is comparatively easier to say 'I don't like fences' and be in intellectual and moral opposition to people who like and build fences. Of course it is important to be against fences and boundaries. All I am saying is, it is more difficult to raise the question of rabbits. Rabbits can be a pet or a pest; rabbit killing can be a sport; these Nature's creatures can be personal property, they can be poached and the poacher punished (the Count does not do that, but gives Marceau the job of polishing shoes - that valued personal-possession). But then it is another matter, when things change and you & I start dying like rabbits - like Renoir's hero who dies in the film, 'just like a rabbit'. This is about being able to talk about something you do not like, but do so in a way you emerge better and wiser - more lovable - as did Renoir. I am not reacting particularly to Rehman's statement in her piece, that Rabindranath wrote the song that ultimately became the Indian national anthem, in order to welcome George V - this has been a common enough belief. At the same time, I would like to record some other details here. This is a letter Tagore wrote to Pulinbihari Sen on 20 December 1931. It is long, but I realise I cannot be selective and produce parts. 'You have asked me whether I composed Jana-gana-mana-adhinaayaka for some occasion or just like that. I know this question comes to your mind because ill words are blowing from some quarters of the country. I am replying to your letter not to fan that and fuel the fires within (the wind), but to satisfy your query. One day, my late friend Hemchandra Mallik, accompanied by Bipin Pal, came to me with a request. They were planning to combine the traditional form of the Durga idol with some divine-form of Motherland, and thus give a new turn to sharadiya-puja (the worship of Durga in Spring). They wanted me to compose a suitable song, mixing devotion and (patriotic) fervour. I declined saying this cannot be my idea of bhakti; I would be committing a mistake (if I did so). If it were literary request, independent of my religious beliefs I would comply, unhesitatingly. But such an unauthorised entry in the field of faith and devotion would be a gross sin! My friends were not particularly happy with this. And I composed bhubauno-mauno-mohini - no need to add the song is unsuitable for the puja-mandap. But of course, it must also be admitted it is equally unsuitable for singing at the common platform of the bharat-rashtra. For the poem is based exclusively on Hindu culture and cannot be appreciated by a non-Hindu in any degree of familiarity. Similar event occurred in my life yet again. That year the 'Emperor-of-Bharat' was to visit and arrangements were afoot. A friend high up in His Majesty's service fervently requested me to write a song hailing the Emperor. The request amazed me and I felt a heat inside. In reaction to that great turmoil, in the song Jana-gana-mana-adhinaayaka, I pronounced the victory of that bhaarat-bhaagya-vidhaata (the lord-of-India's-destiny), who in every aeon has been an eternal and steadfast charioteer, leading the travellers rushing through the yugas rising and falling over uneven paths straight and curved. He is also the reader-of-the-collective-mind, a perennial-guide.[1] Even that friend had understood that that charioteer could never be George V, George VI, or any other George, and in any conceivable manner whatsoever. However excessive his admiration for the crown might have been, he was not lacking in intelligence. In this context I remember another incident, it had happened a long time ago. In those days, our national leaders always looked up towards those unassailable turrets of the King's palace hoping for some tit-bits of royal blessings falling from those great heights. One day there was to be a soiree in someone's house.[2] They sent a messenger known to me. In spite of my repeated dissent, he kept urging me to join in - without me and my song, the party would not be a success, he had said. At the end, the lord-of-my-destiny robbed me of the power to say a 'No'. I had to go. But just before leaving, I had composed 'Don't ask me to sing.'[3] The party could not be a success after this song. Those present were not amused.' I want to appreciate the problem. There is an emperor and I don't want to write in his praise. But I cannot also ignore the fact that such a request has come my way. So, I write something, reacting against such an event falling my way. Now if I do not believe in nationalism, then I might take things for as they are and write a song for him - how wrong will I be? I do not like the British ruling - I think they are foreigners and are robbing us of our rights and properties. So as a poet I then write a song, giving vent to that desire. There is a third possibility - I ignore what is going around me and write as an internationalist poet. Tagore did that too - in fact did that most of the times. Note the way the song is composed: in the ways of a western song, as a chorus, with a refrain composed of repeated words and a melody rising to a crescendo. It is rather amusing how the music-makers those days would discover, as it were, the word 'chorus'; each swayed between composing songs meant for an individual and those meant for community singing. Tagore writes on another occasion, 'The urge was for self-discovery and self-expression, both as individual and a people.' I have a question: if I were a poet living in the cusp of the nineteenth and twentieth century, what would be the options before me? And was there a fourth way before Tagore? Do we pull up Tagore for being a 'nationalist' or ask, what the writing of that song means against the fact he has also written something like the Nationalism? Every literary, musical or artistic work of that period could be labelled 'nationalistic'. But we might not get very far that way, intellectually, politically and ethically. When we were young we had learnt to sing the first, third and the fifth (or last) stanza of the song. After some research (the reason this had to wait before I could post it), I found that is how the song was sung in National Congress meets. That way there was no confusion as to who, the song is addressed to. The National Congress had no doubt and the song became particularly popular after someone (perhaps Tagore) translated it. The interesting thing about this history is not that the song was later chosen as our anthem but that there always were songs at those meets. Many songs in several languages were sung; they were then transcribed in Devanagari, translated in English and circulated. For example, in 1911 Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya requested Tagore to compose a song as a protest for Annie Besant was jailed for her agitation 'Home Rule for India'. Tagore composed a song of patriotic fervour and vigour: desh deshnondito. Later that year, the National Congress was to be held in Calcutta and the song marked 'chorus' was presented on the first day and as a 'third item' - Tagore had sung and led some more songs, like jana-gana-mana, a verse from the Rig-veda sangacchaddham, etc. Present were Gokhale, Gandhi, Tilak, Besant (who was released by then), Malaviya and Das (Chittaranjan). It is amusing to imagine these people sitting around and listen to some very marvellous songs. I request all to listen to a rabidly nationalist song composed by Tagore's niece Indira Devi Choudhurani, atita-gourava-kaahini - what an amazing composition. (Can Triumph of the Will be a good example of how we can look at things with appreciation and perception?) Jana-gana-mana kept gaining in popularity and came up as being very important once again in 1931, when an appeal had to be made against the division of Bengal. There is more history to this song; but all the details of it turning into the Indian National Anthem I think is yet to be unearthed. One objection to it now, could be it's over emphasis on the idea of destiny and of some controller-of-destiny. The song is profoundly pessimistic and it is disappointing to think the poet could counteract the shock of that request only by imagining another entity of the stature of a Ruler. It must have been difficult to be optimistic in those days, true, but Tagore did manage to be, not merely optimistic, but filled with jouissance most of the times. So, I like a national anthem that reminds me of History and sobers me up every time I sing it. Also, the fact that people from all the three countries could sing this Indian one (keeping intact the wish it was a little less destiny-oriented) adds to its interest. It is such a simple song, too, listing names of some territories (almost like a song of genealogy, but here names of places instead of people) and simply hoping for some extra-terrestrial blessings. (The next two stanzas are different in that they evoke abstract thought and imagery - but they are full of very difficult Sanskrit compound-words. That would not have suited everyone with different language ability. No wonder they were gradually discarded. Of course, I do not know what thoughts went into the choice of one single stanza. We could look into that.) As I am researching cultural practices of that time, I realise we do need to inquire some more into those times; we could theorise some more about cultural production at a given point in the history of a country. For example, given that we do not any more sing others' songs, we could compare times when such things are possible and when not. I had sent this for scrutiny and this is the reply from friend Probal Dasgupta: 'while we are on such topics, let me tell you a titbit from my esperantical life. When Zamenhof had not yet become the 28-year-old who gifted us the actual Esperanto we speak, when he was only 19, he and his fellows, who were leaving school and had learnt the early version of his language (then called Lingwe Uniwesale), were singing at the party with everybody saying goodbye to each other, a song in that early version of what became Esperanto, and the words that have come down to us are Malamikete de las nacjes, kado, kado, jam temp' esta! La tot' homoze in familje konunigare so deba. Enmity between the nations, fall, fall, it is high time! All humankind must now get itself together in one family. What people have recently figured out, at long last, is what the tune must have been. It was done by logic, and is based on data that is equally available to you. I leave you to ponder the matter for a couple of days and promise to save you if you are dying of suspense. But I am sure you will come up with the same answer. Anyway it is "only" a guess.' [1] Here Tagore has paraphrased the third stanza from the five-stanza song. [2] Tagore keeps mum on this here, but it is well known the event had taken place in the house of Ananda Palit. [3] 'Don't ask me to sing, please don't! Is this only pleasantry, just a fun-party? Is there to be only lies and hypocrisy? Have you come here only to gain fame, to string together words and receive claps! Only to sing false tunes, engage in false action and spend a night falsely.' From aiindex at mnet.fr Mon May 19 14:58:27 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 10:28:27 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] songs without boundaries In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: For those who may be interested, posted below is the full text of the article by Rehman along with the URL. cheers Harsh ========== Himal, May 2003 PERSPECTIVE http://www.himalmag.com/2003/may/perspective.htm Singing the nation by Nasreen Rehman The old imperial tune: God Save the Queen. Literature and music have long been a means of celebrating the cults of gods, kings and nations. In South Asia, the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharat and the Ramayan are early examples of this, from the Sanskrit tradition. There are of course, variations upon the general themes in different regional languages, and also local songs of praise and adulation for kings and deities. When the Turks, Persians and Afghans came to settle in India, they brought with them their own traditions of glorifying the king, such as, Firdausi's Shahnama (1010 CE). Additionally, they too, had carried with them traditions from Arabic of singing, hamd and na't and tarana in praise of their God, Prophet and saints, respectively. Through the ages, there is ample textual, pictorial and iconographic evidence of thriving traditions of courtiers, painters, musicians and poets retained by rajas and badshahs. Their main purpose was to entertain their patrons, by eulogising them whilst heralding births, celebrating marriages and proclaiming victories. This often had little bearing on reality, as the artist would exaggerate the king's good looks, valour and generosity, no matter that the monarch was no looker, busy losing battles and taxing his subjects into penury; the painter would paint a picture of exaggerated grandeur and beauty and the poet would write in similar, inflated language. Write to editors Printer-friendly version Anyone who has attended an official function in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh will confirm the resilience of this tradition of sycophancy, as long speeches are delivered praising prime ministers and presidents, ministers, governors, petty functionaries and sundry dignitaries, while much of the state infrastructure crumbles, or extolling the virtues of artists, authors and celebrities or some literary work, painting or musical performance, regardless of the artistic or literary merit of the works in question. The national anthems of India, Pakistan and, to a much lesser extent, that of Bangladesh are rooted in this tradition of eulogising and mythologising. However, they have to be viewed in the context of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, which saw the emergence of Indian nationalism and Hindu and Muslim nationalisms in British India, culminating in 1947, with independence and partition, resulting in the creation of Pakistan; and just 24 years later, another partition and the creation of Bangladesh. South Asian nationalisms in the 20th cen-tury draw on the experiences of more than a century and a half of earlier models of nationalism. Early Indian nationalism had modelled itself on the European nationalisms of the 19th century. Beginning with the 1848 revolutions, the end of the 19th century saw the nation-state emerge in Europe. It was a time when much of the current map of Europe was conjured. Writing about this time, the left historian Eric Hobsbawm tells us, It is clear that plenty of political institutions, ideological movements and groups - not least in nationalism - were so unprecedented that even historic continuity had to be invented, for example by creating an ancient past beyond effective historical continuity either by semi-fiction (Boadicea, Vecingetorix, Arminius the Cheruscan) or by forgery (Ossian, the Czech medieval manuscripts). It is also clear that entirely new symbols and devices come into existenceŠ such as the national anthemŠ the national flagŠ or the personification of 'the nation' in symbol or image. The idea that nations are imagined finds a place in Hobsbawm's The Invention of Tradition. Anybody who has seen the prescribed history text books in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh can see the manner in which nationhood, history and truth are constructed and contested: the national anthems are important manifestations of the construction of 'nationhood', simultaneously the perpetuators and reinforcements of feverish nationalism. Prototype sentiment The institutional uses of the fictions and myths of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and their anthems, have to be seen in two stages. First, the anti-colonial struggle and later the nation-centeredness of the postcolonial world in which hegemonic ideas of nationhood were packaged and offered as the authentic version of being. In the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, these concepts had a great impact at a time when there were already large populations living in cities where concepts of mass culture and the packaging of ideas had taken root. The association between productive relations and the technology of communication was an important factor in the propagation of these ideas - print languages created unified fields of communication. Newspapers, periodicals and novels all contributed to creating mass and nationalist trends. Singing the concept of an akhand Bharat or of a Persianised sultanat or of a shonar Bangla when part of Bengal is in India is unreal When the Indian National Congress adopted Vande Mataram as its anthem in 1896, there were several models that were before it. Perhaps, the first song celebrating a nation-state was Marseillaise (1792). Composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, the French national anthem asks the sons of France to awake to the glory of the fatherland. The obvious gendered nature of the song notwithstanding, the general theme of the anthem is to fight for liberty, to use freedom as a sword and shield. The British national anthem, God save the Queen (tune credited to Englishman Henry Carey, contentiously to Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lully, and left 'anonymous' as preferred by Buckingham, adopted 1800), was also the national anthem of India for a time, as it was part of the British empire. Today, it sounds utterly ridiculous in a democratic country, for citizens to pray that God bestow riches on the monarch, while entrusting everything to him or her. However, there is a redeeming clause, at the end: May she defend our laws, And ever give us cause, To sing with heart and voice, God save the queen! There could be a positive construction that singing the praise of the monarch is contingent upon her or him being subservient to the rule of law. The other anthem that would have been accessible to the Indians because it was in English was The Star Spangled Banner (lyrics by Francis Scott Key 1814, adopted 1831), a paean to the American flag. In the current state of the world, where the United States seems poised to be the sole world power, it sends a chilling message. And so, as bombs dropped on Baghdad: And the rockets' red glare, the bomb bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there And the sinister significance in the context of the Rumsfeld-Bush worldview, where the US is quite openly comfortable with bombing other nations of: Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just, And this be our motto: "In God is our trust" And the star-spangled banner forever shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! Both the United Kingdom and the United States of America are avowedly secular countries. However, in singing their nation, God is invoked time and again, for protection, justification and glorification of the country. But these were not the only models available to the Indians. The Internationale, written by Eugene Pottier at the fall of the Paris Commune, in 1871, translated into hundreds of languages, was the rallying cry for the oppressed and exploited of the world to rise and overthrow their masters. It has offered inspiration to social and political activists for over a century now. It was sung by anti-fascist groups during the Spanish civil war; conducted by Arturo Toscanini at the La Scala at the end of the second world war to celebrate the fall of the fascists in Italy. In 1989, it was sung by Chinese students at Tienanmen Square before the massacre. Arise, ye prisoners of starvation, Arise, ye wretched of the earth! For justice thunders condemnation, A better world's in birth No more tradition's chain shall bind us, Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall! The earth shall rise on new foundation, We have been none, we shall be all Calling upon the wretched of the earth to unite against oppression, this anthem subverts the idea of the nation-state; yet, it was adopted by the Soviet Union as its national anthem. It was also available to the Communist Party of India, in its English and Hindustani translations. However, the first anthem that the Indian nationalists chose to sing in praise of their nation, came from the tradition of mythologising a fictive imagined nation personified as a goddess, was Vande Mataram, which appears in Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's 1882 novel, Anand Math. It was recited at the 1896 session of the Indian National Congress. The fact that the novel and the context of the anthem were overtly anti-Muslim and treated them as a separate nation, and that the invocation of the deities, Durga, Kali and Lakshmi ran counter to the secular credentials of Congress obviously did not bother the leaders who selected it. Thou art Durga Lady and Queen, With her hands that strike and her Swords of sheenŠ Vande Mataram or 'hail motherland' became the rallying call of freedom fighters through the freedom struggle. Many chose to either forget or overlook the fact that the first song celebrating the cult of the Indian nation was rooted in suspicion and hatred by one imagined Indian community of Hin-dus against another imagined community of Muslims that it viewed as outsiders. The writer Nirad C Choudhuri described the atmosphere of the times in which the song was written. The historical romances of Bankim Chatterjee and Ramesh Chandra Dutt glorified Hindu rebellion against Muslim rule and showed the Muslims in correspondingly poor light. Chatterjee was positively and fiercely anti-Muslim. We were eager readers of these romances and we readily absorbed their spirit. Muslims and Hindus in the Congress, as well as the Muslim League, reacted sharply to the choice; within the Congress, in a cosmetic move, it was decided that only the first two stanzas of the poem would be sung (the stanza quoted above was excluded). Surprisingly, however, nobody inside the Congress or outside pointed out that Hindus and Muslims were not two separate nations. There was no significant debate on 'nationhood'; in the discussions, there seemed to be an acceptance that Hindus and Muslims were two distinct communities. Anthem DNA In 1911, Jana Gana Mana was used for the first time at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress, where much of the activity was geared to preparations for the visit of the British monarch. Caressing the terrain of the 'nation's' geography, this ballad, which was adopted as the Indian anthem, marks its narrative with references to nine regions and two rivers - Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravida, Utkal, Banga, Vindhya, Himachal, Yamuna, Ganga. It was written by Rabindranath Tagore, for the 1911 visit of King George V, who is described reverentially as Bharat bhagya vidhata or 'the lord of India's fate'. (A controversy brews over the composer of Jana Gana Mana, with most believing that Tagore was the composer while Captain Ram Singh, a Gurkha in the Indian National army and close associate of Subhas Bose, is also credited.) After partition, there was some controversy about the choice of a national anthem for India. Finally, after a parliamentary debate, it was settled that Jana Gana Mana would be the national anthem and that Vande Mataram would have "equal status". On 25 August 1948, in a statement to the Constituent Assembly, Jawaharlal Nehru described his position on the national anthem: The question of having a national anthem tune, to be played by orchestras and bands, became an urgent one for us immediately after 15 August 1947. It was as important as that of having a national flag. The Jana Gana Mana tune, slightly varied had been adopted as a national anthem by the Indian National Army in South East Asia and had subsequently a degree of popularity in India also. I wrote to all the provincial governors and asked their views about adopting Jana Gana Mana or any other song as the national anthem. I asked them to consult their Premiers... Jana Gana Mana was retained, ironically, even though half of Punjab and all of Sindh went to Pakistan, while currently, more than half of Bengal is the independent country of Bangladesh. In highly Sanskritised Bengali, the national anthem is in a language that is largely incomprehensible to the majority of the population of northern India and completely incomprehensible to the people of southern India. But it has the advantage of being very short and largely a litany of names of various regions. India is called Bharat in it - does this in anyway inform the Indian right wing's dreams of the mythical "akhand (undivided) Bharat"? Nehru making the independence address,1947. Another very popular anthem in India, which is almost as popular if not more than the national anthem is the tarana by Iqbal, Sare jahan se accha Hindositan hamara, hum bulbulein hain iski, yeh gulsitan hamara. Set to music by Pandit Ravi Shankar, it became the anthem for the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) in the mid-1940s. All the professionals associated with IPTA were progressive, radical and anti-communal. Ironically, Iqbal, who wrote in this poem, "mazhab nahin sikhata apas mein bair rakhna" (religion does not teach us to fight amongst ourselves) in 1930, dreamt of a separate homeland for Indian Muslims. Iqbal died in 1935, after conceiving the idea of Pakistan but before he could see its creation. No doubt, if he had been alive, he would have written the national anthem for Pakistan. As it was, the choice of language and poet for 'singing Pakistan' was in itself an indication of how the country would develop. A majority of the population lived in East Pakistan with Bangla as its mother tongue; in the provinces of West Pakistan, Pashto, Balochi, Punjabi and Sindhi were first languages. Urdu had been prominent in the Punjab, and the British had used it for administrative purposes. It was also the tongue of the mohajirs from present day Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Quite arbitrarily, Urdu was declared the national language of Pakistan and became the language of the national song. Tragically, a beautiful, rich and lyrical language came to be associated with a repressive state, out of touch with itself and its people. At a time when Faiz Ahmed Faiz was already acclaimed as the greatest living Urdu poet, lyricist and litterateur Hafeez Jullandhri was given the task of writing the song. Not surprising, since Faiz, a revolutionary poet, had written a lament after independence, mourning the bitter dawn of bloodshed and partition. The new state of Pakistan saw itself free, not just from the fetters of imperial Britain, but free from the feared domination of 'Hindu India'. In defining the nation, Hafeez looked to the Persian tradition for inspiration. This, when the great masters of Urdu poetry, such as Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Miraji, had already altered the Urdu canon by departing from the traditional usage of classical Persian to explicitly local and indigenous imagery and language. There are no more than two indigenous words in the song, and one of them is 'ka' - the preposition 'of'. Hafeez could be congratulated for the phrase, "Pak sarzameen ka nizaam, quaat-e-axuat-e-awam", which asserts that the primary concern in the pure land should be the strength and benefit of the populace. But he digs a deep hole with "qaum, mulk, sultanat, painda tabinda bad, shadbad manzil-e-murad". Which 'qaum' or nation is he referring to? In using the word 'sultanat', is he harkening back to the days of empires, falsely represented as Muslim empires in India? Quaat-e-axuat-e-awam - the order of this sacred land is the might of the brotherhood of the people - says the anthem of a country where, almost as if defying those words, Muslims have bled and killed each other since its creation. Top: Sheikh Mujib at March 1971 rally; Jinnah relaxing. While the Pakistani anthem ceded a lot of linguistic ground, Bangladesh seceded from (West) Pakistan largely on the grounds of language. In Pakistan, people still wonder why a Tagore song was chosen for Bangladesh, yet to come to terms with the fact that Bangladesh was about language and not about religion. Language was at the core of the resentment that East Pakistanis felt against West Pakistan. The partition of Pakistan into the independent state of Bangladesh gave a lie to the belief that South Asia had two nations: the Hindus and the Muslims. The Bangladeshis chose their anthem in the light of their struggle, therefore, Rabindranath Tagore, a Hindu Bengali, was chosen, when in fact they could have chosen the more revolutionary Nazrul Islam. The Bangladeshis chose to highlight the Bengali aspect of their identity. Tagore is therefore the creator of two national anthems in the region. Amar Shonar Bangla, ami tamaye bhalo bhashi - was writ-ten in 1906, in the context of the partition of Bengal. Its words and tune, based on a Baul song by Gagan Horkora, in their simplicity are immediately accessible to any Bangla speaker. Invoking the mother goddess and mother earth, Tagore praises the rivers, the breeze and the seasons: it seems that his Bengal has eternal autumn and spring. There is, of course, no mention of the cyclones and storms that wreak havoc in the lives of millions annually. [See 'In search of shonar Bangla', page 33.] False notes The Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi national anthems are very much in the tradition of their Western counterparts, glorifying a make-believe land where the landmass becomes an end in itself - a way of identifying the individual citizen, who is bound and defined by unreal geography and who sings the praise of an unreal nation. Singing the concept of an akhand Bharat in the Indian anthem or of a Persianised sultanat in the Pakistani or of a shonar Bangla when part of Bengal is in India takes these three countries right into Saadat Hasan Manto's imagination. In Manto's 1948 play, someone asks about the fictional Punjabi village, Toba Tek Singh. In reply, he is told, "If it was in India yesterday and is in Pakistan today, how do I know where it will be tomorrow?" If, many years later, the question had been about Dhaka, he could have been told that Dhaka had been in India, then it was in Pakistan and now it is in Bangladesh. Who knows where it will be years from now. There is a need to explode the myths of akhand Bharat, Pakistan, the pure land of the Muslim ummah or the exotic beautiful Bengal of sweet breezes. The anthem of the Hindu right wing: Vande Mataram The nation, hiding behind terms such as authenticity, tradition, folklore, community, obscuring its origins in what Benedict Anderson has called "the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time", uses its national anthem to perpetrate its myth. The singing of national anthems at school assemblies and after the screening of films is no longer mandatory. However, who can overlook the hypocrisy inherent in a moment of glory at some international sporting event - the flag is hoisted, and people weep as the national anthem is played for the victorious country, and members of marginalised and victimised communities go forward to collect accolades for their nations? Where there are common threads of poverty, hunger, malnutrition, illiteracy, filth and squalor, here is a suggestion for the peoples of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh: zard patton ka ban jo mera des hai, dard ki anjuman jo mera des hai by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The majority of our populations live in appalling conditions of deprivation - somebody could add a few lines for the communal and ethnic strife that tears us apart. Perhaps, this will remind us more of our realities and might actually shame us into some action instead of standing and singing and celebrating non-existent nations. Like most other national anthems, the national anthems of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan have no bearing on the reality and existence of the majority of their populations. The national anthems are as false as the nations they celebrate. From aiindex at mnet.fr Mon May 19 15:06:12 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 10:36:12 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Correspondence following Romila Thapar Defence Campaign Message-ID: FYI Here is some correspondence that has followed in response to an SACW alert In Defence of Prof. Romila Thapar (the well known Indian Historian) sent on 29 April 2003: - Letter received from a certain Brannon Parker, the initiator of the internet petition against the appointment of Romila Thapar to the Kluge Chair http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/responsetoBP.html#Letter%20recieved%20by%20SACW%20from%20the [also available on the Hindutva site at: http://www.hvk.org/articles/0503/0.html and - the response from South Asia Citizens Web to Brannon Parker http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/responsetoBP.html am also posting these below Harsh Kapoor South Asia Citizens Web (SACW) http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex N.B.: For more information see: Action Alert: In Defence of the Indian Historian Romila Thapar http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/IDRT300403.html ========= LETTER RECIEVED BY SACW FROM THE INITIATOR OF THE PETITION AGAINST ROMILA THAPAR's APPOINTMENT TO THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS From: Vrin Parker Dear SACW Members and Whom it Concerns, Its truly amazing to see the accusations of slander and Hindu right wing fundamentalists conspiracy being applied to me. I started this petition on my own. No one asked me to or even urged me to do it. I actually am amazed at how much credit is given to the Hindu activists.Fine people as individuals but in general, Hindus are very unispiring campaigners and activists. I found out about the R Thapar appointment from a Hindu friend. It was his and the usual lack of an action plan that I see amongst Hindus that caused me to stand up and say," I don't have to accept this. I, for one, am doing something about it." That is the honest genesis of the petition. The truth is, I am a white American who lived and studied in India and in the USA. After having been forced to learn a lot misinformation about India in American schools I became fed up. I proved to my teacher that it was innacurate info. Simple but false statements like Kali yuga is named after the horrific Goddess Kali. Buddhism predates Hinduism. India was never a civilization because they didn't always have a unified state. Her response was," You will be graded on what is in the books, so I would focus on that instead of worrying about what Hindus believe about their own culture." I began my own research and soon discovered that it was the Indians themselves, esp Romila Thapar, who are at the root of all the nonsense taught about Hindus in the West.(Of course thats my opinion and I have a right to it.) As an American, I am very discouraged by the US Library of Congress using American resources and prestige to bolster the inaacuracies of Romila Thapar's research. I take great offense at being labelled by your group as a Hindu rightwing fundamentalist. In fact, I am a private US citizen, practicing my constitutional rights of legally appealing to my elected representatives and other US government bodies involved in this issue. By labelling me as a Hindu Right wing fundamentalist and accusing me of slandering Romila Thapar you have committed a libelous act. http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/IDRT300403.html I would like an apology and a retraction of your statements. I would also like to see you remove your libelous statements form the internet. I am sorry if you don't agree with me or my actions against Thapar. That does not give you a right to attack my reputation. The fact is you are acting fanatically and your reaction is very revealing. How many times have innocent people been demonized by your inapropriate name-calling? Is this type of situation the basis of all the anti-hindu reports going on in the world media? Are there people with a vested interest in denigrating Hinduism based on a need to create a more conducive atmosphere for conversion to Christianity? More converts, more money? Whats up? What ever is going on you are definately out of line when publicly labelling a private US citizen. As an American, I value free speech and the right to dissent. By trying to demonize me and label me you are attempting to throttle my rights to dissent. If you don't agree with my opinion, as stated on the petition, than be honorable and democratic about it. Prove me wrong by using factual information. Regardless of Romila Thapar's anti-Hindu bias or lack of it, I do not support her as a good use of our American resources. I need no reason to be against her except my constitutional right to freedom of speech. I expect a prompt response and clarification of your public and libelous statements against me. Sincerely, Brannon Parker ========== Response to Brannon Parker's Message re the SACW Alert in Defence of Romila Thapar Dear Brannon Parker, Thank you very much for your email. We are grateful to you for offering us the rationale behind your web petition. Certainly we do not intend nor did we attempt to slander you personally. The website you saw was set up to argue against the main line of argument in the petition which we saw as congruent, indeed along the grain of, hindutva fundamentalism. You are not a Hindutva fundamentalist, that may be as you say, and if you took this from the website, then we are sorry for you. However, the web petition you initiated against the appointment of Prof. Romila Thapar to the Library of Congress, adopts a distinctly Hindutva fundamentalist position that has been rigorously criticized in many other places for describing India's past as being monocultural and being excusively 'Hindu'. The assessment of the petition as organised by Hindutva fundamentalists does not just rest on where the petition originated. The calls for collection of signatures on web noticeboards of Hindutva circuits, coupled with the rabidly chauvinist sentiments expressed by many of the signatories, suggests that Hindu fundamentalist networks have been mobilized in support of the petition. We are of course quite startled and dismayed by your frequent claims about "Hindus" being disorganized, etc. There is a tendency toward racism in these remarks that you may want to reconsider. Are all "Hindus" unable to act, being bad organizers, and what not. Of course you have the freedom of speech, but neither you nor we have the right to toss accusations around without a scrupulous discussion of facts. Let us take the few that you offer in your email: (1) Kaliyug. You assert that a teacher mentioned that the idea of Kaliyug comes from Kali. Does Professor Thapar make this claim? We have not seen her make this statement. (2) Origins of Hinduism. You assert that a teacher told you that Hinduism comes after Buddhism. The verity of this claim depends on certain definitions. What do you mean by Hinduism? Is Hinduism always the same or does it also have a history? Certainly in the time of Ramanujan, drawing from Shankara, the various traditions that came before were radically transformed to begin the formation of what we know as Puranic Hinduism with the multiplicity of Gods, etc. This was around the 11th Century, when temple building emerges as an important aspect of Hindu practice. In the 19th Century, Dayananda Saraswati reacted to this form of Puranic Hinduism to refashion a practice he called Sanathana Dharma, a return to the Vedic Brahmanism of the ancient times. If you accord the Hindus the right to history, then it is arguable that Hinduism comes after Buddhism. D. D. Kosambi has a wonderful paper on the Bhagavada Gita that might be useful to you -- it shows how Buddhism impacted upon the text and how it was later added to the Mahabharata. (3) India as a Civilization. You assert that your teacher said that since there was no unified state there was no unified civilization. Again, I don't want to defend your teacher whose categories 'state' and 'civilization' are in need of analysis. You should of course know that the idea of an Indian civilization is not indigenous to the traditions of thought within India but it is a product of German Indology, drawing from Hegelian ideas of civilization. If you look at the Sanskrit corpus, there is no idea of a unity of civilization, only a vision of how to live in the cosmos. There is a European fallacy at work here: one that comes from Germany's own history of state formation out of the baronies, trying to forge a state to exercise the right of Germany to be a civilization. This problem does not appear in Indic texts, either in Sanskrit (for instance, the Arthashastra) nor in Persian (for instance, Ain-i-Akbari). Professor Thapar is an esteemed historian with many publications that illuminate India rather than ridicule Indians in a racist manner for being disorganized, etc. sincerely Harsh Kapoor & others On Behalf of The South Asia Citizens Web From eye at ranadasgupta.com Mon May 19 16:10:48 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 16:10:48 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] John Berger on Being in the present moment Message-ID: I think it's worth reading this, more because Berger asks good questions than because he gives good answers. Sometimes it seems as if the language we use to describe our world is a kind of theme park: a Disneyland whose limited palette of primary colours and whose small collection of dusty, but obstinately popular, and perpetually recycled, narratives, is supposed to stand for Everything. It is not simply "the world" that gets lost in these moments of seeming. It is also ourselves; for isn't our quest for a language of the grandiose contemporary also a search for interiority? That is why language and ethics, and the connections between the two, are such crucial areas for us to explore. Berger asks questions which connect to these concerns. I have questions, too: What is the sense of "shame" that fills him and that makes the future impossible to look upon? And from where does his "self" derive its being within this emptiness of language and ethics that he describes? R John Berger: Written in the Night Written in the night: The pain of living in the present world I WANT to say at least something about the pain existing in the world today. Consumerist ideology, which has become the most powerful and invasive on the planet, sets out to persuade us that pain is an accident, something that we can insure against. This is the logical basis for the ideology's pitilessness. Everyone knows, of course, that pain is endemic to life, and wants to forget this or relativise it. All the variants of the myth of a Fall from the Golden Age, before pain existed, are an attempt to relativise the pain suffered on earth. So too is the invention of Hell, the adjacent kingdom of pain-as-punishment. Likewise the discovery of Sacrifice. And later, much later, the principle of Forgiveness. One could argue that philosophy began with the question: why pain? Yet, when all this has been said, the present pain of living in the world is perhaps in some ways unprecedented. I write in the night, although it is daytime. A day in early October 2002. For almost a week the sky above Paris has been blue. Each day the sunset is a little earlier and each day gloriously beautiful. Many fear that before the end of the month, US military forces will be launching the "preventive" war against Iraq, so that the US oil corporations can lay their hands on further and supposedly safer oil supplies. Others hope that this can be avoided. Between the announced decisions and the secret calculations, everything is kept unclear, since lies prepare the way for missiles. I write in a night of shame. By shame I do not mean individual guilt. Shame, as I'm coming to understand it, is a species feeling which, in the long run, corrodes the capacity for hope and prevents us looking far ahead. We look down at our feet, thinking only of the next small step. People everywhere, under very different conditions, are asking themselves - where are we? The question is historical not geographical. What are we living through? Where are we being taken? What have we lost? How to continue without a plausible vision of the future? Why have we lost any view of what is beyond a lifetime? The well-heeled experts answer. Globalisation. Postmodernism. Communications revolution. Economic liberalism. The terms are tautological and evasive. To the anguished question of where are we, the experts murmur: nowhere. Might it not be better to see and declare that we are living through the most tyrannical - because the most pervasive - chaos that has ever existed? It's not easy to grasp the nature of the tyranny for its power structure (ranging from the 200 largest multinational corporations to the Pentagon) is interlocking yet diffuse, dictatorial yet anonymous, ubiquitous yet placeless. It tyrannises from off shore - not only in terms of fiscal law, but in terms of any political control beyond its own. Its aim is to delocalise the entire world. Its ideological strategy, besides which Osama bin Laden's is a fairy tale, is to undermine the existent so that everything collapses into its special version of the virtual, from the realm of which(and this is the tyranny's credo) there will be a never-ending source of profit. It sounds stupid. Tyrannies are stupid. This one is destroying at every level the life of the planet on which it operates. Ideology apart, its power is based on two threats. The first is intervention from the sky by the most heavily armed state in the world. One could call it Threat B52. The second is of ruthless indebtment, bankruptcy, and hence, given the present productive relations in the world, starvation. One could call it Threat Zero. The shame begins with the contestation (which we all acknowledge somewhere but, out of powerlessness, dismiss) that much of the present suffering could be alleviated or avoided if certain realistic and relatively simple decisions were taken. There is a very direct relation today between the minutes of meetings and minutes of agony. Does anyone deserve to be condemned to certain death simply because they don't have access to treatment which would cost less than $2 a day? This was a question posed by the director of the World Health Organisation last July. She was talking about the Aids epidemic in Africa and elsewhere from which an estimated 68 million people will die within the next 18 years. I'm talking about the pain of living in the present world. Most analyses and prognoses about what is happening are understandably presented and studied within the framework of their separate disciplines: economics, politics, media studies, public health, ecology, national defense, criminology, education. In reality each of these separate fields is joined to another to make up the real terrain of what is being lived. It happens that in their lives people suffer from wrongs which are classified in separate categories, and suffer them simultaneously and inseparably. A current example: some Kurds, who fled last week to Cherbourg, have been refused asylum by the French government and risk being repatriated to Turkey, are poor, politically undesirable, landless, exhausted, illegal and the clients of nobody. And they suffer each of these conditions at one and the same second. To take in what is happening, an interdisciplinary vision is necessary in order to connect the "fields" which are institutionally kept separate. And any such vision is bound to be (in the original sense of the word) political. The precondition for thinking politically on a global scale is to see the unity of the unnecessary suffering taking place. This is the starting point. I WRITE in the night, but I see not only the tyranny. If that were so, I would probably not have the courage to continue. I see people sleeping, stirring, getting up to drink water, whispering their projects or their fears, making love, praying, cooking something whilst the rest of the family is asleep, in Baghdad and Chicago. (Yes, I see too the forever invincible Kurds, 4,000 of whom were gassed, with US compliance, by Saddam Hussein.) I see pastry cooks working in Tehran and the shepherds, thought of as bandits, sleeping beside their sheep in Sardinia, I see a man in the Friedrichshain quarter of Berlin sitting in his pyjamas with a bottle of beer reading Heidegger, and he has the hands of a proletarian, I see a small boat of illegal immigrants off the Spanish coast near Alicante, I see a mother in Mali - her name is Aya which means born on Friday - swaying her baby to sleep, I see the ruins of Kabul and a man going home, and I know that, despite the pain, the ingenuity of the survivors is undiminished, an ingenuity which scavenges and collects energy, and in the ceaseless cunning of this ingenuity, there is a spiritual value, something like the Holy Ghost. I am convinced of this in the night, although I don't know why. The next step is to reject all the tyranny's discourse. Its terms are crap. In the interminably repetitive speeches, announcements, press conferences and threats, the recurrent terms are Democracy, Justice, Human Rights, Terrorism. Each word in the context signifies the opposite of what it was once meant to. Each has been trafficked, each has become a gang's code-word, stolen from humanity. Democracy is a proposal (rarely realised) about decision-making; it has little to do with election campaigns. Its promise is that political decisions be made after, and in the light of, consultation with the governed. This is dependent upon the governed being adequately informed about the issues in question, and upon the decision-makers having the capacity and will to listen and take account of what they have heard. Democracy should not be confused with the "freedom" of binary choices, the publication of opinion polls or the crowding of people into statistics. These are its pretence. Today the fundamental decisions, which effect the unnecessary pain increasingly suffered across the planet, have been and are taken unilaterally without any open consultation or participation. For instance, how many US citizens, if consulted, would have said specifically yes to Bush's withdrawal from the Kyoto agreement about the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect which is already provoking disastrous floods in many places, and threatens, within the next 25 years, far worse disasters? Despite all the media-managers of consent, I would suspect a minority. It is a little more than a century ago that Dvorák composed his Symphony From the New World. He wrote it whilst directing a conservatory of music in New York, and the writing of it inspired him to compose, 18 months later, still in New York, his sublime Cello Concerto. In the symphony the horizons and rolling hills of his native Bohemia become the promises of the New World. Not grandiloquent but loud and continuing, for they correspond to the longings of those without power, of those who are wrongly called simple, of those the US Constitution addressed in 1787. I know of no other work of art which expresses so directly and yet so toughly (Dvorák was the son of a peasant and his father dreamt of his becoming a butcher) the beliefs which inspired generation after generation of migrants who became US citizens. For Dvorák the force of these beliefs was inseparable from a kind of tenderness, a respect for life such as can be found intimately among the governed (as distinct from governors) everywhere. And it was in this spirit that the symphony was publicly received when it was first performed at Carnegie Hall (16 December 1893). Dvorák was asked what he thought about the future of American music and he recommended that US composers listen to the music of the Indians and Blacks. The Symphony From the New World expressed a hopefulness without frontiers which, paradoxically, is welcoming because centred on an idea of home. A utopian paradox. Today the power of the same country which inspired such hopes has fallen into the hands of a coterie of fanatical (wanting to limit everything except the power of capital), ignorant (recognising only the reality of their own fire-power), hypo critical (two measures for all ethical judgments, one for us and another for them) and ruthless B52 plotters. How did this happen? How did Bush, Murdoch, Cheney, Kristol, Rumsfeld, et al et Arturo Ui, get where they did? The question is rhetorical, for there is no single answer, and it is idle, for no answer will dent their power yet. But to ask it in this way in the night reveals the enormity of what has happened. We are writing about the pain in the world. The political mechanism of the new tyranny - although it needs highly sophisticated technology in order to function - is starkly simple. Usurp the words Democracy, Freedom, etc. Impose, whatever the disasters, the new profit-making and impoverishing economic chaos everywhere. Ensure that all frontiers are one-way: open to the tyranny, closed to others. And eliminate every opposition by calling it terrorist. (No, I have not forgotten the couple who threw themselves from one of the Twin Towers instead of being burnt to death separately.) There is a toy-like object which costs about $4 to manufacture and which is also incontestably terrorist. It is called the anti-personnel mine. Once launched, it is impossible to know who these mines will mutilate or kill, or when they will do so. There are more than 100 million lying on, or hidden in, the earth at this moment. The majority of victims have been or will be civilians. The anti-personnel mine is meant to mutilate rather than kill. Its aim is to make cripples, and it is designed with shrapnel which, it is planned, will prolong the victim's medical treatment and render it more difficult. Most survivors have to undergo eight or nine surgical operations. Every month, as of now, 2,000 civilians somewhere are maimed or killed by these mines. The description anti-personnel is linguistically murderous. Personnel are anonymous, nameless, without gender or age. Personnel is the opposite of people. As a term it ignores blood, limbs, pain, amputations, intimacy, and love. It abstracts totally. This is how its two words when joined to an explosive become terrorist. The new tyranny, like other recent ones, depends to a large degree on a systematic abuse of language. Together we have to reclaim our hijacked words and reject the tyranny's nefarious euphemisms; if we do not, we will be left with only the word shame. Not a simple task, for most of its official discourse is pictorial, associative, evasive, full of innuendoes. Few things are said in black and white. Both military and economic strategists now realise that the media play a crucial role, not so much in defeating the current enemy as in foreclosing and preventing mutiny, protests or desertion. Any tyranny's manipulation of the media is an index of its fears. The present one lives in fear of the world's desperation. A fear so deep that the adjective desperate, except when it means dangerous, is never used. Without money each daily human need becomes a pain. Those who have filched power - and they are not all in office, so they reckon on a continuity of that power beyond presidential elections - pretend to be saving the world and offering its population the chance to become their clients. The world consumer is sacred. What they don't add is that consumers only matter because they generate profit, which is the only thing that is really sacred. This sleight of hand leads us to the crux. The claim to be saving the world masks the plotter's assumption that a large part of the world, including most of the continent of Africa and a considerable part of South America, is irredeemable. In fact, every corner which cannot be part of their centre is irredeemable. And such a conclusion follows inevitably from the dogma that the only salvation is money, and the only global future is the one their priorities insist upon, priorities which, with false names given to them, are in reality nothing more nor less than their benefits. Those who have different visions or hopes for the world, along with those who cannot buy and who survive from day to day (approximately 800 million) are backward relics from another age, or, when they resist, either peacefully or with arms, terrorists. They are feared as harbingers of death, carriers of disease or insurrection. When they have been "downsized" (one of the key words), the tyranny, in its naivety, assumes the world will be unified. It needs its fantasy of a happy ending. A fantasy which in reality will be its undoing. Every form of contestation against this tyranny is comprehensible. Dialogue with it, impossible. For us to live and die properly, things have to be named properly. Let us reclaim our words. From eye at ranadasgupta.com Mon May 19 16:14:57 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 16:14:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Email exchange between aggrieved CD buyer and EMI Message-ID: Am sure some of you will have seen this, but... R >From an October email exchange between Holger Turck and EMI Music in Germany. Translated from the German by Ben Ewing. Dear Sir or Madam, Yesterday I purchased the copy-protcted TOTO CD "Through the Looking Glass." The reverse side reads: "It is designed to be compatible with CD audioplayers, DVD players and PC-OS, MS Windows 95, Pentium II 233 MHz 64 MB RAM or higher." This statement is definitely false. - In reality, only tracks 1-8 are playable in my DVD player. I don't own an ordinary CD player anymore, making this CD worthless. - In reality, my Macintosh plays only tracks 1-7. Result: the CD is worthless. - In reality, my PC would play the CD only if I were to use the software found on the CD itself. I am very careful when selecting the software that I install on my computer, and I refuse to be coerced into using proprietary software. As a result, this CD is worthless. This is all the more regrettable, as I am a dedicated fan of the group TOTO and own -- among other items -- all of their albums. It's a pity that YOU have prevented me from being able to add their most recent work to my collection. You altogether ignore the simple fact that every purchaser is -- by law -- allowed to make a copy of his purchased CD. Your behavior is altogether illegal. As a result, I will not purchase another CD that is outfitted with copy-protection from your firm or from any other. How do you plan to win me back as a customer in the future? Sincerely, Holger Turck Dear Mr. Turck, We will spare ourselves the trouble of addressing those observations in your email wich are obviously uninformed. Simply realize: more than 250 million blank, recordable discs and tapes were sold and used this year, in comparison to 213 million prerecorded albums. Even without formal study in economics, it should be clear to anyone reading this that the music industry cannot continue to exist if the trend holds. The widespread copying of prerecorded audio material via the burning of CD-Rs can only be countered one way: namely, copy protection. We fear, however, that all these facts will not interest you in the slightest, as these measures will herald the end of free music, which surely won't please you at all. Should you legitimately have a playback problem with the CD that you complained about, we would ask that you specify the exact CD player model for us. The scenario you put forth -- multiple players failing to play the CD -- can only be the stuff of fairy tales, given our experiences. In the event that you plan to protest future releases of copy-protected CDs, we can assure you that it is only a matter of months until more or less every CD released worldwide will include copy protection. To that end, we will do everything in our power, whether you like it or not. Sincerely, Your EMI Team From kranenbu at xs4all.nl Mon May 19 18:14:14 2003 From: kranenbu at xs4all.nl (Rob van Kranenburg) Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 14:44:14 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] John Berger on Being in the present moment In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Rana's question: > I have questions, too: What is the sense of "shame" that fills him and that >makes the future impossible to look upon? In November 2001 I posted this on the nettime list: And again: Innere Emigration. What has always struck me as bitterly ironic, deeply tragic and utterly unproductive about Barthes¼ project to split the very idea of sign was the fact that he was able to write that down, whereas I'm only willing to think about this is a serious way, if this project could be made operational in and through singing, the painting of butterflies, the trajectories of football or any other kind of dancing. This has not been the case and through the pathetic attempt to stay within the boundaries of the signifier - you are reading now - scooping a way down through layers and layers of metaphor and metonomy - layer and metaphor having become synonomous by now - the very idea of behind has come to dominate the 20th century and if we are not careful - and we never are because there is no 'we' however much smoothly I call upon us here - that same idea of behind will continue to dominate operations of control of what make meanings to such an extent that there is indeed no longer any place which we can occupy any longer that is not contested, that does not hold promises of danger, promises of death, but is a given. A handout. Let us face this. All the places that we occupy now are handouts, leftovers: given. Shall I clarify us then as intellectuals? Dare I? A Gramscian analysis of our current mental landscape would indeed now identify a locus for intellectuals as a stratum, as a political force in itself. It would find, however, no physical place which could be made to house this intellectual stratum. I suggest we move. We move out of this entire terrain that for all its very depending on processess that operate only and only through and on a shared experience of reality, claims through and by its discursive practices that this reality has become fictional and is no longer bound and grounded in the real. I suggest we move. We move for without a sense of space there is no sense of progress. Oh, much more than this. Trapped with in a discourse that operates through metaphor - through - what is behind all this? - what is the theory behind this praxis (as if this were not a false dichotomy) - we operate in our discursive practices - without any sense of loss. Without any pain of loosing the very notion that work should have a goal, and without it there is no progress and without progress there is no sense of place and more importantly even no sense of now. No sense of this particular now. Not the now of its perpetual nowness as in newness. No, now. Now as in : decisive, or not. I suggest we move. We move because it is time for us to reclaim a sensibility of the mind in the reformation of intellectuals as a specific code of behaviour: a sense of belonging in a story in a space in a place. In a place that I occupy. That you contest. That we can debate. I shall not always speak in sober meanings. On the corner of 7th Avenue and 49 street: a video plays on giant split screens circling the otherwise nondescript office-building. People walk pass each other on the videoscreen and in the streets underneath. It is on the opposite side of the street on another nondescript office-building that in the reflection of these sequences - on the other side of projection - that these walking bodies blur into a comforting simultaneity; comforting as they seem to merge and re-appear in shapes and forms and sounds that defy our dichotomic analytic repertoire; comforting also in the frightening prospect that this parallel universe is reflected into nondescript office- buildings all the time, continuously, regardless of our visual capturing, regardless of our making meaning, regardless of our eyes straining in the afternoon sun. I suggest we move. Move into ourselves for a while - retreat, as it is now our very presence, our very being in this very discourse that legitimizes the ruining of. Rob van Kranenburg, Felenne, November 16, 2001. -- web: http://simsim.rug.ac.be/staff/rob mail: kranenbu at xs4all.nl mobile: ++32 (0) 472 40 63 72 Call home first 0032 9 2333 853 From isast at well.com Mon May 19 22:43:56 2003 From: isast at well.com (LEONARDO (mk)) Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 10:13:56 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] LEA Call for Papers: Technology and Difference In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ** Sincere apologies for cross-posting ** Please feel free to spread the word widely: LEA Special Issue: Technology and Difference Guest Editor: Irina Aristarkhova (uspia at nus.edu.sg) The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN No: 1071-4391) is inviting papers that address the complex relationship between technology and difference. Technology is often conceived as an ability to "create", "innovate", "make"; all that which differentiates: 'man' from 'nature'; human from animal. It is seen as a path to 'God(s)' and 'community', sociality, spirituality, and consciousness. It plays out sexual difference in its separation of human creative ability from 'natural reproduction', though this separation has been radically challenged by the recent reproductive technologies and legal issues associated with the notion of ownership of biological matter. Cultural differences are enacted in differentiations of 'technologically advanced' from 'technologically backward' cultural traditions, often evidenced in statistics on use and proliferation of such technologies. There are significant differences how cultures approach this question of 'technology' both in art and science, albeit they are rarely presented and poorly understood. In the past few decades, however, a new optimism has been propagated of a technology that is said to operate as a de-differentiating force: it builds bridges, it unites, it globalizes (for better or for worse), it brings us closer. It goes beyond 'old' differences: ethnic, sexual, cultural, animal, towards 'new' differences between human and (intelligent) machine, human and post-human, human and transgenic or artificial species. We call for papers that critically address, but are not limited to, the following topics: -Technology and sexual difference: concepts, history, aesthetics; notion of ownership in reproductive bio-technologies, cultural differences in figurations of gender and technology. -Technology and animal / species difference: responsibility and bio-technology; animal Otherness and bio-tech research; transgenic aesthetics and definitions of human. - Technology and cultural / ethnic difference: politics of the local; different cultural approaches to technology; new media art and cultural / geographical specificity. LEA encourages international artists / academics / researchers / students to submit their proposals for consideration. We particularly encourage authors outside North America and Europe to send proposals for articles/gallery/artists statements. Proposals should include: ---------------------------------------- - 300 word abstract / synopsis - A brief author biography - Any related URLs - Contact details Deadline for proposals: 31 June 2003 Please send proposals to: Irina Aristarkhova uspia at nus.edu.sg. or Nisar Keshvani LEA Editor-in-Chief lea at mitpress.mit.edu http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/ **************************************************************************** **** What is LEA? ------------- Established in 1993, the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN No: 1071-4391) is the electronic arm of the world's most prestigious art journal, Leonardo - Journal of Art, Science & Technology. LEA is jointly produced by Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST) and published under the auspices of MIT Press. Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA), is Leonardo/ISAST and MIT Press' electronic journal dedicated to providing a forum for those who are interested in the realm of where art, science & technology converge. Content ------- This peer reviewed e-journal includes Profiles of Media Arts facilities and Projects, Profiles of artists using new media, Feature Articles comprised of theoretical and technical perspectives; the LEA Gallery exhibiting new media artwork by international artists; detailed information about new publications in various media; reviews of publications. events and exhibitions. Material is contributed by artists, scientists, educators and developers of new technological resources in the media arts. Mission ------- Since 2002, LEA formed a strategic alliance with fineArt forum - the Internet's longest running arts magazine. Through this partnership, LEA concentrates on adding new scholarship and critical commentary to the art, science and technology field, with LEA subscribers benefiting from the latest news, announcements, events, and job/educational opportunities through fAf's online news service. LEA's mission is to maintain and consolidate its position as a leading online news and trusted information filter whilst critically examining arts/science & technological works catering to the international CAST (Community of Artists, Scientist &Technologists) ******************************** [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Get A Free Psychic Reading! Your Online Answer To Life's Important Questions. http://us.click.yahoo.com/aM1XQD/od7FAA/uetFAA/J.MolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 1. Members should submit your particulars and biodatas within a week of joining. 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Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ -- ---------------------------------------------------------- nisar keshvani http://www.keshvani.org nisar at keshvani.com mail : studio 3a, 35 place du bourg-de-four, 1204 geneva, switzerland tel: +41 (0)22 310 3413 mob: +41 (0)78 612 1687 ---------------------------------------------------------- editor, fineArt forum = art + technology netnews http://www.fineartforum.org ---------------------------------------------------------- editor-in-chief, leonardo electronic almanac http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA ---------------------------------------------------------- If email bounces, kindly resend to nkeshvani at hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------- ------ End of Forwarded Message From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Tue May 20 10:20:07 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 05:50:07 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] A NUCLEAR ROAD OF NO RETURN Message-ID: <20030520045007.66557.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> Los Angeles Times >May 13, 2003 >A NUCLEAR ROAD OF NO RETURN >Bush's bid for new kinds of weapons could put the world on a suicidal course. >By Robert Scheer >http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-scheer13may13,0,5142385.column > >It turns out the threat is not from Iraq but from us. > >On Sunday, the Washington Post wrote the obituary for the United >States' effort to find Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass >destruction. "Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq," read the >headline, confirming what has become an embarrassing truth - that >the central rationale for the invasion and occupation of oil-rich >Iraq was in fact one of history's great frauds. > >The arms inspectors "are winding down operations without finding >proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of >outlawed arms," reported the Post, putting the lie to Colin Powell's >Feb. 6 claim at the United Nations that Iraq possessed a functioning >program to build nuclear bombs and had hoarded hundreds of tons of >chemical and biological materials. > >Unfortunately, this does not necessarily mean the world is a safer >place. The deadly weapons of mass destruction have proved phantom >in Iraq, but the Bush administration is now doing its best to >ensure that the world becomes increasingly unstable and armed to >the teeth. Although the nuclear threat from Iraq proved to be >nonexistent, the United States' threat to use nuclear weapons and >make a shambles of nuclear arms control is alarmingly vibrant. > >In its latest bid to frighten the planet into a constant state of >shock and awe, our government is accelerating its own leading-edge >weapons-of-mass-destruction program: President Bush's allies on the >Senate Armed Services Committee have approved ending a decade-old >ban on developing atomic battlefield weapons and endorsed moving >ahead with creating a nuclear "bunker-buster" bomb. They also >rubber-stamped the administration's request for funds to prepare >for a quick resumption of nuclear weapons testing. > >What's going on here? Having failed to stop a gang of marauders >armed with nothing more intimidating than box cutters, the U.S. is >now using the "war on terror" to pursue a long-held hawkish >Republican dream of a "winnable nuclear war," as the president's >father memorably described it to me in a 1980 Times interview. >In such a scenario, nukes can be preemptively used against a much >weaker enemy - millions of dead civilians, widespread environmental >devastation and centuries of political blowback be damned... >________________ > >This is a message from MoveOn.org. To unsubscribe from this list, >please visit our subscription management page at: >http://moveon.org/s?i=1372-627941-EMYxTdyIkfaH2qtuSlFFnA _________________________________________________________________ "In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates." - Foucault 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/20030520/9d63ce6f/attachment.html From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Tue May 20 10:48:39 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 06:18:39 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Criminalizing environmental activism ? Message-ID: <20030520051839.34996.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> > Environmentalists = Terrorists > The New Math > >Karen Charman is an investigative journalist specializing in agriculture, health and the environment. > > Have you ever signed a petition in support of an environmental or > animal-rights issue? Do you belong to the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, or Greenpeace? Have you publicly protested some environmental or animal rights outrage? If legislation crafted and promoted by the ultra-conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) becomes law, these fundamental rights of American > citizenship could become illegal. > > Exploiting the current political climate against terrorism, ALEC has teamed up with the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance, a pro-hunting group, to create a model "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act." The legislation is part of an intense backlash against increasingly effective and > vocal citizen campaigns aimed at halting -- and holding corporations accountable for -- environmental, animal-rights and public health > abuses. > Forging this kind of marriage to produce anti-progressive legislation is old hat to ALEC, now in its thirtieth year of policy bending. With an annual budget of nearly $6 million, ALEC's funders read like a > Who's Who of the right, and include organizations like the National Rifle Association, Family Research Council and Heritage Foundation. It counts conservative activists and politicians such as Jesse Helms, Jack Kemp and Henry Hyde among its alumni. Enron, Phillip Morris (now Altria) and several oil companies rank among ALEC's corporate > sponsors. And to bring the loop full-circle, ALEC boasts 2,400 state lawmakers representing all 50 states among its current members. > > In light of this, it's hardly shocking that ALEC is no friend to green groups. According to a 2002 report by Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council, corporations and trade associations "funnel cash through ALEC to curry favor with state lawmakers through junkets and other largesse in the hopes of enacting special interest legislation -- all the while keeping safely outside the public eye." > > The strategy obviously works. ALEC spokesperson David Wargin estimates that out of about 1,000 ALEC model bills introduced in the last > legislative session, 200 were enacted. > > The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act may be next. Intended for > states, it criminalizes virtually all forms of environmental or > animal-rights advocacy. Versions of the proposed law were introduced in Texas in February and in New York in March. New York Assembly > member Richard Smith (D-Blasdell), who introduced that state's bill, says four or five other states have also expressed interest. > > The Texas bill defines an "animal rights or terrorist organization" as "two or more persons organized for the purpose of supporting any > politically motivated activity intended to obstruct or deter any > person from participating in an activity involving animals or... > natural resources." The bill adds that "'Political motivation' means an intent to influence a government entity or the public to take a specific political action." Language in the New York bill is similarly broad. > > Michael Ratner, a human rights lawyer and vice-president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has never seen such draconian legislation in the United States. > > "This is unique. Even under the definition of domestic terrorism in the Patriot Act, you have to at least do something that arguably > threatens people's lives," he says. "The definitional sections of this legislation are so broad that they sweep within them basically every environmental and animal-rights organization in the country." > > Sandy Liddy Bourne, director of the ALEC task force that came up with the model bill, insists the legislation is narrowly targeted at > environmental and animal-rights extremists who blow up buildings or destroy research facilities. "We're certainly not attempting to interfere with anybody's civil > rights to protest or express their opinion on environmental or > animal-rights issues," she says. However, "there are legitimate > business operations across our country that are being targeted by > environmental extremists, and it's time to bring this kind of activity to a halt." > > Ratner points out that there are laws against trespassing, vandalism, destruction of property, disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace. The only reason for this legislation, he says, is to eliminate all forms of dissent, including the time-honored democratic traditions of nonviolent, peaceful protest and civil disobedience. > > Civil rights advocates who thought the Patriot Act was bad should turn their attention to this legislation. Because if ALEC is successful, millions of people might just lose the only tool they have left: the right to loud and public dissent. _________________________________________________________________ "In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates." - Foucault 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/20030520/05c2ebf0/attachment.html From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue May 20 15:36:24 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 15:36:24 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] foreigners in india, and learning Hindi Message-ID: one of the things you have to confront as a foreigner in a place like delhi, where there is a large community of foreign diplomats, researchers, NGO workers and businesspeople, is that the way this community sees itself in this place rather resembles a kind of apartheid - and that you, as "one of them", have a welcome place, ready and waiting, within it. usually there is no point trying to imagine that you will be able to sustain relationships with this community on terms other than its own, so most people who see this as a problem end up trying not to get involved. what has often surprised me is the way in which independent, self-reliant people with egalitarian political beliefs and a horror of oppression come here from, say, France or the UK and fit so quickly and easily into this feudal snobbery. When they have always been "Jack" or "Marie" to everyone, suddenly they refer to themselves, to most people, as "Sir" and "Madam." It comes so naturally that it seems as if this "other self" has always been there, waiting to be deployed when the circumstances are right. This is of course the case, to a great extent. The universalism of western egalitarian thinking is only apparent, and it does not extend to everyone in the world. The imperial persona is still one aspect of the ego ideal of aspiring westerners, and part of the appeal of a posting to a place like Delhi is the possibility of living the life, now almost impossible in the west, of a feared and much waited-upon aristocrat. It is not the full story, however, because there is a great extent to which India's own feudal society places them in this role. The energies that are unleashed in the street, in markets, in restaurants, when white people (and colour is very important) pass by makes it difficult for them to act as if they are "just another person". They are served first and pampered; the most banal details of their life arouse astonishment and admiration. Their "natural" place in Indian society is alongside the industrialists and politicians who alone can share in the kind of global sophistication they are used to - but who can also demonstrate for them what the proper bearing is of such a person in this society. It is by upper-class Delhiites, not by foreigners, that i have been advised to mistrust all non-elites and never to eat in dhabas, and it is from them that i have learned how distasteful it is to talk of the dirt of the city. These reflections follow from a passage in my Hindi course book, written by Mohini Rao who teaches, so the preamble says, "at the American Embassy and at the Hindi Institute run by herself." Ms Rao's work is titled "Teach Yourself Hindi" but it could equally well have been called "Teach yourself to talk to the underclass." Though she says in her introduction that "Hindustani ... is a pleasant mixture of Hindi and Urdu", her book makes no attempt to capture her pupils' imagination with the language; full of postcolonial insecurity she simply presents it as a tool: the skill, that she can impart, of talking to the proletariat. The first noun that is declined in the book is "naukar" (servant). Thus we have, in the introduction to nouns, the following examples of how a masculine noun ending in a consonant can be used in sentences: Yah kam naukar ne kiya (the servant did this work). Naukar ko kam dijiye (Give work to the servant). Naukar se kam lijiye (Take work from the servant). Naukar ke liye bahut kam hai (There is plenty of work for the servant). Yah naukar ka kam hai (This is the servant's job). (Translations also from the book. The next noun, after "naukar", by the way, is "larka" (boy). One would have thought that a "larka" could have something other than work given to him and then taken away, but this "boy", we understand, is the kind you call "boy" - and we have the same list: "Larke ne kam kiya..." etc.) Things do not improve; as pupils become more sophisticated the entire language is turned into a vehicle for their alternating imperious commands and aristocratic discontent. As we learn adjectives we begin to understand that surrounding the gorgeous gardens that "we" live in, with their roses in many different colours, there is an entire community of workers who are lazy and dishonest and who take insufficient care of their children: Mera kala kot kahan hai? Yah kot to maila hai. Yah dhobi achchha nahin hai. (Where is my black coat? This coat is dirty. This washerman is not good.) Yah roti bilkul thandi hai. Garam roti laiye. (This roti is absolutely cold. Please bring hot roti.) Aaj kamara saf nahin hai. Jamadar bahut sust hai. (Today the room is not clean. The sweeper is very lazy.) Vah bahut laparvah hai. Uske bachche bahut duble-patle hain. Ve kamzor hain kyonki kafi dudh nahin pite. (He is very careless. His children are very lean and thin. They are weak because they don't drink enough milk.) Apki yah adat bahut buri hai. Bachchon ki adaten achchhi nahin hain. (!!) (This habit of yours is very bad. Children's habits are not good.) Vah dukankar imandar hai. (That shopkeeper is honest.) Thank goodness for the shopkeeper. R From monica at sarai.net Tue May 20 16:32:58 2003 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 16:32:58 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] anti-globalica: quotes Message-ID: Recently, i participated in a symposium titled [anti-] globalica: conceptual and artistic tensions in the new global disorder. will come in later with the paper that i (as member of raqs media collective) presented, but i thought i would share with you the interesting quotes that the organisers of the symposium, Geoff Cox and Joasia Krysa, put in the beginning of the presentation. best M :: :: quotes: :: :: [1. melting vision - marx quote] :: :: 'All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real condition of life, and his relations with his kind. :: The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.' :: (Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848) :: :: [2. empire - negri quote] :: :: '[Empire is] characterised by a fluidity of form - an ebb and flow of formation and deformation, generation and degeneration. [Š] [It is the] decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers. Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible :: hierarchies, and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command.' [Š] 'Our political taskŠ is not simply to resist these processes but to reorganise them and redirect them towards new ends. The creative forces of :: the multitude that sustain Empire are also capable of autonomously constructing a counter-Empire, an alternative political organisation of global flows and exchanges.' :: (Hardt & Negri, Empire, 2000: 202, xii-xv) :: :: [3. disorder - joxe quote] :: :: 'In the absence of a declared enemy, the most formidable enemy one must face in politics is disorder. [Š] Disorder is present everywhere, like liberty, and this type of threat is never lacking as long as an elite :: brings it to the fore. This is the case today, although only because neo-liberal ideology [...] paradoxically considers disorder to be positive and order negative, the equivalent to an abuse of power. Yet the representation of :: disorder as something harmful was the original source of the political desire for order.' :: (Alain Joxe, Empire of Disorder, 2002: 118) :: :: [4. resistant subject - zizek quote] :: :: 'It seems easier to imagine the 'end of the world' than a far more modest change in the mode of production, as if liberal capitalism is the 'real' that will somehow survive even under ecological catastropheŠ. One can thus :: categorically assert the existence of ideology qua generative matrix that regulates the relationship between visible and invisible, between imaginable and non-imaginable, as well as changes in this relationship.' :: 'How we are to reformulate a leftist, anti-capitalist political project in our era of global capitalism and its ideological supplement, liberal-democratic multi-culturalism.' :: (Zizek, 1994:1 & 1999:4) :: -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From amitbasu55 at hotmail.com Thu May 22 11:31:12 2003 From: amitbasu55 at hotmail.com (Amit R Basu) Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 06:01:12 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Jibanananda Das on Calcutta Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030522/8abd60b8/attachment.html From dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org Thu May 22 19:42:13 2003 From: dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org (Dominique Fontaine) Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 10:12:13 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] For information / Pour information Message-ID: Pour la version française : voir ci-dessous. [ Apologies for cross-posting / Veuillez excuser les envois multiples ] **************************************************************** For information Montreal, May 22, 2003 THE DANIEL LANGLOIS FOUNDATION GRANTS NEARLY HALF A MILLION TO 16 PROJECTS IN THE RESEARCH GRANT PROGRAM FOR INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS OR SCIENTISTS The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology has just granted nearly half a million to 16 projects by artists dedicated to merging art and science through the use of new technologies. The Foundation received 297 applications during its 2003 call for projects for The Research Grant Program for Individual Artists or Scientists. Its international jury examined 83 of the projects, selecting 16 to benefit from the Foundation's program for individuals. Of the projects chosen, six are from Canada, four from the United States, four from the United Kingdom, one from Brazil and one from India. Besides Mr. Daniel Langlois, the jury included Mr. Jim Campbell (United States), Ms. Nina Czegledy (Canada), Mr. Jocelyn Robert (Canada) and Mr. Jean Gagnon, the Foundation's executive director. This year, grants range from $10,000 to $45,000. Please find below a list of the grant recipients. A detailed description of each project will be posted on the Foundation's Web site: http://www.fondation-langlois.org, in September. For more information: JEAN GAGNON, Executive Director DOMINIQUE FONTAINE, Program Officer E : dfontaine at fontaine-langlois.org T : (514) 987-7177 ************************************************************************** LIST OF THE GRANT RECIPIENTS Research Grant Program for Individual Artists or Scientists Ælab (Gisèle Trudel and Stéphane Claude) (Montréal, Québec, Canada) "DATA" Philip Beesley and Diane Willow (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) "Reflexive Membranes" Peter Blasser (Chicago, Illinois, United States) "The shinth: an inner-surface for circuit benders" Sandro Canavezzi de Abreu (Salto, Brazil) "VOID: a stereoendoscopy into a Blackbox" Chris Csikszentmihályi (Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States) "Edgy Products" Jessica Field (Pickering, Ontario, Canada) "Semiotic Investigation into Cybernetic Behaviour" Marc Fournel (Montréal, Québec, Canada) "Tontauben" Steve Heimbecker (Montréal, Québec, Canada) "Wind Array Cascade; phase 2b 'Si(g)n(e)" Giles Lane (London, United Kingdom) "Urban Tapestries" Golan Levin (Brooklyn, New York, United States) "Messa Di Voce" Jessica Loseby (Chichester, United Kingdom) "views from the ground floor" r a d i o q u a l i a (London, United Kingdom) "Radio Astronomy" Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (Montréal, Québec, Canada) "Sustained Coincidence" Vishal Rawlley (Bombay, India) "TYPOCITY-2" Pletts Haque (Usman Haque and Josephine Pletts) (London, United Kingdom) "Sky Ear" Sha Xin Wei (Atlanta, Georgia, United States) "Topological Softwear" ***************************************************************** Pour information Montréal, le 22 mai 2003 LA FONDATION DANIEL LANGLOIS ATTRIBUE PRÈS DE UN DEMI MILLION DE DOLLARS À 16 PROJETS DANS LE CADRE DE SON PROGRAMME DE BOURSES POUR LES ARTISTES ET CHERCHEURS INDIVIDUELS La fondation Daniel Langlois pour l'art, la science et la technologie vient d'attribuer près d'un demi million de dollars à 16 projets soumis par des artistes voués à la rencontre de l'art et de la science sur le terrain des nouvelles technologies. La fondation a reçu 297 dossiers au terme de l'appel de projets 2003 dans le cadre du programme de bourses pour les artistes ou chercheurs individuels. Suite à une première étape de sélection, 83 projets ont été présentés au comité d'évaluation. De ce nombre, 16 projets ont été retenus, soit six en provenance du Canada, quatre des États-Unis, quatre du Royaume-Uni, un du Brésil et un de l'Inde. Outre le président de la fondation, M. Daniel Langlois, le jury comprenait M. Jim Campbell (Etats-Unis), Mme Nina Czegledy (Canada), M. Jocelyn Robert (Canada)) et M. Jean Gagnon, directeur général de la fondation. Les sommes attribuées vont de 10,000 $ à 45,000 $. Vous trouverez ci-dessous la liste des récipiendaires. Une description détaillée de chaque projet sera accessible en ligne sur le site Web de la fondation : http://www.fondation-langlois.org, en septembre. Pour plus d'information : JEAN GAGNON, Directeur général DOMINIQUE FONTAINE, Agent de programmes E : dfontaine at fontaine-langlois.org T : (514) 987-7177 ************************************************************************** LISTE DES RÉCIPIENDAIRES 2003 Programme de bourse de recherche pour artistes ou scientifiques individuels Ælab (Gisèle Trudel et Stéphane Claude) (Montréal, Québec, Canada) «DATA» Philip Beesley et Diane Willow (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) «Reflexive Membranes» Peter Blasser (Chicago, Illinois, États-Unis) «The shinth: an inner-surface for circuit benders» Sandro Canavezzi de Abreu (Salto, Brésil) «VOID: a stereoendoscopy into a Blackbox» Chris Csikszentmihályi (Cambridge, Massachusetts, États-Unis) «Edgy Products» Jessica Field (Pickering, Ontario, Canada) «Semiotic Investigation into Cybernetic Behaviour» Marc Fournel (Montréal, Québec, Canada) «Tontauben» Steve Heimbecker (Montréal, Québec, Canada) «Wind Array Cascade; phase 2b 'Si(g)n(e)» Giles Lane (Londres, Angleterre, Royaume-Uni) «Urban Tapestries» Golan Levin (Brooklyn, New York, États-Unis) «Messa Di Voce» Jessica Loseby (Chichester, Royaume-Uni) «views from the ground floor» Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (Montréal, Québec, Canada) «Sustained Coincidence» r a d i o q u a l i a (Londres, Angleterre, Royaume-Uni) «Radio Astronomy» Vishal Rawlley (Bombay, Inde) «TYPOCITY-2» Pletts Haque (Usman Haque et Josephine Pletts) (Londres, Angleterre, Royaume-Uni) «Sky Ear» Sha Xin Wei (Atlanta, Georgie, États-Unis) «Topological Softwear» From eye at ranadasgupta.com Sun May 25 15:15:36 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 15:15:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] NYT: Matrix is itself the best evidence of the nightmare scenario it depicts Message-ID: May 25, 2003 There's No Exit From the Matrix http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/arts/25RICH.html?pagewanted=print&position = The Matrix Reloaded" is so dull, so literally ruled by Laurence Fishburne's trance-inducing Morpheus, that I had to reload the "Matrix" DVD to remember why I had been taken with all those streaming digits the first time around. But never mind. You can't argue with a $135.8 million four-day opening, which in itself validated the movie's premise. It's the conceit of the "Matrix" films that most of mankind is plugged into a virtual-reality program conjured up by all-powerful machines to tease our brains while they loot our bodies for bioelectric power. AOL Time Warner, the powerful machine behind the films, pulled off a comparable feat by plugging the country into its merchandising program for "The Matrix Reloaded" to loot our wallets. "As of Monday, April 28, there's 95 percent awareness of this movie," boasted its producer, Joel Silver, to Entertainment Weekly weeks before its premiere. In a country where two-thirds of the population cannot name any of the nine Democratic candidates for president, according to a CBS/New York Times poll, that's some achievement. It was certainly helped along by Entertainment Weekly itself, an AOL Time Warner publication that ran two cover stories on "The Matrix Reloaded" in a single month. The genius of the P.R. strategy was its exploitation of the original film's geeky cult status as a thinking kid's kung fu extravaganza. "The Matrix Reloaded" would not be just another bloated Hollywood sequel but instead would have the philosophical heft to fuel a new generation of metaphysical Web sites. And so every puff piece about the film has emphasized that its creators, the siblings Andy and Larry Wachowski, do not give interviews — as if behaving like Thomas Pynchon would give their movie the gravitas of "Gravity's Rainbow." To second the motion, along came Cornel West, the Princeton professor who has a cameo in "The Matrix Reloaded" and is not at all shy about meeting the press. He told Time (for its cover story) that "the brothers are very into epic poetry and philosophy, into Schopenhauer and William James" and that "Larry Wachowski knows more about Hermann Hesse than most German scholars." This does not explain why the movie's multicultural orgy scene looks like a Club Med luau run amok, but maybe the inspiration for that was Kahlil Gibran. So high-minded are the Wachowskis, the publicists assured us, that they even clamped down on "Matrix" merchandising. "The filmmakers did not want to alienate their fan base by selling out," one executive involved with the movie told The Wall Street Journal. Thus they strictly limited the sequel's ancillary products to an Enter the Matrix video game, action figures, sunglasses (featured in another AOL Time Warner magazine, People) and an animated DVD. They kept the movie's product tie-ins to a bare minimum as well: Powerade drinks, Cadillac, Ducati motorcycles and Heineken. Lest anyone think that such commerce constitutes a sellout, we were told that the Wachowskis drew the line by nixing Matrix-theme burgers at McDonald's. Siddhartha lives! And so does AOL Time Warner. It is the most troubled of the media giants these days — crippled by billions in debt, internecine warfare and a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation for fraud. But even in its weakened state, it has the Herculean resources to fix much of the nation's attention on whatever story it chooses to sell. Its pushing of "The Matrix Reloaded" is a fairly benign use of that enormous power: if you are sucked into a film and don't like it, the worst that happens is that you lose a few hours and the price of a movie ticket. But the media giants that wield such clout don't always put it to such frivolous use. We are not just plugged into their matrix to be sold movies and other entertainment products. These companies can also plug the nation into news narratives as ubiquitous and lightweight as "The Matrix Reloaded," but with more damaging side effects. This is what has happened consistently during America's struggle with Osama bin Laden. During the years when Al Qaeda's terrorists were gearing up for 9/11, the media giants were in overdrive selling escapist fare like the Clinton scandals, Gary Condit's sex life and shark attacks. They were all legitimate stories. But just as "The Matrix Reloaded," playing on a record 8,517 screens, crowded most other movies out of the marketplace last weekend, so those entertaining melodramas drove any reports of threatening developments beyond our shores to the periphery of the mass-media news culture. The media giants took the same tack in banding together to push the administration-dictated narrative of Saddam Hussein — and with the same results. The networks' various productions of "Countdown: Iraq," though as ponderous as "The Matrix Reloaded," were so effective that by the time we went to war, 51 percent of the country, according to a Knight-Ridder poll, believed that Iraqis were among the 9/11 hijackers. It took the bloody re-emergence of Qaeda terrorists in Riyadh two weeks ago to recover the repressed memory that none of the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqis and that most of them were Saudis. And whatever happened to Saddam's arsenal, all those advanced nuclear weapons programs and biological poisons that George W. Bush kept citing as the justification for going to war? Well, sarin today, gone tomorrow. That laundry list of terrors, none of them yet found, vanished from the national consciousness as soon as the cable outlets of AOL Time Warner, Fox and NBC put their muscle behind The Laci Peterson Murder. The power of the five companies that foster this sequential amnesia is increasing, not declining. In a vote set for June 2, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to relax some of the few ownership restrictions meant to rein them in. Companies like Viacom (which already owns CBS and Paramount) and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (which owns Fox and is on its way to controlling the satellite giant DirecTV) are likely to go on shopping sprees for more TV outlets. But who knows or cares? Though liberal and conservative organizations alike, from Common Cause to the National Rifle Association, are protesting this further consolidation of media power, most of the country is oblivious to it. That's partly because the companies that program America's matrix have shut out all but bare-bones coverage of the imminent F.C.C. action, much as the ruling machines in "The Matrix" do not feed their captive humans any truths that might set them free. If there's a hero in our own Matrix saga, it may be Barry Diller, who is considerably more articulate than Keanu Reeves's Neo, if somewhat less schooled in the martial arts. Mr. Diller, who now runs USA Interactive, has been chairman of Paramount, Vivendi and Fox. With the exception of the semiretired Ted Turner, he is the only show business mogul who doesn't buy the argument that the advent of 500 TV channels and the infinite sites of the Internet ensure alternative entertainment and news sources. He says that the 500 TV channels will still end up being owned by the same five companies, and that as broadband comes in, the companies that control the fast cable modems will dominate the Web, too. "We will be in a position where our society will be harmed," he said when we spoke last week. In his view, this concentration of power explains much that has gone awry in our culture, from the decline of TV news to "why movies are bad." They're bad, he says, because they are now "20 rings of power removed" from the top decision makers of these vast companies. "No one cares about them," he says. "They are just commodities to deliver returns." Nor does he buy the argument that these media goliaths stay sharp by being forced to vie in the marketplace. "The companies don't really compete with each other," he says. "They accommodate each other. Fox movies have to be sold to HBO. Warner cable has to take Fox because Fox has sports teams. They talk only to each other. They don't have to do anything else for anyone else alive." He believes that it would be impossible today for an independent producer like Norman Lear to break in with a TV show as unexpected as "All in the Family" or for a maverick to start a new network, as he did with Fox and Mr. Turner did with CNN. They'd have to cede their ideas to the big companies if they wanted them to fly. Once they did, their concepts would most likely be stripped of the idiosyncrasies that made them exciting in the first place. (You can see how that process works by recalling what CNN was like before Time Warner devoured it.) But neither Mr. Diller nor anyone else is likely to stop this consolidation of cultural power unless the public knows or cares enough to protest. That hardly seems to be in the cards. We reward mediocre movies with record grosses. We reward tabloid news epics with high ratings. We reward dissembling politicians with high poll ratings. We expect our journalistic media to fictionalize the truth. As others have noted, the most dispiriting aspect of the Jayson Blair scandal may be that even the subjects of his stories usually didn't bother to complain about the lies The New York Times published about them; they just assumed it was standard practice. One way or the other, we all inhabit the Matrix now. From ambarien at yahoo.co.uk Sun May 25 15:48:25 2003 From: ambarien at yahoo.co.uk (=?iso-8859-1?q?ambarien=20qadar?=) Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 11:18:25 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] On the Chowk, in the Gali and beyond. (independent Research) Message-ID: <20030525101825.1429.qmail@web20109.mail.yahoo.com> Standing @ the gate>>02.5.03 Late afternoon. The gali was full of slanting shadows of electricity poles, night lamps and Katias (local electricity connection wires anchored onto the main lines with pride). Javed bhai was on his cycle. Turned around the nukkad and looked confused. Was collecting the cable rent for the month from house to house. After handing out my payment slip he asked for house no. 173/3. It should have been my neighborÂ’s. But the house next to mine was numbered 567. He looked irritated. Asked for a glass of water and moved on. In the silence of the afternoon, his cycle made screeching sounds like an old engine. The pamphlet he gave me was in black and white. It had icons of different channels on its left and right sides. The middle carried: Manoranjan Network wishes you a Happy Summer Vacation. Manoranjan is the raja here I remember someone say. Raja was the name of the cable network that lost out to Manoranjan many years back. Home cable gives the latest films (Hindi/ English) and Pakistani music videos. New shops or beauty parlors that opens in the area have their advertisement on the Home network. One of the local offices at which Javed reports is at the Batla House Chowk. It is run by the sons of Bal krishan Yadav. They also own the oldest mobile retail outlet in the area. Bal krishan offered me a chair and a glass of water as I settled to interview him. Came to Joga Bai in 1972. "I was a handsome man then", he told me. There was a cottage near what is know known as the Batla House pulia. Mr. Butler lived there. Batla house was initially Butler House. " Who was this Mr. Butler?" I asked him. " shayad woh angrez tha.." he said. Bal krishan sells steel utensils in his shop. His shop does not have a name. He does not believe in names and advertising. A customer walked in looking for a pair of tongs. Bal krishan told him to check out shops in Okhla. The customer said, " but here..the place where IÂ’m standing is Okhla isinÂ’t it?" They exchanged confused looks. Bal krishan argued that it was Joga Bai. They argued for long. But the customer remained unconvinced. From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Mon May 26 01:06:20 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 20:36:20 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Tariq Ali - 'The UN has Capitulated' (The Guardian, 5/24) Message-ID: <20030525193620.88613.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> Tariq Ali - 'The UN has Capitulated' Business as usual The UN has capitulated. Now let the north's plunder of the south begin again Tariq Ali Saturday May 24, 2003 The Guardian Unsurprisingly, the UN security council has capitulated completely, recognised the occupation of Iraq and approved its re-colonisation by the US and its bloodshot British adjutant. The timing of the mea culpa by the "international community" was perfect. Yesterday, senior executives from more than 1,000 companies gathered in London to bask in the sunshine of the re-established consensus under the giant umbrella of Bechtel, the American empire's most favoured construction company. A tiny proportion of the loot will be shared. So what happened to the overheated rhetoric of Europe v America? Berlusconi in Italy and Aznar in Spain - the two most rightwing governments in Europe - were fitting partners for Blair while the eastern European states, giving a new meaning to the term "satellite" which they had previously so long enjoyed, fell as one into line behind Bush. France and Germany, on the other hand, protested for months that they were utterly opposed to a US attack on Iraq. Schröder had owed his narrow re-election to a pledge not to support a war on Baghdad, even were it authorised by the UN. Chirac, armed with a veto in the security council, was even more voluble with declarations that any unauthorised assault on Iraq would never be accepted by France. Together, Paris and Berlin coaxed Moscow too into expressing its disagreement with American plans. Even Beijing emitted a few cautious sounds of demurral. The Franco-German initiatives aroused tremendous excitement and consternation among diplomatic commentators. Here, surely, was an unprecedented rift in the Atlantic alliance. What was to become of European unity, of Nato, of the "international community" itself if such a disastrous split persisted? Could the very concept of the west survive? Such apprehensions were quickly allayed. No sooner were Tomahawk missiles lighting up the nocturnal skyline in Baghdad, and the first Iraqi civilians cut down by the marines, than Chirac rushed to explain that France would assure smooth passage of US bombers across its airspace (as it had not done, under his own premiership, when Reagan attacked Libya), and wished "swift success" to American arms in Iraq. Germany's cadaver-green foreign minister Joschka Fischer announced that his government, too, sincerely hoped for the "rapid collapse" of resistance to the Anglo-American attack. Putin, not to be outdone, explained to his compatriots that "for economic and political reasons", Russia could only desire a decisive victory of the US in Iraq. Washington is still not satisfied. It wants to punish France further. Why not a ritual public flogging broadcast live by Murdoch TV? A humbled petty chieftain (Chirac) bending over while an imperial princess (Condoleezza Rice) administers the whip. Then the leaders of a re-united north could relax and get on with the business they know best: plundering the south. The expedition to Baghdad was planned as the first flexing of a new imperial stance. What better demonstration of the shift to a more offensive strategy than to make an example of Iraq. If no single reason explains the targeting of Iraq, there is little mystery about the range of calculations that lay behind it. Economically, Iraq possesses the second largest reserves of cheap oil in the world; Baghdad's decision in 2000 to invoice its exports in euros rather than dollars risked imitation by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the Iranian mullahs. Privatisation of the Iraqi wells under US control would help to weaken Opec. Strategically, the existence of an independent Arab regime in Baghdad had always been an irritation to the Israeli military. With the installation of Republican zealots close to Likud in key positions in Washington, the elimination of a traditional adversary became an attractive immediate goal for Jerusalem. Lastly, just as the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had once been a pointed demonstration of American might to the Soviet Union, so today a blitzkrieg rolling swiftly across Iraq would serve to show the world at large that if the chips are down, the US has, in the last resort, the means to enforce its will. The UN has now provided retrospective sanction to a pre-emptive strike. Its ill-fated predecessor, the League of Nations, at least had the decency to collapse after its charter was serially raped. Analogies with Hitler's blitzkrieg of 1940 are drawn without compunction by cheerleaders for the war. Thus Max Boot in the Financial Times writes: "The French fought hard in 1940 - at first. But eventually the speed and ferocity of the German advance led to a total collapse. The same thing will happen in Iraq." What took place in France after 1940 might give pause to these enthusiasts. The lack of any spontaneous welcome from Shias and the fierce early resistance of armed irregulars prompted the theory that the Iraqis are a "sick people" who will need protracted treatment before they can be entrusted with their own fate (if ever). Such was the line taken by David Aaronovitch in the Observer. Likewise, George Mellon in the Wall Street Journal warns: "Iraq won't easily recover from Saddam's terror" - "after three decades of rule of the Arab equivalent of Murder Inc, Iraq is a very sick society". To develop an "orderly society" and re-energise (privatise) the economy will take time, he insists. On the front page of the Sunday Times, reporter Mark Franchetti quoted an American NCO: "'The Iraqis are a sick people and we are the chemotherapy,' said Corporal Ryan Dupre. 'I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin' Iraqi. No, I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill him.' " No doubt the "sick society" theory will acquire greater sophistication, but it is clear the pretexts are to hand for a mixture of Guantanamo and Gaza in these newly occupied territories. If it is futile to look to the UN or Euroland, let alone Russia or China, for any serious obstacle to American designs in the Middle East, where should resistance start? First of all, naturally, in the region itself. There, it is to be hoped that the invaders of Iraq will eventually be harried out of the country by a growing national reaction to the occupation regime they install, and that their collaborators may meet the fate of former Iraqi prime minister Nuri Said before them. Sooner or later, the ring of corrupt and brutal tyrannies around Iraq will be broken. If there is one area where the cliche that classical revolutions are a thing of the past is likely to be proved wrong, it is in the Arab world. The day the Mubarak, Hashemite, Saudi and other dynasties are swept away by popular wrath, American - and Israeli - arrogance in the region will be over. · Tariq Ali's new book, Bush in Babylon: Re-colonising Iraq, will be published by Verso in the autumn _________________________________________________________________ "In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates." - Foucault 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/20030525/83de3d32/attachment.html From rakesh at sarai.net Tue May 27 16:07:47 2003 From: rakesh at sarai.net (rakesh) Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 16:07:47 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] teen betiyon ke bad beta Message-ID: <200305271607.47089.rakesh@sarai.net> Friends I reside in Lancers Road in the neighbourhood of Delhi University. It is a middle class colony, mainly the central Govt. employees are there. Last Wednessday when I returned to my home I saw there was huge pandal in the colony, a lavish party was going on. Since my wife had her L LM paper next morning and it was very difficult for her to concentrate her last moment study. So, we asked our neighbour that by what time the party will be over. You know what was the reply, "are yeh abhi thode na band karenge. Teen-teen betiyon ke bad beta hua hai, badi mannat ke bad kahin jakar yeh ladka hua hai, aaj to sari rat chalegi yeh party." Finally, switching off the light was the last alternative and we did the same. From saberwal at bol.net.in Tue May 27 23:28:54 2003 From: saberwal at bol.net.in (saberwal) Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 23:28:54 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] teen betiyon ke bad beta References: <200305271607.47089.rakesh@sarai.net> Message-ID: <003e01c3247c$855cc520$f0f75ecb@mtnl.net.in> Sorry about your experience, Rakesh, a fallout from our pervasive patriarchy. Yet patriarchy is having to retreat, at least in Delhi, however slowly. In recent weeks my newspaper has carried reports of four middle-lower middle class families finding themselves in very hot water for demanding dowry. The most assertive case was of a woman training in an electronics institute. But there are other signs. Most evenings I spend about 35 minutes walking in a large park adjoining Highway No. 24 in I. P. Extn. Three or four years ago I began to notice a group of very self-confident young women in a corner of the park doing calisthenics -- pushups etc. This women's akhara was quite extraordinary. They continued for months and months. Now I see that particular group only jogging, striding, around the park. But women doing their exercises publicly is "normal" in this park and also, I notice, in other parks in the area. Assertive women are bad news for patriarchy. Until we find ways to knock patriarchal attitudes out of our minds, and out of all the countless occasions when these are expressed in our society, this insane longing for sons will remain with us. Satish Saberwal ----- Original Message ----- From: rakesh To: Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 4:07 PM Subject: [Reader-list] teen betiyon ke bad beta : Friends : : I reside in Lancers Road in the neighbourhood of Delhi University. It is a : middle class colony, mainly the central Govt. employees are there. Last : Wednessday when I returned to my home I saw there was huge pandal in the : colony, a lavish party was going on. Since my wife had her L LM paper next : morning and it was very difficult for her to concentrate her last moment : study. So, we asked our neighbour that by what time the party will be over. : You know what was the reply, "are yeh abhi thode na band karenge. Teen-teen : betiyon ke bad beta hua hai, badi mannat ke bad kahin jakar yeh ladka hua : hai, aaj to sari rat chalegi yeh party." Finally, switching off the light was : the last alternative and we did the same. : _________________________________________ : 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: : -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030527/af66d9fc/attachment.html From eye at ranadasgupta.com Wed May 28 14:16:08 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 14:16:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Directive on Launching Activities to Transform Vile Habits Message-ID: The politics of spitting in China - SARS favours the new clean regime. R SARS Makes Beijing Combat an Old but Unsanitary Habit By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL BEIJING, May 27 — As Mr. Liu sped along the path at Bei Hai Park here, the rumbling in his throat became louder and more intense. A restaurant cleaner, Mr. Liu had a dollop of phlegm to dispose of, and was rushing around the lake to go out the park's west gate. "No one would dare spit in here these days — you'd get fined a lot and no one's paying wages," explained Mr. Liu, who declined to give his full name but said he had recently been laid off because SARS had decimated his restaurant's business. "In the past no one cared. You spat where you liked. But with SARS everyone's paying a lot of attention." In its battle against severe acute respiratory syndrome, China is tackling a unique challenge. Spitting is a longstanding Chinese tradition, and spitting potentially spreads SARS. As a result, to supplement temperature checks and hand-washing posters, the Chinese government has contributed a new weapon to the world's war against SARS: little white plastic spit bags that are handed out in parks and malls, the hardware for a wide-scale antispitting campaign. Last week on Wanfujing, a shopping street, volunteers dressed as Lei Feng, the legendary Chinese soldier and do-gooder, pressed bags into the palms of passers-by. At the gate of Bei Hai Park last weekend, pretty girls wearing sashes promoting the 2008 Olympics staffed a table where bags were dispensed. The bags read: "Spitting on the ground is dangerous to your health, and spit contains infectious diseases. But with one small bag in your hands, your health will always be invincible." This week the Communist Party Central Committee's Spiritual Civilization Office gave its imprimatur to the war against spit, issuing a "Directive on Launching Activities to Transform Vile Habits." But old habits die hard, and in China there is hardly a more ingrained habit than this one, practiced frequently by men, from lowly peasants to powerful leaders. Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader who ushered in the era of economic reforms, was a famous spitter, renowned for his aim. Until recently, in fact, Chinese leaders had ceramic spittoons placed by their chairs during banquets and ceremonies to greet kings, politicians and business executives. In Chinese culture spitting was regarded as not particularly offensive — far less disgusting than nose blowing, for example. But as China opened its doors to the outside world, its leaders quickly realized that other cultures took a less sanguine view of the arcs of phlegm that filled China's air. Current leaders do not use spittoons, and if one tries to enter "spit" and "Deng Xiaoping" or "Jiang Zemin" into a Chinese computer search engine, the screen goes blank. Censors have apparently decided that Internet browsers should not go there. In recent years the government has begun several campaigns to discourage the habit but until now has met with only limited success. The floors of train stations and hotel lobbies were still dotted with drying gobs, and the sidewalks were a kind of obstacle course, to be navigated with care. Along came a little coronavirus that could live in phlegm, and attitudes quickly changed. Newspapers are filled with antispitting propaganda. The little old ladies of the street committees are now busy stopping spitters in midstream instead of ferreting out neighbors belonging to the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. Just as New York's new restrictions on smoking have set off battles between smokers and nonsmokers, Beijing has seen a rise in nasty brawls between die-hard spitters and their foes. Last week a young spitter threatened and cursed 83-year-old Chen Yongyun when she admonished him, The Beijing Evening News reported. Lately Ms. Chen has been roaming her neighborhood in the Hepingli district with a spray bottle of disinfectant, squirting any phlegm she finds on the ground and covering it with dirt for extra protection. With efforts like those, the sidewalks have become safer. Ren Chonghua, a sweeper in Bei Hai Park, said: "It used to be all over, and I used to spend my entire day sweeping it up, especially around curbs and ditches. I think the situation is much improved." But no one is suggesting that spitters give up the habit altogether, just that they avoid spitting on the ground. For most older Chinese men, phlegm is regarded as an unavoidable byproduct of heavy smoking and pollution, and it is taken for granted that it must go somewhere. The government recommends that phlegm be spit into a tissue or a spit bag and then thrown in a bin. "'I used to spit," said Lu Xiufeng, 68, a retired machinist in Bei Hai, with a stubble of gray on his head and on his chin, "but not anymore, since we are paying a lot more attention to ordinary hygiene. You wait and then use a tissue when you have to spit." But as he spoke, he kept clearing his throat, his face becoming uncomfortable and his voice increasingly hoarse as the minutes passed. From alokrai at hss.iitd.ernet.in Wed May 28 20:05:45 2003 From: alokrai at hss.iitd.ernet.in (Dr. Alok Rai) Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 20:05:45 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Why the President had to show his balls References: Message-ID: <002901c32526$6d76e800$5601050a@x6o6l2> I seem to have forgotten how to post to the list, but I think this article should be there: The Village Voice May 21-27, 2003 Bush's Basket Why the President Had to Show His Balls By Richard Goldstein Who's the man? Check out the package. See photo at http://c1.zedo.com//ads2/k/11794/3853/172/0/167000016/167000016/1/167/2/i.ht ml?e=i;s=2;m=144;w=49;z=0.705 2972310041874 In the annals of infotainment, few moments match the sight of George Bush leaping from the cockpit of a fighter jet and striding across the deck of a carrier at sea. Top Gun: The Pseudo Event enchanted the public, horrified liberals, and galvanized the press. Suddenly media mavens noticed that Bush's handlers have elevated the photo-op to pure cinema. So what else is new? Actually there was something novel about this occasion, but it passed utterly below the radar. Discretion prevented anyone from mentioning that Bush's outfit gave him a very vivid basket. This was the first a time a president literally showed his balls. Check it out-your subconscious already has. This manly exhibition was no accident. The media team that timed Bush's appearance to catch just the right tone of sunlight must have chosen that uniform and had him try it on. I can't prove they gave him a sock job, but clearly they thought long and hard about the crotch shot. As students of the cinematic, they would know that the trick is to make the bulge seem natural, so it registers without raising an issue. Tight jeans (a staple of Bush's dress-down attire) can achieve this look, but nothing works like fighter-pilot drag, with its straps that frame and shape the groin. Most people presume this effect is merely functional. That frees the imagination to work, and work it does, in men and women alike. Say what you will about the male body being objectified. We may expect a dude to display himself like an Abercrombie & Fitch model-but the president? Clearly Bush's handlers want to leave the impression that he's not just courageous and competent but hung. Why is this message important to send? That's a very salient question, if only because it's unlikely to be addressed. Among modern presidents, Kennedy projected the studliest aura (though the sexual evidence was closely held at the time). Yet, in an era of body-hugging menswear, JFK wore loose-fitting suits. Clinton was perhaps the ultimate rogue in chief, but he shrank from showing his body-he wouldn't have dared. Cartoonists alluded to Clinton's libido by giving him a large bulbous nose, which became his emblem. Look at the face cartoonists have given Bush: The ears are outsized while the nose is modest. Big ears are not exactly phallic signifiers; if anything, they connote a state of permanent childhood, à la Mickey Mouse. In caricature Bush looks like a perplexed piker. There's a reason he once drew the ultimate Texas dis: "All hat and no beef." This sissifying contempt still lingers under the hoopla about Bush's prowess. 9-11 scared America into solidarity, but if people perceive the Republican agenda as an equal threat, their doubts about Dubya's manhood will resurface. They will notice his reliance on strong-willed advisers, his association with a patriarchal father, and even his diminutive size. Karl Rove's rangers must be aware of this possibility since they've crafted an image to counter Bush's macho problem. His public affect-the narrowed eyes, the locked-and-loaded look-is calculated to annul his liabilities, present and past. Imagine what the Republicans would make of a Democrat who was a cheerleader in prep school, who wrangled his way into Yale on family connections, and who weaseled out of active duty. Clinton was butch-baited for less. Bush could easily have lived up to his home-state nickname, Shrub-and in the early hours of 9-11, he did. But rehabilitation is the master narrative of Bush's presidency. This party animal turned commander is Prince Hal to his own Falstaff. Overcoming is a powerful American theme; hence the proliferation of log cabins and front porches in the iconography of presidents, even some who grew up in splendor. Bush may be a master of populist pretense, but he can't claim to be self-made. His saga rests on his quest to be a man. The real triumph of Bush's media team is not a matter of lighting and positioning but of creating a presidential persona that radiates stead-fastness, plainspokenness, sexual continence, and righteous religiosity. These are the hallmarks of conservative macho. But something about Bush's image seems as artificially enhanced as his crotch. His need to flaunt it can be read as a response to anxiety. If you have to show your balls, maybe it's because you can't take them for granted. That isn't just Bush's problem. If macho seems so tragicomically x-treme these days, it's because many men think masculinity could actually disappear. All men must cope with the complications of feminism. I would argue that the demand for sexual equality is a major reason for the global rise of fundamentalism. Bush owes his fortune to this movement in America, but his appeal goes far beyond the Christian right. He represents a model that invites female initiative and counsel but not control. This is the Dred Scott compromise of our time, and it's evident in Bush's administration as well as in his marriage to an intelligent woman who knows how to stay three steps behind her husband. But Bush also embodies the primal uncertainty many men feel in the face of sexual change. This angst, which threatens to pop up like a sour belch, solidifies his bond with threatened men. They identify with his struggle to carry off the feat of macho, and many women empathize with that effort. A lot of people root for Bush to make it as a man, and they're happy to see his big basket (even if it does suggest a male version of the push-up bra). If America remains preoccupied with terrorism, the sexual politics I'm describing will affect the 2004 election only obliquely. But if voters focus on other things, the macho issue could be as crucial as it was in 2000, when Al Gore was wussified. Rove's rangers have already begun bashing the Democratic candidate most likely to make Bush look like all cake and no beef: John Kerry. First they questioned his patriotism, then they accused him of looking French, and now they're landing on his wife, casting her as a hyper-Hillary. Teresa Heinz Kerry's outspokenness, her devotion to her dead former husband, her current prenup, and her vow to maim any man who steps out on her are all being used to portray her as a ball-breaking bitch and John Kerry as her emasculated victim. So powerful is this harridan image that it actually allows the Bushies to bash Teresa for her wealth. If she doesn't finance Kerry's campaign, she's dissing him; if she does, he's a kept man. Kerry isn't the front-runner, yet the White House has singled him out for sexual calumny. To understand this fixation, you have to consider Kerry's stature (he towers over Bush), his war record, and his sloe-eyed Kennedy aura. In another era, these would be clear signals of masculinity. Today, you have to flash your stash, and Kerry's patrician style doesn't lend itself to that. But he does have those tales from 'Nam, and in a one-on-one he could expose the angst under Bush's aggression. If the economy tanks while Iraq seethes, we just might have a real contest. Fasten your crotch straps. With luck, we're in for a bumpy ride. >^..^< >^..^< >^..^< From sougata_28 at rediffmail.com Thu May 29 01:14:02 2003 From: sougata_28 at rediffmail.com (sougata bhattacharya) Date: 28 May 2003 19:44:02 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Aurora Message-ID: <20030528194402.19658.qmail@webmail18.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030528/6c3f62e2/attachment.pl From eye at ranadasgupta.com Thu May 29 09:43:22 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 09:43:22 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Baudrillard: The Violence of the Global Message-ID: Cross-posted from Undercurrents list. A rambling piece with a couple of useful gems concealed within. R The Violence of the Global [1] Jean Baudrillard Translated by François Debrix Today's terrorism is not the product of a traditional history of anarchism, nihilism, or fanaticism. It is instead the contemporary partner of globalization. To identify its main features, it is necessary to perform a brief genealogy of globalization, particularly of its relationship to the singular and the universal. The analogy between the terms "global" [2] and "universal" is misleading. Universalization has to do with human rights, liberty, culture, and democracy. By contrast, globalization is about technology, the market, tourism, and information. Globalization appears to be irreversible whereas universalization is likely to be on its way out. At least, it appears to be retreating as a value system which developed in the context of Western modernity and was unmatched by any other culture. Any culture that becomes universal loses its singularity and dies. That's what happened to all those cultures we destroyed by forcefully assimilating them. But it is also true of our own culture, despite its claim of being universally valid. The only difference is that other cultures died because of their singularity, which is a beautiful death. We are dying because we are losing our own singularity and exterminating all our values. And this is a much more ugly death. We believe that the ideal purpose of any value is to become universal. But we do not really assess the deadly danger that such a quest presents. Far from being an uplifting move, it is instead a downward trend toward a zero degree in all values. In the Enlightenment, universalization was viewed as unlimited growth and forward progress. Today, by contrast, universalization exists by default and is expressed as a forward escape, which aims to reach the most minimally common value. This is precisely the fate of human rights, democracy, and liberty today. Their expansion is in reality their weakest expression. Universalization is vanishing because of globalization. The globalization of exchanges puts an end to the universalization of values. This marks the triumph of a uniform thought [3] over a universal one. What is globalized is first and foremost the market, the profusion of exchanges and of all sorts of products, the perpetual flow of money. Culturally, globalization gives way to a promiscuity of signs and values, to a form of pornography in fact. Indeed, the global spread of everything and nothing through networks is pornographic. No need for sexual obscenity anymore. All you have is a global interactive copulation. And, as a result of all this, there is no longer any difference between the global and the universal. The universal has become globalized, and human rights circulate exactly like any other global product (oil or capital for example). The passage from the universal to the global has given rise to a constant homogenization, but also to an endless fragmentation. Dislocation, not localization, has replaced centralization. Excentricism, not decentralization, has taken over where concentration once stood. Similarly, discrimination and exclusion are not just accidental consequences of globalization, but rather globalization's own logical outcomes. In fact, the presence of globalization makes us wonder whether universalization has not already been destroyed by its own critical mass. It also makes us wonder whether universality and modernity ever existed outside of some official discourses or some popular moral sentiments. For us today, the mirror of our modern universalization has been broken. But this may actually be an opportunity. In the fragments of this broken mirror, all sorts of singularities reappear. Those singularities we thought were endangered are surviving, and those we thought were lost are revived. As universal values lose their authority and legitimacy, things become more radical. When universal beliefs were introduced as the only possible culturally mediating values, it was fairly easy for such beliefs to incorporate singularities as modes of differentiation in a universal culture that claimed to champion difference. But they cannot do it anymore because the triumphant spread of globalization has eradicated all forms of differentiation and all the universal values that used to advocate difference. In so doing, globalization has given rise to a perfectly indifferent culture. From the moment when the universal disappeared, an omnipotent global techno-structure has been left alone to dominate. But this techno-structure now has to confront new singularities that, without the presence of universalization to cradle them, are able to freely and savagely expand. History gave universalization its chance. Today though, faced with a global order without any alternative on the one hand and with drifting insurrectionary singularities on the other, the concepts of liberty, democracy, and human rights look awful. They remain as the ghosts of universalization past. Universalization used to promote a culture characterized by the concepts of transcendence, subjectivity, conceptualization, reality, and representation. By contrast, today's virtual global culture has replaced universal concepts with screens, networks, immanence, numbers, and a space-time continuum without any depth. [4] In the universal, there was still room for a natural reference to the world, the body, or the past. There was a sort of dialectical tension or critical movement that found its materiality in historical and revolutionary violence. But the expulsion of this critical negativity opened the door to another form of violence, the violence of the global. This new violence is characterized by the supremacy of technical efficiency and positivity, total organization, integral circulation, and the equivalence of all exchanges. Additionally, the violence of the global puts an end to the social role of the intellectual (an idea tied to the Enlightenment and universalization), but also to the role of the activist whose fate used to be tied to the ideas of critical opposition and historical violence. Is globalization fatal? Sometimes cultures other than ours were able to escape the fatality of the indifferent exchange. Today though, where is the critical point between the universal and the global? Have we reached the point of no return? What vertigo pushes the world to erase the Idea? And what is that other vertigo that, at the same time, seems to force people to unconditionally want to realize the Idea? The universal was an Idea. But when it became realized in the global, it disappeared as an Idea, it committed suicide, and it vanished as an end in itself. Since humanity is now its own immanence, after taking over the place left by a dead God, the human has become the only mode of reference and it is sovereign. But this humanity no longer has any finality. Free from its former enemies, humanity now has to create enemies from within, which in fact produces a wide variety of inhuman metastases. This is precisely where the violence of the global comes from. It is the product of a system that tracks down any form of negativity and singularity, including of course death as the ultimate form of singularity. It is the violence of a society where conflict is forbidden, where death is not allowed. It is a violence that, in a sense, puts an end to violence itself, and strives to establish a world where anything related to the natural must disappear (whether it is in the body, sex, birth, or death). Better than a global violence, we should call it a global virulence. This form of violence is indeed viral. It moves by contagion, proceeds by chain reaction, and little by little it destroys our immune systems and our capacities to resist. But the game is not over yet. Globalization has not completely won. Against such a dissolving and homogenizing power, heterogeneous forces -- not just different but clearly antagonistic ones -- are rising everywhere. Behind the increasingly strong reactions to globalization, and the social and political forms of resistance to the global, we find more than simply nostalgic expressions of negation. We find instead a crushing revisionism vis-à-vis modernity and progress, a rejection not only of the global techno-structure, but also of the mental system of globalization, which assumes a principle of equivalence between all cultures. This kind of reaction can take some violent, abnormal, and irrational aspects, at least they can be perceived as violent, abnormal, and irrational from the perspective of our traditional enlightened ways of thinking. This reaction can take collective ethnic, religious, and linguistic forms. But it can also take the form of individual emotional outbursts or neuroses even. In any case, it would be a mistake to berate those reactions as simply populist, archaic, or even terrorist. Everything that has the quality of event these days is engaged against the abstract universality of the global, [5] and this also includes Islam's own opposition to Western values (it is because Islam is the most forceful contestation of those values that it is today considered to be the West's number one enemy). Who can defeat the global system? Certainly not the anti-globalization movement whose sole objective is to slow down global deregulation. This movement's political impact may well be important. But its symbolic impact is worthless. This movement's opposition is nothing more than an internal matter that the dominant system can easily keep under control. Positive alternatives cannot defeat the dominant system, but singularities that are neither positive nor negative can. Singularities are not alternatives. They represent a different symbolic order. They do not abide by value judgments or political realities. They can be the best or the worst. They cannot be "regularized" by means of a collective historical action. [6] They defeat any uniquely dominant thought. Yet they do not present themselves as a unique counter-thought. Simply, they create their own game and impose their own rules. Not all singularities are violent. Some linguistic, artistic, corporeal, or cultural singularities are quite subtle. But others, like terrorism, can be violent. The singularity of terrorism avenges the singularities of those cultures that paid the price of the imposition of a unique global power with their own extinction. We are really not talking about a "clash of civilizations" here, but instead about an almost anthropological confrontation between an undifferentiated universal culture and everything else that, in whatever domain, retains a quality of irreducible alterity. From the perspective of global power (as fundamentalist in its beliefs as any religious orthodoxy), any mode of difference and singularity is heresy. Singular forces only have the choice of joining the global system (by will or by force) or perishing. The mission of the West (or rather the former West, since it lost its own values a long time ago) is to use all available means to subjugate every culture to the brutal principle of cultural equivalence. Once a culture has lost its values, it can only seek revenge by attacking those of others. Beyond their political or economic objectives, wars such as the one in Afghanistan [7] aim at normalizing savagery and aligning all the territories. The goal is to get rid of any reactive zone, and to colonize and domesticate any wild and resisting territory both geographically and mentally. The establishment of a global system is the result of an intense jealousy. It is the jealousy of an indifferent and low-definition culture against cultures with higher definition, of a disenchanted and de-intensified system against high intensity cultural environments, and of a de-sacralized society against sacrificial forms. According to this dominant system, any reactionary form is virtually terrorist. (According to this logic we could even say that natural catastrophes are forms of terrorism too. Major technological accidents, like Chernobyl, are both a terrorist act and a natural disaster. The toxic gas leak in Bhopal, India, another technological accident, could also have been a terrorist act. Any plane crash could be claimed by any terrorist group too. The dominant characteristic of irrational events is that they can be imputed to anybody or given any motivation. To some extent, anything we can think of can be criminal, even a cold front or an earthquake. This is not new. In the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, thousands of Koreans were killed because they were thought to be responsible for the disaster. In an intensely integrated system like ours, everything can have a similar effect of destabilization. Everything drives toward the failure of a system that claims to be infallible. From our point of view, caught as we are inside the rational and programmatic controls of this system, we could even think that the worst catastrophe is actually the infallibility of the system itself.) Look at Afghanistan. The fact that, inside this country alone, all recognized forms of "democratic" freedoms and expressions -- from music and television to the ability to see a woman's face -- were forbidden, and the possibility that such a country could take the totally opposite path of what we call civilization (no matter what religious principles it invoked), were not acceptable for the "free" world. The universal dimension of modernity cannot be refused. From the perspective of the West, of its consensual model, and of its unique way of thinking, it is a crime not to perceive modernity as the obvious source of the Good or as the natural ideal of humankind. It is also a crime when the universality of our values and our practices are found suspect by some individuals who, when they reveal their doubts, are immediately pegged as fanatics. Only an analysis that emphasizes the logic of symbolic obligation can make sense of this confrontation between the global and the singular. To understand the hatred of the rest of the world against the West, perspectives must be reversed. The hatred of non-Western people is not based on the fact that the West stole everything from them and never gave anything back. Rather, it is based on the fact that they received everything, but were never allowed to give anything back. This hatred is not caused by dispossession or exploitation, but rather by humiliation. And this is precisely the kind of hatred that explains the September 11 terrorist attacks. These were acts of humiliation responding to another humiliation. The worst that can happen to global power is not to be attacked or destroyed, but to suffer a humiliation. Global power was humiliated on September 11 because the terrorists inflicted something the global system cannot give back. Military reprisals were only means of physical response. But, on September 11, global power was symbolically defeated. War is a response to an aggression, but not to a symbolic challenge. A symbolic challenge is accepted and removed when the other is humiliated in return (but this cannot work when the other is crushed by bombs or locked behind bars in Guantanamo). The fundamental rule of symbolic obligation stipulates that the basis of any form of domination is the total absence of any counterpart, of any return. [8] The unilateral gift is an act of power. And the Empire of the Good, the violence of the Good, is precisely to be able to give without any possible return. This is what it means to be in God's position. Or to be in the position of the Master who allows the slave to live in exchange for work (but work is not a symbolic counterpart, and the slave's only response is eventually to either rebel or die). God used to allow some space for sacrifice. In the traditional order, it was always possible to give back to God, or to nature, or to any superior entity by means of sacrifice. That's what ensured a symbolic equilibrium between beings and things. But today we no longer have anybody to give back to, to return the symbolic debt to. This is the curse of our culture. It is not that the gift is impossible, but rather that the counter-gift is. All sacrificial forms have been neutralized and removed (what's left instead is a parody of sacrifice, which is visible in all the contemporary instances of victimization). We are thus in the irremediable situation of having to receive, always to receive, no longer from God or nature, but by means of a technological mechanism of generalized exchange and common gratification. Everything is virtually given to us, and, like it or not, we have gained a right to everything. We are similar to the slave whose life has been spared but who nonetheless is bound by a non-repayable debt. This situation can last for a while because it is the very basis of exchange in this economic order. Still, there always comes a time when the fundamental rule resurfaces and a negative return inevitably responds to the positive transfer, when a violent abreaction to such a captive life, such a protected existence, and such a saturation of being takes place. This reversion can take the shape of an open act of violence (such as terrorism), but also of an impotent surrender (that is more characteristic of our modernity), of a self-hatred, and of remorse, in other words, of all those negative passions that are degraded forms of the impossible counter-gift. What we hate in ourselves -- the obscure object of our resentment -- is our excess of reality, power, and comfort, our universal availability, our definite accomplishment, this kind of destiny that Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor had in store for the domesticated masses. And this is exactly the part of our culture that the terrorists find repulsive (which also explains the support they receive and the fascination they are able to exert). Terrorism's support is not only based on the despair of those who have been humiliated and offended. It is also based on the invisible despair of those whom globalization has privileged, on our own submission to an omnipotent technology, to a crushing virtual reality, to an empire of networks and programs that are probably in the process of redrawing the regressive contours of the entire human species, of a humanity that has gone "global." (After all, isn't the supremacy of the human species over the rest of life on earth the mirror image of the domination of the West over the rest of the world?). This invisible despair, our invisible despair, is hopeless since it is the result of the realization of all our desires. Thus, if terrorism is derived from this excess of reality and from this reality's impossible exchange, if it is the product of a profusion without any possible counterpart or return, and if it emerges from a forced resolution of conflicts, the illusion of getting rid of it as if it were an objective evil is complete. [9] For, in its absurdity and non-sense, terrorism is our society's own judgment and penalty. Notes --------------- [1] Initially published as "La Violence du Mondial," in Jean Baudrillard, Power Inferno (Paris: Galilée, 2002), pp. 63-83. [2] "Mondial" is the French term for "global" in the original text. [3] "Pensée unique" in French. [4] "Espace-temps sans dimension" in French. [5] "Contre cette universalité abstraite" in French. [6] "On ne peut pas les fédérer dans une action historique d'ensemble" in French. [7] Baudrillard refers here to the US war against Afghanistan in the Fall of 2001 in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. [8] "L'absence de contrepartie" in French. [9] Emphasis in original text. -------------------- Jean Baudrillard is an internationally acclaimed theorist whose writings trace the rise and fall of symbollic exchange in the contemporary century. In addition to a wide range of highly influential books from Seduction to Symbollic Exchange and Death, Baudrillard's most recent publications include: The Vital Illusion, The Spirit of Terrorism and The Singular Objects of Architecture. He is a member of the editorial board of CTheory. François Debrix is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He is the co-editor (with Cynthia Weber) of Rituals of Mediaton: International Politics and Social Meaning. (University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming August 2003) From eye at ranadasgupta.com Thu May 29 10:16:19 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 10:16:19 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Ancient plagiarisms Message-ID: Pliny the Elder. (A.D. c. 23–A.D. 79) In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment. Natural History. Book i. Dedication, Sect. 22. From eye at ranadasgupta.com Thu May 29 14:47:02 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 14:47:02 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] NYT: Apple Finds the Future for Online Music Sales Message-ID: notice the absurd role that "friends and family" are playing in some of these arguments. and all the different kinds of "disappointment" described in this article. R Apple Finds the Future for Online Music Sales By NEIL STRAUSS Apple Computer seems to have the future of online music in its hands for the moment. Its new service, iTunes Music Store, has been the first real success story in the long effort to sell music over the Internet. In just its first month of operation the service, by the company's estimate, has sold three million songs online, at 99 cents each. This is an impressive figure considering the limited access that music fans now have to the service. Less than 1 percent of the country's home computers are Macintoshes that are compatible with the iTunes Music Store, and only a fraction of those have a broadband connection to the Internet. But it would not be an online success story without a complicating twist. That complication came this week when the specter of the music industry, which has been publicly supportive of iTunes, began to loom over Apple. The success of iTunes, after all, depends on cooperation from the music business, which controls the songs that iTunes wants in its collection. Apparently trying to stay in the record industry's good graces, iTunes removed a service it had previously offered customers. Called Rendezvous, the service enabled listeners and their friends to access one another's music and listen to it — but not download it — from any computers. Hackers, however, had figured out how to download the music as well, creating programs with names like iLeach and iSlurp. So on Tuesday Apple sent out an update for its iTunes software, disabling Rendezvous and limiting music access to a user's local network at home or at work. In a statement released yesterday, Apple said Rendezvous had been "used by some in ways that have surprised and disappointed us." "We designed it to allow friends and family to easily stream (not copy) their music between computers at home or in a small group setting, and it does this well," the statement said. "But some people are taking advantage of it to stream music over the Internet to people they do not even know. This was never the intent." A spokesman for Apple, Chris Bell, said the company made the decision by itself. The restriction makes sense: hackers are exploiting a loophole, so get rid of the loophole. But in offering music online, there will always be a loophole. Nate Mook, who runs the online news site Betanews, said hackers were already finding a way around this new restriction, writing software that would trick iTunes into thinking that an outside user's computer was on a customer's local network. If Apple responds by limiting the functionality of the music it is selling every time that hackers find a way to trade files, it could end up with a system as unsuccessful as the record industry's own attempts, like Pressplay and Musicnet. Most of the uses for Rendezvous were not about illicit downloading. For example, Richard Yaker, co-founded — with a friend, Christian Bevcqua, who is in the band Ditch Croaker — a Web site called shareitunes.com. His intention was to enable iTunes users to see one another's song collections and then listen to the music (but not download it). Next to every song, Mr. Yaker put links to the iTunes Music Store and to online mail-order retailers like Amazon and CDBaby, so that users had options to buy the music. As far as he knew, his application was neither illegal nor even sneaky. "The industry has never explored the idea of how people sharing and listening to one another's music helps sales," he said. "We're all about selling the music once people find it and like it." "But," he continued, referring to Apple, "they just closed everything down. I was totally disappointed. We were hoping that traffic would continue to grow and we could quit our day jobs." No one has ever doubted that there is an audience that wants to buy music online. And that audience hasn't asked for much: just the permission to do whatever it wants with the songs once they're purchased. Apple Computer gave it just that. The music store is a simple concept: after giving Apple a credit card number, a Macintosh user with an up-to-date computer and operating system can click on a button and buy any song or album in the store. Buyers can then do what they want with the music, except trade it online. What is notable about the success of iTunes is that it has been achieved not by a music company but by a computer company. And this makes sense, because it was a computer solution that was needed, not a music one. Even more impressive is that Apple's coup has been accomplished relatively simply and cheaply. It owns nearly everything it is using: the Web browser software (Safari), the computer media player (iTunes), the portable digital music player (iPod), the streaming technology to play music videos (Quicktime), the software that creates the service (WebObjects), the computer itself (Macintosh) and the operating system (MacOS). "Apple is the new MTV," said Numair Faraz, 18, who has started several online service companies. "It is the new funnel for music. When things moved from radio to video, MTV was the sole source of music. Now Apple is going to control the distribution and the promotion of music. The entire ecosystem they are using is theirs." Mr. Faraz said he bought roughly $115 worth of music at the iTunes store last month. In comparison, he said, he spent no money on CD's in the last year. On a recent visit to the studio owned by the pop production team Matrix — which has produced music for Avril Lavigne, Ricky Martin and Britney Spears — Andrew Nast, the recording engineer, was working on his Macintosh. "I'm buying Paul Simon's `Graceland' right now," he said. He was asked why he is buying it rather than downloading it free of charge from a file-sharing service like Limewire. "Because it's a pain," he answered. "It takes forever to find the track. Then once you find it, maybe you can download it. And then if you download it, maybe it sounds cool. And if it sounds cool, maybe the whole track is there." The iTunes Music Store is not without flaws. Its song collection is not only relatively small, but also limited to music from major labels; independent labels are shut out. Another flaw is that it does not allow consumers to get more involved, as they did with Napster, by promoting their favorite songs through instant messaging and other features of the open architecture of the Internet. In fact, iTunes, doesn't even have an affiliate program, similar to Amazon's, so that other Web sites can refer customers to the iTunes Music Store and earn a small portion of money from the sales. And of course the iTunes store is available only through a Macintosh. Mr. Bell of Apple said the company planned to add content beyond the major labels, was open to other innovations and would have a Windows version by the end of the year. From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Tue May 20 10:27:36 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 05:57:36 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] A NUCLEAR ROAD OF NO RETURN Message-ID: <20030520045736.12266.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> Los Angeles Times >May 13, 2003 >A NUCLEAR ROAD OF NO RETURN >Bush's bid for new kinds of weapons >could put the world on a suicidal course. >By Robert Scheer >http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-scheer13may13,0,5142385.column > >It turns out the threat is not from Iraq but from us. > >On Sunday, the Washington Post wrote the obituary for the United >States' effort to find Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass >destruction. "Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq," read the >headline, confirming what has become an embarrassing truth - that >the central rationale for the invasion and occupation of oil-rich >Iraq was in fact one of history's great frauds. > >The arms inspectors "are winding down operations without finding >proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of >outlawed arms," reported the Post, putting the lie to Colin Powell's >Feb. 6 claim at the United Nations that Iraq possessed a functioning >program to build nuclear bombs and had hoarded hundreds of tons of >chemical and biological materials. > >Unfortunately, this does not necessarily mean the world is a safer >place. The deadly weapons of mass destruction have proved phantom >in Iraq, but the Bush administration is now doing its best to >ensure that the world becomes increasingly unstable and armed to >the teeth. Although the nuclear threat from Iraq proved to be >nonexistent, the United States' threat to use nuclear weapons and >make a shambles of nuclear arms control is alarmingly vibrant. > >In its latest bid to frighten the planet into a constant state of >shock and awe, our government is accelerating its own leading-edge >weapons-of-mass-destruction program: President Bush's allies on the >Senate Armed Services Committee have approved ending a decade-old >ban on developing atomic battlefield weapons and endorsed moving >ahead with creating a nuclear "bunker-buster" bomb. They also >rubber-stamped the administration's request for funds to prepare >for a quick resumption of nuclear weapons testing. > >What's going on here? Having failed to stop a gang of marauders >armed with nothing more intimidating than box cutters, the U.S. is >now using the "war on terror" to pursue a long-held hawkish >Republican dream of a "winnable nuclear war," as the president's >father memorably described it to me in a 1980 Times interview. >In such a scenario, nukes can be preemptively used against a much >weaker enemy - millions of dead civilians, widespread environmental >devastation and centuries of political blowback be damned... >________________ > >This is a message from MoveOn.org. To unsubscribe from this list, >please visit our subscription management page at: >http://moveon.org/s?i=1372-627941-EMYxTdyIkfaH2qtuSlFFnA _________________________________________________________________ "In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates." - Foucault 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/20030520/5408301b/attachment.html From kanti.kumar at oneworld.net Fri May 30 12:00:11 2003 From: kanti.kumar at oneworld.net (Editor, Digital Opportunity Channel) Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 11:30:11 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Opinion poll: Who should be the ICT intermediary? Message-ID: <284950-2200355306011817@oneworld.net> Dear Friends, As you are aware, Digital Opportunity Channel is running an online discussion forum on 'Information Society: Voices from the South' in partnership with Bytes for All . If you have not yet joined the forum, you can do so by submitting your email address at our sign-up page or simply by sending a blank email to: . In recent discussions in the forum, many participants have pointed out the need for having intermediaries to take the benefits of ICTs to the grassroots people. The view is, these intermediaries should work as a bridge between solutions and people who cannot afford to buy or use those solutions or cannot articulate their needs to formulate solutions. The forum also debated who should be the intermediaries. Among those suggested are: NGOs, governments, private sector and community-based cooperatives. Keeping in mind all these suggestions, we have created an online opinion poll for you so you can help us to decide who should be the intermediaries at the grassroots level. You can pick your choice and cast your vote. We will include the poll results in our reports. You can vote even if you are not a member of the discussion forum. Give us your opinion (anonymous) at . It takes just one click to cast your vote! Your participation is important not only to help our forum to be a success, but also to influence policy strategies through your opinion. Also, please circulate this appeal further for wider participation in both the opinion poll and the forum. Thank you. Kanti Kumar Editor, Digital Opportunity Channel www.digitalopportunity.org OneWorld South Asia New Delhi, India From meenugaur at hotmail.com Fri May 30 13:14:05 2003 From: meenugaur at hotmail.com (meenu gaur) Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 07:44:05 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] The Home of Memories Message-ID: Independent Research The Home of Memories Zuv Chum Braman Gara Gatshaha (My life brims over I want to go home) : - Lal Ded One of the focuses of this research project is to witness the multiple memories of Home in the Kashmiri Pandit refugee camps. These memories of home often construct the space of the Camp as the Other of that lost object of fantasy which is Kashmir. In this posting I�d like to discuss the ways in which people�s imaginings of home determines the way they construct the narratives on their experience of the Camps. It needs to be remembered though that when the Kashmiri Pandit migrants remember home, they do not necessarily or only speak of Kashmir in the 1990s. The Kashmir of their memory is amorphous and in their memories of Kashmir as home they often turn to a treasured and more personal past. A middle-aged man narrated to me the story of how he had revisited the Valley a few years back and how the thing that signifies to him an experience of his homeland is this image he carried from Kashmir of a man drinking water from a small stream. Even in the Camps at Delhi, hawa-paani (air+water) is an obsession: Delhi�s hawa-paani intensifies longings for a Kashmir with its singularities of hawa-paani. Yet another old man remembered that when he returned to Kashmir a few years back on a short visit; the first thing he did is that he went straight to his house, opened the tap in his house and drank the water. For many of the people in the Camps, Home is as elementary as Water. Often enough in the Camps, life in Kashmir is also remembered as being full of prosperity. The people in the Camps maintain that they might not necessarily have enjoyed material prosperity in Kashmir but there they owned something, they weren�t so dispossessed. Most of the Kashmiri Pandit migrants had to move from their own houses in Kashmir to a small cubicle (lesser than a room in size) in a large hall which they had to share with many other families. The Camp is thus often constructed as the Other of an ideal and idyllic homeland where there always seemed to be enough for everybody. The enduring image of the Camp, to one inhabitant who has moved out of the camp now to a flat in East Delhi, is that of Pigs. He narrated how he had never seen a pig in his whole life in Kashmir and when he landed in Sultanpuri, the memory of the early days in the Camp has remained forever etched in his mind as an image of the �Pigs�: �Maybe it was the heat. I had not seen a Delhi summer before that but believe me after a few days in the Camp, when I saw people on the roads� toh sab aadmi aurat mujhe suar nazar aate the (the men and women on the roads started looking like pigs to me)�. Someone else in the Sultanpuri Camp talked about how she remembered the days of happiness, well-being and even modest luxury in Kashmir: �Kashmir mein toh hum aise seb torte the aur chakh ke phek dete the�ki yeh theek nahin hain�aur yahan seb khareedne ke pehle sochna padta hai�� (We used to take a bite off such apples in Kashmir and then throw them away but now here you have to think many times before you buy an apple�.) The chaos of the Camp experience is mastered through the order of the memories of home. These memories are intrinsically about open spaces, orchards, abundance� a sense of comfort and general well-being. When they look at their experience in the Camps, it is through jokes �one of the more popular jokes is that if any of the camp resident or ex-resident suffers from insomnia, the only antidote is to soak a clean handkerchief in the sewage drain outside the camp and place it next to his pillow�the familiar smell is sure to lure him to sleep. Sensations matter in these memories. The other obvious points of reference for any conversation on the life in the Camps are mosquitoes, pigs, the drain and the criminals. Nobody talks about things such as the supply of electricity in the camps, for instance, which might be many times better than in Kashmir, where one may get electricity for merely an hour in a whole day in the bitter winters. The Kashmiri migrants carry a miniaturized, idealized Kashmir in their hearts. The memory of Kashmir is also a ritual of remembrance. Some of these narratives stemming out of personal experiences might seem suspect when measured up to certain facts about the life of these migrants in Kashmir but nonetheless they hint at a complex reality. A complex reality which involves a rejection of what the French historian Pierre Nora calls �the terrorism of historicized memory�. _________________________________________________________________ Got a wish? Make it come true. http://server1.msn.co.in/msnleads/citibankpersonalloan/index.asp Best personal loans! From menso at r4k.net Fri May 30 16:21:43 2003 From: menso at r4k.net (Menso Heus) Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 12:51:43 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] NYT: Apple Finds the Future for Online Music Sales In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20030530105143.GE12600@r4k.net> On Thu, May 29, 2003 at 02:47:02PM +0530, Rana Dasgupta wrote: > notice the absurd role that "friends and family" are playing in some of > these arguments. and all the different kinds of "disappointment" described > in this article. Notice also that people for some reason didn't figure out that if you stream bits to a computer and play them, these bits can be saved to a harddrive. > In a statement released yesterday, Apple said Rendezvous had been "used by > some in ways that have surprised and disappointed us." They should have known better. For windows there have been applications for quite some time (undoubtedly for other OS's also) that install themselves as a 'virtual soundcard' What this does is basically sit between the output send to your soundcard and the real soundcard. This circumvents several problems one could encounter when just trying to fetch the datastream, since that might be encrypted and useless to other player applications. When capturing the actual output though, it is already decrypted and ready to blast from your speakers. You sit in between, you save those bits to your harddisk and you're done. These applications have been quite popular ever since RealAudio didn't allow you to save the streams to your harddisk, and they're semi-smart also (they notice gaps in the stream for example, when your player is rebuffering, and don't save the silence during this period). > "We designed it to allow friends and family to easily stream (not copy) > their music between computers at home or in a small group setting, and it > does this well," the statement said. "But some people are taking advantage > of it to stream music over the Internet to people they do not even know. > This was never the intent." A spokesman for Apple, Chris Bell, said the > company made the decision by itself. So they took out the option (for which a workaround will be found). The striking thing about this is that it completely bypasses the fact that it was *also* used for legitimate purposes. They're not shutting down CD shops because some people steal CD's (or nowadays, the booklets to put in their burned copy jewel case). The amount of risk they are willing to take seems little still, even after the big success. I hope this isn't a first in a series of steps to reduce the freedom of the end user. iTunes also allows purchased music to be burned on CD-ROM as many times as you wish for example. This cd can be ripped by anyone. Menso -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "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 aiindex at mnet.fr Sat May 31 01:55:37 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 21:25:37 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Warlordistan Message-ID: The New York Times Magazine | June 1, 2003 Unreconstructed By BARRY BEARAK His Excellency Ismail Khan -- ruler of the ancient city of Herat, governor of the province, emir of the western territories and commander of Afghanistan's fourth military corps -- seemed fascinated by the woman with no arms. ''It's amazing -- she eats with her toes,'' he said, looking my way. The emir had allowed me to sit at his shoulder during his weekly public assembly, when hundreds of supplicants come to the great hall of the governor's compound and plead for him to intercede in their behalf. As usual, Ismail Khan was wearing a spotless white waistcoat, whiter even than his famous fluff of beard, thick as cotton candy. He sat at a simple desk beneath the adoring light of a grand chandelier. Uniformed men hovered nearby, ready to be dispatched on sudden errands. Other aides in suits and ties periodically brought papers for him to sign, removing each one the instant the emir's signature was complete and then bowing before backpedaling away. The armless young woman, disabled since birth, was herself dutifully respectful as she confided her problems with humble words and earnest genuflections. Her voice was a nervous chirp, her eyes hidden behind the meshed peephole of a burka. She asked for nothing more than money for medication. But Ismail Khan, pitying her disability, thought she should be requesting much more. ''Why aren't you married?'' he asked. ''If you want, I will find you a mujahid to serve you.'' The woman did not know quite how to react. ''I love my father,'' she said hesitantly. But the emir grew ever more pleased at his own benevolence. His mind was made up. ''If you marry, it would be better,'' he said. Hour after hour it went on, the needy coming forward one at a time from the cushioned chairs of the waiting area, alternately a man and then a woman, all eager to hear a few transforming words. A few petitioners were keen businessmen, wanting land for a factory or permission to open a bazaar. Other people required the emir's decisive arbitration about property disputes or jailed loved ones or reneged marriage arrangements. But mostly, the hopeful were the pitifully poor, often telling stunning tales of personal tragedy, only to then make the most modest of requests: a visa, a bag of rice, use of a telephone, oil for their lanterns. In this lordly fashion, acting in the manner of the great caliphs, Ismail Khan dispensed a day's worth of practical wisdom and petty cash. It was a remarkable display of personal might -- and one quite in keeping with his busy personal campaign to improve Herat itself, the only major city in the nation where significant reconstruction has taken place. Under the emir's guiding hand, roads have been paved, irrigation channels restored, schoolhouses rebuilt. Clean water has been supplied to most neighborhoods. Soon, Herat will be the nation's only city with around-the-clock power. New parks adorn the cityscape, including two that have large swimming pools and brightly colored playground equipment -- surreal novelties in so woebegone a country. ''Judge for yourself,'' the emir said one sunny afternoon when he was particularly given to boasting. ''Where in Kabul will you find families in a park after 10 p.m.? Where is there even a park?'' A year and a half has now passed since American bombers changed the course of this nation's civil war, a year and a half since the Taliban were forced from their commanding perches to lurk now in hideaways; a year since President George W. Bush pledged something akin to a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan. The reconstruction was to be a mammoth effort in the spirit of American generosity to Europe after World War II, he said, a way to ''give the Afghan people the means to achieve their own aspirations.'' It would be nice to report that Ismail Khan's industriousness typifies a nationwide revival. But the rebuilding of Afghanistan -- among the world's poorest countries even before it suffered 23 years of war -- has so far been a sputtering, disappointing enterprise, short of results, short of strategy, short, most would say, of money. As for the emir, rather than a lead character in the restoration, he is actually a foremost symbol of its affliction. (Page 2 of 11) Nation-building, scorned by George Bush the presidential candidate, has now become the avowed obligation of George Bush the global liberator. The problem is that nations, like so many Humpty Dumpties, are troublesome to put back together again. The challenge -- whether in Afghanistan or Iraq -- is more than brick and mortar, more than airwaves and phone lines; this is not the kind of carpentry required after a hurricane. Afghanistan has been in atrophy for a generation, with institutions in decay, educations in eclipse, the entire society tossing and turning in a benumbing nightmare. Like so many of its people, the nation is missing limbs. There is an overabundance of guns but only the beginnings of a national army and a police force. Elections are scheduled for next year, but there are no voter-registration rolls, nor is there even a working constitution. Entrepreneurs want to think big, but there are no commercial banks to make loans. Much of the land is fertile, but the only major export is the raw opium used in the criminal drug trade. Civil servants have again begun to collect salaries, but pay remains a mere $30 to $40 a month, and many workers rely on tolerated corruption to feed their families. In so many ways, time seems to have halted in the 1970's, and now the past fails to flow logically into the present. Documents are copied with carbon paper and then held together by straight pins; staplers are largely unknown. Traffic flows in the right-hand lane of the roads, though these days most vehicles have steering wheels for left-side driving. The country has an interim government, but it is much less than the sum of its parts -- and those parts are largely controlled by warlords like Ismail Khan in the west, Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Muhammad in the north, Gul Agha Shirzai in the south and Haji Din Mohammad and Hazrat Ali in the east. In a hasty postwar fusion of distrustful factions, these men -- all American-armed allies against the Taliban -- were welcomed into the incipient government and given official titles. And while each expediently mouths allegiance to President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, they still maintain their own militaries and collect their own revenues. ''Emir'' may well be Ismail Khan's favored title. (His aides insist he be addressed as ''your excellency, emir sahib.'') But what gives him legitimacy in the current setup -- as well as phenomenal resources -- is his designation as governor of Herat, one of the great junctions on the old Silk Route and still the nation's richest turf. Most goods entering Afghanistan arrive by way of Iran, traversing Ismail Khan-controlled stretches of highway on their way to smugglers' bazaars in Pakistan. Truckers are obliged to pay duty at the Herat customs house, and while by right all collections belong to Afghanistan's central treasury, the emir has remitted only a fraction of a daily take variously estimated between $250,000 and $1.5 million. It is as if the governor of New York also declared himself the emir of New Jersey and Connecticut, keeping federal taxes from the region for his own purposes. I visited the customs house and its surroundings. Not far from the main buildings was the largest used-car lot I had ever seen, with dusty autos and S.U.V.'s parked along both sides of a mile-long strip, each row dozens deep rising into the hillsides. Most of the vehicles were Japanese, shipped through Dubai and then driven or hauled to Herat. Merchants wearing long-tailed turbans used tents as offices, bellyaching about sagging profits. It was bad enough, they said, to be harassed for a relentless sequence of bribes. But now customs fees themselves had recently doubled, amounting to as much as $2,000 for a late-model Land Cruiser. During a quiet moment in the governor's compound, just after the emir had returned from his midday prayers but before he resumed seeing his supplicants, I politely asked him, ''About how much customs revenue do you collect, emir sahib?'' ''Maybe you can't believe this,'' he assumed correctly, ''but I really don't know.'' (Page 3 of 11) Warlords are not the only ones reluctant to turn their cash over to Kabul. So are most of the donor countries providing aid. ''None of it goes through the government,'' said Elisabeth Kvitashvili, the acting mission director in Kabul for the United States Agency for International Development. ''If we felt the government and the ministries had the capacity to handle the money in a manner that would satisfy the U.S. taxpayer, we'd give it to them, but that's a big if.'' USAID has bookkeeping standards unlikely to be met by long-dormant Afghan bureaucrats, she said. Instead, assistance is channeled through the United Nations, outside contractors or private aid agencies -- the so-called nongovernmental organizations, the NGO's. America has two ambassadors in Kabul. William Taylor Jr., the ''special representative for donor assistance,'' calls himself the ''lesser'' of the titleholders. He is a self-described optimist who nevertheless said that if some highly visible reconstruction projects do not start happening soon, both the Afghan and United States governments will be ''in trouble.'' By Taylor's math, America made $649 million available to Afghanistan in fiscal year 2002, which ended in September; in 2003, the amount should exceed $1.2 billion. While a hefty sum, even the latter amount is hardly Marshall Plan size. Indeed, it roughly equals the cost of a single B-2 stealth bomber; it is about the same amount the United States military spends in Afghanistan every month. But America never intended to go it alone, as it did in Iraq. Reconstruction was supposed to be a multilateral effort. In January 2002, when the post-9/11 world still held Afghanistan near the center of its orbit, a conference took place in Tokyo. Fighting was still going on outside Kandahar, the Taliban's main stronghold, but there was already a sense of urgency to the matter of rebuilding the country. Unfortunately, with events happening in rapid flash, there were also many unknowns. What were to be the goals of this reconstruction? Was the nation merely to be restored to entrenched poverty, or was the objective something more? No one knew the parameters of Afghanistan's many crises. Security concerns had long kept researchers from the field. What were the conditions of rural access roads and irrigation systems? What were the rates of malnutrition, TB and infant mortality? Analysts from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program had hurriedly prepared a preliminary assessment. Though there were caveats about the guesswork involved in their 59-page report, they did dare to estimate costs: the bill could range from $1.4 billion to $2.1 billion in the first year, $8.3 billion to $12.2 billion over five years and $11.4 billion to $18.1 billion over 10 years. But when the donors -- a dozen or so nations, the European Union and the World Bank -- actually opened their wallets, their generous impulses fell short of their compassionate rhetoric. Pledges of grants and loans -- made for periods of one to five years -- totaled $5.2 billion, only about 60 percent of the low-end five-year projection. Still, the help was beyond anything Afghanistan had received since the days of the cold war, when the tenacious mujahedeen, revered in the West as front-line fighters against Communism, were lavished with billions in weaponry. Welcoming the pledges, a spokesman for the transitional government said: ''We're thrilled. Every single dollar is appreciated.'' But soon the thrill was gone. Some pledges were slow to be paid, and much of the money went for food and medicine and blankets and tents and firewood and all the other things war-bedraggled, drought-parched, morbidly poor people desperately need. Refugees were flooding back across the border. By last fall, nearly two million had returned, some rudely hurried on their way by Pakistan and Iran, which had proved impatient caretakers, others emboldened by optimistic radio broadcasts. The world was promising to rebuild their homeland. They did not want to miss out. (Page 4 of 11) Of course, this reverse migration only added to the glut of the hopelessly poor. These people also needed emergency help. During the first year after the war, short-term relief efforts consumed 50 to 70 percent of the ''reconstruction'' aid, depending on how the numbers are tallied. The transitional government certainly welcomed the assistance but objected to its being credited against the pledges made in Tokyo. Wasn't that money meant for hospitals and not Band-Aids? In fact, as time passed, that $5.2 billion began to seem smaller all the time. CARE International, the NGO, issued a study comparing per capita aid provided in recent postconflict situations. Afghanistan fared poorly next to East Timor and Rwanda and did even worse against Kosovo and Bosnia. Government officials often quoted the numbers, sounding wounded -- and even cheated -- reminding foreigners of Afghanistan's sacrifices against Soviet invaders and fanatic terrorists. It was hard to quarrel with the umbrage. Indeed, Robert Finn, the ''greater'' of the two American ambassadors, told me that the discrepancies in aid were all the worse because relative costs were higher in Afghanistan. ''There is almost no infrastructure left,'' he said. ''And mostly, there was never any infrastructure, electricity, water. You have to supply everything.'' He said that only 3 of 32 provinces were linked by telephone to the capital and that ''the country was absolutely medieval in some places.'' But what most annoyed the Afghans was how they were repeatedly sidestepped in the cause of their own resurrection. Though they were consulted about projects, when it actually came time to begin one, the money went into other hands. The word ''capacity'' was always invoked, as in, ''The U.N. and the NGO's have the capacity to do the job, and you don't.'' Much of the donors' thinking was realistic, of course. Clearly, the aid agencies -- repeating familiar tasks year to year in country after country -- knew better how to satisfy vigilant auditors in Brussels or Washington. And just as clearly, the Afghans were very often flummoxed while trying to kick-start an old wreck of a government. The Ministry of Finance was headquartered in a huge pinkish building, but the heating system was shot, the roof leaked and only one bathroom functioned. ''Physically it looked like a stable,'' Ashraf Ghani, the finance minister, told me in an interview. His wife, sitting nearby, added, ''It smelled like one too.'' There was certainly no shortage of civil servants. Estimates put the number at 250,000, though their attendance had become as intermittent as their wages. International business consultants -- contracted by USAID -- were goggle-eyed at what they found in government offices. The central bank operated without a working balance sheet. Payroll records were scarce. When salaries were paid, there were no checks or vouchers. Cash was hand-carried to each province. The ''lab'' at the Kabul customs house -- the main line of defense against infestations in fruit and vegetables -- did not have a single beaker or test tube; it consisted of five bored men sitting in an old shipping container sipping tea. "The needs are so great; everywhere you turn, it's a priority,'' said Lakhdar Brahimi, the Algerian diplomat who oversees the United Nations presence in Afghanistan. He is a veteran global troubleshooter who has also worked in Haiti and South Africa. In the late 90's, he tried to broker a peace between the Taliban and the fast-collapsing forces of the resistance, many of whom -- through the miracle elixir sometimes referred to here as vitamin B-52 -- are now central figures in the government. When I asked Brahimi what the biggest accomplishments of reconstruction were, he answered, ''Probably not very much.'' For him, the most important rebuilding project was bringing security to the country, and that had yet to happen. Without it, he said, everything else was in jeopardy. ''The Taliban have been routed; they have been expelled from the capital, but they have not been defeated, or at least they have not accepted their defeat.'' (Page 5 of 11) As he and I talked, there was fresh news about a particularly alarming murder. Gunmen at a roadblock near Kandahar had ordered people out of their vehicles, which in itself is a common, perhaps even expected practice along some roads. But these thugs let their Afghan captives go, while shooting a Salvadoran water engineer from the Red Cross. The next day, a Taliban commander phoned the BBC and announced a jihad against ''Jews and Christians, all foreign crusaders.'' Two weeks later, an Italian tourist was gunned down. The recent attacks have not been limited to foreigners. Snipers have started to target Afghans employed to clear land mines from the terrain. Ambushes occur almost daily now, causing many aid groups to further restrict already limited labors. More than that, the incidents re-emphasize a chilling truth in a violent, gun-toting land. Any number of major reconstruction projects could be stopped with a few well-aimed bullets. The American-led coalition against terrorism keeps more than 11,000 soldiers in the country, including 8,500 Americans. But their job is combat, chasing after vestiges of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Brahimi is talking about something else, the confidence inspired by basic police work. From the start, both he and the new government have pleaded for an expanded international force to deter robberies on the roads and pillaging by vengeful warlords with ethnic scores to settle. A security force of 5,000 multinational troops -- currently commanded by the Germans and the Dutch -- is stationed in Kabul but does not venture into the provinces. Early on, the United States opposed any expansion of this detachment, and while lately the American attitude has been more conciliatory, American officials aren't in a hurry to provide troops. ''You know very well that in a situation like this, unless the Americans say, 'This is needed and we will support it,' it will not happen,'' said Brahimi. ''If I tell you we have a security problem, you tell me, 'No, it's too dangerous for our soldiers' -- who are trained, who are armed. Don't you think it's also too dangerous for me?'' Most non-Afghans restrict themselves to Kabul. The capital's population has swelled to more than three million, and while most new arrivals are returned refugees -- the bulk of them destitute -- foreigners are a conspicuous presence. Kabul is now a Western-friendly host. Hyatt International has agreed to manage a luxury hotel to be built near the United States Embassy. Souvenir shops and rug merchants have multiplied tenfold. Brand-new carpets are spread across the streets to be run over by cars, the traffic rapidly ''aging'' the wool for wealthier customers who prefer antiques. Expensive restaurants with international cuisine have opened. At a new spot called B's Place, the maitre d'hotel announced fish Valencia as the chef's daily special and suggested an accompanying wine, something forbidden under the Taliban no matter what the vintage. Without any whip-wielding religious police officers roving around in black pickup trucks, Kabul's high quotient of dread has vastly declined. About half the women in the streets now shun the burka, though most continue to keep their heads reverently covered. Girls as well as boys are free to attend school, albeit terribly overcrowded ones. Satellite TV dishes, necessarily camouflaged under Taliban rule, openly bloom from the rooftops. Entire markets are devoted to music and movies sold on bootlegged CD's. There is a bustle to the city. Traffic congeals into jams at predictable rush hours. Soon after arriving, I looked up an acquaintance, Sabir Latifi, a businessman with a great nose for the aroma of money. He has always had the right contacts in the right places, even when the Taliban governed, and as usual he greeted me with a hug as his ''first best friend,'' a distinction I no doubt share with hundreds of others. During the past year, Latifi has opened two guest houses, a restaurant and an Internet cafe, as well as businesses in advertising, real estate, tourism and computers. But the really big money was eluding him, he complained gravely. He lacked financiers to stake him in the bottling of mineral water, fruit juices and soft drinks. He needed a packing plant so he could export produce. ''But this is a country without any banking laws, so the big international companies don't want to invest,'' he said. And that was not the worst of it. Hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid was flooding into Afghanistan only to stream right out again. Humanitarian agencies with hefty start-up costs were all spending money overseas, buying cars, computers and generators from international suppliers. Construction contracts were being won by foreign companies. ''Where is the money for us Afghans?'' he wanted to know. (Page 6 of 11) This was a question ruefully asked throughout the country. Western Kabul, the most-bombed-out part of the capital, still has the postapocalyptic look it acquired in the early 90's when rival Afghan armies used it as a battleground. What is left are the mutilated carcasses of buildings, their roofs gone, walls chewed away, columns sticking up like stalagmites. The neighborhood is now a favored sanctuary of the former refugees. Seventy families live in the remnant hollows of a sandal factory. One recent morning, a 6-year-old boy named Munir wandered sleepily out of a third-floor doorway and into the empty air a few feet away, falling to his death. ''We've been told nothing but lies,'' insisted Rozi Ahmad, one of the boy's relatives, speaking for a collection of nodding men standing behind him inside the factory. Buoyant talk on the radio had enticed them to come back. And though their children now carry bright blue Unicef book bags to reopened schools, and though they occasionally receive a 50-pound sack of free wheat, most feel deceived. ''Even if you drive, you see the destroyed roads are the same, unchanged, no repairs,'' Ahmad said, extending an arm toward the horizon. ''There was supposed to be billions of dollars. How has it been spent?'' Indeed, there is a notable lack of edifices to show for the money that has arrived so far -- a total of $1.8 billion, according to a government agency that coordinates with the international donors. The most-talked-about project is the repair of one of the world's worst highway systems, the torn-up circle of bone-jarring bumps and car-swallowing ruts that connect Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad. Promises for financing have been made by the United States, the European Union, India, Iran, Japan and the World Bank. But little work has begun. ''For a road to be built properly, it must have a proper design, and a design is time-consuming,'' Karl Harbo, head of the European Union's aid office in Afghanistan, told me. He said planners were cutting as many corners as possible, but the job will be especially toilsome because of ''sanded-up culverts'' and ''broken retaining walls,'' to say nothing of land mines. ''You don't want to build a road that will need repair in two or three years.'' Ambassador Finn said much the same thing about the entire reconstruction process: ''It's like building a house. You have to figure out what you're doing and gather materials. Building a country is the same thing.'' The road is highly symbolic to Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's dapper, patrician president. Last year, during a visit to America, he and George Bush shook hands on a pledge to get the project finished. Karzai remains disappointed. ''Reconstruction in the manner we wanted it, with the speed we wanted it, has not taken place,'' he said, calibrating his words, not wanting to let his frustration stray into ingratitude. ''In the eyes of the Afghan people, reconstruction means visible permanent infrastructure projects'' like roads, dams and power plants. ''The Afghan people don't seem to like these quick-fix projects, where you give them a dirt road and the next rainy season it is gone away.'' In September, an assassin's bullets barely missed Karzai as his car moved through a crowd in the middle of Kandahar. Just months earlier, he accepted American bodyguards after one of his vice presidents was shot dead. Detractors insist that Karzai is a lackey for the United States and the possessor of so little power that he is little more than the mayor of Kabul. But those criticisms are overdrawn. He has managed to hold together a multiethnic cabinet in an ethnically divided country, and his closeness to the Americans and the United Nations actually endows him with clout. Though he has often seemed reticent to exercise his power, in mid-May he did try to bring opponents in line with an artful use of petulance. He threatened to quit. ''Every day, the people of Afghanistan lose hope and trust in the government,'' he complained in a speech. The catalyst for this public lament was the threadbare treasury. Once again, civil servants were going without pay. We have the funds, Karzai said: ''The money is in provincial customs houses around the country.'' He put the total at more than $600 million. Unfortunately, he said, very little was being forwarded to Kabul. (Page 7 of 11) Karzai then held an emergency meeting of governors and warlords from the border areas, including Ismail Khan. He got them to sign an agreement promising not to hoard the revenues or launch their own military attacks. Such promises have been dutifully made before, only to be selfishly ignored later. But merely getting Ismail Khan to attend was a victory of sorts. He isn't always so cooperative. The month before, all 32 governors were summoned to the capital. The president and the interior minister chewed them out. You need to be more responsible about security, they were told; you need to clamp down on farmers growing poppy, who have again turned Afghanistan into the breadbasket of the heroin trade; you need to turn over your revenues. Three governors were not present. Two had phoned in with legitimate excuses. Ismail Khan chose to send his deputy, who merely said that the emir extended his regrets. Why not just fire someone like Ismail Khan? I asked Karzai. ''Governments cannot behave in a trigger-happy manner,'' he told me, saying that it was far too soon for such confrontations. ''Governments have to think and then decide.'' The political part of reconstruction is at least as important as the physical -- or so I was constantly told. It was hard to disagree. The latter, no matter how well built, won't last very long without the sanctuary of the former. The Kabul government must prove that it can assert authority -- protect people, collect taxes, dispense jobs, build things. For now, warlords big and small control their customary fiefs. ''There's no law,'' Brahimi of the United Nations said, summing up. ''You're at the mercy of the commander, who will at any time come and demand money, take your property, force you to give your daughter in marriage.'' President Karzai is a Pashtun, the nation's largest ethnic group. But the defense and foreign ministries and the intelligence service are dominated by Tajiks from a single district, the Panjshir Valley. One of them, Defense Minister Muhammad Qasim Fahim, headed the Northern Alliance and marched into Kabul with his troops nine weeks after 9/11. Many Afghans consider him to be nothing more than a warlord himself. His large, well-equipped army remains bivouacked in and around the capital. Last June, during the loya jirga, or grand council, Karzai was formally chosen as interim president, to hold office until a new constitution could be written and a national election held in June 2004. Many Afghans thought this was an opportune time to rid the country of its regional chieftains. Indeed, with so many American troops deployed, the warlords themselves were anxious about surviving. But the Americans still had use for the commanders in the quest for Al Qaeda, paying some of them to put their soldiers into the field. And at the time, Karzai was more concerned with finding a balance among rival ethnic groups. He wanted to pacify the powerful, not confront them. Though ethnic tensions remain, a new fault line has opened that may be equally divisive. Welcomed into the government have been several ''neckties,'' Western-educated exiles who have come back to assume high posts. Karzai seems to rely on them more and more. ''Without Afghans who have been trained in Europe and America and other parts of the world, Afghanistan cannot go forward,'' he told me. Who else has the education? he asked. Within the country, a generation has passed without the development of new skills. ''It's a gap. It'll take God knows how many years to fill.'' The most powerful ''necktie'' is Ashraf Ghani, who is not merely the minister of finance but also the president's closest adviser and a man with a hand in almost everything. Surpassingly erudite and surpassingly fond of displaying it, Ghani, 54, has a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia. He taught at Johns Hopkins. He worked at the World Bank for 11 years, traveling widely, studying third-world economies, managing the reform of the Russian coal industry. He is, by virtually all accounts, a brilliant analyst with a warehouse memory. Also, by virtually all accounts, he is an acerbic man who does not suffer fools gladly and defines that category most broadly. ''He has that sting-y tongue,'' Karzai said, well aware of what he has unleashed. ''It hurts.'' Several ministers have grown to loathe Ghani. All seem to fear him. (Page 8 of 11) The finance minister comes from a well-known, well-heeled family of the Ahmadzai, the largest of the Pashtun tribes. Many of his ancestors served Afghanistan's royalty, including a great-great-grandfather who was executed. ''They said his neck was too precious, so they hung him with a silk rope,'' Ghani told me one evening at his home in the capital's best neighborhood. I had been eager to meet him and found him in a relaxed mood, somewhat fatigued but charming. The tart side of his tongue made no appearance. His wife, Rula, who is Lebanese, sat with us as her husband narrated a short personal history. ''My family has been dispossessed five times in five different generations,'' he said. Both of his grandfathers served as mayors of Kabul. ''Every male member of my family was imprisoned'' when the Communists took over the country in 1978, he said. ''The women had to sell the bulk of the land to keep the men alive.'' At the time, he was studying abroad. His exile lasted 24 years. Brahimi named him as a special adviser soon after 9/11. The prickly anthropologist immediately became the bridge between Afghanistan and the foreign money. Ghani can talk in the mannered jargon of the international lenders, and he has been able to persuade more of them to give their grants directly to the government. At the same time, he has assumed the role of cabinet watchdog, using the budget as a hammer against any loose accounting by fellow ministers. He sometimes berates them in cabinet meetings. ''If any expenditure is declared ineligible, meaning not according to the rules, I cut exactly the same amount from their budget,'' Ghani said with a chuckle. ''And if it repeats, a second offense, I'll cut double their money.'' Opponents think him power-mad. For Ghani to truly control the nation's treasury, he will have to humble the warlords and collect all those customs fees. He and another ''necktie,'' Interior Minister Ali Jalali, have even spoken of a highway patrol that would accompany cargo-carrying trucks in a caravan from the border, bypassing all illegal collection points along the way. Ghani has also visited some of the warlords himself, staking claim to funds. He was greeted warmly by Ismail Khan but then sent home with the promise of only $10 million. ''I have a delegation in Herat, working the numbers,'' Ghani told me rather legalistically. If Ismail Khan ''doesn't remit the budgetary resources, then he would be an outlaw.'' But what sheriff would arrest the emir? These men are two of the stranger bedfellows that lie in Afghanistan's future. Ismail Khan, 56, is a short, stocky man whose face pairs a knowing smile with a fierce stare. He wears a black, gray and white headdress that perfectly accompanies his dark eyebrows, gray mustache and snowy beard. His portrait appears nearly everywhere in Herat. Patriotic posters often couple him with Karzai or the war hero Ahmad Shah Massoud, though Khan is always the one in the foreground. Back in 1979, Ismail Khan was merely a junior artillery officer. He became involved in a mutiny against the Communists then ruling the country. And later, after the Soviets invaded, he became a guerrilla commander. By dint of battlefield success -- as well as of the coincident deaths of other contenders -- he emerged as the leader of the resistance in Afghanistan's west and a self-proclaimed emir. After the Soviets skulked away in 1989, he assumed the governorship of Herat, his popularity ebbing and flowing during a turbulent time of civil war. He was in an ebb phase when the Taliban -- then known as pious champions of law and order -- succeeded in taking the city in the fall of 1995. The emir escaped to Iran, and when he later returned to fight, he was the victim of an ally's betrayal and ended up as his enemy's most famous prisoner. He spent more than two years in a Taliban jail, often manacled in a zawlana, an iron device that hitched his neck to his wrists and ankles. A young Talib intelligence officer helped him in a nerve-racking escape through the desert. Ismail Khan's getaway vehicle hit a land mine, and his leg was broken in the explosion. The Taliban were furious when the wounded emir surfaced safely, again in Iran. (Page 9 of 11) Ghani, by contrast, is clean-shaven, with the frail look of a professor who spends too much time indoors. Two operations for cancer have removed most of his stomach. With so much of his insides cut away, he is forced to eat frequently in small quantities, continuously irrigating himself with fluids. Kidney stones have tormented him. He complains of constant pain, though this does not seem to keep him from working 16-hour days. His speech is deliberate, often a monotone, and his reservoir of intellect provides him his own kind of forcefulness. Despite being the consummate ''necktie,'' these days he wears loose-fitting Afghan clothes and constantly fingers a strand of prayer beads. Ghani allowed me to attend some of his meetings one day. In the morning, his large office filled with half a dozen key staff members, all seated on sofas and armchairs. Conspicuously, most were Westerners -- those consultants paid for by USAID, dressed in conservative business suits and shined shoes. ''We've been in the Kabul customs house from one end to the other, and we have a very good idea what's happening there,'' one reported. Not surprisingly, they had found gross inefficiency amid grosser corruption, or perhaps it was the other way around. Computerization was prescribed. Ghani said he would ''talk to the Koreans'' about it. They sounded like commandos plotting a takeover. The rest of the morning and afternoon were spent in a single meeting about ''D.D.R.,'' shorthand for disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, the means by which the warlords might gradually be made to relinquish their militias. Unavoidably complicated, the program is also unmistakably essential, and Karzai had asked his finance minister to convene an extended session with United Nations staffers who had been reconnoitering among the country's many armies. ''I have my standard list of 100 questions,'' Ghani said: what are the functions of each unit? What kind of loyalty is there between commanders and men? What incentives would make a soldier agree to quit? ''We'll need strong public relations,'' one United Nations staff member said. ''Commanders and soldiers will need to believe they are getting more by disarming.'' The overall idea is for Afghanistan to build a national military of 70,000, commanded by the government in Kabul and for now trained by the United States and France. So far, fewer than 4,000 soldiers have finished the training course. The warlords are not encouraging it. In fact, men like Ismail Khan insist that their soldiers are already part of a national force ready to defend the nation. They see no reason to disband their units or give up their tanks and artillery. For the troops in the militias, D.D.R. threatens their livelihood and hence requires something like a buyout plan, each soldier receiving some incentive in cash or training or a job. Commanders at all levels would need even more extravagant temptations. Exactly how any such plan would work is far from certain. Perhaps the biggest problem is sequencing: who D.D.R.'s first? Most of the warlords have at one time or another been on opposing sides in civil war. In the north, the forces of Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Muhammad still frequently kill one another, fighting over spoils. But whatever happens, D.D.R. will necessarily proceed one small step at a time. ''What we're talking about in the north is basically preserving the balance of terror,'' Ghani told the group. The finance minister himself would inevitably be involved in the payouts of cash to the demobilized armies. In such situations, arguments invariably ensue. It happens now with the government payroll. In a nation without ID cards -- or birth certificates -- it is hard to know whether money is going to actual employees or to phony names. ''I won't pay them, and this bothers a lot of people,'' Ghani said at one point to no one in particular, musing. ''Sooner or later, they may pull the trigger. They'll have to decide whether they want to shoot me. To me, it's not so important an issue.'' (Page 10 of 11) None of the top men in the government are good risks for life insurance. Still, this seemed an odd declaration. Perhaps it was for my benefit, to show commitment or bravery. As I left the meeting, Ghani stopped me and repeated the thought. ''I really don't care if they kill me,'' he said. ''There are worse things than dying for a good cause.'' The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission is relatively new. In March, it opened its first satellite office in a freshly painted house in Herat. There was a big celebration. Lakhdar Brahimi attended. So did Interior Minister Ali Jalali. Even Ismail Khan went, which could have been viewed as a bold gesture: the emir had been the subject of two damning reports by Human Rights Watch, likening his rule to that of the Taliban. I had looked into some of the allegations, and while I thought the reports overheated, people were definitely fearful of criticizing their emir. I met a lawyer named Rafiq Shahir, who heads a council of professionals. Last year he dared to be a critic. ''During the night, they broke through the gate of my house and took me,'' he said. ''My hands were tied, my eyes covered. They beat me for 30 minutes in the desert.'' Ismail Khan is disdainful of the charges against him, which to his ears were then all-too-gleefully repeated on Radio Free Afghanistan, a station financed by the United States. It has a reporter named Ahmad Behzad, whom the emir finds unfair and nettlesome. In speeches, he has compared the young man to those ''who served the foreigners during the Russian occupation.'' As it happened, Behzad was also at the celebration. After the main ceremony, he stopped the interior minister and began taping an interview. Unfortunately, the two men were blocking a narrow iron stairway that kept the emir and others from getting to the food. The exact words said at the time are in dispute. But everyone agrees that Behzad asked the minister about the sad state of human rights in Herat -- and that soon after, the emir informed the journalist that he ''had no honor'' and ought to leave right away. When Behzad promptly exited, he was smacked around by one of Ismail Khan's men, a startling sight at any time but a stunning one at a human rights gala. The emir later ordered the radio reporter to leave Herat, causing several other journalists to stage a strike in outrage. ''I got another call today from Kabul, asking me to straighten this out,'' the emir told me with irritation. He looked down, shaking his head, mashing his great white beard into his chest. Some in the central government considered the incident an embarrassment. But Ismail Khan thought he had already squared everything. The journalists had been invited to return, though now Behzad had left once more, fearing for his life. I had not planned on asking the emir about the matter. But he brought it up one afternoon as we sat comfortably in his guest house on well-stuffed furniture upholstered with fringed cloth. The Persian rugs covering the floor were elegant, though they themselves were mostly covered by other rugs even finer. On the wall was a huge painting of the emir sitting on some boulders, holding a radio, calling in antiaircraft fire. Following his extended rant against Behzad, I questioned him about the ''neckties.'' ''Our brothers who come from the West without understanding the traditions of the people -- about holy things and about the war -- they are taking us toward bad times and will soon face the anger of the people,'' he said somberly if oratorically, speaking in Dari. ''Our brothers from the West have seen Afghanistan from far away. I see it clearly. For example, in Kabul, a city in which there has been 23 years of Islamic revolution, there are some parts where alcoholic drinks are being sold.'' He sighed. ''The people won't tolerate that. They can't tolerate that because they have lost their sons, they've suffered from bombings, they've had revolutions. Now they want to live under a regime that is Islamic.'' He waited for the translator to catch up so he would not be misunderstood. ''Our country is completely different from those that are 100 years ahead of us. The freedom these Afghans from the West have seen is not suitable for here.'' I wanted to pursue these thoughts, but an aide gave a signal, and my audience with the emir was over. Someone scurried right in to take the teacups off the table. Certainly, Ismail Khan was correct about the nation being deeply scarred, perhaps even more than those living in exile could understand. This scarring has left people yearning for peace. They also want good government of the type that provides safety and schools and doctors. Though unused to much in the way of government services, most Afghans are well aware of a world with piped water, dependable electricity and easy access to telephones. Democracy may not rank high on their wish lists, however. Many Afghans associate it with the West, with kafiran, or the ways of the infidel. It brings to mind provocative clothing and disobedient children. For now, a warlord like the emir has an advantage over the ministers dealing with the chaos in Kabul. He gets things done -- and people can see it. I talked with truckers who handle long hauls across the country. On most runs there is one bogus checkpoint after another with soldiers charging ''taxes.'' There are also ordinary bandits, and in most of the country truckers no longer risk travel at night. ''But on Ismail Khan's roads you can drive at any time without a problem,'' said Abdul Razaq, who was carrying 10,000 gallons of gasoline. The reconstruction of Afghanistan needs to show some intrepid reconstructing -- and fast. Ashraf Ghani speaks of the ''moral authority'' of the government as ''leverage'' over the warlords. After all, he says, the loya jirga chose only one leader, the president. But Ghani also understands the leverage he would have if he could deliver the goods. ''No one will want to be seen standing in the way of $100 million in development projects,'' he said. The government can win over the people by proving it exists in more than a name. On March 17, President Bush gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours either to head into exile or to face doom, thereby committing America to another war and another reconstruction. That same day, Ghani spoke at an annual conference of Afghanistan's donor nations in Brussels. He laid out three possible outcomes for five years down the road. The first possibility was a Western-friendly democracy with a strong central government and enough new infrastructure to establish a thriving private sector. The second was yet another floundering third-world country that borrows money it cannot repay and lifts virtually no one out of poverty. The third was a narco-mafia state where opium producers and warlords create enough mayhem to thrust the nation into the whirlwind of anarchy. Ghani said that each possibility carried both direct and indirect costs. The direct money was a predictable sum paid upfront. In the case of Possibility 1, Ghani said, the price tag would be $15 billion to $20 billion over five years. Indirect costs were more difficult to calculate, he said, though recent history provided guidance. After the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, the West also walked away, turning its back on its former allies and leaving them with a catastrophe of a country. Possibility 3 then rapidly evolved. And from the turmoil arose the Taliban. They restored order with religious oppression and allowed their nation to become a hostel for anti-American Islamic terrorists. A year ago, it would have been hard to predict that Afghanistan would be playing postwar second fiddle to Iraq. What happens if the second chair becomes third or fourth? ''They gave me a window frame, but I never got the door they promised,'' an old man named Masjedi told me. He had a long, angular face with deep furrows in his forehead and a long white underhang of beard. We were standing in the village of Deh-i-Naw in the Shamali Plain, just north of Kabul. Built on a hilltop, the hamlet offers a beautiful view of the churning Guldara River, which cuts through the valley. But up close, Deh-i-Naw is largely a ruin, just like most of the Shamali. The Taliban rampaged through the area in the summer of 1999, emptying towns, executing young men, carrying off women, burning houses, machine-gunning livestock, sawing down fruit trees. They meant to scorch the earth, leaving no imaginable reason to return. Masjedi had safely escaped. One of his sons lost a leg to a land mine, but otherwise the family survived better than most. ''That's my house over there,'' he said, facing the mud-brick hovel he had rebuilt. ''I came back but not most of the others. There isn't much to come back to.'' He looked at his new window frame and tried to recall which NGO gave it to him. He was grateful for the wood, though sorry the aid workers hadn't returned. ''What was the name of that group?'' he asked himself to no avail. A few miles away, a dozen NGO's had placed their signs near the road, but the words were in English, and he could not read them. To change the subject, he pointed to the river and told a story of how its medicinal waters had once saved a sick man from a sure death. He lived in a lovely spot, he said. ''But we need a door.'' Barry Bearak is a staff writer for the magazine. -- From aiindex at mnet.fr Sat May 31 04:41:39 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 00:11:39 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Fascist future of the past Message-ID: Frontline Volume 20, Issue 11, May 24 - June 06, 2003 http://www.flonnet.com/fl2011/stories/20030606001508100.htm EDUCATION HISTORY RETOLD K.N. PANIKKAR Fascist future of the past. THE history of India is being retold. And with the support of the government. There is nothing extraordinary in either of them. For history, like any other discipline, undergoes continuous revision. That is when historians gain access to hitherto unused sources or employ new analytical tools. The historian's work is also contingent upon the infrastructure generated and controlled by the government, particularly the archival and the archaeological. On many occasions, research projects are undertaken with the financial support proffered by the agencies of the government. Yet, the historian in independent India has enjoyed enough intellectual freedom to pursue his work without external interference. It is arguable that the advances made by Indian historiography during the post-Independence period would not have been possible without this independence. The situation has rapidly changed during the last few years. The government is now a key player in the writing of history, deciding and dictating what constitutes authentic history and disseminating it through its agencies such as the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). The past is a matter of interest to all governments as it often serves as a source of legitimacy for their politics and as a justification for the society and polity they seek to construct. The involvement of succeeding governments in India in matters historical can be traced to these reasons. Both Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi had taken keen interest in the writing of history; the latter even embedded at the Red Fort in Delhi an official version of history in a time capsule. Their engagement was integral to the nature of their politics: the creation of a secular nation out of the diverse religious communities into which the people were organisationally, ideologically and emotionally divided. The attempt, therefore, was to retrieve the past from the colonial distortions and thus construct a nationalist history, which would reinforce the sense of commonness that the anti-colonial struggle had proffered. More important, to call attention to the fact that the secular character of the nation is not a contemporary construction but a part and continuation of its historical experience. Nehru had already laid the foundation for such a view in The Discovery of India , which was subsequently elaborated by many. The government of independent India had initiated several projects, primarily to underline the historical processes that contributed to the making of the nation. One of the earliest efforts was to commission a history of the Revolt of 1857, which was initially entrusted to R.C. Majumdar who, however, withdrew owing to some differences of opinion. It was subsequently undertaken by Tarachand, Majumdar publishing his version independent of the government. Tarachand also wrote a multi-volume history of the freedom movement, which was sponsored by the government. Majumdar's withdrawal underlined the tension inherent in government sponsorship, which was sought to be overcome by setting up independent and autonomous institutions. It was in this context that the NCERT and the ICHR came into being. These institutions, like other such bodies as the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR), were envisaged as autonomous organisations with full control over their academic activities without any interference from the government. The question of autonomy was seriously debated in the ICSSR during the chairmanship of Sukhamoy Chakravarty when the government tried to control its activities. Although financial dependence and academic autonomy are difficult to reconcile, eventually the government recognised the significance of such organisations functioning within an autonomous sphere. Unfortunately, such ideas have no sanctity in the new dispensation and these institutions have been relegated to the position of loyal appendages of the government. Yet, it is necessary to recall that both the NCERT and the ICHR, by their constitution, are independent and autonomous organisations. THE NCERT's main brief was to prepare standard textbooks for use in schools all over India. In the field of history, the NCERT had managed to persuade some of the outstanding historians of India - most of whom are in the list of `eminent historians' derisively described so by Arun Shourie, now Disinvestment Minister - to write books for school children from Class VI onwards. Although these textbooks had several limitations in both content and pedagogy as recently pointed out by Krishna Kumar about the modern history textbook, they marked a healthy departure from the books then in use in schools. In a country where scholars hardly wrote textbooks the participation of some of the well-recognised names in the project was itself an achievement. It was clear that their involvement was part of an effort to bring about a paradigm shift in the teaching of history. Understandably, these textbooks earned near-universal acclaim at that time. Apart from the professional competence, they helped students envision the nation as a secular entity. These textbooks came under adverse comments during the Janata regime after the Emergency. Reportedly at the instance of some leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the government contemplated the withdrawal of these books on the plea that they injured the religious sentiments of Hindus. In the face of nation-wide protests, the government decided to refer them to some historians, an overwhelming majority of who found nothing wrong with these books. The government, therefore, dropped the idea of withdrawing them. These are the same books that have recently attracted the ire of the Sangh Parivar on the same grounds - that they either injure the religious feelings of the people or insult the historical memory of certain communities. Initially, the government decided to expunge all such facts from the text and later decided to suppress them altogether and replace them with new books. Unlike in 1977, there was no consultation with historians, at least not known to the public, and the decision was reportedly taken by the Human Resource Development Minister who, if his public pronouncements are to be believed, has emerged as an `acknowledged' authority on history! He has, however, announced that in future all textbooks would be vetted by religious leaders to ensure that they are properly sanitised of all objectionable material. This change of procedure is perhaps a reflection of the erosion of the commitment of the government to democratic values. About the practice of history, however, the government censure raises an important question. What part of history should the people know? It needs no reiteration that all facts of history can never be incorporated in any work, let alone in a textbook. But can deletions be made on the ground that they are likely to be uncomfortable to some? For instance, should the textbooks contain the changing food habits of the people, influenced as they were by the nature of social organisation and the system of economic production? That the consumption of beef was not a taboo during the Vedic period is a significant marker of the social organisation at that time. So was its prohibition at a later time. Both help explain the patterns of social change. Similarly should the iniquities of the caste system, practised even today, be kept under wraps? Should we shroud the fact that Gandhiji was killed by a Hindu fanatic? If we accept the principle of selective presentation based on political convenience, quite a bit of our known history would be lost to the coming generations. The NCERT has published four textbooks to replace the old ones: India and the World for Class VI, Contemporary India for Class IX, Medieval India and Ancient India for Class XI. In the foreword to these books, NCERT Director states: "The new techniques and technologies, new excavations and explorations have resulted in fresh interpretations of several situations in history... . The new NCERT textbooks in history have been prepared adhering strictly to the principle of giving an objective account of historical events. The latest researches and interpretations in the field have been incorporated." This indeed is a laudable sentiment, as the fruits of recent research should necessarily find a place in the textbooks. The earlier textbooks were written about 30 years ago, and much has happened since in Indian historiography by way of empirical advance and conceptual innovation. Unfortunately, the new textbooks, despite the Director's claim, hardly contain anything new, either empirically or analytically, except assertions of certain unsubstantiated claims about the antiquity of Indian civilisation and its achievements and the indigenous origins of the Aryans. In fact, these textbooks, replete with factual errors and unacknowledged reproductions from the works of other scholars, are much poorer in knowledge and unprofessional in pedagogic methods. They have depended more on imagination than on historian's craft. THE objection to these books, however much the critics have harped on factual errors and anachronisms, is much more fundamental. The errors, as NCERT Director has repeatedly stated, can be corrected, even if they are a poor commentary on the knowledge of the `specialists' who have authored these books. But then several of them are not simple errors unwittingly committed; there appears to be some method in the madness. For, some facts are deliberately suppressed, others are underplayed and some others are blown out of proportion. They seek to establish the unmatched antiquity of Indian civilisation and its unparalleled achievements. For instance, Indian civilisation is credited with an "unbroken history of 8,000 years i.e. from Neolithic times" and the Upanishads are described as the "greatest work on philosophy in the history of humankind". Hinduism, "the eternal spiritual tradition of India," is traced to the Harappan civilisation, which coincides with the Vedic. The religious and political practices of the ancient civilisation are still in vogue, which suggests continuity from the ancient past. The pipal tree, the linga, fire, sun, wind and sky, which were the objects of worship during the `Harappan-Vedic' civilisation continue to be so even today. Similarity also exists in political practices and institutions. The rules which "governed the debate and behaviour of the members in Sabha and Samiti were like in our Parliament". The king was assisted by a council of ministers, which was "called mantriparshad as today". The rulers were "chosen by the people of the kingdom like we choose our government today". The achievements of Indian civilisation in science and technology receive particular attention. India is projected as the original home of knowledge in many a field. The Class XI textbook states: "In the field of mathematics, astronomy and medicine India had much advanced knowledge during this period in comparison to any other country in the world. These developments in science and technology in India were first borrowed by Arabs and then by the Western world." The narrative that follows does not say how the Indian knowledge in these fields was advanced than others or how the Arabs and the West incorporated it. Surprisingly, what is said about Vedic science is exactly the same in both Class VI and Class XI books! Surely, Class XI students should know more about the scientific achievements of the Vedic Aryans. In contrast to the repeated references to science and technology in ancient India, the textbook on medieval India is remarkably silent about them. It gives the impression that there were no scientific pursuits or technological innovations worth mentioning in this period. The chapters on culture focus mainly on architecture, painting and religious movements. But in all of them the syncretic tendencies that emerged as a result of the coming together of two different streams, which produced a new cultural ambience, are scrupulously overlooked. The changes in the architectural style as a result of the mutual influence of the Islamic and the Hindu traditions do not find a mention, even if some of the finest structures of medieval India were the result of this interaction. At the same time architecture is used to underline religious division. Shajahan, it is stated, forbade the construction of Hindu temples and destroyed others. The number of mosques repaired or constructed and temples destroyed by Aurangazeb form the only content of the section on the decline of Mughal architecture! The plural religious context and influence as a factor in the emergence of medieval religious movements such as the Bhakti and the Sufi movements and in their philosophical outlook have been unambiguously rejected. The Bakhti movement, it is asserted, was "not a Hindu response to the egalitarian message of Islam and its spread among the lower classes," but only the continuation of the tradition from the times of the Upanishads and the Bhagvat Gita. Similarly, Sufism is described as "a movement that arose independently within the Muslim world and not as a consequence of its interface with Hinduism". Apart from a passing reference to Dadu, none of the Nirguna Bhaktas like Kabir, and Raidas find a place in the text. The caste system and religious practices such as idolatry, which the Nirguna Bhaktas criticised and rejected have been completely overlooked. The attitude of the Sufi saints towards Hinduism and their attempts to promote cultural synthesis do not figure at all in the discussion. Such silence is perhaps not accidental, but part of a design to foreground religious exclusion and difference as the characteristic of Indian society. The suppression, distortion and invention of historical facts, which are aplenty, have undermined the quality of these new textbooks and have made them unworthy of use in the schools. More importantly, the sense of history that it seeks to convey tends to weaken the unity of the nation and endanger social harmony. For almost everything that happened in history an undercurrent of religious identity is either directly or indirectly suggested and the cultural and philosophical dynamism that the presence of different religious streams had entailed, has been scrupulously avoided. Added to that is a pro-Hindu slant; the defence of Hindu social institutions running through the entire narrative. For instance, the section on conversions does not give any information about the causes and the process of conversion. It only tries to prove that the "so-called tyranny of the caste system" has nothing to do with conversions and that the social condition of the converts did not improve thereafter. A close reading of all the four textbooks leaves the impression that the history of India is being projected in religious terms, privileging the Hindu as the embodiment of the nation. This is a departure from the secular-scientific outlook of the earlier textbooks. This change is symptomatic of the political project of the present government, namely to redefine the Indian nation as Hindu, euphemistically claimed as the realisation of cultural nationalism. What the NCERT has done is to reshape the Indian past in order to provide historical justification for this political project and to mould communally the historical consciousness of the coming generations. In the process, it has neither respected the norms of historical discipline nor followed its generally accepted methods. The imprecise and unsubstantiated statements and totally unconnected digressions, which are far too many to recount, make these books professionally unacceptable. The present revision of history, academically bizarre but politically well-crafted, becomes intelligible only in the context of the communalisation of the public discourse during the last few years. The communal view of history presented by the textbooks used in the schools run by the Sangh-controlled Vidya Bharati, has considerably contributed to this process. So has the Hinduised notion of the past popularised by the Itihas Sankalan Samiti, entrusted with the task of rewriting history. So far, this interpretation had no credibility or acceptance in academia. By providing the stamp of its governmental authority, the NCERT has brought it to the mainstream. The `new' history that it propounds, reminiscent of what the fascist regimes did, is likely to contribute to the creation of a sense of popular ultra nationalism. For, it seeks to inculcate a false sense of pride in a community with a dismal present by associating it with a past where it had unparalleled achievements to its credit. Such a view can serve the `nation' well, by providing an ideology for organising the politics of identity, exclusion and hatred. The example of fascism in Europe has demonstrated the lure of aggression for the defeated and the sense of hatred that it could generate. The NCERT textbooks invoke the past to create a similar psychology of pride and aggression. Hindu communalism has thus made yet another advance in moulding the future generations in a communal way. K.N. Panikkar is Vice-Chancellor of the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, Kerala. From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Sat May 31 10:12:08 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 05:42:08 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] copyrighting yoga? Message-ID: <20030531044208.236.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> yoga in/as public domain? _________________________ Newsday May 25, 2003 http://www.newsday.com/business/local/newyork/ny- yoga3299012may25.story Litigious Celeb Guru Sues to Keep Yoga 'Hot' Small yoga studio owners wary of Bikram's threats By Carrie Levine Hot yoga is becoming too hot to handle. People take classes to relax, but offering it has become more stressful for small yoga studios. Celebrity yoga guru Bikram Choudhury has copyrighted the 26 poses taught in his studios and has filed a lawsuit against one California yoga studio he claims is infringing on his copyright. Choudhury, a native of India, has built his hot yoga class, taught at temperatures above 100 degrees, into a multimillion-dollar American brand. He said that the lawsuit, which seeks monetary damages of $150,000 per occurrence - as well as the cease-and-desist letters sent to other studios - seeks to protect the quality of classes offered using his name, which for many has become synonymous with hot yoga. He also points out that he has made no effort to copyright individual poses, only the sequence he designed. "I'm not very happy that I have to do this kind of thing, like charging money to teach yoga," he said. "I'm not very happy that I am doing franchising, because yoga is not Big Mac." Donna Rubin, co-owner of four Manhattan Bikram studios and one in Bridgehampton, said many area hot yoga classes are taught by Bikram's teacher-training graduates, who must agree to teach only at Bikram studios. "The bottom line is, it's really nothing to do with financial reasons so much as some kind of quality control." Others say Choudhury is using the threat of litigation - and a possible verdict - to cow competitors from teaching yoga poses that have been in the public domain for thousands of years. The threat of lawsuits has owners of small studios wary to offer Bikram-style yoga. Jonathan Fields, a former lawyer who now owns Manhattan's Sonic Yoga, said that most small yoga studios couldn't afford to fight these lawsuits. "The concern for me is on the potential stifling impact. It's kind of a First Amendment thing." Traditional yogis are objecting to Choudhury's approach as loudly as his competitors. Sal Familia is the director of the Yoga Anand Ashram in Amityville and goes by the name of Satyam, which means truthfulness in Sanskrit. The center teaches what he calls classical yoga. Choudhury's copyright violates the principle of yoga known in English as nonpossessiveness, Satyam said. "Anyone who could do something like that should be ashamed of himself.... To turn it into a commodity and a thing is to deny the very foundation of what yoga is about." The Yoga Research and Education Center in Santa Rosa, Calif., offers no breakdowns on how many Americans do hot yoga, but it's on the schedule everywhere from yoga studios to gym chains. During 90-minute classes, sweat pours off students as they perform poses, or asanas, on mats. The heat is supposed to eliminate toxins. Hot yoga addicts swear the heat also increases flexibility. The financial stakes are high. The copyright puts the flamboyant Choudhury, whom Yoga Journal once described as "the bad boy of yoga," in a position to consolidate his hold on the hot yoga market, a growing share of the $27 billion a year Americans spend on yoga. Choudhury would not give the worth of his privately held company - Bikram's Yoga College of India, headquartered in Los Angeles - but a spokesman confirmed that a $7-million estimate is accurate. Bikram affiliates soon will have to convert to official franchises and pay a fee that may range from $5,000 to $10,000 annually. Owners must agree to teach only Bikram yoga and to submit their studio designs to Bikram for approval. Teachers also must follow a script while teaching the class. The guru describes his 26-pose sequence, taught with two breathing exercises, as "like a melody, like a tune. It works from bone to the skin, from hair to the toes. Each cell, every molecule, you work out 100 percent. That was my invention. I am the first man in the world to be teaching yoga like a drill." Bikram's rules standardize the yoga class so that a customer can drop in at any Bikram affiliate and find the same product - in effect, the first national yoga chain. More than 700 Bikram-affiliated studios operate around the country - including in Dix Hills, Bridgehampton and Locust Valley, along with two in Brooklyn and seven in Manhattan. Since yoga is becoming more popular, some yoga studio owners are expanding without Bikram's blessing. Tom Salshutz, one of the owners of New York Yoga on the Upper East Side, said he and his partner are opening a new studio on Lexington Avenue called New York Yoga Hot next month. The studio will offer "Bikram-style" hot yoga and othermethods - despite a buzz about possible lawsuits. "We have not researched this, and we don't know what the legality is," he said. "But it's a shame that this guy doesn't want to allow the benefits of his practice to be offered to as many people as possible, because that is the essence of yoga." So far, Bikram has sued only one studio, Yoga Studio in Costa Mesa, Calif. It is run by Kim Morrison, who took Choudhury's teacher- certification classes, and her husband, Mark. The couple is fighting the suit. Bikram said he hopes the suit will deter other studios from teaching his sequence so he doesn't have to file another. If he has his way, yogis like Stephanie Cohen of Manhattan will have to take their Bikram classes at Bikram studios. Cohen, 35, teaches yoga, although not Bikram, and takes daily classes all over the city. Bikram's strict rules may turn off his client base, she predicted. "New Yorkers want ashtanga [a different yoga style] one day and, next week, they want power, and then they want slow-flow classes," she said. "I don't think they're ready to be so committed." _________________________________________________________________ "In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates." - Foucault 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/20030531/ebbe2e00/attachment.html From info at geneva03.org Sat May 31 21:42:38 2003 From: info at geneva03.org (info at geneva03.org) Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 18:12:38 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] live talk show: beyond g8 - a new commons? Message-ID: live stream from geneva: NOW PLAYING http://www.geneva03.org/static/live.ram irc://irc.indymedia.org/live BEYOND G-8 -- A new commons? The front page of the London Independent states that 291 million people in Africa live on less than one dollar a day, but in the G8 countries no-one is forced to survive on such a sum. This figure hides the fact that communities outside of the post-inhdustrial west continue to have access to community resources, shared commons, that provide a means to survive, a shared wealth which we in the west are denied, whilst at the same time the robbery and privatization of the world´s resources by those board rooms and their allies in government is enacted. On the eve of the G8 summit with its focus on the market as a means of satifying people´s needs, activists from Midnight Notes, the Commoner and Canadian Postal Workers Union will talk about a future based on different values, which prioritise human life over profit: the Commons. live talkshow from the geneva03 video studio featuring: George Caffentzis (Midnight notes) Massimo de Angelis (The Commoner) Dave Bleakney (Canadian Postal workers) Les Levidow (Campaign against criminalizing communities) NOW PLAYING http://www.geneva03.org/static/live.ram irc://irc.indymedia.org/live