From definetime at rediffmail.com Wed Sep 1 07:07:52 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (Sanjay Ghosh) Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2004 01:37:52 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] BBC E-mail: Israel's court defeats film ban Message-ID: <20040901_013836_050025.definetime@rediffmail.com> Sanjay Ghosh saw this story on BBC News Online and thought you should see it. ** Israel's court defeats film ban ** Israel's High Court defeats a second bid to ban a film about Israel's invasion of Jenin refugee camp. < http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/low/entertainment/3613658.stm > ** BBC Daily E-mail ** Choose the news and sport headlines you want - when you want them, all in one daily e-mail < http://www.bbc.co.uk/dailyemail/ > ** Disclaimer ** The BBC is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything said in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC's views. If you don't wish to receive such mails in the future, please e-mail webmasters at bbc.co.uk making sure you include the following text: I do not want to receive "E-mail a friend" mailings. From ritika at sarai.net Wed Sep 1 12:01:35 2004 From: ritika at sarai.net (Ritika) Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2004 12:01:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] slaughterhouse research status Message-ID: <41356CC7.4050404@sarai.net> hey everybody, First: I have uploaded lots of images on my blog. SO those of you who want to just see and not read: please visit my blog: http://blog.sarai.net/users/ritika (u might just have to cut and paste the link in a browser) Work on the front of the slaughterhouse research is going on. Though i am on this stage where i am going back to the meaterial that i have generated so far - and wondering if i can ask some interesting questions out it. I have few lines of enquiry which i can follow but wondering how fruitful they'd be. So what do i want to write about a space which is source to many industries - big and small, for instance, food processing industry, meat industry, leather industry, pharmaceutical, Cosmetics etc. However, as a space which performs certain specific activity, it creates nuisance and causes concern for some. A peek into the history of the existing slaughterhouse reveals a tendency of location of nuisance in the city. Dirt/ nuisance/ waste is always pushed 'out of core' to its periphery.but then how does one question it? There is a rhetoric of hygeine? but how do i question it? Q1) so then perhaps it'll be interesting to see what has been the history of the idgah slaughterhouse in terms of its location. Q2) I was wondering whether it'll be a worthwhile effort to locate the context in which the word nuisance appears in the vocabularly of the city. (through state archives).I think it can be like a detective story but wonder what'll come out of it. Q) what happens to the waste that is generated? - In a way - whatever 'waste' that is generated is actually not waste -pancreas, endocrine glands, liver, intestines, bile secretions, lungs,testes, trimmings and stomach, brain and spinal cord, hides and skins,tail hair, bristles and body hair, bones, hooves and horns etc., all can be and some of them are being used further from the delhi slaughterhouse. The stuff which is then not used is thrown on municipal landfill sites. On an average 500 - 600 Tonnes of waste is produced by slaughterhouse itself. Q) How does the slaughterhouse trade operate: It works at 2 basic levels 1) how to buy/ sell animals etc (which is what i have been doing so far) 2) allied trade industry: I can get in touch with the people who buy this material (mentioned in 1st question - pancreas, glands etc) and sell it to bigger companies. how do they operate, middlemen involved, eg. allied trades. pharmaceuticals, leather. Or perhaps: processed food industries etc. Sugegstions anyone? cheers ritika -- Ritika Shrimali The Sarai Programme http://blog.sarai.net/users/ritika From definetime at rediffmail.com Wed Sep 1 12:31:32 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (definetime at rediffmail.com) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 07:01:32 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Reader-list] Guardian Unlimited: Daring to dream Message-ID: <20040901070132.D948E1E71@mussel.gul3.gnl> Sanjay Ghosh spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Daring to dream Europe is no utopia but, using Britain as a bridge, it can share its global vision with the US Jeremy Rifkin Wednesday September 01 2004 The Guardian In a deeply polarised America, where virtually every value has become fair game for criticism, there is one that remains sacrosanct: the American dream - the idea that anyone, regardless of the circumstances to which they're born, can make of their lives as they choose, by dint of diligence, determination, and hard work. The problem is that one-third of all Americans, according to a recent national survey, no longer even believe in it. Some have lost faith because they worked hard all their lives only to find hardship and despair. Others question the very dream itself, arguing that its underlying tenets have become less relevant in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world. For the first time, the American dream no longer serves as the rallying point for everyone in America. Meanwhile, a new European dream is beginning to capture the world's imagination. That dream has now been codified in the form of a draft constitution and Europeans are currently debating whether or not to ratify its contents and accept its underlying values as the core of a new Europe. Twenty-five nations, representing 455 million people, have joined together to create a "United States" of Europe. Like the United States of America, this vast political entity has its own empowering myth. Although still in its adolescence, the European dream is the first transnational vision, one far better suited to the next stage in the human journey. Europeans are beginning to adopt a new global consciousness that extends beyond, and below, the borders of their nation-states, deeply embedding them in an increasingly interconnected world. Americans are used to thinking of their country as the most successful on earth. That's no longer the case: the EU has grown to become the third largest governing institution in the world. Though its land mass is half the size of the continental US, its $10.5 trillion GDP now eclipses the US GDP, making it the world's largest economy. The EU is already the world's leading exporter and largest internal trading market. The comparisons are even more revealing when it comes to the quality of life. For example, in the EU, there are approximately 322 physicians per 100,000 people; in the US there are only 279 physicians per 100,000 people. The US ranks 26th among the industrial nations in infant mortality, well below the EU average. The average life-span in the 15 most developed EU countries is now 78.2 years compared to 76.9 years in the US. When it comes to wealth distribution - a crucial measure of a country's ability to deliver on the promise of prosperity - the US ranks 24th among the industrial nations. All 18 of the most developed European countries have less income inequality between rich and poor. Europeans often remark that Americans "live to work", while they "work to live". The average paid vacation time in Europe is now six weeks a year. By contrast, Americans, on average, receive only two weeks. When one considers what makes a people great and what constitutes a better way of life, Europe is beginning to surpass America. Nowhere is the contrast between the European dream and the American dream sharper than when it comes to the definition of personal freedom. For Americans, freedom has long been associated with autonomy; the more wealth one amasses, the more independent one is in the world. One is free by becoming self-reliant and an island unto oneself. With wealth comes exclusivity and with exclusivity comes security. For Europeans, freedom is not found in autonomy but in community. It's about belonging, not belongings. Americans are more willing to employ military force to protect perceived vital self-interests. Europeans favour diplomacy, economic aid and peacekeeping operations to maintain order. The American dream is deeply personal and little concerned with the rest of humanity. The European dream is more systemic, bound to the welfare of the planet. That isn't to say that Europe is a utopia. Europeans have become increasingly hostile towards asylum seekers. Anti-semitism is on the rise, as is discrimination against Muslims and other religious minorities. While Europeans berate America for having a trigger-happy foreign policy, they are willing, on occasion, to let the US armed forces safeguard European security interests. And even its supporters say that the EU's governing machinery, based in Brussels, is aloof from the citizens it supposedly serves. The point, however, is not whether the Europeans are living up to their dream. We Americans have never fully lived up to our own dream. What's important is that a new generation of Europeans is creating a radical new vision for the future. The UK is uniquely positioned to play a bridge role between the older American dream and the newly emerging European dream. Were it to cast its fate with the EU, while maintaining its special relationship with America, the UK could help create an ideological synergy between the two great superpowers of the 21st century. The UK could champion the entrepreneurial sensibilities and sense of individualism that is so characteristic of the US way of life, within the corridors of Europe. At the same time, the UK could help Americans better understand the need to expand their dream beyond individual self-interests to include the general welfare of the larger community and a global consciousness more befitting a globalising world. But the UK will never fully enjoy the advantages that come with being part of a shared political space if it continues to straddle the fence. The US and the EU are going to increasingly realise that their own prosperity and security depends on their cooperation, if for no other reason than the fact that they each represent the two largest markets in the world. What can the UK offer either of these megapowers that they can't better secure by dealing directly with each other? Instead of seeing full membership in the European Union in purely negative terms, as something being forced on them by the flow of global events, the UK ought to consider Europeanisation as a historic opportunity, with vast potential benefits for the British people. By being a critical part of a larger European agenda, the UK can play a leadership role in helping shape the European dream and laying the groundwork for a truly global consciousness in the coming century. Equally importantly, the UK's ability to draw America and Europe closer together depends on it being squarely in the EU fold. The human race is becoming connected. Nation-state boundaries, once a source of security in an unpredictable world, are increasingly seen as too restrictive to accommodate the many new identities, affiliations and loyalties that make up a network way of life. The question for the British people, and peoples everywhere, is whether to be constrained inside old political containers, or to reach out and establish new political arrangements more suitable to an era of ever greater interdependence. The real lesson in a globally connected world is that no people can any longer exist as an island unto themselves. The UK, too, will have to choose to be part of a larger political affiliation. The only question is whether it will make its home with America or Europe. ·This is an edited extract from Jeremy Rifkin's new book, The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, published by Polity Press. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited From christina112 at earthlink.net Wed Sep 1 13:32:23 2004 From: christina112 at earthlink.net (Christina McPhee) Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2004 01:02:23 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [-empyre-] Introducing Jeff, Naomi and Jeremy on "Locative City" Message-ID: Prelude September: " When experiencing narrative elements onsite, the site itself provides a framework, with the senses providing active as well as subconscious associations. The mind can then incorporate these cues in formulating a rich, complex, and meaningful experience. Do we still need myths today, when we are no longer baffled by the physical phenomena that surround us? It is important to remember that besides its connective and educational function, myth ­ and narrative ­ provide an emotional connection to our environment. Fear, bewilderment, alienation and curiosity were driving impulses behind the creation of myths as much as was the need to interpret and share experience. Our global climate today ­ political, economic, environmental, and social ­ continue to elicit fear, bewilderment, and uncertainty. Mythology for us today functions primarily as metaphor. We no longer believe in the stories ascribed to physical phenomena. In part what we are attempting to do is reintroduce the literal aspect ­ the very real sources of human experience ­ back into myth and narrative." --Naomi Spellman, writing from Huddersfield (8.11.04) on http://project_diary.blogspot.com/ More about the artist guests this month on -empyre- --naomi spellman Naomi Spellman is a transmedia artist and educator. Exhibited work includes locative media, networked narrative, video, interactive computer-based works, photography, and graphic prints. Her work has been exhibited nationally and abroad. Venues have included Futuresonic <4>, the LA Freewaves Festival, the Art in Motion Festival, ASCII Digital 2000, The Harvard Map Collection, and the DART IV symposium on digital arts and culture. She teaches computing arts in the Interdisciplinary Computing Arts Program at the University of California, San Diego. Previously she has taught at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington; the University of California, Los Angeles; and Parsons School of Design in New York. Naomi is currently Artist in Residence at the Media Center in Huddersfield, U.K. Together with artistic collaborator Jeff Knowlton she is developing an interpretive engine, which uses wireless internet access to generate a mythologic tale based on the place where it is experienced. Immediate factors such as user profile, stock market info, seismic data, weather conditions, live news feed, and local historic information help shape this narrative of place and time. The interest lies in the emotional connections between data, place, and time. The work will debut this fall at Spectropolis: Mobile Media, Art and the City, a three-day event (OCT 1-3, 2004) in Lower Manhattan. http://www.spectropolis.info/ --jeff knowlton Jeff Knowlton is a transmedia artist based in Los Angeles. His work with information in virtual space began with “a text for the navigational age”, shown at VRML Art 2000 and Siggraph2000. More recently his collaborative work with Jeremy Hight and Naomi Spellman, locating information in the physical world, has been seen at Futuresonic 4, La Freewaves and Art in Motion. “34 North 118 West”, a location based narrative, received the grand prize at Art in Motion. Currently Mr. Knowlton is a resident artist at the Digital Research Unit in Huddersfield UK. He is collaborating with Naomi Spellman developing “an interpretive engine for various places on the earth”, that will will be shown in Manhattan at Spectropolis in October 2004. In 1990, he was the recipient of a New Forms Initiative Grant funded by the NEA and the Rockefeller Foundation. Jeff Knowlton graduated from CalArts with a BFA in Fine Art (95) and an MFA in both Critical Studies and Fine Art (99). Mr Knowlton teaches at UC San Diego and has competed projects for clients such as Mattel and The Centre for Global Dialogue in Reuschlikon Switzerland. --jeremy hight Jeremy Hight is a new media artist/writer/theorist. Jeremy Hight graduated from Cal Arts with an MFA in critical studies (98).He teaches Visual Communication and Multimedia at Los Angeles Mission College. He recently presented at the Trace Symposium on Experimental Writing and the Internet at Nottingham Trent University. His presentation "Narrative Archaeology and the new Narrativology discussed how locative media can allow artists access to the resonance of the unseen layers of information within city spaces, to be able to "read" a space with gps or wireless triggering history, archaeology, architecture, ethnography, metaphor, time and narratives of moments and place. The paper was also recently presented at the University of Iowa conference sponsored by the Department of English et al, Craft/Critique/Culture. His work has been in the Futuresonic Festival, La Freewaves, Art in Motion, Timeforms and Mediatopia. His collaboration with Jeff Knowlton and Naomi Spellman entitled "34 north 118 west"( gps data and interactive map utilized in a physical place triggers layered data as one moves) won the grand jury prize at the art in motion festival in 2003. He collaborated on the experimental animation "Hike Hike Hike" which has shown been shown in many festivals including Sundance and won "best independant animation" at the New England film festival. _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre -- -cm From keith at thememorybank.co.uk Wed Sep 1 15:59:39 2004 From: keith at thememorybank.co.uk (Keith Hart) Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2004 12:29:39 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Guardian Unlimited: Daring to dream In-Reply-To: <20040901070132.D948E1E71@mussel.gul3.gnl> References: <20040901070132.D948E1E71@mussel.gul3.gnl> Message-ID: <4135A493.3070306@thememorybank.co.uk> >Sanjay Ghosh spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. > >To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk > >Daring to dream >Europe is no utopia but, using Britain as a bridge, it can share its global vision with the US >Jeremy Rifkin >Wednesday September 01 2004 >The Guardian > > I am mystified why an article like this should be posted to the list without comment and apparently without expectation of discussion. More to the point, I haven't a clue how readers might be expected to respond to it. Let me briefly summarise what Rifkin has to say in this puff his new book. There is a European dream to match the American dream, but it is about transnational community rather than personal enrichment and is "bound to the welfare of the planet". The EU economy is now bigger than that of the US and in many indicators betters it. Europeans work to live and Americans live to work. Britain (wait for this) can be a bridge allowing the "two great superpowers of the 21st century" to synthesise their differences for the benefit of the world as a whole. But the British will have to decide where they think they belong. I can understand this being peddled in the Guardian to nourish the faltering egos of its British readers. But what is it doing on reader-list? Would most Indian readers easily see this for the moonshine it is or are they expected to adjust their sights to this eternal western hegemony? Dream on. What Rifkin's ecstatic list of economic indicators fails to point out is that, thanks to the neo-liberal world economy they have jointly sponsored in the last quarter-century, America and Europe have stolen vast sums from the rest of the planet through rigged money markets, debt interest, rents from 'intellectual property' in drugs, food, culture and much else. They have erected a property regime that rewards big money to the cost of everyone else. They police the inequality they have generated with instruments of legal and military coercion. But this attempt to establish a global command economy is doomed because it depends on unleashing technological and social forces (of which the internet is the most obvious manifestation) that are inherently progressive and revolutionary. The result is the West is becoming more rigid and dependent on high-cost infrastructure while production is moving inexorably elsewhere. Manufactures have already been relocated to Asia, especially China, and anglophone information services are finding their way to India. It is inconceivable to me that the billions of cheap, hardworking Asians will not put this self-appointed global aristocracy out of business -- and long before the 21st century is out. American and Europe economic power is already collapsing under the weight of their attempt to con and bully the rest of humanity into supporting them at a living standard they can't afford. This shift is at one level between generations, since the rich old West can no longer reproduce itself. But it will take some intellectual and political leadership to give shape to this materialist logic. As a counter-weight to Rifkin's self-serving twaddle, I would strongly recommend a recent posting on the nettime list: THREE PROPOSALS FOR A REAL DEMOCRACY Information-Sharing to a Different Tune by Brian Holmes This can be found at: http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0408/msg00095.html But here we begin to tread on the turf of the commons-law list. And as for a dithering Britain, whose creeping constitutional crisis is the subject of an article I published in the Times Higher this week, I will abstain from more comment until I can post a URL. Keith Hart Somehow I have to capture in this pamphlet the absurdity of allowing these American and European banks, drugs companies etc to absorb the wealth produced by the rest of the world including their own citizens. Apart from turning the world's money markets into an unearned bonanza for the US economy via Wall Street and the Fed's management of the dollar, the rents extracted from commodities like drugs are amazing -- the top ten drugs companies in the Fortune 500 made more profit last year than the other 490 together. In the meantime US health costs tripled in a decade and the job market is collapsing under the strain, as it has in France. My friend Don Billingsley is touting Pat Buchanan's latest, Where the right went wrong, for the clarity of its critique, if not for the constructive policies. I have ordered it. The problem is that the reputation of America and Europe in th erest of the world, like Gilligan's Island post-fiat currency, is much higher than is warranted by current economic realities. And, if Rifkin is anything to go by, they will be able to sit on top of an unending stream of loot indefinitely without even acknowledging where it came from. The Hollywood film industry is a good example of the tendency, since the Brits, having watched their own movie business being killed off by American skulduggery in the 20th century, now insist on sheltering behind this benign special relationship. i wonder what readers of the Sarai list make of postings like that. From karunakar at freedomink.org Wed Sep 1 18:23:59 2004 From: karunakar at freedomink.org (Guntupalli Karunakar) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 18:23:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Localization Newsletter Issue 6, Vol 1 ( 1st September 2004) Message-ID: <20040901182359.1db4a21f.karunakar@freedomink.org> Hi, Localization Newsletter Issue 6, Vol 1 ( 1st September 2004) is out , available at http://www.indlinux.org/nl/issue6.html Highlights include * KDE Hindi translation review workshop at Sarai * New Pango releases * Mozilla supports Pango upstream * Indic printing to work from Gnome 2.8 (to be released in mid Sept) * Utkal - New Oriya Opentype font available - http://oriya.sarovar.org/download/utkalm.ttf.gz * Indic Unicode issues and updates on Indic list at Unicode. * Tamil PC team featured in Team watch For older issues of L10n Newsletter check - http://www.indlinux.org/nl/ Comments, suggestions, criticism, news bits for newsletter can be sent to feedback AT indlinux.org To recieve newsletter regularly subscribe to our News list - http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/indlinux-news -- They can, because they think they can - Anon -------------------------------------------- * Blog: http://blogs.randomink.org/blog/10 * * Work: http://www.indlinux.org * -------------------------------------------- From diya at sarai.net Wed Sep 1 20:34:21 2004 From: diya at sarai.net (Diya Mehra) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 20:34:21 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] Minutes of A Conversation on the Yamuna Pushta Message-ID: <6223.67.101.67.68.1094051061.squirrel@67.101.67.68> A Conversation about the Yamuna Pushta. July 30th, Sarai. We started with a short introduction by Lalit Batra and Diya Mehra, who spoke about the sense of being overwhelmed in the course of the Yamuna Pushta eviction by governmental action that had almost total control over slum housing, but which was increasingly completely unresponsive to the representations of slum dwellers. Interventions by civil society in this scenario can only be limited in their scope. Given the slanted power relations of the political field, how can we consider an idea of equity in the city today? The first part of the meeting was devoted to understanding the strong political consensus on a no-slum city. Different speakers gave examples from the Pushta and other areas in the city to detail this, and to describe the attitude and role of neo-liberal government and bureaucracy which is steadily pushing people out of the city. The question arose of whether this toughness of policy required a great deal of pragmatism in response. Are there limits to this pragmatism? What is the relation between pragmatics and strategy? Lalit Batra argued that search for a pragmatic approach requires a great deal of caution otherwise one could easily end up supporting the process of downgrading of norms and standards for the poor. Political Society/Civil Society: One frame for the discussion that followed was the distinction made by Partha Chatterjee on the major cleavage in urban society today. Increasingly we see a civil society of citizens who have actual rights to the city and a political society of slum dwellers, who lack rights, but are dealt with by the state on an 'ad-hoc' basis. What could be the role of civil society in a situation where the links between it and slum dwellers were particularly tenuous. Shreerekha thought we had to take into account how civil society - which is in large part middle class - is positioned in relation to squatter settlements. How does limit the possibilities of what civil society actors manage or attempt to do? Aditya Nigam said that as long as social and activist links cannot be forged through co-residence, civil society actors should consider what they could do to bring the issue into the public domain, to think about how more sensitive common sense ideas about slums could be elicited. Relations between political society and the city, Rakesh Singh added, were complicated. In the case of the Pushta, for example, slum dwellers had already made housing arrangements in light of the demolition. There are alternative housing markets that they could tap into, and they did. He asked how this figured into ideas of equity? Jeebesh Bagchi suggested that perhaps a single and stable idea of justice was an imposed category and did not relate to the realities of political society. Ranjana Padhi argued that in either case, individuals had the right to object to events like the Pushta in the city. It should not be presumed that support for certain political values was implicit either in slums or civil society, rather the question is how can these be supported. Diya Mehra asked whether working within and allowing for the presence of 'informal mechanisms' actually ever creates the space for political society to become civil society. Hopelessness and Communication: Halfway through the conversation, Rohini Patkar suggested that the conversation was displaying a high degree of frustration and hopelessness with the response of civil society to such situations. In way, it appeared to be cathartic. This could be because although a number of NGOs, political actors, slum dwellers had tried to negotiate with the government, there had not been a strong enough reaction and response to warrant any change in policy. Diya Mehra suggested that one problem could be that those interested in intervening are unable to determine what the pressure points are? Perhaps the complexity of the governmental system and the vastness of the city are barriers to achieving this perspective. Sanjeev suggested that there was a need to federate into a larger alliance. Jeebesh Bagchi commented that a language that communicated the indignity of the Pushta residents had not been significantly developed. Instead, appeals reduced the working class to a series of bare necessities. Ranjana Padhi and Naveen said that we should not discount the efforts that are made by individuals, groups or the left. Ranjana added that one question is what the response of the slum dwellers had been. Organized opposition was quickly squashed, however the slum dwellers had also been cautious and late in reacting to the proposed eviction. This was also something to think about. Neeti Bhardwaj said that when NGOs do make representations to different communities to try and get them to think about the issues of housing and demolitions, it was to small numbers of people. How does one build a city wide understanding through this ? She added that what was required was a systematic and pragmatic approach. Conversations should be centered around specific situation and there was a need for people from different organizations to sit down and work out things on a long term basis. One can only oppose actual demolitions, if the strength existed on the ground. x Aditya Nigam said was that a poor civil society response was also due to the divisions between organizations, in the form of different kinds of turf battles. Jeebesh Bagchi suggested that the conversation had lead him to think that individuals interested in responding were largely isolated from each other. Was there no forum for public communication? Lalit Batra said conversations between people working with the urban poor tended to be in an institutional context and limited to organizational affairs. Perhaps a long standing conversation is required to prevent a 'crises-only' situation - where people come together when the situation is dire. Naveen concluded by saying that a lot of time is spent conversing on these issues. Perhaps an outside or comparative perspective could be useful to thinking about the local Delhi questions. Examples from other places may reflect on problems and possibilities. Otherwise, in the continuing circle of talk, workshops, meetings and seminars, we are still left with the question of how to actually act and what would prompt concerted engagement. -- Diya Mehra Sarai: The New Media Initiative Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, New Delhi 54 (011) 23960040, www.sarai.net From shivamvij at gmail.com Thu Sep 2 11:18:52 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 11:18:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Wage checker launches in nine countries Message-ID: Wage checker launches in nine countries A web-based interactive wage indicator has been launched in Amsterdam. The indicator helps employees check if they are paid fare wages. It was originally developed by the University of Amsterdam and UNI affiliate FNV-Bondgenoten. UNI's Gerhard Rohde has called for the project to be extended beyond Europe - to include India for example - and to be used by unions as an organising tool. (wageindicator.org/contact) From shivamvij at gmail.com Thu Sep 2 11:26:00 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 11:26:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 'Request from AMnesty International India Office' Message-ID: >From PUCL mailing list: Message: 1 Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2004 06:02:12 +0530 From: Suresh-Saila Subject: Request from AMnesty International India Office - ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 7:36 PM Subject: mail - for PUCL list > Would be great if you could put this on the PUCL e-list... > Dear PUCL members, > Amnesty International India is preparing research pieces on the following > issues, and we would be glad to receive information on both of these from > members of PUCL and others in TN - both the issues directly concern TN. RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ACTS AI India is examining the human rights aspects vis-a-vis the various state 'religious freedom' legislation. We are looking to examine the Gujarat and TN acts along with the Orissa and MP acts. We will also be examining the politics behind such legislation. It would be very useful to get any documentation you may have about this issue - particularly information where the TN act was previously used to harass persons or not allow conversions ro if there are any cases under which people were charged under the TN Act. Please note that we need the information as soon as possible - we would like to complete a draft by 15 September 2004. > > REMAND BY VIDEO-CONFERENCING > AI India is also concerned about the use of new video-conferencing > technology for extension of judicial remand. While this has been used in > Andhra Pradesh for the last few years - Karnataka and TN have also started > the use. Work is also on for use in Delhi and Maharashtra. > > We would be glad to receive information on cases where persons have > observed such sessions and the deficiencies of the system. Any information > of persons directly affected by video-conferencing would be very useful. > Any information from Andhra or Karnataka too would be useful. > > Please do send this information as it comes by. We are hoping to have a > draft ready by 1 December 2004. > > regards, > Bikram Jeet Batra > bjbatra at amnesty.org > > > _____________________________ > Legal Officer > Amnesty International India > C-161, Hem Kunt House, Fourth floor > Gautam Nagar, New Delhi - 110 049. > Phone: 91-11- 26854763, 51642501 > Fax: 91- 11- 26510202 > > > > > > From shivamvij at gmail.com Thu Sep 2 12:25:55 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 12:25:55 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] =?utf-8?b?Q05OIOKAmE9wZW4gVG/igJkgQ2hhbm5lbCBGb3Ig?= =?utf-8?q?India?= Message-ID: CNN 'Open To' Channel For India http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=67591 OUR EFE BUREAU Posted online: Thursday, September02, 2004 at 0000 hours IST NEW DELHI: CNN International is open to the idea of launching a channel for the India market. Replying to a media question on whether there were channel plans for the country, CNN International managing director Chris Cramer said "yes". Without elaborating much on the kind of channel being planned, Mr Cramer said: "Our competence is in news...." This is seen as an interesting development in a growing TV news environment in India. Al Jazeera, an Arabic news channel, which got considerable viewership during the recent Gulf war, is expected to make India-specific announcements on Thursday. But, Mr Cramer did not see it as a challenge to CNN. "It's just an Arabic language channel," he said. Mr Cramer was in the capital to announce a programming-cum-marketing initiative. From September 4 to 12, CNN will show 'Eye on India', a combination of live and feature programmes around various facets of India. Oberoi Hotels is the presenting sponsor for the initiative. The channel also announced launch of another discussion forum, which would deal with issues like outsourcing. Indian personalities like Shah Rukh Khan and Biocon's Kiran Mazumdar Shaw would have shows in the India segment. Recently, there was speculation about Turner International collaborating with the Zee group in India to launch a port channel. Zee emerged the highest bidder for telecast rights to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) matches, but it does not have a sport channel yet. Turner and Zee are part of the same distribution platform in India. Mr Cramer reiterated CNN's commitment to India, but admitted that CNN was behind BBC in viewership in India. But, there are several other markets across the world where CNN is ahead of BBC, he added. From definetime at rediffmail.com Thu Sep 2 10:59:02 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 2 Sep 2004 05:29:02 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Guardian Unlimited: Daring to dream Message-ID: <20040902052902.21382.qmail@webmail28.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040902/d755cff6/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- Dear Keith, It would be irresponsible to call your original response a 'tirade' as it contained a wealth of information. Without your side of the argument the Rifkin angle does indeed present a skewed picture. You've also pointed out significant tendencies on the list - more consumption and less debate but I suspect it's a reflection of the real world outside. Now that you've brought it up, I think I first came across that 'US data' in Manufacturing Consent (the Wintoneck/Achbar documentary on Chomsky) but it was kind of lost in the filing cabinets of my brain. One wants to share information but the numbers get hazy, besides often the context is lacking. Big papers usually (though not always!) take care to cross check facts, which lends them a certain gravity and consequently eases one's personal responsibility towards verifying the 'text'. For a while now, I've been sending 'group mails' to friends and acquaintances; finding a fairly positive response. It's both easier and difficult when you personally know the group. In a large anonymous group one hopes that someone somewhere will find useful information in your postings. Over a period, one smells the 'contours' of the group/list and tailors one's postings accordingly (You can get a 'flavour' of the past as this list is archived and searchable). Happily, Sarai and it's readers-list seems to encompass a fairly broad range of topics. My 'editorial selection' takes into account all the above with a degree of inevitable personal bias. I only hope to enlarge the areas of concern beyond the restrictions that location and media ownership/readership bias, seems to impose upon us. regards, Sanjay Ps - I didn't mean to take this exchange out of the 'list' but the auto REPLY button stimulates a one-sided response (to the sender instead of the list). Quite a few interesting exchanges in the past have similarly fallen out of the list - which otherwise may have contributed to our collective engagements. On Thu, 02 Sep 2004 Keith Hart wrote : >Dear Sanjay, > >Thank you for your considerate response to my tirade. I now know what you thought was interesting in this article, but I didn't when I read the original piece. I suppose I am an old ideologue who feels uncomfortable about the dissemination of material without any personal judgment attached. Of course I don't think the sarai list should exclusively report Indian sources. But I wondered what a predominantly Indian memership would make of this piece. So I wrote in to see if I could stimulate a response, although I doubt if that will be the case, since it does seem to me that the list is more geared towards the consumption of ideas that their critique (with the exception of some notable threads). > >I agree with you that an article might be useful for the factual information it contains and this piece certainly qualifies for that. I already filed it away as a source for something I am writing at present. > >Critique doesn't have to be negative and your positive reasons for finding the piece interesting are stimulating in themselves. I live in Paris and work part time in London and work part time in London, so I have quite a stake in the EU project which I agree has many lessons for transnational associations of all kinds. I suppose what got up my nose was the shameless manipulation of a parochial audience by the writer. Like you, I read the western 'liberal' press daily -- the Guardian, Ny Times, Le Monde etc -- and I get much food for thought from them. You are providing a service in offering readers of th elist quick access to material you find interesting. I would like to know more about your editorial principles of selction. But perhaps, if I had been reading the list longer, I would already know that. > >All the best, > >Keith > > On Wed, 01 Sep 2004 Sanjay Ghosh wrote : > > > > > >Dear Keith, > > > >I forwarded that article from GuardianUnlimited. I'm delighted by your response. You've presented just the dimension missing from Rifkin's article. Very often an existing text can give shape to concerns one is not confident of articulating properly. Even though Sarai is Delhi based, the readers-list members are 'spread over many parts of the world', I don't see the merit of it assuming an exclusively 'Indian' character. > > > >The fact that the Guardian also 'peddles' has important implications in the media sphere. The Guardian which calls itself a 'trust run paper' (to distinguish itself from the Murdoch empire) has assumed a 'holier than thou' stature with it's intention to build 'a ring around the world'. Evaluating a presumed stature is very important. > > > >On the other hand there is an enormous hostility in the UK tabloid press towards the EU. Considering tabloid press' bonhomie with big business, it's necessary to understand the complete implications of this issue. > > > >Little pools of 'trade zones' are developing all over. SAARC, ASEAN or ECOWAS wouldn't be here without the example of EU. The character these 'pacts' are assuming is extremely debate-worthy. Implications on representative government, culture, local environment, etc. are very serious. > > > >Assuming that these economic zones might replace the present political fora, their examination becomes essential. Particularly because 'trade pacts' are famous for their 'closed door consultations'. Whether considering low voter turnout in European parliamentary elections or the extent to which trade pact organisers go in order to hide from the public - the issue needs highlighting. Public Domain is a core concern of Sarai. > > > >Lastly an article may not be useful for it's conclusions only, fragments of data can be illuminating. The enormous longing among the Indian youth for a US visa suggests that certain facts about the US (as pointed out by Rifkin) aren't exactly well known. > > > >regards, > >Sanjay Ghosh > > > > > > From radhakha at yahoo.com.au Thu Sep 2 06:57:49 2004 From: radhakha at yahoo.com.au (Radha Khan) Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 11:27:49 +1000 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: reader-list Digest, Vol 14, Issue 3-Contents of reader-list digest Indian personality complex In-Reply-To: <20040901150428.9F0A728E7FF@mail.sarai.net> References: <20040901150428.9F0A728E7FF@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <1094088469.5821.203532355@webmail.messagingengine.com> Dear Shivam, My Library (Uni of Melb.) subscibes to Foreign Policy and I tried to look up the article but this current issue Sept-Oct 2004 is not yet available. Once it is online I'll try & send you a copy of the article (PDF file). Would that be ok ? Cheers, Radha 11 Bermuda Drive, Blackburn South VIC 3130 Australia 61-3-98026718 0408550644 From vivek at sarai.net Thu Sep 2 12:41:42 2004 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 12:41:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] NYT article by Tariq Ramadan: Too Scary for the Classroom? Message-ID: <4136C7AE.1060404@sarai.net> Too Scary for the Classroom? September 1, 2004 By TARIQ RAMADAN Geneva — Right now, I am supposed to be in South Bend, Ind., beginning my term as a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Notre Dame. After all, my petition for a work/residence visa in the United States was granted in May, after meticulous clearance procedures. But nine days before I was to move, I received an urgent message from the American Embassy: my visa had been revoked. If I wished to reapply, I was told, I was welcome to do so; but no reasons for the revocation were given. Classes have now begun at Notre Dame, while my wife and children and I wait here in a barren apartment. The State Department's reasoning remains a mystery. For some time I have been considered a controversial figure in France; but this was well known by the American government when I received the visa in the spring. I have been accused of engaging in "double talk" - that is, of delivering a gentle message in French and English, and a radical, violent one in Arabic. My detractors have tried to demonstrate that I have links with extremists, that I am an anti-Semite and that I despise women. Repeatedly I have denied these assertions, and asked my critics to show evidence from my writings and public comments. Their failure to do so has had little effect: I am repeatedly confronted with magazine articles and Web postings repeating these accusations as facts and fabricating new ones. And now the web of lies has spread across the Atlantic Ocean. The most damaging accusations were in an article in Vanity Fair claiming that I had written the preface to a volume of essays that endorsed the stoning of women caught in adultery. Actually, the book condemned the practice as un-Islamic. I admit that my intellectual project is inherently controversial. My goal is to foster communities within the Islamic world that are seeking a path between their often bitter experience with some American and European policies on the one hand, and the unacceptable violence of Islamic extremists on the other. I understand, share and publicly discuss many of the Muslim criticisms of "Western" governments, including the deleterious worldwide effects of unregulated American consumerism. I find current American policies toward the Middle East misguided and counterproductive, a position I believe I share with millions of Americans and Europeans. Yet I have also criticized many so-called Islamic governments, including that of Saudi Arabia, for their human rights violations and offenses against human dignity, personal freedom and pluralism. My more specific stances have also raised hackles in France. For example, I strongly oppose France's new law banning female students from wearing head scarves, although on general human rights grounds rather than because I am a Muslim. (I condemn the kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq and think the French government should not submit to the blackmail of the kidnappers, who say they will kill the captives unless the ban is overturned.) I was also accused of anti-Semitism after I criticized some leading French intellectuals - including Bernard-Henri Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut - for abandoning France's noble traditions of universalism and personal freedom because of their anxiety over Muslim immigration and their support for Israel. The fact is, in the more than 20 books, 700 articles and 170 audio tapes I have produced, one will find no double talk, but a consistent set of themes, and an insistence that my fellow Muslims unequivocally condemn radical views and acts of extremism. Just days after 9/11, I gave an interview calling on Muslims to condemn the attacks and to acknowledge that the terrorists betrayed the Islamic message. I have denounced anti-Semitism, criticizing Muslims who do not differentiate between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a political issue and the unacceptable rejection of individual Jews because of their religion and heritage. I have called for a spiritual reformation that will lead to an Islamic feminism. I reject every kind of mistreatment of women, including domestic violence, forced marriage and female circumcision. My opponents also accuse me of being the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt. I plead guilty to this charge. My response is: am I to be judged by the words and deeds of an ancestor? Those critics obsessed with my genealogy ought to examine my intellectual pedigree, which includes advanced study of Descartes, Kant and Nietzsche, among others. They should examine the time I have spent working in poverty-stricken areas with the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and the Brazilian human-rights leader Dom Helder Camara, as well as with countless other Christians and Jews, agnostics and atheists. For 20 years, I have dedicated myself to studying Islamic scripture, Western and Eastern philosophies and societies, and built an identity that is truly Western and truly Muslim. I make no apologies for taking a critical look at both Islam and the West; in doing so I am being true to my faith and to the ethics of my Swiss citizenship. I believe Muslims can remain faithful to their religion and be able, from within pluralistic and democratic societies, to oppose all injustices. I also feel it is vital that Muslims stop blaming others and indulging in victimization. We are responsible for reforming our societies. On the other hand, blindly supporting American or European policies should not be the only acceptable political stance for Muslims who seek to be considered progressive and moderate. In the Arab and Islamic world, one hears a great deal of legitimate criticism of American foreign policy. This is not to be confused with a rejection of American values. Rather, the misgivings are rooted in five specific grievances: the feeling that the United States role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unbalanced; the longstanding American support of authoritarian regimes in Islamic states and indifference to genuine democratic movements (particularly those that have a religious bent); the belief that Washington's policies are driven by short-term economic and geostrategic interests; the willingness of some prominent Americans to tolerate Islam-bashing at home; and the use of military force as the primary means of establishing democracy. Instead of war, the Arab and Muslim worlds seek evidence of a lasting and substantive commitment by the United States to policies that would advance public education, equitable trade and mutually profitable economic and cultural partnerships. For this to occur, America first has to trust Muslims, genuinely listen to their hopes and grievances, and allow them to develop their own models of pluralism and democracy. Simply sponsoring a few Arabic TV and radio channels will not lead to real changes in Muslims' perceptions. Instead, America's only chance of making peace with the Islamic world depends on consistency between words and actions, and the development of cross-cultural trust over time. I believe Western Muslims can make a critical difference in the Muslim majority world. To do this, we must become full, independent Western citizens, working with others to address social, economic and political problems. However, we can succeed only if Westerners do not cast doubt on our loyalty every time we criticize Western governments. Not only do our independent voices enrich Western societies, they are the only way for Western Muslims to be credible in Arab and Islamic countries so that we can help bring about freedom and democracy. That is the message I advocate. I do not understand how it can be judged as a threat to America. Tariq Ramadan is the author, most recently, of "Western Muslims and the Future of Islam." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/01/opinion/01ramadan.html?ex=1095052008&ei=1&en=01ce2dcf02a969eb Yahoo! Groups Sponsordocument.write(''); --------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DRUMnewz/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: DRUMnewz-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now. _______________________________________________ Foil-l mailing list Foil-l at insaf.net http://insaf.net/mailman/listinfo/foil-l_insaf.net From vivek at sarai.net Thu Sep 2 13:03:53 2004 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 13:03:53 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Fwd: NYTimes.com Article: Amid Ghosts of the Red Guard, the Avant-Garde Now Blooms] Message-ID: <4136CCE1.5060003@sarai.net> -------- Original Message -------- Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Amid Ghosts of the Red Guard, the Avant-Garde Now Blooms Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 03:37:45 -0400 (EDT) From: narayananv at mtb.und.ac.za Reply-To: narayananv at mtb.und.ac.za To: vivek at sarai.net The article below from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by narayananv at mtb.und.ac.za. Amid Ghosts of the Red Guard, the Avant-Garde Now Blooms September 1, 2004 By CRAIG SIMONS BEIJING, Aug. 31 - In his gray fleece jacket and pressed khaki pants, Xu Yong looks more like a department store manager than a maverick who is one of the most successful promoters of avant-garde art in China and a protector of its historic architecture. Standing in 798 Space, his contemporary art gallery in northeastern Beijing, next to a row of faded photographs of a woman firing a handgun, Mr. Xu carefully thanks the city government for supporting the Dashanzi International Art Festival, a collaboration among 74 galleries and private art studios in a refurbished 1950's-era weapons factory. It is perhaps his mild demeanor, coupled with his fondness for making art and old architecture profitable cultural enterprises, that has helped push the Communist leadership here toward aiding the arts and protecting the past. Two years ago Factory 798 was largely abandoned and physically crumbling, a forlorn complex of warehouses and workshops built by East German architects using World War II reparations money. It was given a number rather than a name, in the old-fashioned Communist manner. Like many of China's state-owned enterprises, it was seemingly doomed, with only a few of its structures still in use. And, as with most of the oldest buildings here, there were demolition plans; in this case the mammoth work areas would be knocked down to make room for a business-development park. Then artists began to move in, attracted by cheap rents and stunning spaces. By the time a friend took Mr. Xu to see the factory, a handful of musicians and painters had renovated studios. He was immediately attracted to the architecture. "It was obvious that the place had great cultural and historic value," he said. That realization prompted him to lease a workshop of about 13,000 square feet, clean away a decade of disrepair and open his gallery, 798 Space, the complex's largest. In April 2003 the gallery attracted about 5,000 visitors and international news media attention with a show of avant-garde art appropriately titled "798 Reconstruction." This was followed by an influx to the area of artists, as well as the opening of galleries from Germany, Britain, the United States, Singapore and Japan. For Mr. Xu, 50, part of the factory's value is intrinsic. The compound was active in the 1960's and 70's and many Maoist slogans (like "Chairman Mao is the red sun in our hearts") painted on the walls during the Cultural Revolution remain visible. Such propaganda, once ubiquitous, is now rare, and the building is a powerful reminder. "The Cultural Revolution was terrible, so most people would rather simply forget it," Mr. Xu said in an interview, "but we need to take stock of the past." In October 798 Space sponsored a show of works by 48 Chinese and German artists that included haunting references to the Mao years: the video artist Wang Wei filmed children eerily repeating Maoist slogans; the installation artist Gu Dexin presented two containers of frozen animal brains and hearts; a mammoth Mao Zedong arm (obvious to anyone who has seen the statues of Mao that still stand all over China) rose out of a doorway. Other artists showed more incendiary works. The photographer and installation artist Chen Guang exhibited an erotic video on a large screen on the factory grounds. "He showed the work at 2 in the afternoon," recalled Robert Bernell, the owner of an art publishing house and bookstore in the factory. "It created a big stir." Such exhibits (one artist ripped up a Communist Party flag during a performance piece) have upset some Chinese leaders and, Mr. Xu said, there has been debate about whether to allow such a free art space in the capital. Another issue has been property rights. The city granted Seven Stars, the company that owns the land, the right to create an industrial park, but the artists, including Mr. Xu, want the buildings protected as an arts center similar to the Tate Modern in London, which is in a renovated power station. The artists were supported by officials who said that a flourishing art scene would help Beijing become a vibrant city. Long Xingmin, the assistant party secretary of development and planning ministry for Beijing, visited the galleries in April, and the vice mayor of Beijing has weighed in to support the artists. Visiting dignitaries, including the president of Switzerland, have also stopped by the complex to offer support. For now, the scales seem tipped in favor of the art. When the developer moved to shut down the Dashanzi International Art Festival in late April, citing violations of parking and fire regulations, the government rejected the complaints and sent word that the show should proceed. "Even a year ago that would not have happened," Mr. Xu said, adding that he was told by "a reliable source" that the government planned to protect the area so it could establish an art district similar to SoHo in New York in time for the 2008 Olympics. Such a center might become a major tourist draw. In the last decade Chinese contemporary art has found an overseas market, with recent shows of Chinese avant-garde art at the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Venice Biennale as well as a show titled "Between Past and Present: New Photography and Video From China," which opened at International Center of Photography in New York on June 11 and will run through Sept. 5. "The 798 Factory could become the top location for cutting-edge avant-garde art, not only in Beijing and China, but in all of Asia," Mr. Xu said. He has been equally successful at protecting China's ancient architecture after an early interest in photography. He said that after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976 and the artistic climate began to loosen, he became interested in photographing hutongs, the twisting residential alleyways clustered around the Forbidden City in Beijing and once home to the emperor's relatives and courtiers. "Too much valuable architecture has been destroyed," he said. "Largely the destruction grew from a common perception that the hutongs were reminders of China's economic stagnation as the rest of the world surged ahead. When foreigners wandered into the lanes, locals were embarrassed. They thought the buildings were backward." In 1990 he published "Beijing's Hutong: 101 Images," a collection of black-and-white photographs. Two years later he opened Hutong Tours, a travel agency that in 2002 took 140,000 tourists through the lanes. Foreigners willing to pay $12 for guided glimpses of the alleys proved to city officials that history has more than just sentimental value. "In China, if you're going to protect historic architecture, you have to show that it has practical use," he said. The Beijing architect Du Dong said, "Had it not been for the attention of tourists, the destruction of the hutongs would have been more thorough." The government has now set aside several hundred lanes for preservation. Mr. Xu said that he hoped to help China find value where most Chinese see only decay, and to prove that culture is not, as Mao believed, merely an instrument of the state but a vital part of the nation's life. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/01/arts/design/01beij.html?ex=1095110665&ei=1&en=8e5bdebfdeea0236 --------------------------------- Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like! Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy now for 50% off Home Delivery! Click here: http://homedelivery.nytimes.com/HDS/SubscriptionT1.do?mode=SubscriptionT1&ExternalMediaCode=W24AF HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales at nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help at nytimes.com. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company From keith at thememorybank.co.uk Thu Sep 2 14:51:46 2004 From: keith at thememorybank.co.uk (Keith Hart) Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 11:21:46 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Guardian Unlimited: Daring to dream In-Reply-To: <20040902052902.21382.qmail@webmail28.rediffmail.com> References: <20040902052902.21382.qmail@webmail28.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <4136E62A.9090703@thememorybank.co.uk> Sanjay, Thanks for posting our private exchange on the list. I hope readers can make sense of it backwards. Your use of the word 'irresponsible' struck a chord, since one of my main reasons for sending the original piece was to raise the question of responsibility in publishing on the net. For you are an internet publisher and the issue is whether readers are entitled to know where you are coming from when you send out something that catches your interest. I only raise this issue because Rifkin's pitch was so outrageous. Subsequently you have told me of your interest in the EU transnational experiment (which is undoubtedly important for the rest of the world as well as for those of us who are part of it) and in the evidence he gave that Europe is now in some respects a bigger economy than the USA. You have also acknowledged that my line offers a rather different angle to his. But I still don;t know if there are grounds for a debate between us and any interested onlookers. Maybe that too is the point -- let's keep it informational and not get upset about anything. This is a week when the Republicans are trying to bully and con the American people into re-electing them because of fear of terror; when Putin's path to authoritarian rule is challenged by Chechen rebels, while the others (the US, Britain, France and Germany keep quiet because they think he is th ebest man to keep the lid on there. Let's not even discuss the mess in the Middle East. Anyone who travels internationally these days knows how security is being tightened everywhere and immigrants are a universal scapgoat for insecurity. In this highly contemporary scenario, Rifkin tells us that Europe offers the kind face of social democracy, transnational cooperation and ecological concern as an alternative to get-rich-quick America a.k.a. liberal democracy or corporate capitalism running amok. But he is not burning his boats there, since his pitch is that, if Britain can help the Americans and Europeans get into bed, they can rule the world safely together for another hundred years. I just wonder how such a story plays in Asia. The Chinese government for sure is not backing down in the face of the US-Europe dual hegemony that passes for a world order at present. They have refused to fix the exchange rates so that America is less embarrassed by the balance of trade betwen them and they are accumulating massive dollar deposits as a result. It is worth recalling that offshore banking took off in the form of eurodollar market after Russian and Chinese were seized in New York at the beginning of the Cold War. Revenge is sweet and it may not be far off. My bet is that India and China will become the superpowers of the 21st century, as befits their strategic economic position, size and ancient civilisation. After half a century of hiding from the world while generating one of the world's most successful diasporas, India is now back in the game. American newspapers make a big deal of outsourcing service jobs through the internet and there is some substance to this. India stands to become the next global centre for information services using English as a common language. All of this is embryonic. But I subscribe to this list to see if young avant-garde Indian intellectuals (and their fellow travellers) show any awareness of the possibilities. That's where I am coming from. Keith From vivek at sarai.net Thu Sep 2 16:13:32 2004 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 16:13:32 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Guardian Unlimited: Daring to dream In-Reply-To: <4135A493.3070306@thememorybank.co.uk> References: <20040901070132.D948E1E71@mussel.gul3.gnl> <4135A493.3070306@thememorybank.co.uk> Message-ID: <4136F954.9050306@sarai.net> Dear Keith, I have enjoyed your past few posts to the list quite a bit and as (I suppose) a "young Indian intellectual" myself, I wonder if we on the list could push your argument a little further, and see where it leads. I think you're right in your later mail that Rifkin's statements are strategic, if somewhat short-sighted and unreflective of larger historical shifts. He is clearly writing out of leftish America's current "anybody but Bush" mentality, where, in the mainstream, slagging off the French and the Germans is a prime-time TV sport. Thus Rifkin wants to preserve and somehow salvage liberal America's last links to sustainable sanity through Europe. Rifkin has always dreamed of being a more populist speaker and writer, making crude arguments and hoping to sway policy and (having encountered him and his work some fourteen years ago in college in the US) I would assume he's slanting his usual shtick slightly to the right, hoping to make a difference. The Guardian, of course, would be the wrong place to make that kind of difference. Maybe he should have tried Fox News. Further, R.'s root impulses have sprung from 80's environmentalism and from rather blunt anxieties about "science"; if I remember correctly, he has always been uncomfortable about a deregulated world, even a deregulated commons. This also clearly informs his (and, for that matter, pop singer Madonna's) love of Europe as does -this is a palpable silence in his, and your, text, Keith- the challenge posed by burgeoning and ambiguous Islamist modernities. (When the latter issue is taken into account, Europe becomes a rather hostile place on the whole, and France, with its ridiculous and counterproductive headscarf law, becomes clearly regressive.) So in the face of "the alternatives", Rifkin retreats to the liberal safe line and crosses his fingers in the hope that Europe, at least, will be the future of the world. So I agree with you that old hegemonies need not be valorised, even if, in the battle between the euro standard and the dollar standard, I must confess a hope that Iraq will sometime lead the way, go back to trading its oil in Euros and let the US economy collapse into its own debt. What I did find to be a rather surprising blind spot in your posting however, was a rather unproblematised paradigm of nation vs. nation. You speak of "billions of cheap, hardworking Asians" thankfully in the plural, but at the same time you still do sound surprisingly like our leaders and our upper classes dreaming of the rise of Eendia. We're not talking of replacing one hegemony with another, are we? This misses the point: for what is at stake is is the formation of a new global underclass, hard-working or not, and capital so fluent and mercurial it's hard to tell who exactly is in charge. Nevertheless, whatever it is, whoever it consists of, there is obviously a NEW global aristocracy taking shape, and if it prefers to invest in or inhabit the East as opposed to the West (but never, alas, the strangled South) that's not necessarily a positive sign. Transition from the nation? Good thing, most probably. But I'm not sure at all that the forces you speak of are "inherently progressive and revolutionary", not sure at all; isn't it up to us and our imagination to seize the moment and ride the forces into progress or liberation? Here at Sarai (where I am new) much research goes into illegal networks, and it's exciting, but one finds (not so?) that even within the subversive chaos there are shifts towards economies of scale, specialization, institutionalization of different kinds- and that may well, in some cases, mean new bossmen, henchmen, slaves, even at very local levels. (Perhaps someone more closely engaged in this research can correct me if I'm wrong.) I am concerned that we should not celebrate chaos without recognizing it as an ambiguous thing, a moment of transformation into a new order that may not be All Good. So rather than imputing inherent qualities to complex processes that will continue to ricochet in several unpredictable directions, OR spending too much time praying that Europe recovers its liberal glory and saves us all from hellfire, I would rather we attend closely to the newly forming hegemonies and the possibilities for diverting, subverting and resisting them. (You will notice I put resistance last; but perhaps it is not the least.) While the iron is hot, Vivek. Keith Hart wrote: > >> Sanjay Ghosh spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought >> you should see it. >> >> To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited >> site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk >> >> Daring to dream >> Europe is no utopia but, using Britain as a bridge, it can share its >> global vision with the US >> Jeremy Rifkin >> Wednesday September 01 2004 >> The Guardian >> >> > > I am mystified why an article like this should be posted to the list > without comment and apparently without expectation of discussion. More > to the point, I haven't a clue how readers might be expected to > respond to it. Let me briefly summarise what Rifkin has to say in this > puff his new book. > > There is a European dream to match the American dream, but it is about > transnational community rather than personal enrichment and is "bound > to the welfare of the planet". The EU economy is now bigger than that > of the US and in many indicators betters it. Europeans work to live > and Americans live to work. Britain (wait for this) can be a bridge > allowing the "two great superpowers of the 21st century" to synthesise > their differences for the benefit of the world as a whole. But the > British will have to decide where they think they belong. > > I can understand this being peddled in the Guardian to nourish the > faltering egos of its British readers. But what is it doing on > reader-list? Would most Indian readers easily see this for the > moonshine it is or are they expected to adjust their sights to this > eternal western hegemony? Dream on. > > What Rifkin's ecstatic list of economic indicators fails to point out > is that, thanks to the neo-liberal world economy they have jointly > sponsored in the last quarter-century, America and Europe have stolen > vast sums from the rest of the planet through rigged money markets, > debt interest, rents from 'intellectual property' in drugs, food, > culture and much else. They have erected a property regime that > rewards big money to the cost of everyone else. They police the > inequality they have generated with instruments of legal and military > coercion. > > But this attempt to establish a global command economy is doomed > because it depends on unleashing technological and social forces (of > which the internet is the most obvious manifestation) that are > inherently progressive and revolutionary. The result is the West is > becoming more rigid and dependent on high-cost infrastructure while > production is moving inexorably elsewhere. Manufactures have already > been relocated to Asia, especially China, and anglophone information > services are finding their way to India. It is inconceivable to me > that the billions of cheap, hardworking Asians will not put this > self-appointed global aristocracy out of business -- and long before > the 21st century is out. American and Europe economic power is already > collapsing under the weight of their attempt to con and bully the rest > of humanity into supporting them at a living standard they can't > afford. This shift is at one level between generations, since the rich > old West can no longer reproduce itself. But it will take some > intellectual and political leadership to give shape to this > materialist logic. > > As a counter-weight to Rifkin's self-serving twaddle, I would strongly > recommend a recent posting on the nettime list: > > THREE PROPOSALS FOR A REAL DEMOCRACY > Information-Sharing to a Different Tune > by Brian Holmes > > This can be found at: > > http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0408/msg00095.html > > But here we begin to tread on the turf of the commons-law list. And as > for a dithering Britain, whose creeping constitutional crisis is the > subject of an article I published in the Times Higher this week, I > will abstain from more comment until I can post a URL. > > Keith Hart > > > > > > > > Somehow I have to capture in this pamphlet the absurdity of allowing > these American and European banks, drugs companies etc to absorb the > wealth produced by the rest of the world including their own citizens. > Apart from turning the world's money markets into an unearned bonanza > for the US economy via Wall Street and the Fed's management of the > dollar, the rents extracted from commodities like drugs are amazing -- > the top ten drugs companies in the Fortune 500 made more profit last > year than the other 490 together. In the meantime US health costs > tripled in a decade and the job market is collapsing under the strain, > as it has in France. > > My friend Don Billingsley is touting Pat Buchanan's latest, Where the > right went wrong, for the clarity of its critique, if not for the > constructive policies. I have ordered it. The problem is that the > reputation of America and Europe in th erest of the world, like > Gilligan's Island post-fiat currency, is much higher than is warranted > by current economic realities. And, if Rifkin is anything to go by, > they will be able to sit on top of an unending stream of loot > indefinitely without even acknowledging where it came from. The > Hollywood film industry is a good example of the tendency, since the > Brits, having watched their own movie business being killed off by > American skulduggery in the 20th century, now insist on sheltering > behind this benign special relationship. > > i wonder what readers of the Sarai list make of postings like that. > _________________________________________ > 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 keith at thememorybank.co.uk Thu Sep 2 17:53:35 2004 From: keith at thememorybank.co.uk (Keith Hart) Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 14:23:35 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Guardian Unlimited: Daring to dream Message-ID: <413710C7.7090805@thememorybank.co.uk> Dear Vivek, I would normally miss out the endearment in a posting to an impersonal list (as I did in my public message to Sanjay), but on this occasion gratitude compels reciprocity. We should allow the occasion of our correspondence to remain anonymous. I would draw attention in particular to the photo at http://www.foet.org/JeremyRifkin.htm. Enough said. My 'silences' and 'blind spots'' come from trying to simplify an argument for purposes of discussion, especially since I am a newcomer to the list as contributor; but I am happy to oblige if you want at least a trailer of my thoughts on Islam, nationalism etc. I am a fan of Tariq Ramadan, who shares Swiss citizenship with my wife, and I side with her against him on the issue of the veil in French schools. There is no topic more complex that the history of anti-semitism in France, the republican legislation that persuaded so many German and East European Jews to settle there, the vicious record of French colonialism and war in North Africa, the immense presence of Moslems in France today, the anti-semitic attacks of Moslem youth and the move of some French Jews to Israel. I live in Paris and there is nowhere in the world that the dark side of 20th century history is replayed on TV as in France. The holocaust is today's news there, for the simple reason that the French were never held account for their part in it nor for thwir North African atrocities. But they are culturally engaged in the politics of history, unlike the anglophones. At the same time, Chirac has been trying to cast himself as the friend of Islam against Israel and the USA -- he was the first French president to visit Algeria since independence! Living in this social cauldron makes me less than engaged when outsiders pronounce on the single issue of the veil question (which also includes banning the use of Christain corosses and Jewish yamulkas in public places). Tariq Ramadan has his line, you have yours. I am trying to get on with my life as a writer in a Paris attic. I recognize that this is a total social fact of our world. But maybe it isn't the main point of the issue I raised. Since the maintenance of the dollar as the world currency is how the USA gets to spend what it likes regardless of what it earns, I too am in favouur of the euro or th eIslamic gold dinar or the yuan or whatever making inroads into that monopoly. I was immensely cheered to learn that, when the Americans in Iraq banned the Saddam dinar and started giving away $20 bills as the putative new currency, the old dinar doubled in price against the dollar and drove the Americans to accept it as the standard. If the Iraqis can turn down free dollars, why do the rest of us buy them at any price? This is linked to the new Republican version of Keynesian economics: deficit spending in favour of th erich and powerful and let the rest of the world pick up the tab. If they don't, we will beat the shit out of them and we can always count on their government's support since they live vicariously off our violence. Now the really serious questions you raise -- and I admit I took a simple view of the answers for the sake of argument -- are the following (lightly edited): > We're not talking of replacing one hegemony with another, are we? ... > there is obviously a NEW global aristocracy taking shape, and if it > prefers to invest in or inhabit the East as opposed to the West (but > never, alas, the strangled South) that's not necessarily a positive sign. > > I'm not sure at all that the forces you speak of are "inherently > progressive and revolutionary"; isn't it up to us and our imagination > to seize the moment and ride the forces into progress or liberation? > Much research goes into illegal networks, one finds that even within > the subversive chaos there are shifts towards economies of scale, > specialization, institutionalization of different kinds- and that may > well, in some cases, mean new bossmen, henchmen, slaves, even at very > local levels. I am concerned that we should not celebrate chaos > without recognizing it as an ambiguous thing, a moment of > transformation into a new order that may not be All Good. > > I would rather we attend closely to the newly forming hegemonies and > the possibilities for diverting, subverting and resisting them. Now that is an agenda for discussion. I think you extrapolated beyond what i actually said, but, for the sake of any lingering readers, I will save a response for later, after I have touched on the peripherals here. I am, however, immensely grateful to you for bringing these issue sup in that way. I will offer two personal anecdotes. I have a life-long engagement with the 'informal economy', but I do not romanticise it. Life under feudalism, whether criminal mafias or the KGB, is not appealing to me. And I have a novel on the back-burner, a science-fiction murder mystery called Futures: the death and life of Don Quick. In it I envisage a world recolution soon that leads to another dual hegemony of India and China and 300 years later there is a grass roots revolt against it formed by a Christian type movement drawing on a decadent and fragmented West as well as the still excluded South. this i snot a prediction, it is a fiction. But I find it allows me to discuss the issues you raise in a form more suitable than most non-fictional discourses. The real question is whether capitalism is about to give way to some other social principle or is merely taking on its truly global role, in which the location of power is irrelevant My scenario is one where the world in the 24th century (incidentally the same time as Star Trek) is still trying to emancipate itself from a wage-slavery enforced by Indo-Chinese imperialism. This is not a rosy picture and I hope it is wrong. But my aim is to get people thinking in terms that transcend the limits of their own life-times. Once again, thanks for encouraging this self-indulgent post. I hope to be more rigorous in future. Keith From definetime at rediffmail.com Fri Sep 3 09:13:43 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 3 Sep 2004 03:43:43 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Guardian Unlimited: Daring to dream Message-ID: <20040903034343.21343.qmail@webmail32.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040903/7a708f94/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Dear Keith, I'm don't mind keeping our conversation private, but then we can't accuse the 'list' of consumption. As I had mentioned earlier - bits and pieces within a body of text maybe very useful. I think each and every little gesture says something if only we are ready to absorb. From college students to pensioners, there are such diverse creatures on lists, that it's impossible to set limits on what can be useful. I tried my best to put our conversation in some order so that it's easier to follow. I may have assumed (wrongly?) that you were the victim of the same technical blunder (on my part) which threw the conversation out of the list in the first place. I believe the tone of one's writing (presentation) betrays an identity therefore I find this idea of anonymity quite ridiculous. Usually it's beyond the scope of 'lists' to have individual mappings of where people come from. Even my parents don't know where I come from. Depending on the complexity of a person it may take years to settle on a vague mapping. And then again people change all the time. Perhaps a list posting can't be compared to an ordinary conversation between two people known to each other. Yet over time you do figure 'oh it's that same loony who forwards from the Guardian!' One can stop there or dig a little deeper but we only recongise people in our own reflection. What you 'read' in a map depends on where all you've been. A very large number of artifacts from history are without definite authorship but that doesn't diminish their appeal. I believe the 'content' will alway find it's place. I don't think we are debating, we are simply broadening the scope of the issue. Quite often an argument has to be presented from the wrong end, to let in a larger audience. I can't speak for Rifkin but I think he's done well in presenting an argument which maybe very palatable for a western white audience. It's a practical antidote to the Ukip agenda. The way you put your argument a large part of the audience will leave before you're halfway through - which is great disservice to the crucial content of your argument. Perverse as it may sound, I think a bit of outrageousness doesn't harm a set of positive inputs. I sincerely believe that the government/social patterns in Scandinavia are worth emulating. UK, France and Germany realise this. In this light I think Europe represents a better pattern than most others in existance. It's would be childish to gulp down Rifkin's conclusions as the holy truth. Information services are basically secondary activities and India is too chaotic to become a superpower. China in some ways is already one. Yet do you sincerely believe that when the Chinese become a superpower, they'll be any different from older superpowers. Living in India right now, I only see the ghost of an ancient civilisation and I suspect the same of China. It's like the popular image of women's empowerment - women who behave like men. Your specific expectations from this list are absurd and restrict the areas of engagement. I still feel that the body of our conversation has extremely positive insights, worth sharing with a larger audience. Regards, Sanjay Keith's reply (sg): Dear Sanjay, I was not arguing for keeping our exchange private. I just felt that it was unfortunate, the way it turned out, that interested readers had to reconstruct what passed between us the wrong way round. I would be happy if you posted this last message to the list. Indeed I would prefer it. You have some extremely cogent points to make which ought to be out there. You might want to edit what you have written so far, to take account of the fact that we do seem to have crossed wires somehow -- partly for technical reasons and partly because there is a difference between us that is now coming out. Maybe I don't mind who I estrange with my polemic -- I am not trying to win the hearts and minds of the people, but merely seeking out the odd partner for conversation -- and you seem to seek a more inclusive approach for reasons that I would not impune. The last thing I want is to lay down the law on how members should use the list -- that really would be absurd. I wanted to learn more about your authorial philosphy (and get an anti-Rifkind diatribe off my chest) and I have. I would welcome seeing any version of this letter on the list. Then I will respond in public or, if you prefer, privately. I apologise for sending some signals that offended you. It's probably more a question of style than substance. All the best, Keith CAVEAT (sg): This is a 'late city' edition of a 'conversation' which took place a yesterday, now made public on the 'list' by mutual consent. Please excuse the writers' flowery tone; this was originally a 'private conversation'. On Thu, 02 Sep 2004 Keith Hart wrote : >Sanjay, > >Thanks for posting our private exchange on the list. I hope readers can make sense of it backwards. > >Your use of the word 'irresponsible' struck a chord, since one of my main reasons for sending the original piece was to raise the question of responsibility in publishing on the net. For you are an internet publisher and the issue is whether readers are entitled to know where you are coming from when you send out something that catches your interest. > >I only raise this issue because Rifkin's pitch was so outrageous. Subsequently you have told me of your interest in the EU transnational experiment (which is undoubtedly important for the rest of the world as well as for those of us who are part of it) and in the evidence he gave that Europe is now in some respects a bigger economy than the USA. You have also acknowledged that my line offers a rather different angle to his. But I still don;t know if there are grounds for a debate between us and any interested onlookers. Maybe that too is the point -- let's keep it informational and not get upset about anything. > >This is a week when the Republicans are trying to bully and con the American people into re-electing them because of fear of terror; when Putin's path to authoritarian rule is challenged by Chechen rebels, while the others (the US, Britain, France and Germany keep quiet because they think he is th ebest man to keep the lid on there. Let's not even discuss the mess in the Middle East. Anyone who travels internationally these days knows how security is being tightened everywhere and immigrants are a universal scapgoat for insecurity. In this highly contemporary scenario, Rifkin tells us that Europe offers the kind face of social democracy, transnational cooperation and ecological concern as an alternative to get-rich-quick America a.k.a. liberal democracy or corporate capitalism running amok. But he is not burning his boats there, since his pitch is that, if Britain can help the Americans and Europeans get into bed, they can rule the world safely together for another hundred years. > >I just wonder how such a story plays in Asia. The Chinese government for sure is not backing down in the face of the US-Europe dual hegemony that passes for a world order at present. They have refused to fix the exchange rates so that America is less embarrassed by the balance of trade betwen them and they are accumulating massive dollar deposits as a result. It is worth recalling that offshore banking took off in the form of eurodollar market after Russian and Chinese were seized in New York at the beginning of the Cold War. Revenge is sweet and it may not be far off. > >My bet is that India and China will become the superpowers of the 21st century, as befits their strategic economic position, size and ancient civilisation. After half a century of hiding from the world while generating one of the world's most successful diasporas, India is now back in the game. American newspapers make a big deal of outsourcing service jobs through the internet and there is some substance to this. India stands to become the next global centre for information services using English as a common language. All of this is embryonic. But I subscribe to this list to see if young avant-garde Indian intellectuals (and their fellow travellers) show any awareness of the possibilities. That's where I am coming from. > >Keith From sujandasgupta at hotmail.com Thu Sep 2 19:11:14 2004 From: sujandasgupta at hotmail.com (Sujan DasGupta) Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 13:41:14 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Abasar - an information website in Bengali Message-ID: A not-for-profit group registered in Kolkata, India, has launched a Bengali information website: Abasar (http://www.abasar.net). The site provides information on law, environment, science, arts, health and women's issues. It also contains a directory of local services in Kolkata and Dhaka. It has a Bengali film database (films released between 1931 through 1960) and other recreational items. A Bengali encyclopedia, Bharatkosh, is under construction. The site requires Internet Explorer for proper viewing. Editor, Abasar _________________________________________________________________ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee� Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 From quraishy at sarai.net Fri Sep 3 12:52:06 2004 From: quraishy at sarai.net (Moslem Quraishy) Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2004 12:52:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Anti piracy Message-ID: <41381B9E.2050902@sarai.net> it may be interesting who are working on piracy. read and enjoy */_INTRODUCTION_/* The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its international counterpart, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), estimate that the U.S. motion picture industry loses in excess of $3 billion annually in potential worldwide revenue due to piracy. Due to the difficulty in calculating Internet piracy losses, these figures are NOT currently included in the overall loss estimates. However, it is safe to assume Internet losses cause untold additional damages to the industry. To combat these staggering losses, MPAA/MPA, on behalf of its member companies, directs a comprehensive international anti-piracy program. Established domestically in 1976, the program works to: implement and strengthen existing copyright protection legislation, assist local governments and law enforcement authorities in the investigation and prosecution of piracy cases, initiate civil litigation on behalf of its’ member companies against copyright infringers, conduct education outreach programs regarding the harmful effects of piracy. Worldwide, MPAA/MPA anti-piracy activities have helped support legitimate markets that struggle to compete with pirate businesses. Pirate activities undermine every aspect of the legitimate filmmaking business since legitimate retailers cannot possibly compete fairly with pirate business. Pirate operations do not have the average expenses associated with the cost of doing legitimate business. Piracy negatively affects every rung on the ladder including the studios that invest in the film, the distributors, the retailers and foreign and local filmmakers. To battle the problem, in 2000, the MPA launched over 60,000 investigations into suspected pirate activities, and more than 18,000 raids against pirate operations in coordination with local authorities around the world. The MPAA/MPA directs its worldwide anti-piracy activities from headquarters in Encino, California. Regional offices are also located in Brussels (Europe, Middle East and Africa), Mexico (Latin America) Canada and Hong Kong (Asia/Pacific)*.* */_ THE ECONOMIC PICTURE _/* Moviemaking is an inherently risky business. Contrary to popular belief that moviemaking is always profitable, in actuality, only one in ten films ever retrieves its investment from domestic exhibition. In fact, four out of ten movies *never* recoup the original investment. In 2000, the average major studio film cost $55 million to produce with an extra $27 million to advertise and market, a total cost of over $80 million per film. No other nation in the world risks such immense capital to make, finance, produce and market their films. To recoup such enormous investments, the industry relies upon a carefully planned sequential release of movies, first releasing feature films in cinemas, then to home video, and then to other media. This release sequence not only provides the best financial return for studios, but also provides consumers with choices as to how they wish to view movies, and when. This carefully planned release sequence, which includes intervals for each specific media known as "distribution windows", are vital to the health of the industry. When piracy of a film occurs at any point in the release sequence, all subsequent markets are negatively affected. One real-world example of piracy’s devastating impact on the legitimate marketplace is with the 1999 release of the film Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace. Pirate copies of the film (created by using camcorders in US theaters) flooded the Asian marketplace while the film was still in U.S. theatrical distribution. When the film opened legitimately in Asian theaters, attendance was far below expectations. In addition, home entertainment retailers lost vital business in the home video window due to the availability of pirated copies. In this case, piracy affected legitimate theatrical distributors, exhibitors and local businesses. Today, U.S. films are shown in more than 150 countries, and American television programs are broadcast in over 125 international markets. However, piracy affects all films. Pirates steal creative works regardless of national origin, and the MPA fights to create a safe environment for both the works of MPA member companies, as well as other audiovisual entertainment. */_ THE LAW _/* The Copyright Act of 1976 gives the U.S. some of the strongest anti-piracy legislation in the world. The Act was amended in 1982, substantially increasing the penalties for the illegal duplication of copyrighted material, making such offenses felonies on the first offense. Copyright owners may also file civil lawsuits against copyright infringers, and the government may file criminal charges. Tough new United States Sentencing Commission guidelines have reinforced these penalties. The Communications Act of 1984, and later amendments provide comparable penalties and remedies for cable TV and satellite pirates. Today, more than 80 nations have copyright laws. MPAA/MPA and its affiliated organizations work to strengthen these laws, when necessary, and suggest appropriate penalties as part of copyright reform. In some parts of the world where copyright laws are weak or nonexistent, successful charges have been brought against pirates under other statutes, such as receiving stolen goods, trademark violations, smuggling, and failure to pay custom duties. In addition, intellectual property relations between the US and most foreign countries are governed by an array of multilateral treaties and conventions as well as bilateral agreements, including the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) and the Berne Convention. Lastly, various trade agreements also ensure the free flow and protection of intellectual property among nations. The MPA encourages foreign governments to abide by, and fully implement, important agreements such as the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties. */_TYPES OF PIRACY_/* *OPTICAL DISC PIRACY* Optical Disc Piracy is major threat to the audiovisual sector. Pirate optical discs, which include Laser Discs (LD), Video Compact Discs (VCD) and Digital Versatile Discs (DVD), are inexpensive to manufacture and easy to distribute. In 2000, over 20 million pirate optical discs were seized, and by comparison, 4.5 million videos were seized worldwide in the same period. Unlike traditional analog piracy, a digital pirated disc is as pure and pristine as the original. In addition, a production facility can churn out a huge volume of illegal discs in relatively short time. To illustrate this, an average illegal videocassette duplication facility with 100 VCRs can, in a 10 hour period, produce about 400 pirated cassettes, while pirates with the right CD pressing equipment can produce thousands of perfect VCDs or DVDs daily. The MPA supports the introduction of effective measures to control the spread of optical disc piracy, such as licensing requirements for optical disc manufacturing facilities and the tracking of the import and export of manufacturing equipment. Strengthened cooperation among customs and enforcement authorities worldwide to share information relating to transnational operation of organized criminal enterprises engaged in production, export, or import of illicit optical discs is also critical. * INTERNET PIRACY * Online motion picture piracy is the unauthorized use of copyrighted motion pictures on the Internet. It is illegal to sell, trade, lease, distribute, upload for transmission, transmit or publicly perform motion pictures online without the consent of the motion pictures’ copyright owner. Online piracy is a relatively new phenomenon, and, unfortunately, a growing trend. The MPA Worldwide Internet Anti-Piracy program investigates all forms of online piracy including: Downloadable Media, Hard Goods Piracy, Streaming Media and online offerings of illegal Circumvention Devices. The MPA is working closely with the online community to prevent the unauthorized use and distribution of film industry product on the Internet. * Downloadable Media * Downloadable Media refers to digital files that allow for motion pictures to be compressed and uploaded for direct download onto a computer. Pirates use Downloadable Media formats to illegally offer and distribute motion pictures to other Internet users. Typically, the pirate host will use illegal VCD copies of motion pictures to create digital copies that are recorded into a computer file. Using online communication avenues, including chat rooms, Internet Relay Chats (IRC), FTP sites, newsgroups, File Swapping Utilities (FSUs) and Web sites, the pirate offers these files to other Internet users who then download the motion picture file onto their own computers. * Hard Goods * Hard goods piracy refers to the illegal sale, distribution and/or trading of copies of motion pictures in any format, including videocassettes and all optical media product. Illegal hard goods are sold on web sites, online auction sites such as eBay and Yahoo!, and via e-mail solicitations. * Streaming Media * Streaming media refers to the transmission or transfer of data that is delivered to the online user or viewer in a steady stream in near real time. Similar to hard goods and downloadable media, It is illegal to stream copyrighted content without the express authorization of the copyright holder. * Circumvention Devices * A circumvention device is any physical medium or digital file that allows for the circumvention of content protection devices put on films, videos, discs, etc. to secure the copyrighted content. One such Circumvention Device is the unauthorized, so-called software utility DeCSS. Any person that has the DeCSS utility can use it to break the copy protection on DVDs making it possible for motion pictures in DVD format to be decrypted and illegally copied onto a computer’s hard-drive for further distribution over the Internet or otherwise, in perfect, digital format. Other common circumvention devices include "black boxes" and other illegal signal theft devices and macrovision defeators. * The Law * Online piracy is covered by the same laws that govern other forms of piracy. In addition, the US government recently amended federal copyright statutes to specifically address Internet copyright issues and enhance the protection of Intellectual Property online through the No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act) and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). For more information on online film piracy, please see the MPAA web page section "Protecting Copyright in the Courts". *VIDEOCASSETTE PIRACY* Videocassette piracy is the illegal duplication, distribution, rental or sale of copyrighted videocassettes. In recent years, the MPAA/MPA shifted its investigative focus onto the illicit duplicating facilities or "laboratories" that are set-up to create and distribute pirated videocassettes. These facilities are often times capable of producing hundreds of thousands of illegal videocassette copies each year. These copies are then distributed to a variety of outlets including swap meets, co-operating video dealers and street vendors. The pirate product is often packaged in counterfeit videocassette boxes that resemble legitimate packaging. *Camcording:* Pirates use hand-held video cameras to record motion picture films off of theater screens and then copy these films onto blank videocassettes and optical discs for illegal distribution. These illicit copies are not only distributed to pirates in the US, but also shipped overseas and distributed through illegal channels even before the film’s international theatrical release. * * *Screeners:* Illegal copies are sometimes made from legitimate advance copies used for screening and marketing purposes. * * *Back-to-back Copying:* A "back-to-back" copy is a pirate videocassette made by connecting two VCRs and then copying an original video onto a blank cassette. * Identifying an Illegal Video * The absence of any of a series of indicators can help point to pirated cassettes, including: the lack of special markings on the plastic cassette, low quality labeling, tape length that does not correspond to the film’s running time, or the absence of special colored gates on the cassette. Most importantly, pirate videocassettes are ALWAYS of inferior quality to an original. Consumers are cheated into purchasing sometimes shoddy, unwatchable product where the sound is garbled and the graphics are poor. Videocassettes can also be analyzed on special electronic equipment to determine if they are counterfeit as well as to identify the source of the piracy. * THEATRICAL PRINT THEFT * Theft of a 35 or 16 mm film print from a theater, film depot, courier service or other industry-related facility for the purpose of making illegal copies is one of the most serious forms of piracy. This type of theft allows the pirate to make a relatively high quality videotape from the theatrical print, which then serves as the master for the duplication of unauthorized videocassettes. Fortunately, this type of theft is extremely rare due to the difficulty in obtaining the prints illegally and also in transferring the print to another format, such as videocassette. * SIGNAL THEFT * Signal theft refers to the act of illegally tapping into cable TV systems as well as receiving satellite signals without authorization. In addition, pirates have made businesses out of supplying consumers with illegally tampered cable decoders or satellite descramblers. Internationally, the problem becomes more acute when programs not licensed to a particular country are pirated from satellites and then re-transmitted in that country either by cable or broadcast TV. * BROADCAST PIRACY * Like signal theft, broadcast piracy is also defined by piracy that occurs on over-the-air broadcasts. However, instead of stealing signals, the illegal act may be the on-air broadcasting of a bootleg videocassette of a film or the on-air showing of legitimate films or television programs *without permission from the copyright holder*. * PUBLIC PERFORMANCE * Unauthorized public performances refer to situations where an institution or commercial establishment shows a tape or film to its members or customers without receiving permission from the copyright owner. This includes "public performances" where an admission fee is charged as well as those that are simply offered as an additional service of the establishment. * PARALLEL IMPORTS * Parallel imports describes the importation of goods authorized for manufacture or distribution in the exporting country but imported without express authority of the copyright or trademark owner. (Parallel Importation may or may not be lawful under local laws). Generally parallel imports undercut the domestic market by being available prior to authorized release in that market. */_COPY PROTECTION TECHNOLOGIES _/* Many entertainment companies use copy protection technologies to protect their films against theft and some delivery systems for film content already use some form of copy protection, including DVDs (which use the Content Scrambling System), PPV, dedicated DSL set-top boxes, digital encryption encoding of satellite signals and videocassettes (which contain Macrovision). Copy protection benefits consumers as well as the industry because without these safeguards, the industry would not be able to release their high-quality digital content for fear of widespread and rampant piracy. For instance, with PPV, because of the copy protection, there is a level of assurance that the movies won’t be copied freely so movies are offered at a very reasonable price considering the cost of making the product. The motion picture industry has pursued those who distribute devices that break copy protection in any format. While no technology has yet proven foolproof, the industry continues to implement protection technologies which raise the threshold of difficulty and expense for the pirate and therefore help reduce piracy. */_ REGIONAL OVERVIEWS: _/* * NORTH AMERICA * In 2000, approximately 350,000 illegal videocassettes and 4,000 VCRs were seized. To combat this problem, the MPAA initiates over 600 investigations into suspected piracy in the U.S. each year and at any one time has approximately 400 active cases. The MPAA maintains a toll-free anti-piracy Hotline number (1-800-NO-COPYS) in the U.S. for retailers and consumers to call if they suspect piracy. In addition, complaints can be directed to the MPAA email hotline at hotline at mpaa.org . The majority of camcording in theaters in the US is conducted out of the New York City area. In addition, this is where the majority of large-scale video laboratories are located. It is a violation of federal law (17 U.S.C. 106(1)) to distribute, rent or sell illegally duplicated copies, even if the copies are made by someone else (17 U.S.C. 106(3)). The Communications Act of 1934, as amended, (47 U.S.C. 605) and related statutes also prohibit the unauthorized reception of films via satellite or cable TV. Copyright infringement and violation of the Communications Act are felonies under federal law and carry maximum sentences of up to five years in jail and/or a $250,000 fine. Both laws also provide for copyright owners to seek civil damages. State laws relating to video piracy are not copyright laws per se. However, various states have so-called "truth-in-labeling" laws and other statutes that can be effectively used to prosecute film and video pirates. Forty-five states have "True Name and Address" statutes which can be used to combat video piracy. These laws impose criminal penalties for the rental or sale of video cassettes that do not bear the true name and address of the manufacturer. Video pirates who fail to identify themselves as the "manufacturer" of illegally duplicated cassettes violate these statutes. In some states these laws are currently first offense misdemeanors and the MPAA is seeking legislation to upgrade the violations to felonies. * ASIA/PACIFIC * The MPA operates anti-piracy programs in 13 countries in the Asia/Pacific region, estimating that its Member Companies lost in excess of $718 million in potential revenue regionally in 2003. The predominant piracy threat in Asia-Pacific is optical disc piracy, with hundreds of millions of illegal optical discs being produced, many of which are exported to other parts of the world. In 2003, 84 percent of pirate optical discs seized globally were seized in the Asia/Pacific region. This included 98 percent of pirate VCDs and 75 percent of pirate DVDs. Recently, syndicates of pirates producing and distributing smaller volumes of illegal DVD-Rs – the region’s fastest growing pirate format – from homes and/or small business premises have emerged as a difficult-to-detect and growing problem. An even greater concern is the connection in this part of the world of organized crime to pirate syndicates, which makes battling optical disc piracy more difficult, and dangerous. In 2003, the MPA operations in the Asia-Pacific region investigated nearly 15,500 cases of piracy and assisted law enforcement officials in conducting nearly 13,000 raids. These activities resulted in the seizure of approximately 44 million illegal optical discs, and the initiation of almost 9,100 legal actions. Notable hubs for optical disc piracy in Asia/Pacific include China, Malaysia and Taiwan. China’s piracy rate is among the highest in the world, at 95 percent, and has increased in each of the past three years. Losses of potential revenue to MPA Member Companies last year due to piracy were $178 million and losses of potential revenue over the past three years were in excess of $500 million. Although China’s leadership has pledged to significantly reduce piracy, enforcement and local government will are lagging behind. Malaysia, while still a leading source of exported pirate optical discs to other countries, is making strides in its fight against copyright theft. Recently, the country’s copyright law has been strengthened, with criminal penalties increased and enforcement officers given the power to arrest suspected copyright thieves. In 2003, enforcement officers conducted 12 surprise factory raids and more than 2,700 combined anti-piracy raids, resulting in the seizure of more than 2.8 million illegal discs. In Taiwan, while the Taiwanese authorities have made positive developments in enforcement, particularly raids against optical disc factories, these efforts must be sustained and extended to other areas of enforcement, particularly the Internet. Taiwan needs to accomplish more in the area of legislation for optical disc licensing and the control of optical disc manufacturing equipment. Recent amendments to Taiwan’s Copyright Law raise fines, increase jail sentences and appear to be a step in the right direction, but the language passed by the Legislative Yuan is substantially weaker than had previously been approved by the Executive Yuan and is deemed insufficient by industry representatives. Minimum penalties were deleted, significantly reducing deterrence. The 2003 amendments also failed to extend any protection against the circumvention of Technological Protection Measures, which are essential for the proper development of e-commerce and content on the Internet. Legislation that would have remedied these deficiencies and others failed to be enacted prior to the closure of the latest legislative session in June 2004 and remains pending. It will be important to ensure that effective further legislative amendments are completed, that enforcement is achieved from the perspective of the rights holders and that regular monitoring is used to keep the process on track. Technologically sophisticated Japan and Korea represent the future of piracy in Asia, since high broadband Internet penetration in those countries permits computer users to download copies of films via peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Japan is leading the region in the fight against P2P piracy, having launched prosecutions against the developer of a P2P network and several network users. In Australia, increasing broadband penetration, together with consumer willingness to download illegal films presents a growing challenge. This challenge is being addressed through a focus on consumer awareness campaigns and a strong push for changes in legislation facilitated by the recent Australia-US Free Trade Agreement. In Australia the industry has worked successfully with Customs to slow the tide of manufactured illegal discs entering the country from Asia, and is working with the police to address the corresponding increase in DVD-R burning and distribution of illegal discs, most openly at market stalls around the country. Persistent parallel importation of film industry products, especially DVDs, also adversely effects the legitimate theatrical and video markets in Australia and provides a ready source of ‘masters’ for illegal burning operations, * EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA (EMEA) * The MPA operates 31 anti-piracy programs in this region. Traditional video piracy remains the major problem in the region despite increased seizures of pirated optical discs and the rapid spread of pirate activities on the Internet. Turkey now faces the largest pirate VCD problem in Europe. The problem has moved from one of exclusively imported products to a situation where pirate VCDs are also being produced in-country. Turkey's legislation, enforcement mechanisms and court system are inadequate to curb pervasive piracy. To compound matters, a general amnesty in April, 2000, nullified all 174 criminal cases that had been initiated against pirates following pre-April 1999 raids. On the policy level, the European Parliament is undertaking an important examination of new threats to the legitimate audiovisual sector including optical disc piracy and Internet piracy. The MPA looks forward to expeditious action by the EU on providing the necessary framework to fight piracy in these new forms. In addition, the MPA continues to fight for speedy ratification and implementation of the WIPO treaties and TRIPs standards. Internet piracy is currently most notable in Germany, while "Smartcard" and "black boxes" present acute problems for the legitimate cable industries in the UK and other parts of Europe. In addition, despite recent progress, Russia continues to have one of the worst piracy situations in the world. In 2000, the Russian Anti-Piracy Organization seized over 655,000 pirate videocassettes and over 171,000 pirate CD-ROMs containing films in MPEG4 format. These seizures point to sophisticated organized criminal groups controlling the duplication and distribution of pirate product. Russia has continued to do little to address wholly inadequate criminal enforcement against copyright infringers. The Middle East has traditionally been plagued by inadequate sentencing for copyright violations. However, the MPA has noticed that some Middle Eastern Governments have been taking such violations more seriously. * LATIN AMERICA * The MPA operates anti-piracy programs in 14 countries in Latin America. Video piracy continues to be the main source of piracy in this region. In many countries piracy is linked to organized crime units, thus complicating piracy investigations and enforcement. Brazil, the largest market in the region, also has one of the highest piracy rates, with piracy losses topping $120 million in 1999. It is the position of the MPA that the Brazilian Government has, to date, demonstrated inadequate commitment and attention towards protection of Intellectual Property rights. Signal theft is common in many Latin American territories, while Internet piracy has not yet posed a real threat due to lack of bandwidth in the region. From keith at thememorybank.co.uk Fri Sep 3 13:49:38 2004 From: keith at thememorybank.co.uk (Keith Hart) Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2004 10:19:38 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Guardian Unlimited: Daring to dream In-Reply-To: <20040903034343.21343.qmail@webmail32.rediffmail.com> References: <20040903034343.21343.qmail@webmail32.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <4138291A.7020700@thememorybank.co.uk> Sanjay, Passing over the ethics and politics of personal publishing on the net, there are important matters of judgment about the composition and future of world society at stake in the piece you posted. Now you have revealed that you admire aspects of the European experiment and would like to counter Europhobia in Britain. And you don't think India is a superpower or is likely to be one soon. I doubt if you are in a minority in that respect. Indian history is the sea you swim in, so it is hard for you to see the ancient roots of your society all around you. I understand why the West and especially the British had to locate the origin of ancient civilisation in the region of their holy land, but I find it astonishing that India's independent intelligentsia have not done more to restore a perspective on the ancient world where India assumes its rightful place as the earliest and dominant civilization and the Indian Ocean is seen for what it was, the matrix of early long-distance commerce until really quite recently. Why was India the source of many of the world's principal religion's and is still home to most of them? Gandhi drew heavily on the cultural residue of this history in forging his own synthesis of Western and Eastern thought and offended the narrower Hindus in the process. The Commonwealth, relic of the British empire, is the largest voluntary association of states in the world and it is obvious that Indians could be its active leaders, if they wanted. The question is what will become of the Anglo-Indian superstate that dominated the 19th century world, especially now that English is the common language of the network of networks? Information services are not secondary -- they are by far the largest sector of the world economy, including finance, education, media, entertainment, b2b commerce etc and the market share of material production is dwindling. My novel is a thought experiment in which our world is transposed to the 24th century with one important change, the superpowers are Asian not Western, based on a switch in the location of global production that is already evident in manufactures and may become so for services. The world revolution of 2017 comes about when India, reconciled with Pakistan and thus with the Islamic world, moves with China into a more assertive role in the Middle East. The last American helicopter leaves the roof of the embassy in Baghdad and a new state of Palestine is established. The Islamic world subsequently enjoys a renaissance, but global hegemony reinforces the territorial integrity and size of the two new superpowers. Although the overthrow of rule by the white men in suits was hailed at the time as a liberation for the young, poor, darker people of the world, it soon shakes down into another round of capitalist imperialism, with China and India uneasily sharing dominance of global governing institutions. The South remains excluded. The Americans and the Europeans fulfil the network prophecy for political disintegration and end up having to turn to religion in compensation for their fragmented impotence. A religious movement loosely based on Christianity arises to resist the Indo-Chinese empire in self-conscious imitation of Gibbon's scenario for Rome's decline. My narrator, a time-travelling (this is after all the century of Star Trek) historian at Mumbai Cosmopolitan University called Muni Subrahmanya, would not be out of place in a right-wing American think tank today -- the intellectuals having long ago exchanged subaltern for boss status. The question is not whether this is an accurate prediction of the future, but whether it allows us to look at the class structure and movement of world society today through different spectacles than those provided by the current global establishment. So, no Sanjay, I .don't suppose that an Asian superpower would behave much differently from those we already have, since capitalism has not finished its task of bringing cheap commodities to every corner of the world. But there are definite cultural possibilities in such a shift and I aim to explore them in my novel. Keith From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Sep 3 17:02:55 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 17:02:55 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Breaking news: North Ossetia school siege - Your views... In-Reply-To: <20040903105811.8B4DA103AF@io.powweb.com> References: <20040903105811.8B4DA103AF@io.powweb.com> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: greatreporter.com From: greatreporter.com Here in the UK, major channels have cut programming to provide live coverage of the unfolding events as the Russian authorities storm the complex. What's going on in other people's countries? The pictures are so shocking and the commentary so frantic and speculative it can only be compared to the breaking images of the second trade tower burning in NY. A very interesting point made by Russian commentators on the BBC channels is a comparison to old Soviet control of news as Russian national news agencies are reporting that officials are in control of the school, where all other correspondents are reporting fighting and ongoing battles, with the pictures and audio to prove it. What's your coverage like? And how are your news organisations using technology to give you the newest updates? Here we've got Live feeds, streaming audio via SatPhone and interactive TV loops of different events so far... Tell us what's happening where you are and what your feelings on coverage are... Comment here: http://www.greatreporter.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=289 - greatreporter.com Staff From shivamvij at gmail.com Sat Sep 4 18:50:11 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Sat, 4 Sep 2004 18:50:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] HC rejects suit to legalise homosexuality Message-ID: HC rejects suit to legalise homosexuality Friday September 3 2004 IANS NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Thursday dismissed a public interest petition seeking the legalisation of homosexuality in the country. Dismissing the petition, a division bench of judges B.C. Patel and B.D. Ahmad said that since no cause of action had arisen, a suit could not be filed just to test the validity of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which prohibits voluntary unnatural sex. Naaz Foundation, a NGO working to create awareness about AIDS among sex workers in the capital, had filed the petition. The NGO had sought the repeal of the penal provision, saying it violated Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the constitution relating to equality before law and prohibition of discrimination on grounds of sex among other things. The government, however, opposed the petition on the ground that if the penal provision were repealed, it would promote delinquent sexual behaviour in society. The central government's counsel said the Law Commission too had considered this issue and ruled out the repeal of the provision. He further said that Section 377 had been inserted in the law book to prevent child sex abuse and to remove lacunae in the rape law. From keith at thememorybank.co.uk Sat Sep 4 19:15:49 2004 From: keith at thememorybank.co.uk (Keith Hart) Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2004 15:45:49 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Guardian Unlimited: Daring to dream In-Reply-To: <20040904064346.31621.qmail@webmail27.rediffmail.com> References: <20040904064346.31621.qmail@webmail27.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <4139C70D.2070807@thememorybank.co.uk> Sanjay, I know that food, clothing and shelter are basic needs and that an obscene proportion of humanity lacks adequate supplies of them. In a recent article, 'The political economy of food in an unequal world' http://www.thememorybank.co.uk/papers/polecon_food, I tried to show that western dominance of global food markets was the principal obstacle to the development of poor countries and the lynchpin of a racist international division of labour. Textliles, stimulants and construction are always the lead sectors in the early stages of capitalist development. But the market for information services is huge and growing. Yesterday, in an anti-piracy tract issued by the Motion Picture Association posted to this list, they claimed that "the US motion picture industry loses in excess of $3 billion annually in potential world revenue due to piracy". Imagine how much they make, if this is what they lost. The coercive system of intellectual property rights and most of the asociated legal action is designed to protect rents extracted from this sector, after the drugs industry of course. There would not be so much anxiety in the western media about the loss of 'middle class' jobs to India and elsewhere, if this were not a strategic area for contemporary capital. I agree that priorities look different from the opposite end of the economic scale. But it might pay Africans to try to sell more cultural products that they already excel in, such as music, rather than competeer in overcrowded world markets for raw materials. I hold no brief for the British empire. Indeed I left Britain because my countrymen appear to be incapable of waking up from their long post-imperial hangover. I was simply drawing attention to India's strategic centrality to the global political economy of the 19th century. In 1870, 17 out of 20 British civil servants worked in India. The other European powers did everything they could to break the link between the two places. The Suez canal was built to strengthen it. And the Commonwealth is a considerable organization that, in my view, could benefit from more active Indian leadership. If in the 20th century the peoples forced to join world society by western imperialism fought back to claim at least their nominal independence, India has played a leading role in that movement and could play an even bigger one. My 'fantasy' explores a scenario in which your country throws its weight around rather more than it has so far. Do we all depend on the American electorate or, to bring us back to the origin of this exchange, the European Union, to save us from global fascism? Keith www.thememorybank.co.uk sanjay ghosh wrote: >Dear Keith, > >You haven't even remotely offended me. I broadly agree with the 'content' of your Rifkin critique. Vaguely repeating myself again, I think we should nourish positive thoughts and not let our egos get in the way of the content. I see myself as a vehicle for an idea, ideas are much bigger than people. > >You seem to have a very evolved projection / fantasy of the future. Even if the drift of manufacturing centres don't dent the western domination, negative population growth would certainly do the white race in. My views and projections are rather down to earth. I personally don't think very highly of the 'Anglo-Indian superstate'. I think it was an exploitative arrangement and whatever merits we assign to it it postumously, were essentially unmanageable side effects. > >The relevant part of my 'ancient roots' were essentially spiritual. I think 7-8 centuries of foreign domination and one bad social experiment (caste structuring) has completely destroyed the 'great' part of the great ancient Indian civilisation. At least it has been wiped out of the public space. The best parts have gone underground and only surface posturings remain visible. As regarding the religion that this place (unlike 'religions') brought to this world, I think it's present form is a cruel joke. This doesn't mean that other religions are in any better state. We live in a world where Bush Jr is setting the standards for 'christian values'. External posturings have become so overwhelming that the spiritual component of religion has completely vapourised. In these circumstances, the 'material world' intellectuals can't even figure what we've lost. That's why I say we live in the ghost of an ancient civilisation. > >My benchmark for information services is that you can't eat information. Indian primary standards are 'roti, kapta. makaan' (bread, clothing, shelter) of which the last 2 are essentially the same. You can live without information but you can't live without food, even shelter. > >Best of luck with your book. >Sanjay > > > From eye at ranadasgupta.com Sun Sep 5 18:23:17 2004 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 18:23:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] George Bush: the contradictory conservative Message-ID: <413B0C3D.7090708@ranadasgupta.com> Excellent article from The Economist assessing impact of Bush administration. R The contradictory conservative Aug 26th 2004 | WASHINGTON, DC From The Economist print edition Despite the narrowness of his mandate, George Bush has done more to alter America's profile abroad, and its government at home, than any president in years NEXT weekend, the Republicans, meeting in New York, will anoint George Bush as their candidate for a second term. His approval ratings in his own party stand at around 86%. Among Democrats, they run at around 8%. Few presidents have been loved and loathed as heartily as Mr Bush; few have so starkly polarised the country; and few have done so much to change both the way America's government behaves at home, and the way it is perceived abroad. The Bush presidency has proved a radical unsettling force, from AIDS policy in Africa to education reform at home; in different ways, for good and ill, it has undermined the rulers of both Saudi Arabia and San Francisco. Rather than offering a compendium of all that Mr Bush has achieved, this special report will focus on three projects that history may eventually judge the most controversial: the alleged “revolution” in foreign policy, the pursuit of big-government conservatism and the dramatic expansion of presidential powers. These may not prove the deciding factors in the coming election; but they may be the ones that resonate longest. Begin with foreign policy. Mr Bush has had a bigger impact on diplomacy than any president since Harry Truman. After the second world war, Truman set up the system of alliances that ensured the Soviet threat would be contained and American leadership of the West would continue after Europe recovered. Ronald Reagan turned Truman's creation into more of a public challenge to what the Soviet Union stood for, but he did not fundamentally alter its structure. Mr Bush did. After the end of the cold war—long after, in fact—he argued that the old world order had run its course. He rejected both a supposed cornerstone—the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty—and some later additions, such as the Kyoto accords and the International Criminal Court, both also rejected by Congress. But Mr Bush's foreign-policy revolution actually came in two steps. The rejection of the treaties was the first and, since it came to terms with a geopolitical fact, the Soviet collapse, it may well prove the more lasting. The second step came only after the September 11th attacks, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In response to the atrocity, NATO for the first time invoked its article 5 provision that an attack on one member is an attack on all, signalling a willingness to help America militarily. The Bush administration was slow to pick up the offer. “Coalitions of the willing” took the place of traditional alliances. Then, in Iraq, Mr Bush put his doctrine of prevention and possible pre-emption into effect. In an age of global terror, this said, self-defence meant acting alone and pre-emptively, if need be. Working through the United Nations—ie, waiting for others—could be suicide. These two steps obviously had much in common. Both said that treaties can constrain America's freedom of action and that, when they do, they should be ignored. Both imply that the exercise of power alone may be enough to achieve American aims. Still, the second step went beyond the first. It proposed new rules for going to war and a substitute for traditional alliances—the willing coalitions. Over the past few weeks, however, these additions have begun to look shaky. Is the Bush revolution in foreign affairs reaching its limits? It may be. In May 2003, on the flight-deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, Mr Bush argued that once upon a time, “military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation. Today we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime.” Experience in Iraq contradicts that optimism, or at least suggests that “freeing a nation” requires more than just bringing down a troublesome regime. Legitimacy, it turns out, matters. It does not spring up spontaneously if American motives are pure, as some in the administration have argued. And coalitions of the willing do little to confer legitimacy. Moreover, as Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and Jim Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations have argued, the doctrine of pre-emption supposes that the intelligence services will be good enough to warn America of threats before they are realised. The catalogue of errors is not reassuring on this point. Lastly, problems in Iraq have strained the unstable coalition that is Mr Bush's foreign-policy team. Neo-conservatives, who argue that America's destiny is to spread democracy round the world, are losing influence. The world-view of assertive nationalists (notably Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defence), who say military might will be enough to deter America's enemies, has not been dethroned. But it has been weakened, and their unilateralist instincts look more problematic. The “soft power” diplomats—Colin Powell and the State Department—have become more important. All this raises questions about support for Mr Bush's foreign policy even within his own cabinet. As if to confirm the doubts, the past few months have seen a new look. Having handed over sovereignty to the Iraqis and got the Security Council's blessing, as it always meant to, America has also asked Europeans to endorse its “Broader Middle East Initiative” and appealed to NATO to help train Iraqi troops. The big question now is whether these changes are part of a profound reappraisal of American foreign policy, or whether they are just tactical adjustments to recent difficulties. The honest answer is that it is too early to be sure. But the changes are probably tactical. Despite the presence of heavyweights in his cabinet, Mr Bush has always been the author of America's foreign-policy transformation, and he has repeatedly denied any new change of course. This is not to be discounted; in foreign affairs, the president has usually signalled what he is planning to do very clearly. It is true that Iraq has raised doubts about the doctrine of prevention and pre-emption. But the debate has shown that the alternative “rules for going to war” are, from America's viewpoint, far worse. This is the claim, particularly espoused by France and Germany, that, except in the case of actual attack or imminent threat, countries cannot use military force legitimately without the approval of the Security Council. No American president would ever accept, or has ever accepted, such an idea. If others insist that the alternative to unilateralism is the UN, America will stick with unilateralism. Most important, the underlying rationale of Mr Bush's transformed policy has not really changed. This is that there is a huge gap in military power between America and everyone else, that the country has opportunities denied to anyone else and that traditional alliances are therefore useful rather than necessary. Iraq has shown that the exercise of American power is harder than the administration thought; but the exercise of power is still what matters most to Mr Bush. In that sense, his foreign policy is being refined, not retooled. Mr Bush once campaigned as a proponent of a “humble” foreign policy. In practice, he has not provided one. On the domestic front, he has been equally surprising. And despite the narrowness of his mandate, he has proved as polarising at home as he is abroad. Consider, next, the peculiar character of the president's domestic conservatism. A big-government guy This is one of the most conservative politicians ever to inhabit the White House. Mr Bush has fed red meat to the various groups that make up the conservative coalition—opposition to abortion, gay marriage and stem-cell research for social conservatives; the invasion of Iraq for neo-conservatives; tax-breaks and deregulation for business conservatives. He has driven liberals stark raving bonkers. “Among the worst presidents in US history,” proclaimed Jonathan Chait in the New Republic. “Incomparably more dangerous than Reagan or any other president in this nation's history,” wrote Harold Meyerson in the American Prospect. But exactly what sort of conservative is Mr Bush? Ever since Barry Goldwater's quixotic bid for the White House in 1964, American conservatism has been a small-government philosophy. Ronald Reagan regarded government as the problem rather than the solution, and therefore shrank social programmes. Newt Gingrich's troops assaulted not just Lyndon Johnson's Great Society but also a pillar of FDR's New Deal, the welfare system. Mr Bush's track-record has been very different. While cutting taxes in a dramatic way that Mr Reagan would surely have applauded, he has relentlessly expanded both the scale and scope of central government—in order to advance the conservative cause. Mr Bush has tried to preside over the birth of a new political philosophy: big-government conservatism. The Bush presidency has seen the biggest increase in discretionary spending since his fellow Texan, Johnson, was in the White House (see chart 1). In his first term, according to the 2005 budget, total federal spending will rise by 29%, more than triple the rate of increase in Bill Clinton's second term. The Bush administration raised spending on education from $36 billion in 2001 to $63 billion in 2004, a 75% increase; it has also pushed through the biggest expansion of Medicare, the federal health-care plan for the old, since the programme was created in the 1960s. More people now work for the federal government than at any time in history. It could be argued that the expansion of government under Mr Bush is the unfortunate consequence of events, particularly the September 11th attacks. The terrorist threat more or less forced the government to create a giant new homeland-security apparatus, which Mr Bush at first opposed. Mr Bush has promised conservatives that he will try to get spending under control; the 2005 budget envisions domestic discretionary spending rising by only 0.5% and calls for the abolition of 65 federal programmes, saving $4.9 billion. Not just homeland security Yet this argument seems unconvincing. The war on terror accounts for only part of the increase in government spending. As for Mr Bush's promise that he will eventually get spending under control, the White House has already embraced commitments that could keep government growing for years. On some estimates, the Medicare bill alone could end up costing $2 trillion in its second decade. Mr Bush's big-government conservatism goes beyond a mere blind response to events. During the 2000 campaign, he made it clear that he had a different attitude to government from his fellow conservatives. He sang the praises of “focused, effective and energetic government”. Rather than calling for the abolition of the Department of Education, like the rest of his fellow conservatives, he called for its expansion. He even had a good word to say about Johnson's Great Society. Mr Bush's big-government conservatism also goes beyond a mere willingness to spend public money. He has reversed a long-standing Republican commitment to decentralisation by giving the federal government a greater role in setting education standards than it has ever had before. He has also reversed a long-standing Republican suspicion of government bossiness by trying to use government to promote conservative values. The Education Department is promoting abstinence in sex education. The Department of Health and Human Services is trying to use the welfare system to advocate the virtues of marriage and responsible fatherhood. John Ashcroft's Justice Department has ridden over states' rights to prosecute people who believe in assisted suicide and the medical use of marijuana. Where has all this come from? Mr Bush turned to big-government conservatism as an antidote to growing problems of the small-government kind. As the 1990s wore on, Mr Gingrich and his merry band increasingly tried America's patience with their bomb-throwing radicalism. The middle classes had been happy to advocate tough love for the poor, but they were much less happy when the tough love involved cuts to Medicare or student loans. Not unfairly, Mr Bush calculated that making peace with government was the only way to re-endear conservatism to the middle class. Many of his fervent supporters regarded tax cuts as their highest priority: cuts that Mr Bush duly delivered. But many elements in the conservative coalition also looked to government to solve their problems. Business people wanted the government to subsidise their industries at home and promote their interests abroad. Corporate America had been calling for educational reform for years. Social conservatives were keen on using government to promote “virtue” or eradicate “vice” (from assisted suicide to pot-smoking), a position highly attractive to a president who starts every cabinet meeting with a prayer. The White House and the Republican majority in Congress worked assiduously to shower government largesse on Republican-leaning interest groups. Agricultural legislation involved a huge give-away to agribusiness; prescription-drugs legislation provided a bonanza for the pharmaceutical industry. The neo-conservative intelligentsia has played as vital a role in promoting big-government conservatism as it did in promoting the Iraq war. Irving Kristol, the godfather of neo-conservatism, sees the growth of the state as “natural, indeed inevitable”. His son Bill uses his Weekly Standard magazine to lead a crusade to replace “leave-us-alone conservatism” with “national-greatness conservatism”. Mr Kristol and his supporters argue that “wishing to be left alone isn't a governing doctrine”, and that loving your country while hating its government is not a sustainable philosophical position. Besides, there is no need to hate government if it is in the right (Republican) hands. A lasting philosophy? The most compelling argument in favour of Mr Bush's policies is that he is doing more than just expanding government. He is increasingly tying public spending to competition and accountability. The No Child Left Behind Act, the most interesting reform of American education for a generation, uses a combination of national standards and standardised testing to measure children's progress: if too many children in a particular school fail to hit the required standards, then parents have the right to move them elsewhere. The Medicare reforms have been a way of introducing medical savings accounts. The proposed individual investment accounts in Social Security (federal pensions) will give individuals more responsibility for managing their nest eggs. This emphasis on accountability explains why public-sector unions loathe Mr Bush, despite his big-spending ways. Yet attempts to introduce competition in schools or health care have not gone very far. There are good reasons to doubt whether the educational bureaucracy will ever have the guts to close down failing schools. The Bush administration signally failed to use the expansion of Medicare as a lever for introducing structural reforms, such as means-testing. Mr Bush's only real chance to build choice into the heart of a government programme lies in his mooted Social Security reforms. Even if these programmes can be made to work, big-government conservatism undoubtedly has drawbacks. The new creed's biggest problem is simple: if you cut taxes deeply while increasing spending lavishly, you end up with a gigantic deficit. This newspaper is not about to argue that cutting taxes is wrong in principle: the Republican Party's instinct that it is better to leave money in voters' pockets than to give it to bureaucrats has been one of its most attractive features. But big, persistent budget deficits also put a burden on people. If the Republicans continue to tax like a small-government party and spend like a big-government one, deficits could average $500 billion a year for the next decade—an alarming prospect. Mr Bush should be preparing for the retirement of the huge baby-boomer generation. Nor is big-government conservatism the political cure-all that it might seem. It is alienating big chunks of the Republican coalition. Libertarians don't want to be told whether they can smoke pot by Mr Ashcroft. Old-fashioned conservatives don't want to see Washington extending its power over local schools. And good-government types don't want to see the deficit balloon out of control. Senator John McCain has reprimanded Mr Bush for failing to use his veto to control a Congress which is spending money “like a drunken sailor”. Rush Limbaugh has complained that Mr Bush's legacy may be the greatest increase in domestic spending, and one of the greatest setbacks to liberty, in modern times. “This may be compassionate”, says Mr Limbaugh, “but it is not conservatism at all.” A third problem lies with unintended consequences. Forty years ago, the founding fathers of neo-conservatism criticised the Great Society on the grounds that its soaring intentions often produced bad results: rent control reduces the availability of affordable housing, for example. The biggest unintended consequence of Mr Bush's efforts may be that big-government conservatism morphs into big-government liberalism. Government is by its nature a knife that cuts to the left, in part because government employees tend to be on the left, in part because government programmes promote dependency. Rather than twisting government to conservative ends, the Republicans may simply be creating yet more ammunition for future Democratic administrations. Mr Bush is nothing if not ambitious. If his new philosophy endures, he will be a transformative figure in the history of the modern conservative movement. If it fails, he will be seen as a domestic policymaker who doomed himself by ignoring the central insight of the revolution that began with Goldwater: that the essence of conservatism lies in shrinking government. Mr Bush's presidency has been radical not only in what he has tried to do, but in the way he has gone about doing it. His term has seen an extraordinary change in style. Partly by his own efforts, partly as a result of underlying forces, he has increased the power of the presidency at the expense of other branches of government. This is the third great project of his presidency, the least noticed outside Washington, DC, and perhaps the most worrying. Imperium revisited Mr Bush came to office arguing that restrictions on presidential authority, especially since Watergate, had harmed decision-making. The implication is that good government requires a certain period of privacy in which officials can thrash out policies. The public should judge only the result. In 2002, his vice-president, Dick Cheney, said, “I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job.” He said he and Mr Bush had talked about the need to “pass on our offices in better shape than we found them to our successors.” They have succeeded, after a fashion, but at a heavy cost. Unified government, with the administration and Congress under the same party's control, tends to boost presidential authority anyway—the more so this time, as the Republican Party is fairly disciplined. Tom DeLay, the majority leader in the House of Representatives, has defined his job simply: “How do I advance the president's agenda?” The party's narrow majority keeps troops in line. Lest there be any backsliding, Mr Bush's personal campaigning in the 2002 mid-term elections reminded congressmen and senators of their interest in keeping on good terms with him. More important, wars always increase the powers of the executive branch. Because it has implications for America's domestic freedoms, the war on terror may well end up increasing executive power more than most. But Mr Bush's ambitions have gone beyond what these underlying forces make inevitable. One measure of his ambition was the claim of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department (the administration's main source of legal advice), made in August 2002, that the president's authority as commander-in-chief was in effect unlimited in the conduct of a war. As the legal opinion put it, he “enjoys complete discretion in the exercise of his commander-in-chief authority.” This claim showed how expansive Mr Bush's view of his powers could be. No former president had gone that far. In fact, it was too far. The Supreme Court said the constitution did not warrant such a reading and struck down the policy based on it: holding detainees from the war in Afghanistan without charge. But the case was unusual only in that the high court overruled Mr Bush. More commonly, he has had his way. The most important check on a president's authority is Congress, formally the sovereign power. To see how Mr Bush and his allies have treated the legislature, consider the Medicare bill. In January 2003, the White House sent Congress a proposal for reform of the health-care system. The price tag, it said, was $400 billion. The real cost was $534 billion. Medicare's chief actuary was told not to answer congressional questions on pain of dismissal. After the House and Senate passed different versions of the proposal, the Republicans began work to reconcile the two. They refused to let five of the Democrats nominated to the process take part in deliberations—and rewrote the bill. Even then, they fell short of a majority when voting began, at 3am. Defying precedent, the House leadership held the vote open for three hours while arms were twisted. The bill finally passed just before 6am. Norm Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, called it the ugliest breach of congressional standards in modern history. Making laws has always been like making sausages (don't look closely). When the Democrats were in charge, they did not always run Congress as prescribed in the civics textbooks. Some of Congress's hallowed traditions could do with pruning, especially the power of committees. But the Republicans have put forward none of this in mitigation. Instead, they have claimed, in essence, that the ends justify the means. Mr Bush, they say, has pushed big tax cuts and education and health-care reforms through a closely divided, bitterly partisan institution. The alternative to such strong-arm tactics was legislative gridlock, which, they argue, would have been worse. Even if you think the ends are good, the means have inflicted institutional harm on Congress. The committee system for amending bills has all but collapsed. Bills are now written by the leaders and their staffs, in concert with the White House. Debate is often cut off: many controversial measures are voted on under a “closed rule”, which bars amendments. The conference stage, when different versions of a bill are reconciled, has been turned from an occasion for compromise into yet another opportunity for partisan gain. Sometimes the conference committee does not meet at all. Sometimes Republicans have ignored the rule that says the committee can only iron out differences, and have fundamentally altered bills at the last minute. The budget process is in tatters. Dozing watchdogs As for Congress's other main job—oversight of the administration—that has declined too, with a few exceptions (the Senate Armed Services Committee held useful hearings on the Abu Ghraib scandal). Serious investigation has been left to special commissions, such as the one that looked into the September 11th attacks. The responsibility for this lies largely with congressional Republicans: they are reluctant to investigate one of their own. But Mr Bush has not exactly shown deference to Congress's oversight role. The White House refused to let Tom Ridge, the head of homeland security, testify in 2002. It declared it would not answer questions from Democrats on budget committees. Mr Bush refused to testify before the 9/11 commission. In all these cases, the administration finally backed down. But at a time of dramatic change, the watchdogs of Congress have been dozing. Congressional oversight is at the heart of the administration's claim that excessive intrusiveness is harming executive decision-making. The cause célèbre in this case was the new energy policy. When Democrats attempted to force the vice-president to reveal whom he had met while formulating an energy bill, Mr Cheney refused, arguing that the constitution protects the president and vice-president from congressional attempts to reveal details of their deliberations. As the solicitor-general argued to the Supreme Court, “Congress may neither intrude on the president's ability to perform these [deliberative] functions, nor authorise private litigants to use the court to do so.” On this occasion, Mr Cheney prevailed. His victory will encourage future administrations. But the administration has not stopped there. The power of the president is limited not only by the might of Congress but by a host of smaller laws and administrative rules: freedom-of-information requests, the power to classify documents, and civil-service procedures. Partly in response to domestic security worries, the discretionary power of the executive has increased substantially in these areas. The best-known examples come from the Patriot Act, which boosted law-enforcement powers and surveillance. That act, at least, was passed by Congress and is subject to congressional review. More commonly, the administration has increased its powers by asserting them. Soon after September 11th, Mr Ashcroft issued new guidelines on freedom-of-information requests. The attorney-general reversed the Clinton-era policy of rejecting such requests only if to allow them would cause “substantial harm”. Public-interest groups complain that requests are now often denied, even over matters that seem to have nothing to do with security, such as pollution or car safety. According to figures from the National Archives, around 44m documents were classified in the first two years of the current administration—as many as in the whole of Mr Clinton's second term. More officials—including, for some reason, the secretary of agriculture—have been given the power to classify materials. This is more than just a response to September 11th. Mr Bush has issued an executive order overturning the rule that presidential papers are automatically declassified 12 years after presidents leave office; instead, he said, former presidents could decide whether to disclose their papers during their lifetimes, and the incumbent president would also have power of review. In the details A subset of this reaction against scrutiny is the use of what might be called government by small print: slipping additions into law at the last minute or tinkering with the wording of rules that implement laws. As a recent series in the Washington Post argued, such changes often appear minor but can have a big impact. By changing the word “waste” to “fill” in a rule governing coal-mining, for instance, the administration allowed an increase in strip-mining in West Virginia. By adding two sentences about scientific evidence to an unrelated budget bill, it gave itself increased authority to rule in regulatory disputes. Perhaps the most disturbing way in which the administration has increased its power has been through its public-relations machine. Thomas Jefferson said long ago that a well-informed electorate is the most important constraint on government. By issuing partial and sometimes misleading information, the Bush administration has hampered such scrutiny. Consider for instance the arguments for tax cuts. Here, Mr Bush made claims about the cost of the cuts and their distributional impact that he should have known were misleading. In 2000, he claimed the first round of cuts would cost $1.6 trillion over ten years, a quarter of the budget surplus at that point. On his own figures, the share was a third, not a quarter, and he arrived at the figure only through outrageous accounting gimmicks that he is now campaigning to forbid. He also asserted that the cuts would provide “the greatest help for those most in need”, providing a Treasury study to back up his claim. In the past, Treasury studies have been impartial. But this one arrived at its conclusion by leaving out the parts of the tax cut that most benefited the wealthiest (such as the repeal of the estate tax). By any normal measure, the tax cuts have been regressive—hardly “the greatest help for those most in need”. Taking facts out of context, politicising government studies and presenting anomalous examples as typical are hardly unique to the Bush administration. But they still do damage. The system of checks and balances—indeed, democracy itself—requires voters to be able to understand the impact of actions taken on their behalf, so they can apportion credit or blame fairly. If it is impossible to tell how much of the administration's arguments for war were vindicated or disproved, or who the tax cuts really helped, then proper public accounting is impossible. Beyond that, members of the administration have occasionally acted in ways that have discouraged public debate directly. In May 2002, the White House's communications director, Dan Bartlett, argued in the Washington Post that Democratic criticisms of administration actions before September 11th were “exactly what our opponents, our enemies, want us to do.” Mr Ashcroft had earlier conflated civil-liberties activists with terrorist sympathisers, telling Congress: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists.” All this came near to arguing that, after September 11th, debate itself could be treasonous. Mr Bush has frequently said that voters will give their verdict in November, and that he looks forward to it. But quadrennial elections are not the only means of restraining government. The genius of the American system is that administrations must work within a system of checks and balances. These checks have themselves been checked. Congress is the main competing source of power. It has become more like an adjunct to the administration. Information encourages public scrutiny. The flow has been reduced. The administration's actions are filtered through civil-service rules and procedures. The rules have been chopped and changed. A free press is essential to the working of democracy. Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, rejected that view, arguing “I don't believe you [the press] have a check-and-balance function.” On occasion, the administration has even crossed the line separating the interests of the state from the party by using taxpayers' money to finance advertising for the Medicare bill. Almost all governments bend the truth. This one has seldom resorted to outright falsehood; instead, the administration has manipulated public information and breached basic standards of political conduct in Congress, the civil service and public debate. Whatever the merits of increasing presidential authority, Mr Bush has achieved his aim less by winning support for more power than by weakening the authority of other institutions. In the round Mr Bush's supporters may regard carping on about this expansion of powers as a distraction from other more visible achievements of his presidency. Look, they may argue, at the way that the White House has set about reducing nuclear proliferation, or at his plans to build an ownership society at home, or at the long-term economic stimulus of his tax reform. From the other side, his critics complain that the administration has trashed the environment, or worsened inequality, or schemed to roll back abortion rights. It usually takes some time for the true significance of any presidency to emerge. Mr Bush's most contentious projects may come to seem relatively unimportant. For now, perhaps the most remarkable thing about this presidency is the extent to which it has already confounded expectations. When Mr Bush was elected, it was widely believed that his power would be slight and he would achieve little. For better or worse, those predictions were refuted. Whether this will help or harm him in November remains to be seen. From shivamvij at gmail.com Sun Sep 5 18:36:44 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 18:36:44 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Evangelisation Should Be Cornerstone Of Every Church Policy: CBCI President Message-ID: Evangelisation Should Be Cornerstone Of Every Church Policy: CBCI President By SAR NEWS JAMMU, Jammu & Kashmir (SAR NEWS)-- Evangelisation should be the cornerstone of every Church policy in India, the president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India president, Cardinal Telesphore P. Toppo, has reiterated. "The Christian community in India should work with absolute vigour and vitality to make our small community big. This calls for discipline – discipline within the community, which is the need of the hour," he said. Cardinal Toppo, who is also the Archbishop of Ranchi, Jharkhand, was speaking to the members of the Northern Regional Catholic Council (NRCC), after blessing a new church and school at Sahnewal in Ludhiana, Punjab State, August 29. The NRCC was incidentally holding its 24th meeting at the Trinity Pastoral Centre in Jallandhar, August 28-29. Underlining the need for forging unity within the Catholic community, the cardinal said unity alone could help the community in maintaining its identity. He called on the Catholics to share their religious views with the people of other faiths, "for this could pave the way for understanding and harmony among different faiths". The CBCI president pointed out that while the Church was on a development spree in the southern parts of India, "much needed to be done in the northern areas." Earlier, speaking on the theme of the NRCC meeting, 'Peace for Development – A Church View', the resource person, Dr. John George of Vidyajyoti, a Jesuit theology centre, New Delhi, said Jesus Christ had taken the human form to establish the Kingdom of God on earth where there would be no place for injustice, oppression, hatred, ill-will and disharmony. "Unless there was perfect peace and harmony in the world, development – whether social, political, economic or spiritual – would not take place," he said adding respect for human dignity alone could bring justice, peace and development. Archbishop Vincent M. Concessao of Delhi gave details of the discussions he had with the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, when he led a delegation of Christian leaders for a meeting with him, August 27. He said the United Progressive Alliance Government at the Centre was committed to redress the grievances of the Christian community, more particularly the extension of constitutional rights and privileges to the Dalit Christians. Auxiliary Bishop of Delhi, Anil Couto, Bishop Gerald John Mathias of Shimla-Chandigarh, Bishop Symphorian Keeprath and Bishop Peter Celestine Elampassery of Jammu-Srinagar attended the meeting. From shivamvij at gmail.com Sun Sep 5 18:39:27 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 18:39:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Dowry-free wedding card catalogue Message-ID: IN PICTURES: Dowry-free wedding card catalogue : Are you getting married soon or are arranging a marriage for your siblings or children and want to say no to dowry in an elegant and noticeable way? India Together has a simple and no-cost solution for you. Our D-Free wedding card catalogue. http://www.indiatogether.org/weddingcards/ From shivamvij at gmail.com Sun Sep 5 18:50:19 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 18:50:19 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] India TV, Al-Jazeera agree on barter of news content Message-ID: India TV, Al-Jazeera agree on barter of news content Indiantelevision.com Team (2 September 2004 5:00 pm) http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k4/sep/sep17.htm NEW DELHI: Confirming a report filed by indiantelevision.com yesterday, Arabian satellite news channel Al-Jazeera this afternoon announced an alliance with Rajat Sharma's India TV that would involve an "exchange" of content. According to the agreement reached between the two news channels, which would not involve any financial dealings, Al-Jazeera's prime time news bulletin dubbed into Hindi would air daily on India TV. India TV hopes that Al-Jazeera would do the same. "We have tied up with India TV as we believe that like our network, it (India TV) also believes in putting journalistic considerations before commercial interests," Al-Jazeera MD Wadah Khanfar said during a press briefing here today after exchanging signed documents with India TV chairman Rajat Sharma. The agreement will also include exchange of real-time news updates from the respective regions and the telecast of the Al-Jazeera bulletins will begin from 3 September at 11 pm on India TV. Pointing out that the tie-up with India TV is part of Al-Jazeera's plans to make forays into new marketplaces, Khanfar said the agreement with India TV is independent of any other expansion plans the Arab network may be having for India. The Qatar-based channel came into the limelight through its coverage of the first two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which offered an Arab perspective on the conflicts and broke the virtual monopoly Western news media had up till that time over reportage from the region. No wonder, the promotional clips aired by Al-Jazeera at today's press conference has several instances of US military bosses and US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld saying `dump the channel' or `change the channel' to questions on Al-Jazeera's coverage during the Iraq was. "Al-Jazeera has provided Arab audiences with a much needed platform for interaction and debate, something that was quite unfamiliar in this part of the world. India holds an important audience base for us and this agreement will enable us to provide India with news about the Arab world and vice versa. We have a mandate of extending and enhancing professional relationships with international media. By signing this agreement with India TV, both news channels will be able to provide a more comprehensive image of the sub-continent to our viewers," Khanfar further explained. Speaking at the signing ceremony, a beaming Sharma said, "India TV endeavours to provide viewers with a complete picture of news as it occurs in the world. There has been a dearth of composite and immediate news reporting of events in the Arabic world." Pointing out that for the past one month Al-Jazeera signals were being test-received at India TV's studios on the outskirts of Delhi, Sharma added, "By signing this agreement, alongside providing in-depth and composite international news to our viewers, India TV will also provide an additional picture of events and current affairs in the Arab world to viewers in India." Asked by indiantelevision.com whether India TV is looking at other similar tie-ups, Sharma answered in the affirmative. "We are looking at some tie-ups in South India and also in the Western world," he added. As an aside, yesterday when CNN International's Chris Cramer, also in India, was asked about the Indian foray of Al-Jazeera --- often termed the 'CNN of the Arabic world' --- he had said that CNN finds it flattering that comparisons were made between the two networks and "competition is always welcome." From definetime at rediffmail.com Sat Sep 4 15:55:39 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 4 Sep 2004 10:25:39 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) Islamophobia Message-ID: <20040904102539.10179.qmail@webmail28.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040904/071625c3/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Cummins & Co We can no longer ignore Islamophobia, or the racism that fuels it Madeleine Bunting Saturday September 4, 2004 The Guardian It could hardly be more embarrassing: the British Council, charged with promoting British values throughout the world, is forced to fire a senior press officer this week after he penned an extraordinary series of attacks on Islam. For those who doubt the very concept of Islamophobia, the columns of Will, aka Harry, Cummins in the Sunday Telegraph should be a set text. His brand of virulent paranoia combines racism - "all Muslims, like all dogs, share certain characteristics" - with a particularly vicious aggression - the massacres in Bosnia were "more a tribute to (Muslims') incompetence than their humanity". This is very nasty stuff and one wouldn't want to give it more space in another newspaper but for the fact that there is still a well-meaning, but fatally blind strand of opinion which refuses to accept the phenomenon of Islamophobia. Refuses to see how it represents a mutated form of racism, and refuses to see how such comments about Jews or blacks would be quite rightly regarded as unprintable. What makes the Cummins case so disturbing is that he didn't lurk in the backroom of British National party offices, writing Nick Griffin's speeches. No, he was at the very heart of a quintessential British institution. It exposes, in a way which can no longer be denied, how deep the worm of Islamophobia has crawled. It's time for a clear reckoning of what Islamophobia is, and just why it represents a major challenge in our time - comparable to the rise of anti-semitism in the 20th century, comparable to the racism which we have spent several decades trying to confront. Islamophobia is not a fantasy phenomenon to head off criticism of the religion. Surely it's not beyond the wit of (wo)man to distinguish between legitimate debate and the grotesque rubbish pedalled by Cummins. But the key criteria for that legitimate debate on Islam is that it must be rooted in knowledge. The majority of people in this country still have only the haziest, and often prejudiced, understanding of this religion, a 1,500-year-old ethical tradition with a huge range of interpretations across hundreds of cultures around the globe - and a lamentable lack of interest in putting that right. This is no accident; the biggest component of Islamophobia's long history in European consciousness is what the writer Ziauddin Sardar describes as a "constructed ignorance" in which Islam is wilfully ignored, neglected and distorted. Take one example: the particular association of Islam with violence is a colonial hangover, dating back to the 1857 Indian Mutiny, when Muslims rebelled against British imperialism. The huge military machines of Germany and America in the 20th century were both the product of Christian, democratic countries, but few talk of Christianity being inherently violent. Islamophobia is a hybrid beast and it calls on another equally powerful strain of European thinking - racism. It is racism, pure and simple, which lies behind the permutations of the "swamping" thesis which we've seen from BNP literature and Cummins to the front cover of the Spectator; of how Muslims want to take over the world, and take over Britain - an absurd fantasy when only 3% of Britain is Muslim. There is a particular responsibility for those who frame the debate on Islam in this country to break out of the "constructed ignorance". It means developing a deep knowledge of Islam and of the ongoing struggles within it to reform and renew itself. It means a determination to get beyond the distortions of a media fascinated with the likes of Abu Hamza, of a media which can convey the horrific barbarity of the hostage-takers in Beslan - presumed to be Muslim - better than the comparable cruelty meted out by the Russians in Chechnya over the last decade. A vigilant awareness is required in public debate, of the resonances in popular consciousness which certain comments are likely to trigger. Would a critical examination of Leviticus' prescriptions for the uncleanliness of women in the Old Testament have been appropriate in 1936 in Germany? Context is crucial and the context now, in the UK, is of an impoverished, excluded community (over 60% of Bangladeshi and Pakistani families live in poverty) upon whom the anti-terrorism laws are weighing very heavily. The hostility towards Islam needs little fanning, and on the street, it is visited disproportionately on women whose hijabs identify them as Muslims. It is for these kinds of reasons that we may well need new legislative tools, such as a law on incitement to religious hatred, to combat a new and virulent demonisation of the Other which is sheltering, at present, under the banner of free speech. m.bunting at guardian.co.uk From definetime at rediffmail.com Mon Sep 6 11:29:12 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 6 Sep 2004 05:59:12 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] The man who lost his past Message-ID: <20040906055912.1877.qmail@webmail29.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040906/0be83ed4/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   The man who lost his past Merhan Karimi Nasseri has spent 16 years living in Charles de Gaulle airport. Now Steven Spielberg's Terminal has catapulted him to international stardom - but casts little light on who he really is. And Sir Alfred, as he calls himself, isn't too sure either. Paul Berczeller, who spent a year with Nasseri, set out to unravel the mystery Monday September 6, 2004 The Guardian I first saw him, many years ago now, staring out with an uncanny gaze of blank intensity from the pages of a newspaper. Seated alone on a bench, immune to the endless motion of the airport around him, there was a curious inscrutability to his slight, balding yet dignified countenance. He looked like some unlikely cross between a Zen master and Chaplin's Tramp. He had these amazing long brows, as dark as his hooded eyes, and a small, perfectly groomed moustache perched on top of his upper lip. It was like a caricature of a face, five charcoal marks on a canvas. But strangely noble, too. His name was Merhan Karimi Nasseri though he called himself "Sir Alfred". He lived in a lost dimension of absurd bureaucratic entanglement. That is to say, on a bench in Terminal One of the Charles de Gaulle International Airport, and he had lived there since 1988. For a series of insanely complicated reasons, the Iranian-born refugee was now a man without a country - or any other documented, internationally accepted identity status. Alfred couldn't leave France because he did not have papers; he couldn't enter France because he did not have papers. The authorities told him to wait in the airport lounge while they sorted the paradox out. That he did - for years and years. Then one day, I heard that Alfred had finally been given his papers. He was free to go anywhere in the world he wished. Except now it seemed he didn't want to leave the airport after all. It was the only home - the only past - he had left. I woke up that night burning with an idea for a movie about Alfred - co-starring Alfred himself. I counted the hours before I could hit my desk and get started on the script. To me, his unlikely nightmare was nothing less than one of the quintessential tales of our lonely, displaced, increasingly unreal age. Perhaps I was a little overexcited, but I soon found that I was not the only one inspired by Alfred's true story. Every screenwriter in London seemed to have a version of his life in the drawer somewhere. And every single one (except mine) was a romantic comedy with a happy ending. None of the others had been made, nor would they ever be. Because word was out that over at DreamWorks, Steven - the Steven - was interested in the story. In sunny faraway LA, the big boys were preparing to immortalise Sir Alfred. Meanwhile, down at the other end of the world cinematic digestive system, my friend Glen Luchford and I grabbed a DV camera and a few changes of clothes and drove overnight to meet Alfred in the airport. Fittingly, days turned into months and we ended up spending close to a year with him shooting our low budget, arthouse feature, Here to Where (2001). If you've seen it, I probably know you. Recently, Alfred has been back in the news again. Spielberg's latest, The Terminal, starring Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones, is playing on thousands of screens around the world. Media everywhere is asking the same old question. Who is Alfred? No one has a clue. Alfred least of all, it seems. That is exactly how he wants it - I have spent enough time with him to know that. He has been in the airport for 16 years now. I suppose my fantasy upon first meeting Alfred back in the summer of 2000 was that I would be the one to save him. Where friendly lawyers, concerned doctors, crusading refugee groups and assorted praying Christians had failed, I would succeed. I would be the one to convince him to finally leave the airport. He lived in the basement shopping mall of Terminal One. The circular main building was a triumph of avant-garde airport design when it opened in 1974, but its swank jet-age days were long gone. Alfred's red bench was the only anchor in his life. It was his bed, living room and corporate headquarters. It was actually two benches pushed together, about eight feet long in total and gently curved, just about wide enough to sleep on if he kept his hands tucked under the pillow. (Alfred did have a pillow - and sheets - that he carefully laid down when he turned in for the night.) But he never slept during the day, though his eyes would often droop out of boredom; you could always find Alfred sitting in the middle of his bench, in front of a rickety, white Formica table, which he employed as a desk. >From this perch, Alfred would survey his world. The display windows of an electronics store were across a corridor to his left; he could see the back of a newsagent's to the right. If he moved to one side of his bench, he could gaze across to a MacDonald's on the outer ring of the level. If he moved to the other, there were the shuttered doors of the misleadingly named Hotel Cocoon. Stacked around the back of the bench were boxes, suitcases and plastic bags containing everything Alfred owned in the world. This included: an extensive archive of newspaper, magazine and TV reports about himself; a rather large library donated by friendly passengers with lousy taste; giant files of postcards and letters from well-wishers around the world; his dry cleaning; a vast collection of McDonald's straws and - most tantalisingly - a diary which recorded in apparently exacting detail every day of his bizarre existence since he first appeared at Terminal One. Sitting next to Alfred I tried to get into the rhythm of his airport life. It was punctuated every other minute by three chimes heralding the flight announcements, that exotic mantra of foreign destinations that practically drove me mad by the end of my first day there. But Alfred had evolved in his strange habitat; he was able to tune them out. Life in the airport followed a masterplan, designed and controlled by some far off power. Waves of passengers came and went, the same patterns of humanity every hour, every day - the tide would bring in the Japanese in the early morning, the Africans would wash past the bench late at night. Many passers-by recognised Alfred; some had even made a special pilgrimage to meet him, first or last stop on their Paris tour. Even those who had never heard of him seemed to sense that this was no ordinary passenger. He provoked pity in all of them but Alfred certainly didn't see it that way. He had an extremely high opinion of himself. And besides, as he would quickly remind you, his situation was only "temporary". During Alfred's first years in the airport, his basic needs were supplied by sympathetic passers-by and airport workers who knew of his Kafkaesque situation. People bought him food, gave him money and listened with sympathy to his tale. But by the time I met him, Alfred had developed a more retail approach to survival. Now he preferred to engage with the professionals of the media, people like me. In return for a few exclusive hours of his stream of consciousness tale, Alfred would graciously accept a small gratuity. The constant stream of journalists and film-makers passing through provided more than enough to keep him going. And yet from the moment I sat down next to him I felt the force of his - there is no better word - dignity. Alfred seemed totally content within himself. He did not aim to please or play on your sympathy. He was not the homeless guy on the tube singing for a drink. Everything in Alfred's life was conducted on his own terms. In some sense he was a freer man than most. Despite outward appearances, Alfred lived a life of total self-sufficiency and order. He kept himself meticulously clean and groomed, using a nearby airport bathroom. He hung his freshly dry-cleaned clothes from the handle of a suitcase next to his bench. He always ate a MacDonald's egg and bacon croissant for breakfast and a McDonald's fish sandwich for dinner. (Perhaps one day McDonald's will have the wit to sign Alfred up for a celebrity endorsement.) He always left a tip. Alfred was not, to put it bluntly, a bum. Still, I felt sorry for him - how could I not? Because one thing was never made quite clear in all the reports about Alfred: just how far gone he was. When he got talking about politics or the economy you could sense the remnants of a fine mind. But when he turned to his past you were dragged into the labyrinth of Alfred's fragile mental state. All the stories he had ever told over the years, all the articles ever written about him, were jumbled together in his head to produce a narrative that changed from day to day. The more you pressed him, the more absurd his supposed memories would become until he would suddenly stop short and fall silent. There seemed to be something in his past that he needed to forget. It was very frustrating. He once spent a week insisting to me that he was really Swedish. But his most consistent story, as far as I could piece it together, went like this: After his physician father's death in 1972, his family summoned him with the news that he was illegitimate. His real mother was, in fact, Scottish. (Looking at him, this seemed unlikely.) His family rejected him and Alfred left home to study Yugoslav economics in northern England. (This, amazingly, turned out to be true.) He returned to Iran in 1974 and got caught up in anti-Shah demonstrations. Arrested and tortured by Savak, the Iranian ministry of security, Alfred was stripped of his Iranian nationality and expelled. He spent the next years roaming through Europe in a search for asylum. Finally, in 1981, Belgium granted him refugee status and identity documents. That should have been a happy ending, of sorts. Instead, soon afterwards Alfred was robbed of his documents or - according to another version - sent them back to the authorities in what he called "a moment of folly". He left Belgium for France where he spent the next years in and out of jail on illegal immigration charges. Apparently, he tried to return to England but was turned back at Heathrow. It was at this point, in 1988, that he first settled into his limbo waiting for papers in Terminal One. A prominent lawyer took on Alfred's case and fought a 10-year legal battle to win him identity documents and the right to travel. But then Alfred refused to leave the airport. If nothing changed, he would die on his red bench. It seems very naive to me now, but I hoped that the making of Here to Where would somehow provide the catalyst for Alfred to reclaim a "normal" existence. It was the story of Paul Hugo, a selfish and incompetent American director (played by me, naturally) who goes to Paris to make a fiction film about Alfred's life. Along the way, Hugo's own life falls apart; his producer and crew turn on him, his main actor quits, his girlfriend leaves him and shooting grinds to a halt. The arrogant young man changes from using Alfred to identifying with him. Hugo redirects all his frantic energies to saving him - or what he thinks will save him. My plan was that the last scene would see Alfred and I leave the airport together both on film and in real life. It didn't exactly work out like that. For one thing, Alfred wasn't going anywhere, despite all my best efforts. Otherwise, our script took over reality or perhaps it was vice versa - I wasn't sure after a while. My friend Glen and I were at each other's throats, the crew was in revolt, my girlfriend left me, the money ran out. Only Alfred kept his cool, looking on with his usual Zen-like detachment. The last day of filming was an emotional one for me. My character Paul Hugo had spent the night in the airport sleeping on the floor next to Alfred. Early the next morning they were in the airport bathroom, looking into the mirror at themselves, shaving. Nothing had worked out as I hoped. I felt we had failed Alfred in every way. "I'm worried about what's going to happen to you," my character said. He was still trying to get Alfred to leave the airport, though I had long given up. "I followed my identification," Alfred replied. "But you've been doing that a long time, right?" "Yes, it takes longer," he said. "I know, but nothing has changed." "Many things have changed." "But you're still here, Alfred, right? You're still at the airport." "Yes," he replied, carefully grooming his moustache. "One of the airport's passengers. I'm always a passenger. If I go, I come back again. I'm not wandering. I don't wander." Suddenly, Alfred turned his back on me and walked out of the bathroom. I broke down in tears - me, not Paul Hugo. Like everyone else, we had used him and were about to walk away. What did he truly understand about our intentions - about the cynical real world beyond his bench? Alfred walked up to Glen in the corridor outside the bathroom. "How did I do?" he asked. Last week I flew to meet Alfred, three years since I last saw him. His noble Persian face lit up when he recognised me, but then it always does when he first sees a reporter. We shook hands. He seemed quite content. "I am famous now," was the first thing he said to me. That was the only thing that mattered to him any more. Not his family or friends, not his past or future - only the archive of articles about a wasted life and a poster advertising Spielberg's film which he proudly hung from a suitcase next to his bench. "Life is waiting," went the Hollywood ad slogan. Alfred was thrilled about The Terminal, though he would never get a chance to see it. He was looking forward to the Oscars. I didn't want to shatter his daydreams by telling him what a load of puerile crap Spielberg's movie was. I doubt he would have believed me anyway. "Yes, my interest in America has gone up because of movie," Alfred said. "That is very good." Apparently Alfred had received a cheque of several hundred thousand dollars for his life story. It had been deposited in the airport's Post Office bank. But Alfred had never cared much about money. He was now under the impression that DreamWorks was going to get him a passport and take him to California. Spielberg was going to come to his rescue; Tom Hanks was going to visit him at his bench. In fact, publicity material for the film didn't mention Alfred at all; they were distancing themselves from his depressing story. It wasn't exactly a happy Hollywood ending. I asked him if he had heard from any friends or family since I last saw him. He grabbed an old Toronto Globe and Mail article from one of his suitcases. "It says that my relation has elapsed. Cut off. In this phase, I am without parents." I looked at the article. "He has taken to saying he has no parents at all," it said. Alfred looked away from me for a moment. "He denied me. Not his son." He turned back to watch me write notes. He seemed pleased. "In 1968 they denied me, said I was not their son, so I left country. My parents, I suppose, are Americans. If Clark Gable says he's my father - I don't accept unless he has documents to prove." One of the strangest things about Alfred's situation is that no one from his past has ever come forward. It is as if he had never existed before the day he was first spotted in the airport. Perhaps all of us intrigued by Alfred's story preferred it that way. But once I decided to solve the mystery of who he really was, his acquaintances and family were surprisingly easy to find. Alfred had four brothers and two sisters, all of them middle-class people who lived in Tehran, except for one sister who was a dentist in Luxembourg. One worked in a bank, another was a chemist, another worked for state television and radio. Their father, Abdelkarim, was a physician who worked for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Masjed Suleiman, the birthplace of the Iranian oil industry - just like Alfred had always said. After he retired from the oil company, Abdelkarim moved the family to Tehran. He died in 1967 of cancer when Alfred was 22. It seems the family had known for a long time about Alfred's plight. They were a very well educated family, knew the west well, and read newspapers from abroad. But they apparently always believed that Alfred was living the life he wanted, that he had some kind of master plan. Alfred's closest relative was his brother, Cyrus, who was two years older than him. In their youth, the two boys seemed to have an idyllic childhood in Masjed Suleiman. "He was close to me and we usually had the same friends," he said. "We were mostly together. We had a good life. I liked swimming and Merhan used to play table tennis. He was very good at it." Cyrus was a businessman who imported surgical supplies into Iran. He knew England well. He and his wife, Mina, had lived and worked there for many years. Their son still did. Cyrus was, in fact, responsible for Alfred attending university in Bradford. He was very reluctant to talk, at first. The family thought that Alfred's problem was still only one of papers - and they worried that speaking to me might cause their lost brother problems with the authorities. It seems that the family had no idea of Alfred's fragile mental state. Alfred had lived with Cyrus and Mina for a time in London before moving into a flat of his own. They also lived upstairs from him in Tehran after they got married. At the time he was living with his mother. So Mina knew Alfred - or Merhan, as she scolded me when I used his new name - well. And the portrait both she and her husband painted of him couldn't be more different from the man now sitting on his bench in Terminal One. "What can I say, he was very normal in every way," she said. In every way? She laughed charmingly. "He was a good-looking man. Some of my friends wanted to be his wife or girlfriend. He had very normal relations with girls. But Merhan chose his own life and I guess it was not a family one." We agreed that Merhan was a very intelligent man. "He was an intellectual. He spent all his time studying and reading books and listening to the radio," Mina said. "He talked all the time about politics. He read books on politics all day and night. It was very important to him. And then he started to do what he believed in." One of the key parts of Alfred's story was always his arrest and torture by Savak because of his opposition to the Shah, followed by his deportation to Europe. Cyrus was reluctant to talk about this aspect of Alfred's life. But doing a bit more digging through sources in Iran, I was able to find out what really happened. Apparently, Alfred participated in a student strike at Tehran University in 1970 to object to a new university regulation. Things started to get out of hand and Savak got involved. They questioned all the students and gathered up the ringleaders, about 20, including Alfred. After a few hours of questioning in a university classroom, the matter was apparently dropped. This was evidently Alfred's only serious problem with the security services. There was no arrest, no torture, no confiscation of his passport and no deportation. It was not nearly as dramatic a story as Alfred now remembered. But he must have been scared. He certainly never forgot the incident. The last time Cyrus and Mina saw Alfred was in 1976 when their son was born in England. Alfred had abandoned his studies in Bradford, apparently because his money had run out, according to Mina. (Actually, according to fellow students and teachers I spoke to, Alfred failed his course. They had all wondered what a young Iranian was doing in England studying Serbo Croatian.) He left England to travel through Europe. For a while, he kept in touch, but then his letters stopped coming. With the revolution and then the war with Iraq, his family back home had their own problems to deal with. After four years without any contact, they went to the Foreign Ministry to ask for help trying to find him. "But we could not find any sign of him," said Cyrus. Then in 1991, a family friend came upon Alfred at his bench in the airport. Amazed to find him after all that time, the friend went up to greet him. But Alfred wouldn't acknowledge that he knew him. The same thing happened on other occasions to other family and friends who tried to make contact with him. Finally they stopped trying. Was he ashamed of what he had become? Did the studious boy who loved politics consider himself a failure? Is that why he distanced himself from friends and family? "Why did he say in the newspaper that his family rejected him?" asked Mina. "We do not understand that. That was not true. We thought this was the way he wanted to live. Everyone has his own life and he was going on in his own way. That's what we thought." But I was curious - there were still things I wanted to know. The Alfred I knew was mentally ill. Had there ever been signs of it when he was younger? "No, no, not at all!" said Mina. "If there is something wrong with him now, it's not from the past. It must have happened to him there." This supported what Alfred's lawyer had said to me. He had arrived sane at the airport. At some point along the way - no one knew quite when - Alfred tipped over into madness. His life was indeed ruined by the absurdities of bureaucracy. And what of Alfred's mother? It turns out that she died only four years ago - at the very time I was filming Here to Where. She knew all about what had happened to her son. And according to Cyrus and Mina, she couldn't understand why he insisted on saying that she was not his mother. It was the great sadness of her life. "He came from me," she told her other children. "Why does he say that?" Alfred doesn't know that she is dead. Cyrus is planning to fly to Paris next month to see his long lost brother. Perhaps Alfred's long journey still has another unlikely twist. From kram853 at yahoo.co.uk Sat Sep 4 08:35:05 2004 From: kram853 at yahoo.co.uk ( Kram 853 Yahoo) Date: Sat, 4 Sep 2004 04:05:05 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Another history of Mumbai: jazz Message-ID: <000601c4922b$fd8027e0$0bca30d5@EMachine> 4 September 2004 Hello, This is in relation to the article by Mr. Stanley Pinto on Mumbai Jazz in the 60's. I would appreciate it if you could let me have his email address please, or contact address. I would like to update him on many of the names he has mentioned in the article, and one or two of them are trying to contact him. Perhaps you would be kind enough to pass this letter to him. I would appreciate your help Thank you Kram ---------------------------------------- My Inbox is protected by SPAMfighter 384 spam mails have been blocked so far. Download free www.spamfighter.com today! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040904/af4c6fb9/attachment.html From tellsachin at yahoo.com Sun Sep 5 12:49:26 2004 From: tellsachin at yahoo.com (Sachin Agarwal) Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 00:19:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] INDO PAK PEACE MARCH In-Reply-To: <20040905063004.88A0E28E677@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20040905071926.95981.qmail@web41506.mail.yahoo.com> ROUTE OF INDIA PAKISTAN PEACE MARCH *********************************** Date Place Distance from previous place (in km) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 23rd March, 2005 Delhi 24th March Naya Azadpur 25th March Narela 17 26th March Sonepat 18 27th March Rajlugadhi 11 28th March Samalkha 17 29th March Panipat 17 30th March Gharonda 16 31st March Karnal 18 1st April Nilokheri 16 2nd April Kurukshetra 17 3rd April Shahabad Markanda 22 4th April Ambala 20 5th April Rajpura 20 6th April Sarhind 26 7th April Khanna 18 8th April Sonewal 27 9th April Ludhiyana 15 10th April Phalor 13 11th April Phagwara 23 12th April Jhalandhar 21 13th April Kartarpur 15 14th April Beas 21 15th April Jhandyala 24 16th -17th April Amritsar 19 18th April Wagha 27 19th -20th April Lahore 30 21st April Rai Bind 15 22nd April Premnagar 15 23rd April Bhai Pheru 15 24th April Changa Manga 15 25th April Pattoki 15 26th April Habibpur 20 27th April Renala Khurd 20 28th April Okara 18 29th April to be decided 20 30th April Sahiwal 20 1st May Harappa 20 2nd May Chinchawatani 20 3rd May Kasowal 15 4th May Mian Chunnu 20 5th May Abdul Hakim 6th May Kachcha Khuh 7th May Pirowal 8th May Khanewal 9th -10th May to be decided 11th May Multan **************************************************** All persons wishing to march must register by 1st December, 2004 with their passport details. For more details about the peace march or interest in participating in the peace march you may contact the following. Karamat Ali Sandeep Pandey PILER NAPM ST-001, Sector X, Sub-Sector V A-893, Indira Nagar Gulshan-e-Maymar, Karachi � 75340 Lucknow-226016, U.P. Pakistan India Tel: (9221) 6351145, 46, 47 Ph(0522)2347365,9839073355 Fax: (9221) 6350354, 6350919 Fax: (0522) 2353020 e-mail: piler at cyber.net.pk bobbyramakant at yahoo.com Please visit our website at www.thesouthasian.org and subscribe to indpakpeacemarch at yahoogroups.com to receive regular information about the peace march or send mail to moderator at indopakpeacemarch at yahoo.co.uk --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040905/b23f03ca/attachment.html From tellsachin at yahoo.com Sun Sep 5 19:24:09 2004 From: tellsachin at yahoo.com (Sachin Agarwal) Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 06:54:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] NHRC Schedule of events. Training at Lucknow Message-ID: <20040905135409.6626.qmail@web41505.mail.yahoo.com> National Human Rights Commission, New Delhi, India --------------------------------- BACK Public Hearings On rights to Health The National Human Rights Commission, in partnership with the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan will be holding regional public hearings on Health and Human Rights in five regions of the country followed by a national public hearing in New Delhi. SCHEDULE OF REGIONAL AND NATIONAL PUBLIC HEARINGS ON HEALTH S.No Region States Covered by Public Hearing. Venue Date of Public Hearing 1 Northern Region Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttranchal. Lucknow 26 September 2004 2 Eastern Region Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Sikkim, Orrisa, Chattisgarh. Ranchi 11 October 2004 3 North Eastern Region All Seven States of North East. Guwahati 28 November 2004 4 National Public Hearing All States & Union Territories New Delhi December 16-17 2004 The venue for theThird Regional Public Hearing on the Right to Health Care covering the Northern Region of Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal to be held at Lucknow at Training Centre, Non-Conventional Energy Development Association, DEVA Road, CHINHET, Lucknow. Those who wish to participate in the Hearings may contact : N.B. Sarojini, C/o SAMA, G-19, Second Floor, Marg No.24, Saket, New Delhi - 110 017. --------------------------------- Note: For further details kindly contact National Human Rights Commission, Sardar Patel Bhavan, Parliament Street, New Delhi, PIN 110001 Tel.No. 23346244 Fax No. 23366537 E-Mail: ionhrc at hub.nic.in Disclaimer: Neither NHRC nor NIC is responsible for any inadvertent error that may have crept in the Information being published on NET. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040905/fe1ff1f4/attachment.html From monica.mody at gmail.com Mon Sep 6 15:08:16 2004 From: monica.mody at gmail.com (Monica Mody) Date: Mon, 6 Sep 2004 15:08:16 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Agent Gmail Message-ID: <4badad3b0409060238bc8aabf@mail.gmail.com> Gmail invites are a bit like Agent Smith, na? Much as you try to eliminate them, hardier varieties spring up. And what a clever dispersal strategy. Who can humanly resist the exclusivity of an "invitation"? You have to beg/borrow/steal for one, and pass it on, and accept if you get one. Soon, then, one can foresee a tyrannous reign of gmail accounts – each one spawning a dozen more – and internet human-users helplessly, recklessly opening more and more gmail accounts, sending out more and more SOS invitations, just to keep their inboxes looking non-messy and invite-free… From naunidhi at hotmail.com Mon Sep 6 21:16:55 2004 From: naunidhi at hotmail.com (Naunidhi Kaur) Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2004 21:16:55 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Agent Gmail Message-ID: I think there is a bigger picture to gmail. The brand strategy of selling this product has assured that everybody wants their accounts ending with that elusive gmail. Not very different from having the Nike swoosh on your Tshirt or becoming a human billboard for Tommy Hilfiger. In the longer run gmail curtails freedom. This is because it stands for choosing under the pressure of what is �in.� Oh well, we can all thank the nefarious brand managers of gmail for that ! Naunidhi _________________________________________________________________ Mergers and buyouts. Acquisitions and takeovers. http://www.msn.co.in/business/ Enter the world of business. From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue Sep 7 11:03:59 2004 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2004 11:03:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Civil war most likely outcome in Iraq Message-ID: <413D4847.3030903@ranadasgupta.com> Report: Civil war most likely outcome in Iraq Major British institute says breakup of Iraq is a likely scenario. by Tom Regan | csmonitor.com http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0906/dailyUpdate.html While America's attention was focused last week on the Republican National Convention in New York, and the world was watching the hostage tragedy unfold in the small Russian town of Beslan, the prestigious British Royal Institute of International Affairs (known as Chatham House) issued a report saying a major civil war that would destablize the entire Middle East region is the mostly likely outcome for Iraq if current conditions continue. Reuters reported Friday that the report said the best outcome Iraq can hope for is "to muddle through an 18-month political transition that began when Washington formally handed over sovereignty on June 28." The Los Angeles Times reports that the fragmentation of Iraq is the "default scenario" in the eyes of the Chatham House team. 'Under this scenario,' the report says, 'Kurdish separatism and Shia assertiveness work against a smooth transition to elections, while the Sunni Arab minority remains on the offensive and engaged in resistance. Antipathy to the US presence grows, not so much in a unified Iraqi nationalist backlash, but rather in a fragmented manner that could presage civil war if the US cuts and runs,' it says. 'Even if the US forces try to hold out and prop up the central authority, it may still lose control.' The Chatham House report, called 'Iraq in Transition: Vortex or Catalyst?' was released last Wednesday. (Chatham House is often the scene of regular international news events; British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw recently gave a major speech there in August where he called for the overhaul of the United Nations.) The organization's Middle East team came up with three possible scenarios for Iraq, two of which would create real problems for the US and its allies: # If the Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd factions fail to adhere to the Iraqi Interim Government (IIG), Iraq could fragment or descend into civil war. # If the transitional government, backed up by a supportive US presence, can assert control, Iraq may well hold together. # A 'Regional Remake' could overtake the other two scenarios if the dynamics unleashed by Shiite and Kurdish assertiveness trigger repercussions in neighboring states. Other Kurds would want their own independence, and Shiites in other countries would be more aggressive. "The first scenario is the most likely," says the report. Shiite Arabs will not settle for a subservient position, Kurds will not relinquish the gains in internal self-government and policing during the 1990s and Sunnis will neither accept a Shiite-led central government, nor a Kurdish autonomy in the north. If the IIG or its successors fail to assert itself as an organization capable of appealing across Iraq’s societal cleavages, Iraq will fragment. In an article in the New York Review of Books, former US ambassador to Croatia, UN official in East Timor, and current senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non- Proliferation Peter Galbraith writes that "It is a measure of how far America's once grand ambitions for Iraq have diminished that security has become more important than democracy for a mission intended not only to transform Iraq but with it the entire Middle East." Mr. Galbraith, who recently returned from his second long trip to Iraq, agrees with the Chatham House worst-case scenario and also says it is the most likely outcome. He writes that Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is a troubling choice to create the political stability that the US and its allies so desperately need to keep Iraq from falling apart. Allawi's colleagues speak of him with evident affection, but even his allies point to his shortcomings. Several of the INA's [Iraqi National Accord, which Allawi founded] most respected leaders left the organization because they objected to Allawi's authoritarian style, including an unwillingness to heed advice and inability to delegate authority. As an anti-Saddam activist, fellow exiles described Allawi as routinely embellishing his credentials. He would claim to have had meetings with world leaders that turned out to be fictional, and has said that he controlled operatives inside Iraq who, in fact, never existed. But in an interview with the Nashville Tennessean on Sunday, Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the recent 'successful' resolution of the siege of Najaf is a positive sign of things to come. I think what we saw in Najaf was actually very good from the viewpoint of Iraqis handling their problem. The solution there was the prime minister and his cabinet working with (Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al) Sistani, the cleric, and private leaders and government leaders working in partnership with the multinational forces coalition there and finding the solutions — which they found and which hopefully will last. Although the fellow (rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al) Sadr is not particularly reliable. He changes his mind frequently, but for now Iraqis are in charge. An editorial in the Jerusalem Post last Thursday argues that what happened in Najaf was actually the "best that could be made of a bad job." It said if the US and the interim government had rolled over Moqtada al-Sadr and his forces, they would only have reinforced in the minds of Iraqis the lesson that they have been learning again and again since 1958: "he who is capable of killing the most, wins a political battle." But the intervention of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani may have changed the equation very much for the better. Sistani's intervention, however, changed the nature of the game. By deploying what could only be described as "people's power," the grand ayatollah succeeded in discrediting the tradition of political violence established by the 1958 coup d'etat. He showed that one can win a political battle without having to kill large numbers of people. The whole episode could be seen as a lesson to Iraqis that politics need not be a win-lose, let alone a zero-sum, game. Finally, freelance writer Yusuf Al-Khabbaz, writing in Media Monitor Networks, looks at the occupation and rebuilding of Japan 60 years ago, and the current day occupation and attempted rebuilding of Iraq, and finds the two events have little in common, despite what politicians may claim. (For instance, he says, Japanese offered little or no resistance to American soldiers, and "by most accounts not a single one of the 150,000 American soldiers in the occupying forces was attacked and killed by Japanese citizens.") If Iraq is to be rebuilt, Mr. Al Khabbaz says, the successful rebuilding of Japan cannot serve as a model because of significant differences in the two occupations. From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue Sep 7 12:01:23 2004 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2004 12:01:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Liberal position on sex work Message-ID: <413D55BB.7090709@ranadasgupta.com> From the Economist. Sex is their business Sep 2nd 2004 From The Economist print edition Attitudes to commercial sex are hardening. But tougher laws are wrong in both principle and practice TWO adults enter a room, agree a price, and have sex. Has either committed a crime? Common sense suggests not: sex is not illegal in itself, and the fact that money has changed hands does not turn a private act into a social menace. If both parties consent, it is hard to see how either is a victim. But prostitution has rarely been treated as just another transaction, or even as a run-of-the-mill crime: the oldest profession is also the oldest pretext for outraged moralising and unrealistic lawmaking devised by man. In recent years, governments have tended to bother with prostitution only when it threatened public order. Most countries (including Britain and America) have well-worn laws against touting on street corners, against the more brazen type of brothel and against pimping. This has never been ideal, partly because sellers of sex feel the force of law more strongly than do buyers, and partly because anti-soliciting statutes create perverse incentives. On some occasions, magistrates who have fined streetwalkers have been asked to wait a few days so that the necessary money can be earned. So there is perennial discussion of reforming prostitution laws. During the 1990s, the talk was all of liberalisation. Now the wind is blowing the other way. In 1999, Sweden criminalised the buying of sex. France then cracked down on soliciting and outlawed commercial sex with vulnerable women—a category that includes pregnant women. Britain began to enforce new laws against kerb-crawling earlier this year, and is now considering more restrictive legislation (see article). Outside a few pragmatic enclaves, attitudes are hardening. Whereas, ten years ago, the discussion was mostly about how to manage prostitution and make it less harmful, the aim now is to find ways to stamp it out. The puritans have the whip hand not because they can prove that tough laws will make life better for women, but because they have convinced governments that prostitution is intolerable by its very nature. What has tipped the balance is the globalisation of the sex business. The white slave trade It is not surprising that many of the rich world's prostitutes are foreigners. Immigrants have a particularly hard time finding jobs that pay well; local language skills are not prized in the sex trade; prostitutes often prefer to work outside their home town. But the free movement of labour is as controversial in the sex trade as in any other business. Wherever they work, foreign prostitutes are accused of driving down prices, touting “extra” services and consorting with organised criminal pimps who are often foreigners, too. The fact that a very small proportion of women are trafficked—forced into prostitution against their will—has been used to discredit all foreigners in the trade, and by extension (since many sellers of sex are indeed foreign) all prostitutes. Abolitionists make three arguments. From the right comes the argument that the sex trade is plain wrong, and that, by condoning it, society demeans itself. Liberals (such as this newspaper) who believe that what consenting adults do in private is their own business reject that line. From the left comes the argument that all prostitutes are victims. Its proponents cite studies that show high rates of sexual abuse and drug taking among employees. To which there are two answers. First, those studies are biased: they tend to be carried out by staff at drop-in centres and by the police, who tend to see the most troubled streetwalkers. Taking their clients as representative of all prostitutes is like assessing the state of marriage by sampling shelters for battered women. Second, the association between prostitution and drug addiction does not mean that one causes the other: drug addicts, like others, may go into prostitution just because it's a good way of making a decent living if you can't think too clearly. A third, more plausible, argument focuses on the association between prostitution and all sorts of other nastinesses, such as drug addiction, organised crime, trafficking and underage sex. To encourage prostitution, goes the line, is to encourage those other undesirables; to crack down on prostitution is to discourage them. Brothels with brands Plausible, but wrong. Criminalisation forces prostitution into the underworld. Legalisation would bring it into the open, where abuses such as trafficking and under-age prostitution can be more easily tackled. Brothels would develop reputations worth protecting. Access to health care would improve—an urgent need, given that so many prostitutes come from diseased parts of the world. Abuses such as child or forced prostitution should be treated as the crimes they are, and not discussed as though they were simply extreme forms of the sex trade, which is how opponents of prostitution and, recently, the governments of Britain and America have described them. Puritans argue that where laws have been liberalised—in, for instance, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia—the new regimes have not lived up to claims that they would wipe out pimping and sever the links between prostitution and organised crime. Certainly, those links persist; but that's because, thanks to concessions to the opponents of liberalisation, the changes did not go far enough. Prostitutes were made to register, which many understandably didn't want to do. Not surprisingly, illicit brothels continued to thrive. If those quasi-liberal experiments have not lived up to their proponents' expectations, they have also failed to fulfil their detractors' greatest fears. They do not seem to have led to outbreaks of disease or under-age sex, nor to a proliferation of street prostitution, nor to a wider collapse in local morals. Which brings us back to that discreet transaction between two people in private. If there's no evidence that it harms others, then the state should let them get on with it. People should be allowed to buy and sell whatever they like, including their own bodies. Prostitution may be a grubby business, but it's not the government's. From thehindu at web1.hinduonnet.com Tue Sep 7 04:51:13 2004 From: thehindu at web1.hinduonnet.com (thehindu at web1.hinduonnet.com) Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2004 04:51:13 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Article from The Hindu: Sent to you by Vetri Message-ID: <200409062321.i86NLDfH005337@web1.hinduonnet.com> ============================================================= This article has been sent to you by Vetri ( avm124 at hotmail.com ) ============================================================= Source: The Hindu (http://www.hinduonnet.com/2004/09/07/stories/2004090707171101.htm) National    Manmohan criticised for remark against academics By Our Special Correspondent NEW DELHI, SEPT. 6. Left-leaning academics have taken offence to the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh's observation that he was "opposed to fundamentalism of all types; be it of the Left or the Right''. Reacting to this comment made by Dr. Singh at his press conference this past weekend, the historian, Irfan Habib, today said: "By making such statements, the Prime Minister is playing into the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).'' Addressing a press conference organised by Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) here, Prof. Habib asked: "What has Left fundamentalism got to do with books written by Bipin Chandra who extolled Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru? If this is the case, then both Gandhi and Nehru are also Left fundamentalists. The Prime Minister must explain what he means by Left fundamentalism or he will be left alone.'' Further, he said, by making such a statement, Dr. Singh had accepted half of the RSS case that the books — removed by the former Human Resource Development Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi — were biased. Other academics at the press conference — Gita Hariharan, Amiya Bagchi and Prabhat Patnaik — drew attention to the fact that the books introduced by the Joshi regime were full of mistakes with some of them included plagarised material. Copyright: 1995 - 2004 The Hindu Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the consent of The Hindu From radhakha at yahoo.com.au Wed Sep 8 06:26:28 2004 From: radhakha at yahoo.com.au (Radha Khan) Date: Wed, 08 Sep 2004 10:56:28 +1000 Subject: [Reader-list] re: Indian Personality Complex Message-ID: <1094604988.7604.203895138@webmail.messagingengine.com> Full Text (1229 words) Copyright Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Sep/Oct 2004 Indian Personality Complex Being Indian: The Truth About Why the 21st Century Will Be India's By Pavan K. Varma 325 pages, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2004 Publishing a book on "India Shining" just before Indian voters slap the slogan out of power is, at the very least, unfortunate timing. In May, the electorate rejected a complacent Indian government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), despite a massive state advertising campaign claiming the government economic policies made India "shine." But bad timing is less worrisome than self-delusion. Pavan K. Varma's new book, Being Indian: The Truth About Why the 21st Century Will Be India's, reveals how portions of India's elite have begun to confuse their own optimism with the nation's more complex reality. The shine is real enough: The Indian economy is surging, growing by more than twice what Indian economists once dismissed as the "Hindu rate of growth" of 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) per year. But the glow only reaches roughly one third of the population, perhaps explaining why the BJP won only one third of the votes in the general elections. And numbers-whether growth indicators or statistics about the booming information technology (IT) industry-hardly tell the whole story of India's success. Varma recounts a comment by Robert Blackwill, then the U.S. ambassador to India. "Human resources and intellectual capital are India's greatest asset," gushed Black-will upon leaving New Delhi in 2003. "As a nation, you have great DNA." Varma takes it upon himself to unravel that Indian genome. He concludes that the "Indian personality" is utterly practical, indifferent to human suffering, naturally amoral, and power-obsessed: A nation of people whose "feet are firmly on the ground, and their eyes fixed on the balance sheet." A successful diplomat who translated former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's poems while serving as ambassador to Cyprus, Varma now heads the Nehru Centre, a London cultural-exchange club run by the Indian government. But diplomacy is only his day job. Varma has authored books on a range of subjects, from a well-received analysis of the Indian middle class to a biography of 19th-century Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib. In his latest work, Varma wants to "attempt a new and dramatically different inquiry into what it is to be an Indian." Varma begins his bestselling book with factoids about the success of India's IT sector and economic growth, but this exercise fails to impress. Yes, outsourcing is a genuine Indian success story, but a nation must do more than answer complaints from British Airways passengers to conquer the world. A serious book needs serious evidence that the 21st century can be India's just as the 20th century belonged to the United States-that India will become arbiter of destinies across the globe; that the Mumbai stock exchange will replace New York's as the index of international markets; or that Indian generals will lead battles to eliminate rogue states from Asia and Africa and Latin America. Curiously, much of the book reads like a litany of what is wrong with India, often with an undertone of subdued merriment. The chapter called "Power: The Unexpected Triumph of Democracy" comprises several stories about Indians' weakness for unsubtle flattery and status worship. Sources include Varma's own observations, classical Indian treatises on statecraft, and the timeless Bhagavad-Gita story about Lord Krishna's use of deception to slay his enemy's guru. Varma attributes Indian Americans' growing involvement in U.S. politics to an increasing material prosperity that triggers a genetic urge for "status and recognition." Yet the author fails to explain how these traits will help India master the 21st century, unless Varma's implicit contention is that such virtues (or lack of them) are necessary for success in an immoral century. Enlarge 200% Enlarge 400% Other evidence for Varma's thesis is similarly weak. The text is littered with hit-and-miss quotations from predictable authors, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and V.S. Naipaul, as well as from fashionable names like Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, and Henry Kissinger, all of whom he rebukes for ignoring India. Varma finds journalism more nourishing for his argument. His copious references to opinion pieces and editorials lead to pat generalizations, such as the suggestion that globalization, through modern communications, is the glue of India. Bollywood, Varma believes, "has been the single biggest integrating factor in the evolution of the pan-Indian persona." India's emerging economic strength certainly merits analysis. GDP grew by 8.2 percent in the 2003-04 financial year. But it does not justify breathlessness. The creation of the modern Indian economy has been a laborious process that began during the 1950s under Nehru's visionary leadership. He established the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management that created generations of entrepreneurs responsible for today's stunning statistics. The economic reforms that began in the 1980s took time to gain traction. India is, after all, the world's largest democracy. Competitor China has the advantage (some would argue a temporary one) of being run by dictators who do not have to taste the bitterness of electoral defeat. Indeed, India's success stems from the nation's refusal to take shortcuts, including an unwillingness to sacrifice its past in the face of modernity's onslaught. In a compelling passage on the mathematics of astrology, Varma asserts that Indians see no contradiction between mythological elements of their past and scientific elements of their present. Millions consult the Bhrigu Samhita, a treatise written in Vedic times some 3,000 years ago, that "claims to have an infinite number of records of people and events in their lives," from which "45 million horoscopes can be permuted." The West has outdistanced other civilizations in science and technology during the last three centuries-the true reason for its economic, military, and political dominance. Although the West derided Indian traditions such as the ayurvedic system of medicine, Varma says Indians never considered their culture, dance, music, or ethics primitive, even during the worst days of colonial subjugation. And, he adds, they are now asserting their heritage in other fields as well. Thus, an Indian technology geek can cheekily assert that, because India gave the world the zero, Indians are natural leaders in computers. An Indian musician can take the ragas of classical music and transform them into a Broadway musical, as did the popular composer A.R. Rahman with his hit Bombay Dreams. And Indian publishers ensure black ink for their bottom lines with exotic foreign editions of the ancient Indian sex manual the Kama Sutra. (Incidentally, Varma is currently working on a book about "the wisdom" of the Kama Sutra.) This dynamic provides the most interesting and viable answer to Varma's inquiry on how Indian identity will lead the country toward a glorious future. The United States created the future because it had no past. India, conversely, has placed a calling card on the doorstep of history precisely because it can easily link the glory of its past to the story of its future. "A potential global power must understand what makes its people tick," Varma concludes. "This book would have served its purpose if it contributes to that end." That is the book that Varma wanted to write. He still should. [Sidebar] Outsourcing is a genuine Indian success story, but a nation must do more than answer complaints from British Airways passengers to conquer the world. [Author Affiliation] M.J. Akbar is editor in chief of the daily newspaper The Asian Age, based in New Delhi. From jeebesh at sarai.net Wed Sep 8 18:46:18 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Wed, 08 Sep 2004 18:46:18 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Post - Beslan impossibilities Message-ID: <413F0622.8090705@sarai.net> dear friends, was trying to write something to get some clarity after the Beslan massacre. Could not make much headway. Was going through reader-list posting to see if somebody has written about it. Was surprised by a total absence of any posting. Given that this list has always been very active during global crisis events and many different point of views have been articulated and debated, this peculiar absence seemed strange. About myself, i could not understand what to make of the events. Trapped within nationalist retributive logic of violence are very vulnerable population group and so many just killed. A editor of a newspaper in Russia got sacked apparently because of showing the graphic images of the incident. This editor have been opposed to the violence of the state in russia in the conflicts in 90s. A scared man being taken away by two hooded commandos and he confesses. What to think about it? Maybe, some of you have something to say more about it. best jeebesh From definetime at rediffmail.com Wed Sep 8 00:04:08 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 7 Sep 2004 18:34:08 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) US sociologists challenging stranglehold of economists Message-ID: <20040907183408.15419.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040907/80ec1553/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   US sociologists are finally challenging the intellectual stranglehold of economists Jonathan Steele in San Francisco Tuesday August 24, 2004 The Guardian In the ocean-fed air and mild August sunshine of America's most beautiful city, optimism flows easy. But the real mood-lift these past few days was in the windowless conference rooms of two downtown mega-hotels. More than 5,000 American sociologists, plus a few foreign scholars, held their largest and, many said, most vibrant annual convention for years. Bush and Kerry were campaigning through nearby states. Their soundbites were rarely mentioned, but the lack of serious debate is one reason for US sociology's new political engagement after decades of quiet since the 60s. The profession's centre of gravity is moving left. There is a drive to inject ethical standards into the analysis of what most agree is a US society becoming increasingly polarised beneath its veneer of shared consumerism. Above all, sociologists are starting to challenge the intellectual stranglehold of American economists who have managed to get the neo-liberal model of competitive individualism and corporate globalisation to dominate public discourse and policy-making for the past 20 years. Words like "empire" and "inequality" popped up frequently at this conference after their post-Vietnam war dormancy. New phrases like "the corporate state" and "global apartheid" appeared. Half the world's PhDs in sociology are taken at American universities. The US has 13,000 career sociologists, a potential for extraordinary intellectual hegemony. They flexed their muscles last year, becoming the only US professional association to oppose the invasion of Iraq. A few unions denounced the war and even the normally conservative trade union federation, the AFL-CIO, passed a mildly worded vote of criticism. But with the exception of the sociologists, America's professions were coy about raising their collective voice. It was no accident that this year's conference theme was "public sociologies". It was chosen by the American Sociological Association's president, Michael Burawoy, a modest Mancunian ethnographer and sociologist who emigrated in the 70s. He distinguishes public sociology from professional sociology, which he describes as work aimed primarily for academic journals and peer review - "solving puzzles". It also differs from policy sociology, which is "solving problems" for mainly government or business. Public sociology, by contrast, is a conversation with society about values. Burawoy is careful to argue that it does not have a single orientation since a third of the sociologists who voted rejected the anti-war motion. He also insists that the three types - professional, policy and public - are inter-dependent. Without rigorous scholarly standards no public sociology will be taken seriously. Most controversially, Burawoy wants to "provincialise" American sociology. This may sound odd since US intellectual life has long been scarred by insularity. Burawoy means his slogan provocatively. The famous "end of history" claim that US liberal democracy and market capitalism were the only models left was a sign, in his view, that many Americans were trying to universalise the particular. They should realise their culture is not always preferred else where. To make the point, he invited high-profile foreigners like Arundhati Roy, the anti-globalisation campaigner, and Mary Robinson, a former UN human rights commissioner. Sociologists' relations with the state vary in time and place. The South Africans and east Europeans present were ex-dissidents who described how the advent of democratic and legitimate governments in their countries had brought new problems. Debate narrowed, intellectuals were less in demand and disappointment with rising social inequality and the new governments' economic policies was leading to public apathy. Jacklyn Cock, author of a path-breaking exposure of the plight of domestic workers in South Africa, called on sociologists to stand in solidarity with the new social movements. But she warned against romanticising civil society in the struggle against globalisation's injustices. "The real issue of our time is how to reinvent the state," she said. Her point applies with greatest force in the US. Behind the rhetoric of small government, the US has created a monster state where political, economic and media power is dominated by corporations. America's political scientists ought to be taking the leading role in analysing this distortion of democracy but, according to their sociology rivals, their profession is in a conservative phase. It churns out graduates for the foreign service rather than critics who want to reform the system. Sociologists have to move alone. Four days in California are not going to change the world. But it was hard not to feel that something big is stirring in US academic life. The dominance of Reaganomics is under serious intellectual challenge. Clinton's third way is rejected as neoliberalism in a different guise - welfare-cutting, support for the out-sourcing of US jobs and unfair "free" trade. The foreign subjects of America's global empire have been restless for years. Now some of the sharpest minds are raising questions. Even if John Kerry wins control of the White House, the rebellion is unlikely to stop. · j.steele at guardian.co.uk From definetime at rediffmail.com Wed Sep 8 12:54:30 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 8 Sep 2004 07:24:30 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) Makeup and marketing - welcome to the world of 10-year-old girls Message-ID: <20040908072430.5580.qmail@webmail46.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040908/569019ed/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Survey says put cosmetic vending machines into schools Owen Bowcott Wednesday September 8, 2004 The Guardian The plastic bag that wraps around Bliss, a magazine for teenage girls, this month says it all. "FREE INSIDE! makeup palette," it screams. Across the bottom of the bag it teases with a "Lush mascara offer" "Gorgeous lip gloss offer", as well as a £5 voucher for "spray tan". On the Bliss website, even before you get to the front page, a pop-up advert appears from Ralph Lauren asking readers: "How old are you?" If you answer 10-15, it goes on to ask "What was the last fragrance you purchased?" followed by "Which shop do you buy fragrances from?" Bliss, Sugar, Cosmo girl, Elle girl, the list goes on ... The power of such marketing is highlighted today by a survey which shows that most seven- to 10-year-olds are using makeup. The survey showed that by the age of 14, around nine out of 10 girls apply some type of eyeliner, mascara or lipstick. The number of those in the 11-14 age group who report using lipstick or lip gloss on a daily basis has more than doubled intwo years. Mintel, one of the UK's leading consumer research organisations, which carried out the survey, draws the controversial conclusion from its results that cosmetic companies could go much further in their drive to entice young girls to buy their products. Firms should place vending machines for their products in schools and cinemas to target teenage consumers, Mintel says. The study, based on marketing questionnaires, fails to distinguish whether makeup is being used merely for play, involving dressing up at home, or as part of a beauty regime when going out. But claims that youngsters are being forced to express their sexual identity long before childhood is over have provoked rows and moral panics in recent years. Earlier this year the Association of Teachers and Lecturers called for age restrictions on magazines such as Bliss, Sugar and Cosmo girl on the basis that they were "full of explicit sexual content" and "glamorise promiscuity". When Mad About Boys, a glossy magazine aimed at nine- to 12-year-old girls, was launched in 2001, MPs warned that it portrayed them as sex objects, gave tips on makeup and encouraged them to diet. 'Corruption' Two years ago the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, criticised consumerism for its "corruption and premature sexualisation of children". Paris Fashion Week has provoked outcries for parading nine- and 10-year-old girls on a catwalk wearing plunging necklines and high hemlines. The Mintel survey acknowledges such concerns but points out there are commercial opportunities. "Cosmetic manufacturers must be ever mindful of the fine line they tread between encouraging children to look and behave like adults and promoting their products as being good, clean fun," said Claire Hatcher, one of the firm's senior consumer analysts. "Despite their self-assurance, when it comes to grooming products, these girls are still learning about what suits them and are therefore open to experimentation and new products offered in ways which appeal to their age group." Retailing toiletries to teenagers has suffered neglect, the report adds. "Makeup, in particular, is often an impulse purchase, so placing teen brands in unusual locations such as in vending machines in schools, cinemas and bowling alleys may persuade consumers into buying something they had not previously considered." According to the survey, 63% of seven to 10-year-olds wear lipstick, more than two in five eye shadow or eyeliner, and almost one in four mascara. Three quarters of 11- 14-year-old girls use eye shadow and a similar proportion mascara. Lip gloss and lipstick is even more popular, with eight in 10 girls aged 11-14 applying it. Half of girls in that age group wear blusher, with 14% saying they use it every day or more. By the age of 14, almost three in five (58%) girls use perfume. "Long before girls become teenagers, they use a wide selection of cosmetics as well as other skin care products and toiletries," said Ms Hatcher. "Their interest in these products is fuelled by teen magazines and by swapping ideas and recommendations with their peer group and, of course, watching what their mothers use. "Manufacturers of consumer products such as makeup and fragrance should therefore be wary in over-promoting celebrities in the belief that all young teenagers aspire to a notion of perfection which many do not realise is unobtainable." The survey, which questioned 5,856 youngsters aged seven to 19, also showed that fake tan is popular, with 13% of 11-12 year old girls using self tanning cream, lotion or oil. This rises to one-in-five among the 13-14 group. Hair colourants are also used by many young girls: 27% of those aged 11-14 use them, rising to 35% of 13- 14-year-olds. Childcare organisations reacted with caution to the figures. "Children should be free to enjoy childhood without undue pressure," the NSPCC said. "However, young girls have always experimented with makeup and the dressing-up box ... This should only really cause alarm if a child feels that it's something they are uncomfortable with but feel forced to do." Many schools already discourage pupils from wearing makeup and some ban cosmetics. The two main teaching unions reacted with disbelief to the suggestion of installing vending machines in schools. Chris Keates, the acting general secretary of the NASUWT, said: "It's an extraordinary idea for anyone to come up with. "Do people want to lose the focus of what school is about? Pupils should not be thinking about whether they have an opportunity to use cosmetics." A spokesman for the NUT said: "Pupils have always tried to get around bans. But the purpose of school is education of the child not an opportunity to increase their sex appeal." From feedback at seagullindia.com Tue Sep 7 14:43:51 2004 From: feedback at seagullindia.com (Seagullindia) Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2004 05:13:51 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] seagull books - new Message-ID: <200409070513375.SM01568@AspEmail> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040907/afd8e1f3/attachment.html From shivamvij at gmail.com Wed Sep 8 18:11:05 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2004 18:11:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Maya to sue DJ Message-ID: Maya may take legal action against Dainik Jagran The Times of India / Lucknow TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 07, 2004 06:01:55 AM ] LUCKNOW: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/842904.cms Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati on Tuesday expressed her displeasure at a "derogatory and casteist" headline in the Hindi daily Dainik Jagran. She said her party would explore the possibility of legal action against the paper for the headline that identified her by her caste. Her partymen have already filed an FIR against the chief editor, editor and some other employees of the newspaper under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act at Noida's Sector-20 police station. The FIR accuses the daily of using objectionable language with regard to Mayawati. Meanwhile, Noida SP A K Jain said officials of Dainik Jagran had said the use of the derogatory term was an accident. At a press meet in Lucknow, Mayawati accused the paper of running a "vilification campaign." o o o o o Caste in the newsroom? Caste discrimination in the newsroom? Rubbish, say most upper caste journalists in Uttar Pradesh. It's all over, say backward caste journalists. By Shivam Vij in Lucknow How many journalists in the Lucknow office of Dainik Jagran, India's largest selling newspaper, belong to the Schedule Castes or the 'Other Backward Castes'? "I have never counted and I will never count. Caste is not an issue in this organisation," says Dilip Awasthi, a senior editor with Dainik Jagran. But a backward caste journalist says that Dainik Jagran in Lucknow in particular has been run as a "Brahminical paper". Unlike Awasthi, backward caste journalists can count their numbers on the fingertips. Ask them and they start listing names — an exercise which some upper-caste scribes are also able to undertake. There are not even half a dozen Dalit journalists in Lucknow, most of whom do not handle the political beat, and no Dalit journalist works for an English paper. As for OBC's, you will find at the most one in every paper. Why are the numbers so few? "They don't go to schools!" says Awasthi. And the ones who do? Has he never met a single SC/OBC journalist who's talented enough for a job? "Never. They can't write a single sentence properly." The full story: http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web2196523711Hoot122711%20AM1229&pn=1§ion=S16 From tellsachin at yahoo.com Tue Sep 7 19:00:05 2004 From: tellsachin at yahoo.com (Sachin Agarwal) Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2004 06:30:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] ZESTEconomics needs co-moderators Message-ID: <20040907133005.27230.qmail@web41503.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Sarai Members, Here is a an oppurtunity to become a co-moderator of ZESTEconomics a prestigious yahoo mailing list on economics and related material. Its content includes features, analysis and events. ZESTEconomics needs a co-moderator. Read the following message from the group owner and also visit the group to get a feel of what it has been doing till now. Should you feel interested in becoming a co-moderator please write back to tellsachin at yahoo.com or shivamvij at gmail.com with your brief introduction. Regards, Sachin Agarwal ZESTEconomics Moderator o o o o o o o http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-economics/message/192 Dear ZESTEconomics members, Your moderator Sachin Agarwal has for some time now been threatening to resign from this honorary post because he has been busy pursuing his PhD. For this reason ZEST wants one of you to rise to the occasion and be a co-moderator. You will be required to post at least 5 articles a day, and Sachin will format and approve them. This distributes Sachin's work. The articles you post should be features and not news reports; they should deal with current Indian and international economic scenarios. Efforts should be made also to cover the economic scene of Pakistan given that we have quite a few members from there. The need for this appeal would not have arisen had you all been irregularly posting articles from the net. Whenever you come across something interesting that relates to economics, please post it to zest-economics at yahoogroups.com. ZEST is a group where all members are supposed to participate. If you consider it a 'free service', Sachin may be tempted to apply the basic principles of economics and close down the shop. So I request you all to consider being co-moderator. Please reply this mail with a brief introduction of yourself and Sachin will decide who is most suitable. He may also make all applicants co-moderator, so as not to burden a single individual. Looking forward to an enthusiastic response, SHIVAM VIJ | shivamvij at gmail.com The ZEST Groups | zestcurrent-owner at yahoogroups.com --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040907/46a2de04/attachment.html From jo at turbulence.org Tue Sep 7 23:23:00 2004 From: jo at turbulence.org (Jo-Anne Green) Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2004 10:53:00 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Turbulence Commission: "Two Textual Instruments, Part 1: Regime Change" by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, with Brion Moss, David Durand, and Elaine Froehlich Message-ID: <413DF57C.4020600@turbulence.org> September 7, 2004 Turbulence Commission: "Two Textual Instruments, Part 1: Regime Change" by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, with Brion Moss, David Durand, and Elaine Froehlich http://turbulence.org/works/twotxt Textual instruments make text "playable" in a new way. At first, as one encounters their workings, they are toys for exploring language--more flexible than link-node hypertext, more responsive than batch-mode natural language generators. With growing experience, these instruments can also become tools for textual performance. "Regime Change," the first of two textual instruments to be released by Turbulence this month, begins with a news article from April 2003, following the bombardment that began the U.S. invasion of Iraq. George W. Bush cites "eyewitness" intelligence that Saddam Hussein was assassinated by targeted U.S. bombing, and clings to the contention that the Iraqi president was hiding "weapons of mass destruction. "Playing "Regime Change" brings forth texts generated from a document that records a different U.S. attitude toward presidential assassination and eyewitness intelligence--the report of the Warren Commission. "Two Textual Instruments: Regime Change and News Reader" is a 2003 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the LEF Foundation. BIOGRAPHIES NOAH WARDRIP-FRUIN has recently co-edited two books: The New Media Reader (2003) and First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game (2004). His artwork has been presented by the Whitney and Guggenheim museums. BRION MOSS, an engineer by training and vocation, first entered the art world through his participation in the conceptualization and creation of The Impermanence Agent. He is currently employed as a computer geek by IGN/Gamespy. DAVID DURAND is Director of Electronic Publishing Services at Ingenta plc and Adjunct Associate Professor at Brown's Department of Computer Science. He is co-author of Making Hypermedia Work. He participated in the XML, TEI, HyTime, XLink and WebDAV standards efforts. ELAINE FROEHLICH is principle of Active Surface Design and Director of the Computer Based Design Program for Continuing Education at the Rhode Island School of Design. Past projects include interaction design for Mesa Vista and book design for the Encyclopedia Africana. For more information about Turbulence, please visit http://turbulence.org -- Jo-Anne Green, Associate Director New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856 Turbulence: http://turbulence.org New American Radio: http://somewhere.org Networked_Performance Blog and Conference: http://turbulence.org/blog -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040907/f728e77d/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From shai at filterindia.com Wed Sep 8 17:03:58 2004 From: shai at filterindia.com (shai at filterindia.com) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2004 17:03:58 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] EXPERIMENTA 2005 Call for Entries Message-ID: EXPERIMENTA 2005 The 3rd international festival for experimental film in India CALL FOR ENTRIES FILTER INDIA is currently seeking experimental films for exhibition at EXPERIMENTA February 2005 to be held in Bombay, India. Medium specific experimentation in documentary, non-fiction, diary and animation genres are welcome for selection to both the Film and Digital Video categories. Innovative, cutting edge and non-traditional work is encouraged. EXPERIMENTA is a curated film festival and is a Filter India project in collaboration with NowhereLab UK, British Council India UK, and the LUX Centre for Artists’ film and video UK. For further information www.filterindia.com Please forward this email _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From uspia at nus.edu.sg Wed Sep 8 21:40:31 2004 From: uspia at nus.edu.sg (Irina Aristarkhova) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 00:10:31 +0800 Subject: [Reader-list] Post - Beslan impossibilities Message-ID: <4B1347596456D140ACEFD15523E82A770D0C96@MBOX01.stf.nus.edu.sg> Dear Jeebesh, What words can we have at this point? I expressed myself on the Chechen wars in the pieces like "Bloody Russian Soul" and "Russian J-I Jain" (http://www.mailradek.rema.ru/arjen.htm), due to which I was refused publications in a respected St-Petersburg art and culture journal. This is not to claim any 'refusnik' status, but to stress again that Russian intellectuals and intelligentsia in its genealogy are deeply xenophobic, and in that sense, I guess, 'Westernized'. The lack of critical self-reflexivity and highly defensive attitude are not only characteristics of FSB or the Cold War period. This is a long-term problem in Russian national identity and its self-representation. One does not need to be very smart to notice that, of course. One thing to note though - the terror in Beslan creates more dissatisfaction with Putin among Russians than any of the previous wars. When I read comments in press it is obvious more people do not buy that sanitized Cold War media rhetoric, that is more reminiscent of a spectacle of masculinity crisis than of a government leader. Terminology used is adopted directly from Israel and the US: "pre-emptive strikes", "we should not show weakness", "it is a total war", "try and invite Bin-Laden for negotiations", etc. "Russians Do Not Surrender" - that is our message of the day. This is a war that we started and lost in the 19th century. We started it again and lost it again. There is a Russian saying - only fools injure themselves in the same way (loose translation). I feel like another 2-3 months and the whole world will have a déjà vu - be scared of our nuclear weapons - "Who knows what these crazy Russians will do now?" And the last point - there were two other terrorist acts almost at the same time. No one noticed it much, in Russia included. Beslan now is a new 'star' among terrorist attacks. I wonder how much of Beslan is an orchestrated spectacle - since international media is usually not invited to film so openly in Russia, especially victims of terrorist attacks. So that editor you mention was probably sacked because he did not manifest enough 'patriotism'. I wonder what Soldiers' Mothers political movement would say. This is a threshold, no doubt. But towards what? That's why silence, I guess. We are all waiting, Russians included - in awe. Thanks for asking of opinion though. I would not have written if not for that. Take care, Irina Aristarkhova -----Original Message----- From: reader-list-bounces at sarai.net [mailto:reader-list-bounces at sarai.net] On Behalf Of Jeebesh Bagchi Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 9:16 PM To: reader-list at sarai.net Subject: [Reader-list] Post - Beslan impossibilities dear friends, was trying to write something to get some clarity after the Beslan massacre. Could not make much headway. Was going through reader-list posting to see if somebody has written about it. Was surprised by a total absence of any posting. Given that this list has always been very active during global crisis events and many different point of views have been articulated and debated, this peculiar absence seemed strange. About myself, i could not understand what to make of the events. Trapped within nationalist retributive logic of violence are very vulnerable population group and so many just killed. A editor of a newspaper in Russia got sacked apparently because of showing the graphic images of the incident. This editor have been opposed to the violence of the state in russia in the conflicts in 90s. A scared man being taken away by two hooded commandos and he confesses. What to think about it? Maybe, some of you have something to say more about it. best jeebesh _________________________________________ 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 radiofreealtair at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 16:19:59 2004 From: radiofreealtair at gmail.com (Anand Vivek Taneja) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 03:49:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] synchroni-cities - delhi/elsewhere: Sophia, Janmashtami and the strange case of the Iraqi sprinter... Message-ID: <14343654.1094726968455.JavaMail.root@bla54.blogger.com> Anand Vivek Taneja has sent you a link to a weblog: The mail-this-post feature warns you, 'This feature is not to be used for excessive self-promotion.' ... But interesting thoughts here on 'information asymmetry', and the production of knowledge, and the strange case of the iraqi sprinter and the starter gun... cheers, Anand Blog: synchroni-cities - delhi/elsewhere Post: Sophia, Janmashtami and the strange case of the Iraqi sprinter... Link: http://synchroni-cities.blogspot.com/2004/09/sophia-janmashtami-and-strange-case-of.html -- Powered by Blogger http://www.blogger.com/ From shivamvij at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 18:32:46 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 18:32:46 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Homosexual victim exposes the Delhi press Message-ID: 9/8/2004 Homosexual victim exposes the Delhi press In the case of a double murder in Delhi, it is the "dark underbelly" of print journalism rather than homosexuality that needs to be examined By Aniruddha Dutta see: http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot84817%20PM1328&pn=1 From shivamvij at gmail.com Thu Sep 9 19:05:08 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 19:05:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] "This Is Perhaps the Best Time in the History of the Subcontinent" and all that Message-ID: Here is a naive article on the India-Pakistan situation from a Saudi paper. Please note the gushing, Utopian generalisations. We heard a lot of these for Vajpayee too. The argument then was that only an RSS PM in India and a military dictator in Pakistan could bring about peace. Now the argument is that economist PM's will bring about peace because they will put prosperity about politics. It's so easy to go with the flow, but ground realities of political conflicts don't change with governments. The Indian govt has complained again that cross-border infiltration of trained jehadis has begun again (sounds familiar, no?) and this will again take us to the cycle of violence, denial, argument and counter-argument between the two countries. And it is so ridiculous to compare Indian and Pakistani PM's because Pakistani PM's change every time Musharraf sees a new dream. It's Musharraf and Manmohan, not Shaukat and Manmohan, who will bring about peace, if at all. My observation of the Indo-Pak political peace-conflict cycles over the last 5-7 years makes me believe that neither side is serious about peace because it's so much easier to live with status quo. Just blame the other side, simple. But taking the initiative for peace, driving though the arduous process of negotiation and working out nitty-gritties, and then for both governments to 'sell' the conclusion of the settlement to their public - it's too much responsibility. You have to put your neck on the line. You have to face accusations of a 'sell-out' from the opposition. And then be judged by history, just as popular conceptions of history blame Nehru for the Kashmir dispute: 'had Patel handled it...'. And then Indira Gandhi is blamed for not blackmailing Bhutto after the Bangladesh war into giving up PoK. And so on. I'm sure a lot of Pakistani leaders have been blamed for messing up Kashmir. Pakistani liberals blame the military establishment for taking the jehadi approach. Vajpayee's Lahore bus was one major attempt to bring about lasting peace, because, as Indian editors have repeatedly pointed out, Vajpayee harboured the dream of a certain lolly-pop called the Nobel peace prize. And from the recent revelations about the Kargil war and the Nawaz Sharif-Musharraf politics, it seems that Sharif was also sincere about peace. But Kargil and the nuclear arrogance of the two countries ruined it all, and for this Saudi writer to suggest that the Agra summit could have been a turning point is ridiculous. The Agra summit was a farce, nothing more than a media spectacle. The 'what if?' question here should be: what if Kargil hadn't happened? And be it Lahore or Agra, it wouldn't have 'sounded a death-knell' for Hindu fundamentalists because they have plenty of issues to rake up and spill blood over. Curiously, the writer suggests that the lack of success of 'patriotic' anti-Pakistan movies in India is a sign of the Indian public wanting peace. I'm not so sure. There are no signs of anyone rejecting such cinema for political reasons. Indians don't use their brains when they watch Bollywod. So a war film will be successful if it's released soon after the Kargil war. But if you make it into a formula, or if you use a viable formula to make a bad film, people just get plain sick of it. And Bollyood cinema taste has in the past few years been altered by 'feel good' films. Let another skirmish happen on the border, and some stupid filmmaker will spend a few crores sending Ajay Devgan or Sunil Shetty to fight Pakistan, with their love interests singing songs in the background. Shivam Vij o o o o o o o o o o o o This Is Perhaps the Best Time in the History of the Subcontinent By Siraj Wahab Arab News (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) / 8 September 2004 http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=51168&d=8&m=9&y=2004 In its Independence Day Collector's Issue last month, India's popular Outlook weekly magazine examined a series of hypothetical questions such as "What if L.K. Advani had been PM? Godse's Bullets Had Missed Gandhi? India Hadn't Tested the Nuclear Bomb? Rajiv Gandhi Hadn't Unlocked Babri Masjid? Indira Gandhi Hadn't Been PM? Gujarat Hadn't Happened?" Brilliant essays — all by some of the best analytical minds in India. But they somehow forgot to throw light on the most pertinent question of our time: What if the Agra summit had succeeded? Would it have changed the political and economic map of the Subcontinent? Would it have assured a second term for Atal Behari Vajpayee? Would it have sounded the death-knell for the Hindu fundamentalists? The unfortunate failure of that summit in 2001exploded a long-held myth among a large number of the Subcontinent's population that a lasting peace between the two archrivals was possible only if there were a hard-line Hindu government in Delhi and a powerful military general in Islamabad. The popular perception was that any give-and-take on Kashmir would not have invited the charge that national interests had been compromised by a Hindu nationalist government. A strong army man in Pakistan would have eventually rallied round the weakened political parties in his country. In short, a popular Indian National Congress and an equally popular Pakistan People's Party or Pakistan Muslim League would have found it extremely difficult to offer anything besides rhetoric. Who would have imagined that one day both countries would be ruled by world-class economists whose eyes are fixed firmly on the welfare of their countries? Dr. Manmohan Singh became prime minister under special circumstances and now has the unflinching support of perhaps the most powerful woman in Indian politics, Sonia Gandhi. Pakistani Premier Shaukat Aziz got the top job under equally interesting circumstances and enjoys tremendous support from the most powerful man in Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Both Dr. Singh and Shaukat Aziz are proponents of liberalization. Both want economic reforms with a human touch. Both have lived outside their countries and know very well their nations' problems. Both know full well the futility of fighting proxy wars. Both want a big chunk of their budgets to go toward alleviating poverty and educating the masses. Both lack the cunning of politicians and are therefore in a better position to focus on issues of vital interest to their nationals. They will at least try to cut down on burgeoning defense budgets. Whether they succeed or not is another matter. They are a dream team to lead two big nations which have the indisputable potential to become the world's largest trade zone. The recent cricket series between the two nations opened the floodgates of goodwill between two different ideologies. Every other day, Bollywood now receives a guest from Lollywood. Every other day Indian newspapers are filled with beaming pictures of Pakistanis arriving in India for heart surgery and other medical treatment. There are similar stories in Pakistani newspapers. The desire for peace with India is perhaps more evident in Pakistan than in India. Pakistani cricket legend Javed Miandad literally took India by storm during his recent Zee TV-sponsored tour. Everybody thought he was the most hated person in India. He was in for a shock when he met Bal Thackeray. "I am your admirer," said Thackeray. "I love your game." Mainstream Indian actors discovered a new-found courage and are increasingly refusing to act in anti-Pakistani films. Perhaps they have been encouraged by a series of failures of such films in theaters all over the country. The verdict is clear: The peoples of the two countries have had enough of the politics of hate. There is a kind of war fatigue in both India and Pakistan. The hate on which many in both countries were brought up is rapidly turning into something better. The rhetoric is gone. And for good. This is perhaps the best time in the history of the two nations. Both countries are at ease with themselves. They no longer suffer from the insecurities of the past. Both realize the unwinnability of any future war. Both have two dynamic leaders with refreshing outlooks toward life. Neither carries the usual baggage of popular politicians. When Dr. Singh speaks about improving relations with Pakistan, he sounds convincing. And when Shaukat Aziz talks about converting Pakistan into a giant economic powerhouse, everybody sits up and listens. It is indeed a blessing in disguise that the politicians have been given a much-needed rest. In all probability, what the politicians failed to achieve in 50 years may now be achieved by technocrat prime ministers in three or four years. They will focus less on the disputed border and more on the people who live inside those borders. Indians and Pakistanis will hopefully no longer have to suffer the sight of hundreds and thousands of hungry and emaciated compatriots lining the streets of their cities and towns as so poignantly described by V.S. Naipaul in "India: A Million Mutinies Now." As for what would have happened if the Agra summit had succeeded, history would have recorded something very different. From govil at virginia.edu Thu Sep 9 22:04:36 2004 From: govil at virginia.edu (Nitin Govil) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 12:34:36 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] the robot interpreter References: <14343654.1094726968455.JavaMail.root@bla54.blogger.com> Message-ID: <02a201c4968a$e55cbd50$0300a8c0@SwiftLord> This dovetails completely with US militarism. I wonder if VoxTec will outsource the programming tasks and then sue folks that hack the unit (like the robot dog) to mimic george w's "we're making solid progress"? nitin ______________________________ The Economist, August 28, 2004 U.S. Edition. p. 42 SECTION: MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA HEADLINE: Elevate your hands or I ignite; A robot interpreter The US army's robot interpreter A high-tech weapon for the war to win Iraqi hearts and minds AMONG the many fields in which Americans excel are technological wizardry and not speaking foreign languages. So it was only a matter of time before someone invented a robot that can translate spoken English into other tongues. Enter the "Phraselator", a palm-held electronic polyglot built by a firm in Maryland called VoxTec. Its most immediate application is military. Flesh-and-blood linguists prefer to work in places where their flesh and blood are safe. Robots don't care. Humans may be better interpreters than machines, but they "often have their own political agenda", which can jeopardise accuracy, says the Phraselator's designer, Ace Sarich. Plus, at $2,300 a pop, the device works out cheaper than an interpreter's wages, especially if you expect to be stuck somewhere foreign for a long, long while. So it's popular with coalition troops in Iraq. The seed money for the Phraselator was supplied by the American government. After September 11th 2001, the Department of Defence decided it was going to need a machine that could speak Arabic, among other languages. Shawn Collins, a sergeant with America's special forces in Iraq, calls the device "a godsend". After a recent battle, he found he was able to make a group of Iraqi children laugh with his Phraselator's Star-Trekky vernacular. He then asked if they knew of any hidden weapons nearby, and they led him to a cache of rocket-propelled grenades. For now, the device is best at translating phrases "commonly used by soldiers", says VoxTec. But the company is exploring new markets, including disaster relief, tourism and the preparation of Freedom Fries. "We've been approached by fast-food companies that need to tell [non-English-speaking] workers how to use the deep-fat fryer," says Mr Sarich. The Phraselator's main drawback is that it cannot translate replies. Questions have to be answerable with a nod of the head, or by pointing to the window where the sniper is lurking. It lacks a certain human touch, too. "Pointing a machinegun at enemy soldiers and yelling loudly in English and motioning them to get down tends to work wonders compared to pulling out the Phraselator and having it say: 'Drop your weapon'," says Sgt Collins. From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Sep 10 14:26:52 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 14:26:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Who's Your Hero? Message-ID: Who's Your Hero? TIME is seeking nominations for online Asian and European Hero of the Year. And they don't have to be famous. Suggest a name now at https://www.timeinc.net/time/secure/asia/heroes/2004/ and https://www.timeinc.net/time/europe/secure/hero/2004/. Hurry! Nominations close September 10. From definetime at rediffmail.com Thu Sep 9 17:36:40 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 9 Sep 2004 12:06:40 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) Anti-spam campaigners win battle against world's second largest ISP. Message-ID: <20040909120640.28111.qmail@webmail46.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040909/d57ab4e1/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Spammers given boot by net host Campaigners against spam on the internet have won a major battle against the world's second largest internet service provider. By Andrew Bomford BBC Radio 4's PM programme Wednesday, 8 September, 2004 . US firm Savvis was allegedly earning up to $2 million a month from 148 of the world's worst spammers, a former employee had claimed. Following talks with anti-spam groups, Savvis has now promised to get rid of the spammers using its network. The move has been welcomed by anti-spam campaigners and organisations. Savvis has a low profile publicly, but on the net they are a big player. The company describes itself as "the network that powers Wall Street", because it provides the network connections for the New York Stock Exchange, as well as many other major financial institutions, including 75 of the world's top 100 banks. Until this year Savvis was regarded as a model service provider with a strong policy against spam. But in January it bought C&W US, the American arm of the British telecommunications company Cable & Wireless, for $155 million (£87.4 million). Along with C&W US's 3,000 business customers, Savvis inherited 95 major spammers who make their money by sending out millions of unsolicited e-mails a day with the standard mix of Viagra and porn offers. Since then they have added another 53 spammers, bringing the total number of spammers on their network to 148. Just from these customers alone the company was making a reported $2 million (£1.1 million) a month, the former employee had claimed, a figure which Savvis disputed. But internal memos sent between Savvis executives, and seen by the BBC, referred to the spam customers and how much money was coming in from them. As rumours about Savvis and the spammers grew on the internet, executives discussed different ways of keeping the customers and whether they could hide them by changing their names or their computer IP addresses. One memo, from a senior Savvis executive in charge of Information Security, warned fellow management that the company was in danger of losing its good reputation and a secure and honourable provider. He warned that they could lose their ability to sell to upstanding customers. Alif Terranson, a former Savvis employee who was responsible for keeping the network clean, objected to the spammers and wrote a 200-page report detailing his complaints about the spammers. He told the BBC: "One of the Vice Presidents told me, 'Take no action against any Cable & wireless customer - they are profitable and they are off limits.' "He was talking specifically about that 200-page report which at the time was 95 spammers. When I left Savvis in April it was almost 100, today it is 148. "In my opinion there's no way they could go and add 60 spammers to their service without actively looking for that business," he said. Mr Terranson went to Steve Linford, who runs the Spamhaus block list from a small house boat on the River Thames near London. Spam king Around the world 260 million users are protected from spam by the Spamhaus block list, which identifies where spam is coming from. In three long conversations with Savvis executives last Friday, Mr Linford persuaded them to ditch its spamming clients after threatening to block all Savvis e-mails, making it very difficult for them to communicate with the outside world. Mr Linford said: "The spammers that they were hosting include some of the worst - Eddie Marin, the spam king of Florida for example, a lot of the Viagra spammers, and a lot of the pornography spammers. "So there were some very serious spam gangs on there. For us it is a real victory in being able to get the spam gangs off, and at the same time gaining a new ally in Savvis' management." Mr Linford applauds Savvis for reacting so quickly, and promising to clean up their act. He points out that many service providers would prevaricate, make excuses, and blame someone else to avoid the problem. Savvis itself says the company is firmly anti-spam, and Rob McCormick, the Chief Executive Officer, told the BBC that Savvis does have an excellent reputation for being anti-spam. He disputed the figure of $2 million a month revenue from the spammers, and said the actual figure is only a tenth of that amount. Mr McCormick said the problem stemmed entirely from the spammers they inherited from C&W. "The previous owner of that company allowed something to exist for a long period of time, and people are expecting that a few months after the acquisition of a bankrupt company it's suddenly our fault. "Savvis does not believe illegal spamming is good, in fact 99.99% of our customers are large enterprises who are recipients of this kind of stuff, and don't like it either. "So what we are going to do is shut them off and we are working with Spamhaus to do this." Mr McCormick promised that within the next 10 days all spammers will be taken off their network. This will be celebrated in the anti-spam community, a small band of enthusiasts who patrol the net like voluntary cyber cops to eliminate spam, viruses and internet crimes, many of which are linked. Organisations such as Spamhaus, and Spews (Spam Prevention Early Warning System) are continually chasing spammers across the world. But as they are thrown off one service provider, there is always another one ready to take them on for the lucrative business they bring. The volume of spam shows little sign of diminishing. MessageLabs scans 65 million e-mails a day and in August found 84% of them were spam. From mirzachhotoo at yahoo.co.in Thu Sep 9 21:00:58 2004 From: mirzachhotoo at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?-=20-?=) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 16:30:58 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] FRAMING ABUSE: Media Influence and Public Understanding of Sexual Violence Against Children Message-ID: <20040909153058.72815.qmail@web8302.mail.in.yahoo.com> by Jenny Kitzinger Published by: Pluto Press, 2004 The book can be ordered via: www.plutobooks.com This book offers fascinating insights into how the media shape the way we think. Combining in#8209;depth analysis of media representations of sexual abuse with interviews with nearly 500 journalists, campaigners, abuse survivors and a cross#8209;section of 'the public', Jenny Kitzinger explores the media's role in contemporary society. Which stories attract attention and why? What strategies do journalists and campaigners use to engage people? How do we respond to television and press reporting? The research presented in this volume demonstrates how the media can impact on people's knowledge of the 'facts', perceptions of risk, sense of appropriate policy responses and even how we interpret our own experiences. Kitzinger examines feminist initiatives to challenge sexual violence, the historical emergence of incest as a social problem and the development of new survivor identities. She also explores stereotypes around sex offenders, interrogates protests against 'paedophiles#8209;in#8209;the#8209;community' and presents a detailed analysis of the impact of scandals about disputed abuse accusations. This book is essential reading for those interested in theories about media influence and social change. It is also a key resource for anyone who is concerned about sexual violence, involved in designing intervention strategies or who wishes to encourage responsible journalism. Jenny Kitzinger is Professor of Media and Communications Research at the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University. She is co-editor of 'Developing Focus Group Research' (Sage) and co-author of 'The Mass Media and Power in Modern Britain' (Oxford University Press) and 'The Circuit of Mass Communication: media strategies, representation and audience reception in the AIDS crisis' (Sage). Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partneronline. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040909/4cbd7dad/attachment.html From indradg at icbic.com Sat Sep 11 00:05:17 2004 From: indradg at icbic.com (Indranil Das Gupta) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 00:05:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [ANNOUNCEMENT] Formation of Indian Koha Interest Group Message-ID: <1094841317.2524.10.camel@phpmyadmin.banglamafia.org> Hi, I would to inform all of you that the Indian Koha Interest Group has been set up. The mailing list is up and running. Koha (www.koha.org) is the award-winning opensource software originally from New Zealand; it is the world's first Free/Opensource Library management software. The objective of the Interest Group is to foster the use and adoption of this Opensource Library Software in India, as well as to ensure that Indians using/wanting to use Koha have a common forum to discuss issues specific to indigenous libraries. Koha may also be of interest to all who are interested in creating online digital archives (Precisely the use I am making of Koha at my deployment site) To subscribe to the mailing list please sign up at http://mail.randomink.org/mailman/listinfo/kig-india_randomink.org cheers, -indranil -- ------------------------------------------------------------- Indranil Das Gupta, Project Lead, CASTLE Project [Computer Aided Studies, Teaching and Learning Environment] In collaboration with: West Bengal University of Technology Calcutta, INDIA www.wbut.net ------------------------------------------------------------- L2C2.ORG - Bringing Localized Low-Cost Computing to People ------------------------------------------------------------- From coolzanny at hotmail.com Fri Sep 10 14:04:24 2004 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 14:04:24 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Women in Trains - Postscript Message-ID: Dear All, This is a Postscript to my train research, the Sarai fellowship phase of which is now over. 29th August 2004 I am in Srinagar. Back to square one is a phrase most appropriate for my research process because I have come back to that very place which helped me see my city differently. Srinagar city inspired me to look at issues of crowd, identity, ownership and community, and I took to Mumbai's local trains. There is a sense of peace within me while I am in the Valley now. The Valley is slow-paced - time drags on with each cup of Kashmiri salt tea. My mind goes back to the local trains in Mumbai, the railway station being a site of chaos, confusion, rush, commotion, hostility, understanding and misunderstanding. And before me is the landscape of the Valley - the waters of the Dal Lake, the benign and cruel mountain ranges of the Zabarwan and Pir Panjal, the army and the civilians, the outsiders and the insiders. I don't know which border I stand on. In Mumbai, I stand on the border of Central Railway from the brink of which I see the Western Railway, the Harbour Line and the City. I am part of the crowds, yet I am apart. My eyes are watching them and maybe I am being watched. The crowds are both personal and impersonal. I imagine I am an observer, but I am a participant too. The cinema of life is created everyday here on the local trains and it is a film of ectasy and sorrow, of mundane and novelty, of excitement and drudgery. There are parallels and contradictions. Each one of us embodies and represents each of these shades. The space is not by itself and neither are we by ourselves. Time stands tall, almighty! Time - holy be thy name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on this earth as it is on this railway station and in the trains!!! 8th August 2004 Shaizeen is my companion today as I travel from Kurla to Byculla. She is about 5 years old, loves pungent food and is quite a grown up lady. Her mother is a slave to her whims and fancies. Shaizeen demonstrates how she is capable of taking good care of herself and ensuring that others around her assist her when need be. She is nibbling away at the spicy peanuts while her mother cribs about how she would not touch the dal at home saying it is too pungent. Shaizeen is one of the most fragile users of this city and of the trains. I wonder whether the train is meant is meant for fragile people? Or does it make fragile people 'strong'? The train is a cruel and nurturing space - people say it is becoming selfish in today's times. What is this time? And what is this time doing to the train space? Attached in this postscript is a brief essay of the findings of the research during the six month period. I would appreciate if people on this list could come up with suggestions of avenues, ways and means in which the work could proceed and the knowledge and information can spread and a dialogue initiated. With warm regards, Zainab Bawa _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC from viruses. Enrich your online experience. http://www.msn.co.in/onlinesecurity/ Get more from the internet. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Women in Trains - An Essay.doc Type: application/msword Size: 40960 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040910/1f9bdce7/attachment.doc From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Sep 10 15:28:18 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 15:28:18 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] ZESTCaste begins 18 Sept 2004: Join now Message-ID: ZESTCaste: Documenting India's Journey to De-casteisation Mailing and discussion list begins 18 September 2004 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestcaste/ Unreported caste discrimination, exclusion and violence, caste politics, affirmative action, metropolitan apathy towards caste issues are some of the contours of the present state of India's ancient system of apartheid called caste. ZESTCaste is a no-holds-barred mailing list to reflect contemporary discourses on the subject, promote new thinking, and make accessible the research done on caste over decades. Although the intent of this list is activist, and indeed it will be of great use to human rights activists, ZESTCaste will give space to all shades of opinion on the subject, reflecting not just both the upper- and 'lower'-caste views, but also the differences within them. The list will also reflect the increasingly high-brow Dalit activism being carried out by such eminent caste activists as Udit Raj, Chandrabhan Prasad, Kancha Ilaiah, VT Rajshekhar, Gopal Guru and S. Anand. Attempts will be made to understand the politics of caste leaders such as Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party, and the OBC leaders Mulayam Singh and Laloo Prasad Yadav. ZESTCaste will also give space to news reports about caste issues, as well as the academic research by scholars who hide themselves in universities. The list is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestcaste/ It will begin operations on Saturday, 18 September 2004. To subscribe, if you have a Yahoo! ID, visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestcaste/join/ If you do not have a Yahoo! ID, just send a blank mail to zestcaste-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Please circulate this announcement widely. Other ZEST Groups: ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestcurrent/ zestcurrent-subscribe at yahoogroups.com ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-economics/ zest-economics-subscribe at yahoogroups.com ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zestpoets zestpoets-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Issued by Shivam Vij, Delhi, for The ZEST Groups shivamvij at gmail.com | Friday, 10 September 2004 _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From shivamvij at gmail.com Sat Sep 11 17:30:40 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 17:30:40 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 'Denying Broadband to India' Message-ID: Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 21:50:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Ravinder Singh Subject: Denying Broadband To India Friends, This is very important message. While going through this message posted in e.gov I concluded that the cost of providing Broadband in Indian towns, where power supply is regular could be just a couple of thousand crores. Why then our telecom giants have to wait for some state government initiative to launch this marvelous technology for the benefit of our people? South Korea, Singapore and most progressing economies are broadband connected for some years. Our industry is not interested in technologies, which could potentially revolutionize our economy. India has been adopting technologies when they rotting and verge of being phased out. This leaves us perpetually lagging in development for our inability to take advantage of the opportunities- the primary cause of our poverty. In some areas like irrigation we are still building big leaking canals when water saving drip irrigation technology is available for several decades. Thus our food productivity remains at lowest level- and the number of starving population go on multiplying. Ravinder Singh 10/09/2004 Rs 1,000 Cr AP Broadband Project. Source: Financial Express by R RAVICHANDRAN Posted online: Friday, September 10, 2004 at 0000 hours IST HYDERABAD: In a bid to provide seamless connectivity across the state, Andhra Pradesh government has decided to go in for a mega- broadband project, in collaboration with private sector service providers. Estimated to cost over Rs 1,000 crore, this will be the first time that a state government will take up such a project. It had invited expressions of interest (EoI) recently from private service providers to send in their proposals to design, finance, build and operate the project. "If the project goes live, broadband connectivity charges will become the lowest in India, estimated to be between Rs 100 and Rs 150 per month or even lower without any additional or hidden charges," sources close to the development of the project told FE here. According to them, though the project cost essentially will be met by the private participants, the state government will participate with equity and funding support as a partner to reduce the risks for establishing such a big project. Expected to bridge the digital divide, the government had proposed the low-cost bandwidth project with a 10 GB (gigabyte) connectivity to all the 23 districts, 1 GB connectivity to all the 1,127 mandals and 50/100 MB connectivity to all the 22,000 villages and gram panchayats in the state, sources said. Randeep Sudan, managing director of the AP Technology Services, the agency responsible for the mega broadband project, said the state government is keen to provide seamless connectivity to its people, businesses and public sector electronic services providers. Moreover, Internet service providers (ISPs) as well as private telecom operators can subscribe to this bandwidth for faster and better operations. According to RP Sisodia, director of eSeva, one of the co-ordinators for the project, the government is willing to provide free right-of- way, wherever needed. "We expect that the process of selecting bidders will be completed in the next two months and the name of the successful bidder will be finalised by November," Mr Sisodia said. The principal objective is to accelerate the deployment of broadband by determining technology solutions and selecting credible partners for providing high quality, affordable and equitable broadband access and information devices and services. "The existing technologies are more than five year old and have become obsolete to provide a direct connectivity from Hyderabad to districts and mandals," pointed out Jacob G Victor, general manager of APTS and project in-charge http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=68304 From shivamvij at gmail.com Sat Sep 11 22:19:10 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 22:19:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Northeast Vigil: Manipur Message-ID: Northeast Vigil has launched its microsite on Manipur. Sections include: (i) Background: The State and its Act (ii) Incidents: The abuses and protests (iii) Documents: The laws and reports (iv) Opinions: Editorials and articles (v) Updates: The news and the politics (vi) Voices: The people and their anger (vii) Links: Internet resources Please visit: http://www.northeastvigil.com/issues/manipur/index.html. The Articles and Mediawatch sections have also been redesigned and relaunched. The News section, which is indeed huge, will need some time to be relaunched. Northeast Vigil looks forward to both your comments about the microsite, as well as suggestions about microsites on other issues. Regards and best wishes. Subir Ghosh Northeast Vigil From ritika at sarai.net Mon Sep 13 12:20:36 2004 From: ritika at sarai.net (Ritika) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 12:20:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] madan theater in archives Message-ID: <4145433C.7010600@sarai.net> Hello everybody, off late i have started going to the delhi State archives located at 18A Satsang Vihar Marg, Special institutional Area - near Qutub Institutional area. While going through the material on slaughterhouse etc, i was also looking out for more stuff on cinema, film, exhibition etc. I found interesting bit of information in the Chief Commissioner's Proceedings of 1916. What struck me was a) name madan theatre: as one of the independent fellows of sarai this year worked on Madan theatre b) the way the supremacy of colonial rule was being subtely reinstated through film exhibition. It says... In a letter written (from) the Hon'able Mr. Wheeler, CSI., CIE - Sectretary to the Government of India (to) The political Secretary to the Government of Bombay (and) Chief Secretary to the Government of bengal, Wheeler writes that the government is interested to disseminate information regarding the war by the exhibition of cinematogarph films. In particular mention has been made of a film entitled "Britain Prepared" which is being shown at the Empire Theatre, London and comprises pictures illustrating a) training of new army b) making of munitions (dont know what it means though..perhaps a mispelt word) and c) navy in war time. Wheeler was wondering whether local governemnts could take the matter to the notice of those interested in the trade who would likely to push the circulation of such films, and the one mentioned in particular, in India. In this connection the name of Messrs. Madan of calcutta has been given as that of an enterprising firm. Where such films are shown official patronage might well be extended to them and as much prominence as possible given to their existence. "...special facilities be given to pupils of Government institutions to attend these exhibitions and that encouragement be given to the development of visual instruction in schools and colleges under Government control." cheers ritika -- Ritika Shrimali The Sarai Programme http://blog.sarai.net/users/ritika From definetime at rediffmail.com Sun Sep 12 22:58:18 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 12 Sep 2004 17:28:18 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Post - Beslan impossibilities Message-ID: <20040912172818.4274.qmail@webmail32.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040912/06115843/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Jeebesh's call on the Beslan tragedy has elicited surprisingly little response. It's especially ironic after the reams of outpouring on Dhananjoy. Does it reinforce our societal preoccupation with celebrity and spectacle ? Is the mainstream media setting our agenda for discussion ? Maybe the problem lies with human lives becoming numbers. A bigger number outdoes yesterday's number. Beslan seems to have disappeared from Indian newspapers already. It may come riding piggy back on the third 9-11 anniversary coverage but then maybe the latest Jakarta bombing will take it's place. Irina has a point vis-a-vis Moscow's willingness to allow international camera crews. Consequently I guess the 'Wag the Dog' effect plays on us, with so many fake encounters around, our natural response is numbed by underlying suspicion. Putin's persistent insistence in avoiding a public enquiry (a la Bush Jr) and the drugging of 2 Beslan bound journalists** only adds to this theory. On Monday (6 September), Ariel Sharon welcomed the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, for a meeting about strengthening ties in the fight against terror. "Terror has no justification, and it is time for the free, decent, humanistic world to unite and fight this terrible epidemic," Sharon said. Even with the media bias for Israel, the Beersheba suicide bombing didn't quite blip, it took 10 women among it's 16 victims. Ahmed Zakaev (Aslan Maskhadov's representative and deputy prime minister in the Chechen government elected in 1997) wrote a response in the Guardian on 7 September : ...Ten years ago Chechnya had a population of 2 million. Today it is 800,000, and Vladimir Putin has an army of what we estimate to be up to 300,000 Russian soldiers in Chechnya inflicting a regime of terror. Many Chechens are refugees and many others have simply disappeared, often in the night. At least 200,000 Chechen civilians have been killed by Russian soldiers, including 35,000 children. Another 40,000 children have been seriously injured, 32,000 have lost at least one parent and 6,500 have been orphaned. These are figures supported by reports of human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, and we believe they are conservative. This is how Putin's soldiers treat Chechen civilians. As charges and counter charges are traded, one can't gloss over the fact that without a celebrity/spectacle angle our attention seems to waver quite quickly. Kombakonam is gone but the remains of David Beckam's marital indiscretions still haunt our media. On the terrorist's front, in order to squeeze into the narrow media space they have to generate ever more spectacular catastrophes. It's perhaps our fault that we consume the 'disaster film' on media outlets, while neglecting this ominous pattern. Bersheeba, Belsan, Jakarta all within 9 days and it's become a part of ordinary life. One is almost disappointed with the headlines for not serving a catastrophe with one's breakfast. I think the real threshold we are sitting on is the yawning inequality of resource distribution. According to the UN, the gap between rich and poor countries was 3:1 in 1820, it widened to 44:1 in 1973, Oxfam puts the figure at 98:1 in it's 2001 report. In terms of population vs wealth distribution the picture is grotesque. I think we gloss over this essential nugget when we talk of terrorism as an unprecedented phenomenon. Without addressing inequality, the tensions which give rise to this seemingly endless cycle of violence may never end. Also the present high tide of terrorism rides on back of two decades of globalization which has simply blown the inequality issue out of proportion. As representative governments downsize / deafen, people are resorting to extreme measures just to get themselves heard. Ideally terrorists around the world should stop going after primary school registers and invest in the Fortune 500 annual issue. regards, Sanjay **http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1302311,00.html On Wed, 08 Sep 2004 Jeebesh Bagchi wrote : >dear friends, > >was trying to write something to get some clarity after the Beslan massacre. Could not make much headway. Was going through reader-list posting to see if somebody has written about it. Was surprised by a total absence of any posting. Given that this list has always been very active during global crisis events and many different point of views have been articulated and debated, this peculiar absence seemed strange. > >About myself, i could not understand what to make of the events. >Trapped within nationalist retributive logic of violence are very vulnerable population group and so many just killed. >A editor of a newspaper in Russia got sacked apparently because of showing the graphic images of the incident. This editor have been opposed to the violence of the state in russia in the conflicts in 90s. >A scared man being taken away by two hooded commandos and he confesses. > >What to think about it? Maybe, some of you have something to say more about it. > >best >jeebesh >_________________________________________ >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 reyhanchaudhuri at eth.net Sun Sep 12 05:19:25 2004 From: reyhanchaudhuri at eth.net (reyhan chaudhuri) Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 16:49:25 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Re:Post-Beslan impossibilities-J.Bagchi Message-ID: <009301c4985c$65ed9a20$21ee41db@ReyhanChaudhuri> Dear Friends , You are right ,even outside the sarai -ist postings there has been almost luke warm reaction to Beslan as compared to Senior citizen crimes , hanging of the liftman rapist or even the the blue line running down a cyclist. At our South Delhi Polytechnic for Women ,we did have an one minute silence for the Ossetian children,in the classrooms.I told the Nursery teacher trainees that we would definitely put a question on it in the next test and to read up the factual events.And ofcourse so many of us colleagues lit a candle on tuesday night....(7thSept)l ike rest of the world.. But there was something definitely missing.Is it fesible to zero in into the exact reason??The agitated ,shocked response was not there.The concerned urgent discussions were not there.Even after the videotape being telecast or injured children shown running out...Not to mention the agonizing story carried by Indian express, about the mother who had to choose between her 2 yr old son and six yr old daughter.(Thank God! Atleast that had a happy ending.).. Are we getting cold and immune? Or 1)Sometimes things are too unnerving to be articulated.And we are tightlipped about it. 2.)It's a classic Indian response to tragedy.They are not really one of us.They are not our community or our caste.Not really are problem...apna to dekho phir doosron ki phikar karo; 3) They are foreigners aren't they? They don't have a real family life.They will go with anyone.They will not have the same attachment.They don't love and sacrifice like us .For us our chilren are everything.We Indian women will give up everything ,once chidren come,without even thinking...No? 4).The concern was diverted by the imperious curiosity,"Maam if uzbeks,tajiks,kazakhs,,,etc have been given their lands.Why aren't russians giving chechens chechenstan?" Ofcourse for everybody's sake I do hope it's the first reason.Because children belong to all of us. They are a treasure beyond borders.They are something we all have to not love and cherish .We must keep them safe and happy,come what may; Regards, but-with-contrition, R.Chaudhuri -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040911/a40c2f9c/attachment.html From subasrik at gmail.com Mon Sep 13 10:28:00 2004 From: subasrik at gmail.com (Subasri Krishnan) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 10:28:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Jensen on Moore's film... Message-ID: <5ac9ecd30409122158385c4580@mail.gmail.com> This article was published in 'The Counterpunch' sometime in July. A lot of you have probably read it... Subasri -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stupid White Movie What Michael Moore Misses About the Empire By ROBERT JENSEN I have been defending Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" from the criticism in mainstream and conservative circles that the film is leftist propaganda. Nothing could be further from the truth; there is very little left critique in the movie. In fact, it's hard to find any coherent critique in the movie at all. The sad truth is that "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a bad movie, but not for the reasons it is being attacked in the dominant culture. It's at times a racist movie. And the analysis that underlies the film's main political points is either dangerously incomplete or virtually incoherent. But, most important, it's a conservative movie that ends with an endorsement of one of the central lies of the United States, which should warm the hearts of the right-wingers who condemn Moore. And the real problem is that many left/liberal/progressive people are singing the film's praises, which should tell us something about the impoverished nature of the left in this country. I say all this not to pick at small points or harp on minor flaws. These aren't minor points of disagreement but fundamental questions of analysis and integrity. But before elaborating on that, I want to talk about what the film does well. The good stuff First, Moore highlights the disenfranchisement of primarily black voters in Florida in the 2000 election, a political scandal that the mainstream commercial news media in the United States has largely ignored. The footage of a joint session of Congress in which Congressional Black Caucus members can't get a senator to sign their letter to allow floor debate about the issue (a procedural requirement) is a powerful indictment not only of the Republicans who perpetrated the fraud but the Democratic leadership that refused to challenge it. Moore also provides a sharp critique of U.S. military recruiting practices, with some amazing footage of recruiters cynically at work scouring low-income areas for targets, whom are disproportionately non-white. The film also effectively takes apart the Bush administration's use of fear tactics after 9/11 to drive the public to accept its war policies. "Fahrenheit 9/11" also does a good job of showing war's effects on U.S. soldiers; we see soldiers dead and maimed, and we see how contemporary warfare deforms many of them psychologically as well. And the film pays attention to the victims of U.S. wars, showing Iraqis both before the U.S. invasion and after in a way that humanizes them rather than uses them as props. The problem is that these positive elements don't add up to a good film. It's a shame that Moore's talent and flair for the dramatic aren't put in the service of a principled, clear analysis that could potentially be effective at something beyond defeating George W. Bush in 2004. Subtle racism How dare I describe as racist a movie that highlights the disenfranchisement of black voters and goes after the way in which military recruiters chase low-income minority youth? My claim is not that Moore is an overt racist, but that the movie unconsciously replicates a more subtle racism, one that we all have to struggle to resist. First, there is one segment that invokes the worst kind of ugly-American nativism, in which Moore mocks the Bush administration's "coalition of the willing," the nations it lined up to support the invasion of Iraq. Aside from Great Britain there was no significant military support from other nations and no real coalition, which Moore is right to point out. But when he lists the countries in the so-called coalition, he uses images that have racist undertones. To depict the Republic of Palau (a small Pacific island nation), Moore chooses an image of stereotypical "native" dancers, while a man riding on an animal-drawn cart represents Costa Rica. Pictures of monkeys running are on the screen during a discussion of Morocco's apparent offer to send monkeys to clear landmines. To ridicule the Bush propaganda on this issue, Moore uses these images and an exaggerated voice-over in a fashion that says, in essence, "What kind of coalition is it that has these backward countries?" Moore might argue that is not his intention, but intention is not the only question; we all are responsible for how we tap into these kinds of stereotypes. More subtle and important is Moore's invocation of a racism in which solidarity between dominant whites and non-white groups domestically can be forged by demonizing the foreign "enemy," which these days has an Arab and South Asian face. For example, in the segment about law-enforcement infiltration of peace groups, the camera pans the almost exclusively white faces (I noticed one Asian man in the scene) in the group Peace Fresno and asks how anyone could imagine these folks could be terrorists. There is no consideration of the fact that Arab and Muslim groups that are equally dedicated to peace have to endure routine harassment and constantly prove that they weren't terrorists, precisely because they weren't white. The other example of political repression that "Fahrenheit 9/11" offers is the story of Barry Reingold, who was visited by FBI agents after making critical remarks about Bush and the war while working out at a gym in Oakland. Reingold, a white retired phone worker, was not detained or charged with a crime; the agents questioned him and left. This is the poster child for repression? In a country where hundreds of Arab, South Asian and Muslim men were thrown into secret detention after 9/11, this is the case Moore chooses to highlight? The only reference in the film to those detentions post-9/11 is in an interview with a former FBI agent about Saudis who were allowed to leave the United States shortly after 9/11, in which it appears that Moore mentions those detentions only to contrast the kid-gloves treatment that privileged Saudi nationals allegedly received. When I made this point to a friend, he defended Moore by saying the filmmaker was trying to reach a wide audience that likely is mostly white and probably wanted to use examples that those people could connect with. So, it's acceptable to pander to the white audience members and over-dramatize their limited risks while ignoring the actual serious harm done to non-white people? Could not a skilled filmmaker tell the story of the people being seriously persecuted in a way that non-Arab, non-South Asian, non-Muslims could empathize with? Bad analysis "Fahrenheit 9/11" is strong on tapping into emotions and raising questions about why the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11, but it is extremely weak on answering those questions in even marginally coherent fashion. To the degree the film has a thesis, it appears to be that the wars were a product of the personal politics of a corrupt Bush dynasty. I agree the Bush dynasty is corrupt, but the analysis the film offers is both internally inconsistent, extremely limited in historical understanding and, hence, misguided. Is the administration of George W. Bush full of ideological fanatics? Yes. Have its actions since 9/11 been reckless and put the world at risk? Yes. In the course of pursuing those policies, has it enriched fat-cat friends? Yes. But it is a serious mistake to believe that these wars can be explained by focusing so exclusively on the Bush administration and ignoring clear trends in U.S. foreign and military policy. In short, these wars are not a sharp departure from the past but instead should be seen as an intensification of longstanding policies, affected by the confluence of this particular administration's ideology and the opportunities created by the events of 9/11. Look first at Moore's treatment of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. He uses a clip of former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke complaining that the Bush administration's response to 9/11 in Afghanistan was "slow and small," implying that we should have attacked faster and bigger. The film does nothing to question that assessment, leaving viewers to assume that Moore agrees. Does he think that a bombing campaign that killed at least as many innocent Afghans as Americans who died on 9/11 was justified? Does he think that a military response was appropriate, and simply should have been more intense, which would have guaranteed even more civilian casualties? Does he think that a military strategy, which many experts believe made it difficult to pursue more routine and productive counterterrorism law-enforcement methods, was a smart move? Moore also suggests that the real motivation of the Bush administration in attacking Afghanistan was to secure a gas pipeline route from the Caspian Basin to the sea. It's true that Unocal had sought such a pipeline, and at one point Taliban officials were courted by the United States when it looked as if they could make such a deal happen. Moore points out that Taliban officials traveled to Texas in 1997 when Bush was governor. He fails to point out that all this happened with the Clinton administration at the negotiating table. It is highly unlikely that policymakers would go to war for a single pipeline, but even if that were plausible it is clear that both Democrats and Republicans alike have been mixed up in that particular scheme. The centerpiece of Moore's analysis of U.S. policy in the Middle East is the relationship of the Bush family to the Saudis and the bin Laden family. The film appears to argue that those business interests, primarily through the Carlyle Group, led the administration to favor the Saudis to the point of ignoring potential Saudi complicity in the attacks of 9/11. After laying out the nature of those business dealings, Moore implies that the Bushes are literally on the take. It is certainly true that the Bush family and its cronies have a relationship with Saudi Arabia that has led officials to overlook Saudi human-rights abuses and the support that many Saudis give to movements such as al Qaeda. That is true of the Bushes, just as it was of the Clinton administration and, in fact, every post-World War II president. Ever since FDR cut a deal with the House of Saud giving U.S. support in exchange for cooperation on the flow of oil and oil profits, U.S. administrations have been playing ball with the Saudis. The relationship is sometimes tense but has continued through ups and downs, with both sides getting at least part of what they need from the other. Concentrating on Bush family business connections ignores that history and encourages viewers to see the problem as specific to Bush. Would a Gore administration have treated the Saudis differently after 9/11? There's no reason to think so, and Moore offers no evidence or argument why it would have. But that's only part of the story of U.S. policy in the Middle East, in which the Saudis play a role but are not the only players. The United States cuts deals with other governments in the region that are willing to support the U.S. aim of control over those energy resources. The Saudis are crucial in that system, but not alone. Egypt, Jordan and the other Gulf emirates have played a role, as did Iran under the Shah. As does, crucially, Israel. But there is no mention of Israel in the film. To raise questions about U.S. policy in the Middle East without addressing the role of Israel as a U.S. proxy is, to say the least, a significant omission. It's unclear whether Moore actually backs Israeli crimes and U.S. support for them, or simply doesn't understand the issue. And what of the analysis of Iraq? Moore is correct in pointing out that U.S. support for Iraq during the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein's war on Iran was looked upon favorably by U.S. policymakers, was a central part of Reagan and Bush I policy up to the Gulf War. And he's correct in pointing out that Bush II's invasion and occupation have caused great suffering in Iraq. What is missing is the intervening eight years in which the Clinton administration used the harshest economic embargo in modern history and regular bombing to further devastate an already devastated country. He fails to point out that Clinton killed more Iraqis through that policy than either of the Bush presidents. He fails to mention the 1998 Clinton cruise missile attack on Iraq, which was every bit as illegal as the 2003 invasion. It's not difficult to articulate what much of the rest of the world understands about U.S. policy in Iraq and the Middle East: Since the end of WWII, the United States has been the dominant power in the Middle East, constructing a system that tries to keep the Arab states weak and controllable (and, as a result, undemocratic) and undermine any pan-Arab nationalism, and uses allies as platforms and surrogates for U.S. power (such as Israel and Iran under the Shah). The goal is control over (not ownership of, but control over) the strategically crucial energy resources of the region and the profits that flow from them, which in an industrial world that runs on oil is a source of incredible leverage over competitors such as the European Union, Japan and China. The Iraq invasion, however incompetently planned and executed by the Bush administration, is consistent with that policy. That's the most plausible explanation for the war (by this time, we need no longer bother with the long-ago forgotten rationalizations of weapons of mass destruction and the alleged threat Iraq posed to the United States). The war was a gamble on the part of the Bush gang. Many in the foreign-policy establishment, including Bush I stalwarts such as Brent Scowcroft, spoke out publicly against war plans they thought were reckless. Whether Bush's gamble, in pure power terms, will pay off or not is yet to be determined. When the film addresses this question directly, what analysis does Moore offer of the reasons for the Iraq war? A family member of a soldier who died asks, "for what?" and Moore cuts to the subject of war profiteering. That segment appropriately highlights the vulture-like nature of businesses that benefit from war. But does Moore really want us to believe that a major war was launched so that Halliburton and other companies could increase its profits for a few years? Yes, war profiteering happens, but it is not the reason nations go to war. This kind of distorted analysis helps keep viewers' attention focused on the Bush administration, by noting the close ties between Bush officials and these companies, not the routine way in which corporate America makes money off the misnamed Department of Defense, no matter who is in the White House. All this is summed up when Lila Lipscomb, the mother of a son killed in the war, visits the White House in a final, emotional scene and says that she now has somewhere to put all her pain and anger. This is the message of the film: It's all about the Bush administration. If that's the case, the obvious conclusion is to get Bush out of the White House so that things can get back to to what? I'll return to questions of political strategy at the end, but for now it's important to realize how this attempt to construct Bush as pursuing some radically different policy is bad analysis and leads to a misunderstanding of the threat the United States poses to the world. Yes, Moore throws in a couple of jabs at the Democrats in Congress for not stopping the mad rush to war in Iraq, but the focus is always on the singular crimes of George W. Bush and his gang. A conservative movie The claim that "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a conservative movie may strike some as ludicrous. But the film endorses one of the central lies that Americans tell themselves, that the U.S. military fights for our freedom. This construction of the military as a defensive force obscures the harsh reality that the military is used to project U.S. power around the world to ensure dominance, not to defend anyone's freedom, at home or abroad. Instead of confronting this mythology, Moore ends the film with it. He points out, accurately, the irony that those who benefit the least from the U.S. system -- the chronically poor and members of minority groups -- are the very people who sign up for the military. "They offer to give up their lives so we can be free," Moore says, and all they ask in return is that we not send them in harm's way unless it's necessary. After the Iraq War, he wonders, "Will they ever trust us again?" It is no doubt true that many who join the military believe they will be fighting for freedom. But we must distinguish between the mythology that many internalize and may truly believe, from the reality of the role of the U.S. military. The film includes some comments by soldiers questioning that very claim, but Moore's narration implies that somehow a glorious tradition of U.S. military endeavors to protect freedom has now been sullied by the Iraq War. The problem is not just that the Iraq War was fundamentally illegal and immoral. The whole rotten project of empire building has been illegal and immoral -- and every bit as much a Democratic as a Republican project. The millions of dead around the world -- in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia -- as a result of U.S. military actions and proxy wars don't care which U.S. party was pulling the strings and pulling the trigger when they were killed. It's true that much of the world hates Bush. It's also true that much of the world has hated every post-WWII U.S. president. And for good reasons. It is one thing to express solidarity for people forced into the military by economic conditions. It is quite another to pander to the lies this country tells itself about the military. It is not disrespectful to those who join up to tell the truth. It is our obligation to try to prevent future wars in which people are sent to die not for freedom but for power and profit. It's hard to understand how we can do that by repeating the lies of the people who plan, and benefit from, those wars. Political strategy The most common defense I have heard from liberals and progressives to these criticisms of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is that, whatever its flaws, the movie sparks people to political action. One response is obvious: There is no reason a film can't spark people to political action with intelligent and defensible analysis, and without subtle racism. But beyond that, it's not entirely clear the political action that this film will spark goes much beyond voting against Bush. The "what can I do now?" link on Moore's website suggests four actions, all of which are about turning out the vote. These resources about voting are well organized and helpful. But there are no links to grassroots groups organizing against not only the Bush regime but the American empire more generally. I agree that Bush should be kicked out of the White House, and if I lived in a swing state I would consider voting Democratic. But I don't believe that will be meaningful unless there emerges in the United States a significant anti-empire movement. In other words, if we beat Bush and go back to "normal," we're all in trouble. Normal is empire building. Normal is U.S. domination, economic and military, and the suffering that vulnerable people around the world experience as a result. This doesn't mean voters can't judge one particular empire-building politician more dangerous than another. It doesn't mean we shouldn't sometimes make strategic choices to vote for one over the other. It simply means we should make such choices with eyes open and no illusions. This seems particularly important when the likely Democratic presidential candidate tries to out-hawk Bush on support for Israel, pledges to continue the occupation of Iraq, and says nothing about reversing the basic trends in foreign policy. In this sentiment, I am not alone. Ironically, Barry Reingold -- the Oakland man who was visited by the FBI -- is critical of what he sees as the main message of the film. He was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle saying: "I think Michael Moore's agenda is to get Bush out, but I think it (should be) about more than Bush. I think it's about the capitalist system, which is inequitable." He went on to critique Bush and Kerry: "I think both of them are bad. I think Kerry is actually worse because he gives the illusion that he's going to do a lot more. Bush has never given that illusion. People know that he's a friend of big business." Nothing I have said here is an argument against reaching out to a wider audience and trying to politicize more people. That's what I try to do in my own writing and local organizing work, as do countless other activists. The question isn't whether to reach out, but with what kind of analysis and arguments. Emotional appeals and humor have their place; the activists I work with use them. The question is, where do such appeals lead people? It is obvious that "Fahrenheit 9/11" taps into many Americans' fear and/or hatred of Bush and his gang of thugs. Such feelings are understandable, and I share them. But feelings are not analysis, and the film's analysis, unfortunately, doesn't go much beyond the feeling: It's all Bush's fault. That may be appealing to people, but it's wrong. And it is hard to imagine how a successful anti-empire movement can be built on this film's analysis unless it is challenged. Hence, the reason for this essay. The potential value of Moore's film will be realized only if it is discussed and critiqued, honestly. Yes, the film is under attack from the right, for very different reasons than I have raised. But those attacks shouldn't stop those who consider themselves left, progressive, liberal, anti-war, anti-empire or just plain pissed-off from criticizing the film's flaws and limitations. I think my critique of the film is accurate and relevant. Others may disagree. The focus of debate should be on the issues raised, with an eye toward the question of how to build an anti-empire movement. Rallying around the film can too easily lead to rallying around bad analysis. Let's instead rally around the struggle for a better world, the struggle to dismantle the American empire From db at dannybutt.net Tue Sep 14 02:31:51 2004 From: db at dannybutt.net (Danny Butt) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 09:01:51 +1200 Subject: [Reader-list] Post - Beslan impossibilities In-Reply-To: <20040912172818.4274.qmail@webmail32.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: Kia ora all I agree with Sanjay that an appropriate response is to examine the news cycle and this global flow of crisis content. This is not at all to downplay the reality of Chechen horror for children as described by Reyhan, but to remember that, in the Euro-American media at least, there was nothing to be heard as what can only be described as genocide has been taking place in Chechnya. So what drives our demand for news? After all, with appropriate media support, we could spend most of our day tracking the various crises taking place. There is something about the symbolic role of children that serves to effectively block conversation about what is happening there. [As one NZ blogger found out when trying to discuss the history of this situation: he was bombarded with emails like "I CANT BELIEVE YOUR SUPPORTING TERRORISTS. THEYRE KILLING CHILDREN FOR GODS SAKE." etc.] I'm not sure what the appropriate response is (and maybe thus, therefore, the silence) but I am concerned at the appallingly naive reporting in this part of the world of Putin's "get tough on terror by centralising executive power" line. I've also been thinking about other colonial occupations. Putin's regime apparently believes that he can eventually massacre enough of the Chechens to solve "the problem". But the lessons from many other European colonies, such as New Zealand (or e.g. Palestine) perhaps indicates that a decline in sheer numbers will not mean the end of the anti-occupation consciousness. It is perhaps more likely that the continued extermination will only increase the moral force and political motivation of those supporting the Chechen cause. Thanks to Jeebesh for raising this issue. Regards, Danny On 9/13/04 5:28 AM, "sanjay ghosh" wrote: > Beslan seems to have disappeared from Indian newspapers already. It may come > riding piggy back on the third 9-11 anniversary coverage but then maybe the > latest Jakarta bombing will take it's place. -- http://www.dannybutt.net #place: location, cultural politics, and social technologies: http://www.place.net.nz From keith at thememorybank.co.uk Tue Sep 14 14:45:21 2004 From: keith at thememorybank.co.uk (Keith Hart) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 11:15:21 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Post - Beslan impossibilities In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4146B6A9.1070005@thememorybank.co.uk> Danny, >I've also been thinking about other colonial occupations. Putin's regime >apparently believes that he can eventually massacre enough of the Chechens >to solve "the problem". But the lessons from many other European colonies, >such as New Zealand (or e.g. Palestine) perhaps indicates that a decline in >sheer numbers will not mean the end of the anti-occupation consciousness. It is perhaps more likely that the continued extermination will only increase the moral force and political motivation of those supporting the Chechen cause. > > I have long tried to understand, perhaps even explain, the extraordinary renaissance of aboriginal politics throughout the world in the last quarter-century. We tend to focus on the sources of 'resistance', but just as important, perhaps more so, is the loss of will on the part of the oppressors. The two sides are in any case dialectically related. I would divide the period since 1945 into two phases -- the 50s and 60s when the world economy was growing and states were generally strong and the 80s, 90s and now, when the world economy was stagnant and states were generally weakened. If you look at accounts of aboriginal peoples in the 60s, in places like Australia and Canada, the picture is very gloomy. They are demoralised, drunk, holed up in miserable slums, detached from traditional economic pursuits. But of late they are winning political concession after concession, are culturally vibrant, connected to each other, hunting and fishing again and so on. They are 'The Fourth World'. Now some of this has to do with these people's active resilience, unquenched folk memory etc; but a lot of it has to do with a change in the attitude of the dominant population. 100 years ago the latter were issuing smallpox-infested blankets to aboriginals, when they weren't shooting them or poisoning them with drink. They did this with the full knowledge of western civilization's superiority and as citizens of states that enjoyed great legitimacy. But this idea has taken a knock of late. Canadians from the white majority are not so convinced any more about their intrinsic unity or historic mission. The white New Zealanders took a look at their geographical isolation, small size and exclusion from the EU, after the British Empire collapsed, and measured that against the fact that NZ has the primary islands in Oceania, while the Maoris have the largest aboriginal share of any population in the lands of temperate zone new settlement. They renamed themselves Pakeha and tried to build bridges to the substantial Maori minority, with quite impressive results, it would seem. But this was a two-way street in which the changing heart of the dominant class played a significant part. Palestine and Iraq are at the centre of the struggle for global domination in our time. But Chechnya , like Afghanistan, is part of a fading Russian imperialism within its own region. Here I would say that Putin has a lot to fear from a reduced commitment od Russian to this cause, as well as from the redoubtable Chechens themselves. Unlike Stalin, who was able to manufacture lots of it, Putin has to worry about his own popular legitimacy and the Russian people are getting fed up, when they are not fearful. Keith Hart From vivek at sarai.net Tue Sep 14 15:14:21 2004 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 15:14:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Sarai-CSDS fellowships Message-ID: <4146BD75.70900@sarai.net> CALL FOR PROPOSALS – SARAI-CSDS INDEPENDENT FELLOWSHIPS, 2004-05 Applications Invited for Independent Research Fellowships The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi Sarai is a public initiative of media practitioners and scholars looking at media cultures and urban life. Sarai's interests are in the field of old and new media, information and communication technologies, free software, cinema, and urban space --its politics, built form, ecology, culture and history--with a strong commitment to making knowledge available in the public domain. Sarai is a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. (For more information, visit _www.sarai.net_ ) *Who Can Apply? * Sarai invites independent researchers, media practitioners, software designers and programmers, urbanists, architects, artists and writers, as well as students (postgraduate level and above) and university/college faculty to apply for support with regard to research-driven projects. We support projects from all over India, and have an established track record of supporting deserving project proposals that originate outside the metropolitan centres of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore. We would like to see the focus of our fellowship programme expand to support more research in smaller towns and non-urban areas. The duration of the fellowship is six months, beginning from 1 January 2005. The final presentation of the research project will be made in Delhi in August 2005. *Why Research ? What Do We Mean by Research? * Sarai is committed to generating public knowledge and creativity through research. By research we mean both archival and field research, practice-based research and forays into theoretical work, as well as any process or activity of an experimental or creative nature--in the audiovisual media, for instance, as well as in journalism, the humanities and social sciences, computing and architecture. We are especially interested in supporting projects that formulate precise and cogent intellectual questions, reflect on modes of understanding that implicate knowledge production within a critical social framework, foreground processes of gathering information and of creating links between bodies of information. We also encourage research that is based on a strong engagement with archival materials and imaginative ways of tackling the question of the public rendition of research activity. **The Experience of Previous Years** This is the fourth year in which Sarai is calling for proposals for such fellowships. We would like to describe how the process has worked in previous years, as an indication of what applicants should expect. We have so far supported a hundred research projects over the past three years, including work in the areas of popular culture, literature, urban ethnography, architecture, geography, creative writing, graphic arts, new media, cinema studies, FLOSS software, histories of media forms and practices, sexuality, studies of technology and culture, and oral history. Successful applicants have included freelance researchers, academics, media practitioners, writers, journalists and activists. (For a detailed overview of successful proposals from the previous years, see _http://www.sarai.net/community/fellow.htm_) The project proposals, postings and reports were submitted in English, Hindi or a combination of the two languages. We have seen that projects which set important but practical and modest goals were usually successful, whereas those that may have been conceptually sound but lacked sufficient motivation to actually approach a research objective in the field usually did not sustain themselves beyond the interim stage. Sarai interacts closely with the researchers over the period of the fellowship, and the independent fellows make a public presentation of their work at Sarai at the end of their fellowship period. During the term of their fellowship each fellow is required to make a posting to the Sarai Reader List every month, reporting on the development of their work. These postings, which are archived, are an important means by which the research process reaches a wider discursive community. They also help us to trace the progress of work during the grant period, and understand how the research interfaces with a larger public. Fellows also receive structured but informal feedback from Sarai in stages during the course of their work. Submissions by fellows include written reports and essays, photographs, tape recordings, pamphlets, maps, drawings and html presentations. On occasion, fellows have also incorporated performance into their final presentations. **What Happens to the Research Projects?** The annual research projects add to our now substantial archival collections on urban space and media culture. These are proving to be very significant value additions to the availability of knowledge resources in the public domain. Researchers are free to publish or render any part or all of their projects in any forms, independently of Sarai (but with due acknowledgment of the support that they have received from Sarai). Sarai Independent Research Fellows have gone on to publish articles in journals, work towards the making of films, exhibitions, websites, multimedia works and performances, and the creation of graphic novels, soundworks and books. We actively encourage all such efforts. **What We Are Looking For** Like previous years, this year too we are looking for proposals that are imaginatively articulated, experimental and methodologically innovative, but pragmatic and backed up by a well argued work plan which sets out a timetable for the project, as well as suggests how the support from Sarai will help in generating/providing specific resources (human and material) that the project needs. Suggested Themes: Sarai's interests lie in the city, and in media. Broadly speaking, any proposal that looks at the urban condition or at media, is eligible. More specifically, themes may be as diverse as habitation, sexuality, labour, migration, surveillance, intellectual property, social/digital interfaces, urban violence, street life, technologies of urban control, health and the city, the political economy of media forms, digital art and culture, or anything that the applicants feel will resonate with the philosophy and interests that motivate Sarai's work. We are particularly interested in supporting work that delves into what we are beginning to call 'Histories of the New'. This can include excavating the histories of different forms of media practice (early photography, cinema, print, radio, the music industry), as well as the histories of urban spaces and phenomena, neighbourhoods in cities, the evolution of utilities, transport and communications networks (electricity, telegraphy, telephony, the early Internet in India, railways, roads, urban public transport), labour, histories (including oral histories and biographical research) of dissident political movements, milieus and cultures and people associated with them. Again, Sarai supports innovative and inventive modes of rendering work into the public domain. Proposals which pay attention to this principle will be particularly valued. Also, proposals that include the collection of materials for our archive will be appreciated: in the past, fellows have submitted photographs, recordings, printed matter, maps, multimedia and posters related to the subject of their study to this archive. Preferred Approaches: We especially welcome the articulation, within the text of the proposal, of innovative and interdisciplinary methodologies that gesture towards how research, practice, and delivery or rendition methods will dovetail into each other in the project. **Conditions** Applicants should be resident in India, and should have an account in any bank operating in India. The research fellowship would be available for up to six months and for a maximum amount of Rs 60,000. The fellowships do not require the fellows to be present at Sarai. Fellowship holders will be free to pursue their primary occupations, if any. **What Do You Need To Send?** There are no application forms. Simply post your: - Proposal (not more than 1000 words) - A clear work plan (not more than one page) - An updated CV (not more than two pages) - Work samples (maximum two) - Envelopes should be marked - "Attention: Short Term Independent Research Fellowship" (Email proposals will not be considered). Proposals may be sent in English or Hindi. Mail these to: Independent Fellowship Programme, Sarai, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India. Inquiries: vivek at sarai.net Last date for submission: October 30, 2004 The list of successful proposals for 2004-2005 will be notified on the Sarai website by 15 December 2004 Note: Proposals from teams, partnerships, collectives and faculty are welcome, as long as the grant amount is administered by a single individual, and the funds are deposited in a single bank account in the name of an individual, partnership, registered body or institutional entity. Applicants who apply to other institutions for support for the same project will not be disqualified, provided they inform Sarai that support is being sought (or has been obtained) from another institution. The applicants should inform Sarai about the identity of the other institution. From shivamvij at gmail.com Tue Sep 14 20:07:20 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:07:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Pakistani Terror in Gilgit In-Reply-To: <20040914034617.27401.qmail@ns.yesglobalweb.net> References: <20040914034617.27401.qmail@ns.yesglobalweb.net> Message-ID: >From Yogi Sikand His Excellency Mr. Kofi Annan Secretary General UNO New York Sub: Pakistani Definition of Terror I have the honor to write your honor about the misery of 2 million innocent and peaceful people of Balawaristan (Pakistan Occupied Gilgit Baltistan) in the hands of Pakistan Army and it’s notorious intelligence agency ISI. Terrorist section 6/7 imposed by the Occupying regime of Pakistan against all the detainees, who were arrested on 5 June 2004 in Gilgit, at the occasion when the Shia community protested against Syllabus of Sooni dominant Islamiyat. Out of more than 90, 28 Prisoners have been detained in High School No 2 Jutiyal, Gilgit, while others are languishing in Gilgit Jail in terrorism charges. While Talibaan, Al-Qaida , Harkatul-Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Toiba and many others not only free for their act, but appreciated and protected by ISI and government of Pakistan.One can imagine the misery of the people of Balawaristan (Pakistan Occupied Gilgit Baltistan), Occupation forces can impose terrorist or any kind of it’s own made law against the indigenous people of Balawaristan. The indigenous people have no right to appeal/writ against Pakistani atrocities and Human Rights violation in any court of the world. The occupying regime and it’s notorious intelligence agency the ISI tried it’s worst to create sectarian clashes among the Sooni and Shia community by following it’s past practice. But by the grace of God, Sooni community shown it’s responsibility and remained patient during the whole riot of Shia Muslims against the Sooni dominated occupying regime of Pakistan and it’s forces. The Islamiyat syllabus issue is non issue, which has been created by the occupying regime to divide the indigenous people in to sectarianism for their evil design to divide and rule, otherwise there was no separate Islamiyat book since early 70s. This lawless country Pakistan can impose Islamic, British and Marshal law against individual or parties at any time by any reason, otherwise there is no example in the world, where public uprising is termed as terrorism. The June incident against Pakistan’s duel policy of Islamiyat was public uprising not terrorism. But there is no check and balance system an d no court can rein this country and it’s Military authority. Pakistan is the country, where a terrorist is declared as innocent and innocent person is declared as terrorist without consulting any court by the Military regime and it’s ISI and no one either court or individual can dare to say any thing against Pakistan Army and it’s ISI. If any one dares he/she will be no more to live. The following detainees belong to Shorot, Khomar, Bagorote and Haramosh villages and Mahlas of Gilgit district are the example of Pakistan Army;s law of Jungle. 1.Abbas Ali s/o Rahmat Khan 2.Abdul hamed s/o ali murdan 3.Abrahem s/o amir shah 4.Afsar jan s/o muhammad hassan 5.Ahmad ali s/o syed Mohammad abbas 6.Ain ullah s/o afiyet khan 7.Ajaz hussain hussain s/o Mohammad ali 8.Ajlal hussain s/o ali rahmat 9.Akhter hussain s/o abdullah 10.Alamdar Hussain s/o hyder khan 11.Ali shan s/o Mohammad shafah 12.Amar ali s/o Mohammad jaber 13.Asfaq ahmed s/o anayat 14.Asteyaq hussain s/o ali shah 15.Azam khan s/o safar khan 16. Bahador , President Youth wing Nomel. 17.Deldar hussain s/o Karim khan 18.Dostdar ali s/o raza 19.Ghulam haider s/o shah murad. 20.Ghulam heder s/o shah murad 21.Ghulam hyder s/o roshan ali 22.Ghulam mustufah s/o Ghulam ali 23.Ghulam sarwar so shah faraz 24.Ghulam sarwar s/o shah murad 25.Ghulam shah s/o Mohammad Amin shah 26.Habib shah s/o haleem shah. 27.Habib shah s/o ali muhammad shah 28.Haji yousaf ali s/o muzaher 29.Ijaz hussain s/o muhammad wali. 30.Ijlal hussain s/o ali rehmat. 31.Iqbal s/o muhammad hussain. 32.Ishaq hussain police man s/o zadul khan 33.Ishaq hussain s/o zahid ullah khan 34.Ishtiyaq husain s/o ali shah 35.Islam ali s/o sultan ali 36.Jameel s/o bukhtawar shah, 37.Kareem khan s/o ali yar 38.Karem johar s/o Ghaze Johar 39.Khalid husain s/o wazir khan. 40.Kushleem khan s/o abdullah khan n 41.Mohammad ali s/o Mohammad abraheem 42.Mohammad ali s/o neyat qabol 43.Mohammad yaqoob s/o m aesa 44.Manwar Hussain s/o muhammad yaqoob. 45.Maqbool hussain s/o jafar ali. 46.Maqbool hussain so jafar ali 47.Mehboob ali s / o mohd yousaf 48.Muhammad ali s/o muhammad qabool. 49.Muhammad ibrahim s/o amir shah 50.Muhsen ali s/o haji aun ali. 51.Muhsin ali s/o aon ali 52.Murdan shah s/o Mohammad faqer 53.Murtabah khan s/o gulsheer khan 54.Murtuza ali s/o aman ali shah 55.Musaf ali so rajab ali 56.Mutuza ali s/o aman ali shah 57.Naib khan s/o azam khan 58.Naser ali s/o Mohammad ali 59.Naser ali s/o Mohammad shafa 60.Nasir hussain s/o Muhammad ali 61.Nazar ali s/o muhammad sharif 62.Pukhton wali s/o akbar 63.Qayoum khan so ayoub 64.Rehbar hussain s/o abdullah 65.Rehmat ali s/o sher ahmad. 66.Rizwan ali s/o akhon fida ali 67.Sadaqat ali s/o Mohammad shafah 68.Sadat ali so jafar ali 69.Safar ali s/o ali madad. 70.Safeer hussain so sheer wali 71.Sageer hussain s/o sher dil. 72.Saholat ali s/o faqer shah 73.Shabab hussain s/o shahid mir 74.Shah nawaz s/o m khan 75.Shahid hussain s/o ali madad 76.Shahid raza s/o mubarak shah 77.Shakoor muhammad s/o bulbul shah. 78.Shamsheer ali s/o m ali 79.Sharafat hussan s/o Mohammad Fakir 80.Sheer baz s/o taher hussain 81.Shukoor muhammad s/o 82.Syed agah shah s/o syed sultan 83.Syed ahmad ali s/o syed muhammad abbass. 84.Syed hussain asgar s/o 85.Syed javeed hussain s/o syed m abbas 86.Syed Mohammad afzal s/o syed najaf shah 87.Syed ul hussain s/o syed wali shah 88.Syed zamir hussain s/o syed ali ahmed shah 89.Waseem abbass s/o baba jan. 90.Waseem babar s/o babar ali 91. zakir hussain 92.Zarmast khan s/o hajat khan Besides this, the occupation regime has imposed ban against the local magazine "KARGIL INTERNATIONAL" which was printing stories of those killed from Balawaristan (Pakistan Occupied Gilgit Baltistan) in Kargil War 1999 and was vocal about the way government of Pakistan portrayed local soldiers of NLI as Mujahideen and the issue of killing local soldiers as mercenaries was linked with the status of the region albeit between the line. Periodical also demanded fresh probe into Kargil fiasco and also highlighted the plight of widows of those killed in Kargil War and this war according to Kargil magazine was a conspiracy to kill local soldiers and further subdue the local residents. These and other issues which were directed against the establishment prompted local admin to impose a ban on it, because Kargil International was getting popularity among the local people. Its Chief Editor Engineer Manzoor Hussain Parwana has not been seen for the last 2-3 months because of the threat of some people on the instigation of Pakistani agencies. He was openly threaten by some religious fanatics, on the instigation of Pakistan Army and it’s intelligence agency. Local Journalists are so afraid of the ISI and Pakistan Army, who cannot protest against such illegal and immoral acts of Pakistani imposed regime. News about the ban of Kargil International was published in Daily Dawn on 8th Sep. 2004 A NLI soldier belongs to Damas village of Ghezer district was released after 2 years from Indian Jail 2 months ago by mutual consensus of both the countries India and Pakistan, but he did not reach after lapse of 2 months neither home nor his NLI unit concern. He has been kidnapped by ISI immediately after repatriated in to the boundary of Pakistan from Punjab India to Lahore Pakistan. More than 100 political activists and leaders of this land including me are facing death sentence in sedition charges of Pakistani section 124 A, because we dared to protest against Pakistani occupation in peaceful public gathering, while there is no single case against those Kashmiris who do not accept Indian rule and do support terrorism against India in Indian part of J & K. On the other hand, Pakistan is planning to build a Dam for it’s own benefit on this disputed land before the settlement of J & K issue as a result the large area of this part of the world will be submerged, which will badly effect it’s natural beauty, environment, life and resources . Irony is that neither the indigenous people of Balawaristan (Pakistan Occupied Gilgit Baltistan) are allowed to file a writ/ appeal petition in Balawaristan nor in Pakistan against these and other Human Rights related cases. More there is no any Human Rights Organization exists in this neglected part of disputed Jammu & Kashmir and international community, media and Human Rights champion also do not give any attention to the grave issue of the 2 million people of Balawaristan. The reason of apathy of international community is nothing but, because the people of Balawaristan are peaceful and did not take arms and ammunition to attract the international community. In the light of above mentioned Human Rights violation, we have no choice but to appeal the UNO, UNSC and Human Rights Organization, to take this matter seriously. Abdul Hamid Khan Chairman Balawaristan National Front (BNF) Head Off: Majini Mahla, Gilgit, Balawaristan (Pakistan occupied Gilgit Baltistan) WEBSITE (Urdu & English) Urdu & Eng: Urdu website: EMAIL: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To be removed from this mailing list click on the link below http://www.islaminterfaith.org/mailing/mail.cgi?zest_india at yahoo.co.in From shilpagupta at hotmail.com Mon Sep 13 20:38:28 2004 From: shilpagupta at hotmail.com (shilpa_hotmail) Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 20:38:28 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Aar Paar 3 : Call for Entries - short films and videos Message-ID: Aar Paar 3 : CALL FOR ENTRIES Aar Paar 2004 is a public art project between artists in India and Pakistan. Artists are invited to submit short films or video works no longer than 4 minutes. Fifteen entries will be selected by a Jury of artists and film makers. The selected works will be projected in open air public spaces as well as educational institutes in Mumbai and Lahore, between November 2004 to January 2005. For more information on AAR PAAR 2000 and 2002, view url http://www.aarpaar.net Please Note - Last date for confirmation of participation: September 27, 2004 - Last date for submission of works: October 31, 2004 - Format for submission: mini DV/ DV tapes or DVD / copies n Pal format - Entries will not be returned. All submissions must enclose the following information: Name and contact details of Artist. Title of Work Date of Production Brief synopsis of the work 2 stills from the work. Entries must be mailed to one of the following addresses: Shilpa Gupta: 2nd Floor, Premesh, 6 B Turner Road, Premesh, Bandra West Mumbai 400050, India Tel: (91-22) 26427721/26414745 Huma Mulji: 1st Floor, 32, off Zafar Ali Road, Gulberg V, Lahore 54400, Pakistan Tel: (92-42) 5764287/ 5718261 (ext.803) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040913/001353dc/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From impulse at bol.net.in Tue Sep 14 19:57:24 2004 From: impulse at bol.net.in (Kavita Joshi) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 19:57:24 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] MULTIPLICITIES - A Seminar on Experiences with Form Message-ID: <002e01c49a6e$ca0dd240$90cb5ecb@kavita> Below is the concept note and schedule for the seminar organised by Films for Freedom, titled "MULTIPLICITIES". The seminar is a dialogue on film form. It is aimed at film-makers, film students and film enthusiasts... * Films for Freedom in partnership with School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU presents "MULTIPLICITIES" A Seminar on Experiences With Form Date: Sept 18th & 19th. Venue: School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU Time: 10 am to 6 pm Regn Fee: Rs. 50 / - students; Rs. 100 - others. About the Seminar Different periods in history have imposed different norms on on the practice of filmmaking. How are filmmakers trying to question, resist & break these norms to evolve their own personalised forms? Films for freedom & the School of Arts & Aesthetics, JNU, invite you for a brainstorming session on the creative process of filmmaking. The idea is to bring together on the same platform, filmmakers with varied concerns and approaches, to present a multiplicity of viewpoints. The group of speakers includes young filmmakers, experienced practitioners, film students, and also people who felt an urge to make a film, and so went ahead and made one! The filmmakers will present their work, and share with us their philosophies of image making. The audience in turn will get a chance to question, discuss and debate both their work and their words. Within this framework, we will focus on how digital filmmaking has profoundly impacted questions of 'norm' and 'form', and how it is redefining the very concept of a 'film', a 'filmmaker' and the process of filmmaking. Amar Kanwar, Anu Srinivasan, Gurvinder Singh (on behalf of Films for Freedom, Delhi) Schedule 18th September 10:00 am: Introduction 10:30 am: Om Dar-b-dar (100 mins) A film by Kamal Swaroop. Followed by a presentation by the filmmaker and discussion with the audience. Discussion moderated by Gurvinder Singh. 1:00 pm: Lunch Break 2:00 pm: My Friend Su (55mins) A film by Neeraj Bhasin. Followed by a discussion with the filmmaker. Discussion moderated by Rahul Roy. 3:30 pm: A package of Short Films: Reverb (7min): Sunayana Singh Juxtapose (1min): Saumyananda Sahi Go Slow, School Ahead (2min 30sec): Giftie Sahany The Greatest Discovery that was Never Made (2 min): Sandeep Francis Discussion moderated by Anu Srinivasan. 4:00 pm: Nusrat Has Left the Building... But When? (20 mins) A film by Farjad Nabi. Discussion moderated by Amar Kanwar. 4:30 pm: Tea Break 4:45 pm: Keshkambli (25mins) XYZ (22 mins) Two films by Amit Dutta. Followed by a discussion with the filmmaker. Discussion moderated by Gurvinder Singh. 19th September 10:00 am: Nee Engey (Where Are You?) (90mins) A film by RV Ramani. Followed by a presentation by the filmmaker, which will include selections from his other films. Moderator to be announced. 12:00 am: Tea Break 12:15 pm: A Winter Tale (68 mins) A film by Gurvinder Singh. Moderator to be announced. 1:30 pm: Lunch Break 2:30 pm: A Night of Prohecy (77mins) To Remember (7 mins) Two films by Amar Kanwar, followed by a discussion with Amar Kanwar and Sameera Jain. Discussion moderated by R.V.Ramani. 4:00 pm: Tea Break 4:15 pm: Unmathabudham Jagath (The Egotic world) (33 mins) Hawa Mahal (58 mins) Two films by Vipin Vijay, followed by a presentation by Vipin Vijay and Debkamal Ganguly. Discussion moderated by Amar Kanwar. *** From sbreitsameter at snafu.de Wed Sep 15 05:39:29 2004 From: sbreitsameter at snafu.de (Sabine Breitsameter) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 02:09:29 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Statistical data: Bhopal In-Reply-To: <20040914144213.8DF6128E682@mail.sarai.net> References: <20040914144213.8DF6128E682@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: Hello! Could somebody help me with some statistical data? How many inhabitants had Bhopal in December 1984? (At the time of the gas desaster.) How many inhabitants does it have today? How were the percentages of the different religious communities in 1984? How are they today? Thank you very much for your info! Sabine From sbreitsameter at snafu.de Wed Sep 15 05:43:22 2004 From: sbreitsameter at snafu.de (Sabine Breitsameter) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 02:13:22 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] The name of a Bollywood actor In-Reply-To: <20040914144213.8DF6128E682@mail.sarai.net> References: <20040914144213.8DF6128E682@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: Hello again! I have another question, concerning a Bollywood actor. I would need to know his name. He is extremely popular in Bollywood-Movies as the father figure. Everywhere you can see his face looking down from big film posters in the streets. I remember him acting in the film "Sometimes happy - sometimes sad". Could you let me know his name? - Thank you so much. Best greetings Sabine From shivamvij at gmail.com Wed Sep 15 16:58:45 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 04:28:45 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] 'Kurdish Refugee' Message-ID: Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 17:31:50 -0000 From: "kurdish refugee" Subject: S.o.S From Turkey Hello friends, I am seyyedmansour Ayyoubi, an Iranian Kurd who fled Iran to escape execution, now living in Turkey with my family. I am in grave danger since, I am scheduled to be deported back to Iran. Please read the following petition which outlines the dangerous situation my family and many others face. We need several thousand signatures to be able to make an impact! http://www.petitiononline.com/iransos1/ Please sign this petition and forward this link to others. Thank you for helping and making a difference. S.Ayyobi Best Regards From captain.typo at gmail.com Wed Sep 15 18:19:41 2004 From: captain.typo at gmail.com (Captain Typo) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 18:19:41 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Agent Gmail Message-ID: Value of @gmail.com accounts is going down south as far as brand value/hipness value is concerned. Following is small factoid on gmail: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Google initially invited about 1,000 employees, friends and family members to become beta testers. The trials began on March 21, 2004. Since then, others have been randomly selected to test the service. On April 25, active users from the Blogger.com community were offered the chance to participate in the beta-testing. Since then, active members have periodically received "invites" which they can extend to their friends. One round was sent out on May 1, and another three invitations were given to all active members on June 1; in mid-June, the number of invitations has been increasing, with some users receiving between three and five invites daily. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The larger is issue is rather regarding privacy. Google does'nt delete any mails, even if user intends to. The privacy page of gmail, is a interesting read. The mails are being watched for ad-positioning. Mail Content by itself is a great data for analysis of social heirarchies, but the added information need for sending and recieving mails reveal geographic location, time zones etc etc. If collected over period of time reveals social behaviour, associations/type of association with organization/events/people. In case of gmail users, there is still a explicit agreement between the user of gmail and google. But there is no legal binding regarding mail sent to people using gmail, which all of us inevitably will do. So just wondering what to do with the account and the invites that I have! Captain From shivamvij at gmail.com Wed Sep 15 19:52:29 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 19:52:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Agent Gmail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Captain, I don't understand how the privacy issue should be worrying. As far as ads go, I find Gmail less intrusive than Yahoo! and Hotmail, or the big spammers that some Indian email services like Rediffmail and Indiatimes are. Gmail's brand value has no doubt taken a beating - it had to, and Monica's delightful mail about the "invitations" that never cease to arrive in your account is illustrative of how Gmail has gone overboard with the "invitations" strategy. Despite all that, the reason I use Gmail is that it's better than any other mail service I have used. Conversations, archiving, the automatic address book system - it all helps me a lot. As I discovered the many ways in which Gmail was improving my mail experience, I marvelled at the genius of the people who made it. So who cares about brand value? Thanks Shivam On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 18:19:41 +0530, Captain Typo wrote: > Value of @gmail.com accounts is going down south as far as brand > value/hipness value is concerned. > Following is small factoid on gmail: > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Google initially invited about 1,000 employees, friends and family members to > become beta testers. The trials began on March 21, 2004. Since then, others > have been randomly selected to test the service. On April 25, active users from > the Blogger.com community were offered the chance to participate in the > beta-testing. Since then, active members have periodically received "invites" > which they can extend to their friends. One round was sent out on May 1, and > another three invitations were given to all active members on June 1; in > mid-June, the number of invitations has been increasing, with some users > receiving between three and five invites daily. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > The larger is issue is rather regarding privacy. Google does'nt delete any > mails, even if user intends to. > The privacy page of gmail, is a interesting read. The mails are being watched > for ad-positioning. > > Mail Content by itself is a great data for analysis of social heirarchies, but > the added information need for sending and recieving mails reveal geographic > location, time zones etc etc. > > If collected over period of time reveals social behaviour, associations/type of > association with organization/events/people. > > In case of gmail users, there is still a explicit agreement between the user of > gmail and google. But there is no legal binding regarding mail sent to people > using gmail, which all of us inevitably will do. > > So just wondering what to do with the account and the invites that I have! > > Captain > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > From avinash332 at rediffmail.com Thu Sep 16 14:47:15 2004 From: avinash332 at rediffmail.com (avinash kumar) Date: 16 Sep 2004 09:17:15 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] re: agent gmail Message-ID: <20040916091715.23071.qmail@webmail10.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040916/757861ce/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- this is from aniket alam,   the thing about privacy is that the levels of intrusion talked about by captain in his mail are regular practices in our lives now. there is enough technology available to monitor your credit card and bank transactions so that people monitorig can easily work out work, leisure, eating, transport, etc etc patterns and that too globally. moreover, increasing number of public buildings and spaces are monitored by cameras. further, even in regular emails it is very very easy to monitor specific computers or accounts for usage patterns giving a mine of inofrmation. and if you are living in a country where your social security number, bank account, health system, tax returns, municipal records, transport office, police records and such others are linked, or can be linked, on a single Government (or non-government) network... well then, "welcome brother, we are watching you". on top of that there is the newer technology (s) of bio-information from fingerprinting, cornea 'printing' and DNA 'printing'... "where will you run, come back to momma and she will take care of you'..... to agonise about google.... (actually, why am i even writing this?) its a sheer waste of time. but since i have spent the better part of ten minutes putting this down i might just add the good news. a little bird tells me that the data generated is so massive (a googal of data perhaps) that it is difficult to make much sense of it. it works for tagging individuals but is of not much use for large bodies of people... i can almost imagine some paper pushing flunkey drowing in a sea of bits and bytes of meaningless data! cheers.... AA From definetime at rediffmail.com Thu Sep 16 11:38:16 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 16 Sep 2004 06:08:16 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) Who seized Simona Torretta? Message-ID: <20040916060816.14580.qmail@webmail27.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040916/9eb906a6/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Who seized Simona Torretta? This Iraqi kidnapping has the mark of an undercover police operation Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill Thursday September 16, 2004 The Guardian When Simona Torretta returned to Baghdad in March 2003, in the midst of the "shock and awe" aerial bombardment, her Iraqi friends greeted her by telling her she was nuts. "They were just so surprised to see me. They said, 'Why are you coming here? Go back to Italy. Are you crazy?'" But Torretta didn't go back. She stayed throughout the invasion, continuing the humanitarian work she began in 1996, when she first visited Iraq with her anti-sanctions NGO, A Bridge to Baghdad. When Baghdad fell, Torretta again opted to stay, this time to bring medicine and water to Iraqis suffering under occupation. Even after resistance fighters began targeting foreigners, and most foreign journalists and aid workers fled, Torretta again returned. "I cannot stay in Italy," the 29-year-old told a documentary film-maker. Today, Torretta's life is in danger, along with the lives of her fellow Italian aid worker Simona Pari, and their Iraqi colleagues Raad Ali Abdul Azziz and Mahnouz Bassam. Eight days ago, the four were snatched at gunpoint from their home/office in Baghdad and have not been heard from since. In the absence of direct communication from their abductors, political controversy swirls round the incident. Proponents of the war are using it to paint peaceniks as naive, blithely supporting a resistance that answers international solidarity with kidnappings and beheadings. Meanwhile, a growing number of Islamic leaders are hinting that the raid on A Bridge to Baghdad was not the work of mujahideen, but of foreign intelligence agencies out to discredit the resistance. Nothing about this kidnapping fits the pattern of other abductions. Most are opportunistic attacks on treacherous stretches of road. Torretta and her colleagues were coldly hunted down in their home. And while mujahideen in Iraq scrupulously hide their identities, making sure to wrap their faces in scarves, these kidnappers were bare-faced and clean-shaven, some in business suits. One assailant was addressed by the others as "sir". Kidnap victims have overwhelmingly been men, yet three of these four are women. Witnesses say the gunmen questioned staff in the building until the Simonas were identified by name, and that Mahnouz Bassam, an Iraqi woman, was dragged screaming by her headscarf, a shocking religious transgression for an attack supposedly carried out in the name of Islam. Most extraordinary was the size of the operation: rather than the usual three or four fighters, 20 armed men pulled up to the house in broad daylight, seemingly unconcerned about being caught. Only blocks from the heavily patrolled Green Zone, the whole operation went off with no interference from Iraqi police or US military - although Newsweek reported that "about 15 minutes afterwards, an American Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away". And then there were the weapons. The attackers were armed with AK-47s, shotguns, pistols with silencers and stun guns - hardly the mujahideen's standard-issue rusty Kalashnikovs. Strangest of all is this detail: witnesses said that several attackers wore Iraqi National Guard uniforms and identified themselves as working for Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister. An Iraqi government spokesperson denied that Allawi's office was involved. But Sabah Kadhim, a spokesperson for the interior ministry, conceded that the kidnappers "were wearing military uniforms and flak jackets". So was this a kidnapping by the resistance or a covert police operation? Or was it something worse: a revival of Saddam's mukhabarat disappearances, when agents would arrest enemies of the regime, never to be heard from again? Who could have pulled off such a coordinated operation - and who stands to benefit from an attack on this anti-war NGO? On Monday, the Italian press began reporting on one possible answer. Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, from Iraq's leading Sunni cleric organisation, told reporters in Baghdad that he received a visit from Torretta and Pari the day before the kidnap. "They were scared," the cleric said. "They told me that someone threatened them." Asked who was behind the threats, al-Kubaisi replied: "We suspect some foreign intelligence." Blaming unpopular resistance attacks on CIA or Mossad conspiracies is idle chatter in Baghdad, but coming from Kubaisi, the claim carries unusual weight; he has ties with a range of resistance groups and has brokered the release of several hostages. Kubaisi's allegations have been widely reported in Arab media, as well as in Italy, but have been absent from the English-language press. Western journalists are loath to talk about spies for fear of being labelled conspiracy theorists. But spies and covert operations are not a conspiracy in Iraq; they are a daily reality. According to CIA deputy director James L Pavitt, "Baghdad is home to the largest CIA station since the Vietnam war", with 500 to 600 agents on the ground. Allawi himself is a lifelong spook who has worked with MI6, the CIA and the mukhabarat, specialising in removing enemies of the regime. A Bridge to Baghdad has been unapologetic in its opposition to the occupation regime. During the siege of Falluja in April, it coordinated risky humanitarian missions. US forces had sealed the road to Falluja and banished the press as they prepared to punish the entire city for the gruesome killings of four Blackwater mercenaries. In August, when US marines laid siege to Najaf, A Bridge to Baghdad again went where the occupation forces wanted no witnesses. And the day before their kidnapping, Torretta and Pari told Kubaisi that they were planning yet another high-risk mission to Falluja. In the eight days since their abduction, pleas for their release have crossed all geographical, religious and cultural lines. The Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah, the International Association of Islamic Scholars and several Iraqi resistance groups have all voiced outrage. A resistance group in Falluja said the kidnap suggests collaboration with foreign forces. Yet some voices are conspicuous by their absence: the White House and the office of Allawi. Neither has said a word. What we do know is this: if this hostage-taking ends in bloodshed, Washington, Rome and their Iraqi surrogates will be quick to use the tragedy to justify the brutal occupation - an occupation that Simona Torretta, Simona Pari, Raad Ali Abdul Azziz and Mahnouz Bassam risked their lives to oppose. And we will be left wondering whether that was the plan all along. · Jeremy Scahill is a reporter for the independent US radio/TV show Democracy Now; Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows jeremy at democracynow.org www.nologo.com From fernandesn at vsnl.net Tue Sep 14 20:51:11 2004 From: fernandesn at vsnl.net (fernandesn at vsnl.net) Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:21:11 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: reader-list Digest, Vol 14, Issue 25 Message-ID: <9d0bfe9ccf11.9ccf119d0bfe@vsnl.net> > " It's the best book yet written about that great, ruined > metropolis, my city as well as his, and it deserves to be very widely > read." > - Salman Rushdie > > > Time Out Mumbai invites you to a reading and discussion with Suketu > Mehta - author of the highly acclaimed 'Maximum City - Bombay Lost and > Found'. > > Date: 21st September 2004 > Venue: National Gallery of Modern Art Auditorium > Opposite Prince of Wales Museum, Colaba > Time: 7: 00 p.m. > Entry: Free. If you wish to reserve a seat please call the Time Out > hotline on 022 56601200 > > > > 'A gripping, compellingly readable account of a love affair with a > city: I couldn't put it down.' - Amitav Ghosh > > 'Maximum City is the remarkable debut of a major new Indian writer. > Humane and moving, sympathetic but outspoken, it's a shocking and > sometimes heartbreaking book, teeming with extraordinary stories.' - > William Dalrymple > > "The book is part urban history, part nightmare, part memoir, almost > all stunningly written." > - Sreenivasan Jain in Time Out Mumbai > > > > > Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found > By Suketu Mehta > > Suketu Mehta left Bombay at the age of 14. Twenty-one years later, > having lived in Paris, London and New York's East Village, he returned to > rediscover the only city he calls his own. The result is this stunning, > brilliantly illuminating portrait of the megalopolis and its people-a > book, seven years in the making, that is as vast, as diverse, as rich in > experience, incident and sensation as the city itself. > > Mehta approaches the life and lives of Bombay from unexpected > angles. He takes us into the underworld where Muslim and Hindu gangs > manage to wrest some control of the Byzantine political and commercial > systems of the city. He follows the life of a bar dancer, whose childhood > of poverty and abuse left her no choice but the one she made. He journeys > on the famed local trains and out onto the streets and footpaths, where > the essential story of Bombay is played out every day by the countless > migrants who come in search of a better life. He opens windows into the > inner sanctums of Bollywood and the alternative universe at its fringes. > And through it all-as each individual story unfolds-we hear Mehta's own > story: of the mixture of love, frustration, fascination, and intense > identification he feels for and with Bombay. > Candid, impassioned, insightful, both surprisingly funny and > heart-rending, Maximum City is a revelation of a complex and ever-changing > world: the continent of Bombay. > > Suketu Mehta is a fiction writer and journalist based in New York. > His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Granta, > Harper's, Time, Condé Nast Traveler, The Indian Express, Man's World, > Himal and India Magazine. ----- Original Message ----- From: reader-list-request at sarai.net Date: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 8:12 pm Subject: reader-list Digest, Vol 14, Issue 25 -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: reader-list-request at sarai.net Subject: reader-list Digest, Vol 14, Issue 25 Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:12:14 +0530 (IST) Size: 27929 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040914/abf09f97/attachment.mht From monica.mody at gmail.com Thu Sep 16 01:27:28 2004 From: monica.mody at gmail.com (Monica Mody) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 01:27:28 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Invitation to Jagah Message-ID: <4badad3b040915125728ec2a8@mail.gmail.com> JAGAH: IN SEARCH OF SPACES THE GENDER AND SEXUALITY EXHIBITION presented by the Nigah Media Collective Venue: Arpana Fine Arts Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts and Literature (4/6 Siri Fort Institutional Area, New Delhi 110049, tel : 91-011-2649 8070 / 2649 4444) Date: 25-27 September 2004 Jagah is a space where one can hang out, meet people, talk and share experiences, without having to struggle to fit. A jagah for expression and mediations on gender and sexuality, on our bodies and our desires, our silences – both chosen and imposed. A space one can claim as one's own, one without judgments, one that is not just about "art", but about creativity, expression, and resistance. In mounting this multimedia exhibition, our aim is to bring to the center expressions of gender and sexuality that are forced to live at the margins. What does our gender mean to us? What does our sexuality mean to us? How do we choose to express them/share them? Where are the hidden spaces within and between the labels of "gay", "straight", "lesbian", "bisexual", "transgender", "man" and "woman"? What do these names give us and what do they take away? We seek to question the assumptions of desire and identity – conceptions of normality, compulsory heterosexuality, the binaries of "man" and "woman", inevitable and morally superior monogamy, notions of which sex goes with which gender which goes with which body – that try to impose ways of thinking about sexuality on all of us. Jagah is where we break the silence(s) around our bodies and our sexualities, both as an act of conscious resistance and as a means of exploration and expression. Highlights Ø Queer Salon: where nothing is excluded from conversation Ø Tactical Media Lab hosted by Sarai: explore, create art during the exhibition Ø Jagah's apna blog Ø Vidya Shah singing Bulle Shah Ø Photographs, paintings, poetry, films and much more Who we are Nigah is a group of people committed to opening up spaces for discussions around gender and sexuality by using different forms of media. The exhibition is part of a broader movement against censorship that includes artists, activists, filmmakers, writers, poets, cartoonists, lawyers, teachers and students. Campaign Against Censorship seeks to draw linkages between people and movements that have faced censorship, and to explore the dynamics of similarity and dissonance between censorship of films and other forms of expression including theatre, art, literature, popular culture, press and reports by NGOs. Contact Email: nigahmedia at yahoo.com Phone: 9811269257/ 9810253342 Website: http://www.geocities.com/nigahmedia We hope to see you all at the Arpana Fine Arts Gallery next Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Not merely to "see", but to hang out. Please spread the word! Warm regards, Monica for the Nigah Media Collective -- Art can take our unexpressed thoughts and desires and fling them with clarity and coherence on the wall, a sheet of paper, or against the silence of history. - Adrienne Rich _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From nisar at keshvani.com Thu Sep 16 13:29:42 2004 From: nisar at keshvani.com (nisar keshvani) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 02:59:42 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] LEA Sept '04: The Intertextual Thread: A New Cultural Unit In Hypertext/Global Crossings/Geography of Pain Message-ID: <200409160259.AA196608250@keshvani.com> *sincere apologies for cross-posting* Leonardo Electronic Almanac: September 2004 ISSN#1071-4391 art | science | technology - a definitive voice since 1993 http://lea.mit.edu In LEA's September issue, the central feature is an article co-authored by Motti Benari of Israel and five colleagues who describe their fascinating project, CULTOS, which is based on the intertextual thread, a "new cultural unit." In the article, they present ways of expanding the use of hypertextual and intertextual methods, which can aid in a number of fields, including academic research. In Leonardo Reviews, we present reviews of the books *Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment* and *Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business, 1953-1968*, an unlikely but revealing subject for academic critique. In our news section, we bring you up to date, as always, on the latest developments in the Leonardo/ISAST community, including initiatives to pursue experimental publishing projects, publication of abstracts of academic theses, and a news item that illustrates the urgent need for artists to be aware of potential legal infringement on their civil liberties. All in one issue ... Latest Calls for Papers ------------------------------ * Geography of Pain * LEA is seeking short texts/abstracts (with imagery and project URLs) by artists and scientists, or artist/scientist teams, whose work addresses pain in all its forms. Projects of interest include aesthetic works that address subjective experiences, social conditions, and cultural constructions of pain. Projects on the art of healing are of interest as well, especially multidisciplinary approaches that integrate Eastern and Western traditions. We will also consider current health science, computer science, and engineering research relevant to these topics. Deadline for submissions: 15 October 2004 More info: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/LEA2004/authors.htm#pain * Gallery Special: Global Crossings * The LEA Gallery is looking to make visible the work of international artists, professionals and scholars who live and work in a wide variety of situations where access to established venues for exhibition, display and publication is limited. Difficulty of access may be attributed to cultural, geographic, ethnic, institutional or disciplinary diversity, or issues related to the North/South divide, age, gender, etc. !!! ** Extended Deadline **!!!: 15 November 2004 More info: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/LEA2004/authors.htm#gx Editorial ideas / proposals: lea at mitpress.mit.edu ******************************************************************************** LEA Information and URLs ------------------------------------------- Receive your FREE subscription to the Leonardo Electronic Almanac e-mail digest at http://mitpress.mit.edu/lea/e-mail -- just provide your email address, name, and password, and check off that you'd like to be added to the Leonardo Electronic Almanac monthly e-mail list to keep on top of the latest news in the Leonardo community. How to advertise in LEA? http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/placeads.html#LEAads For a paid subscription (to become an ISAST member and access archives dating back to 1993): http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=4&tid=27&mode=p The Leonardo Educators Initiative ------------------------------------------------------- The Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS) is a comprehensive database of abstracts of Ph.d, Masters and MFA theses in the emerging intersection between art, science and technology. Thesis Abstract Submittal form at http://leonardolabs.pomona.edu LEA also maintains a discussion list open only to faculty in the field. Students interested in contributing and faculty wishing to join this list should contact lea at mitpress.mit.edu What is LEA? ---------------------- For over a decade, Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) has thrived as an international peer-reviewed electronic journal and web archive, covering the interaction of the arts, sciences and technology. LEA emphasizes rapid publication of recent work and critical discussion on topics of current excitement. Many contributors are younger scholars and artists, and there is a slant towards shorter, less academic texts. Contents include Leonardo Reviews, edited by Michael Punt, Leonardo Research Abstracts of recent Ph.D. and Masters theses, curated Galleries of current new media artwork, and special issues on topics ranging from Artists and Scientists in times of War, to Zero Gravity Art, to the History of New Media. Copyright© 1993 - 2004: The Leonardo Electronic Almanac is published by Leonardo / International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST) in association with the MIT Press. All rights reserved. From vivek at sarai.net Thu Sep 16 16:37:59 2004 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 16:37:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Omair Ahmad's sketches of Srinagar Message-ID: <4149740F.9000605@sarai.net> Dear all, This below from Omair Ahmad-- quick sketches from his recent trip to Srinagar (Kashmir). For our international readers, Omair also writes, "For those that don't know a shikara is a small boat used to navigate the lakes in Kashmir." I am wondering if we can initiate a series of sketches like this on the list, especially from areas "in crisis" which also speak to the banality of life in such situations, how people immunize themselves to a situation of constant conflict. Any takers? And comments on the piece below. -V. THE SHIKARAWALLA ~ On Dal Lake, Afternoon of 10^th September 2004 ~ ~ We spend beyond our means. ~ At least three times a week we must have a mutton meal, otherwise people talk. ~ I just spent ten thousand rupees on a wedding, and there are 5-6 more coming up. It is the season. ~ This shikara and a small plot of land, it gets us through. That is what most of us have. ~ That house, there, is the Raja’s: Hari Singh. That fenced off piece of land in the middle of the lake is also his. His son, Karan Singh, sometimes comes here with his family. ~ There are no tenders awarded here, no way to make another income. In the whole Valley there is no tender for liquor. ~ There used to be so many foreign tourists before, the owners never used to allow the Indians into the houseboats. Now look at what God has done. ~ This year there were some tourists early in the season, and then that news of the swelled up lake in China came, and the flow of people dried up. THE HOTEL MANAGER - I ~ Dal Gate, Evening of 10^th September 2004 ~ The Lights Go Off. ~ See how India oppresses us! Nothing, there has been no development in the last 55 years. ~ There is no work here, such uselessness, that is what pushes the young men into picking up the gun. ~ You see that bridge? It has been five years and they are still building it. First it was supposed to go that way, but prices started falling in this area, so the people forced a change of direction. Abdullah government then, Mufti government now, so now a bridge that runs in the opposite direction it was supposed to, and still not finished. ~ Officers and Ministers divide and eat up the money, not like Choudhary sahib who sent you here. Put a crore in front of him and he will not take one rupee. ~ Factories exist, but only in the books. There was an HMT watch factory here that employed 5,000 – 6,000 people, but it closed down because of the violence. They could put up any industry here, but the only ones that come into existence are those on paper, so that the corrupt can eat the money. ~ I will have to go into debt and buy a generator. The guests demand such things. It is so hard to get a loan from a bank. THE CENTRAL RESERVE POLICE FORCE PERSONNEL ~ By Dal Lake, Late Afternoon of 11^th September 2004 ~ ~ Stop. ~ Where are you coming from? ~ Why from that direction, what were you doing? ~ What is in your bag? ~ Where are you from? Oh Delhi? Your first trip here? ~ How are you liking the place? ~ Aren’t you scared? ~ I am from Ghaziabad (shy smile, gap between his two front upper teeth). Do you know it? ~ Aren’t you scared? THE GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL ~ Government Housing, Evening of 11^th September 2004 ~ ~ It is a Hindu marriage. You know that Hindus rarely divorce here? That is how it is between India and the Kashmiris. There is no trust, no liking, but we will not divorce. ~ India has to be more generous, more magnanimous. Always they start talks and then break them off on some pretext or other. The Kashmiri politicians who have attended the talks are discredited when they come back. Their people stop believing in them. ~ India has never trusted the Kashmiris, they even undermined the government of Sheikh Abdullah, the one who was the most instrumental in Kashmir acceding to India. ~ There was that Senior Superintendent of Police from Baramulla that got arrested when he went to Delhi. He was there for a meeting and they put him into jail for a day because they did not believe his papers or him. Khajuria, the former Director General of Police wrote an article that if somebody of such unimpeachable credentials could be treated like that, what was to happen to the rest of the country? ~ This is not Punjab. There is no intermarriage, no fluidity of cultures here like that. Our heritage, our religion, our language and our culture tie us to this place. All my relatives live here. The militants can pressure us, and even if we were all to leave, wherever we went we would be distrusted. ~ The militants do not attack haphazardly. When I was in charge of setting up things for the elections I was on their hit list. My family and I barely survived an attack. But once the elections were over, I was off their hit list. ~ There can be palliatives, economic measures, freer movement for the young men, but this is cancer in the second stage and very difficult to treat. Someone has to die, and we, India, Pakistan, the Kashmiris, we are all patients. THE HOTEL MANAGER - II ~ Dal Gate, Late Evening of 11^th September 2004 ~ Sound of Grenades. Crack, Crack, Crackle of Machine Guns First on Single Bursts Then Switching to Multiple Rounds. ~ You see how India oppresses us? ~ The soldiers are drunk and have fallen asleep on their posts, and the militants have made their way into the compound. It will continue all night. ~ Before I had so many customers, but they hear of something like this, and do not come. They do not know that the militants are targeting the CRPF and not hotels like mine. They use grenades. It is the soldiers that fire wildly. ~ Sometimes the militants will burn down a place where the Army stays. There are so many soldiers that they have taken over whole hotels. ~ You will write this like how it is, no? The truth? Before the Western press would report some of the truth but they don’t any more. And the Indian media prints nothing of us. ~ Before some people wanted Pakistan, now we want nobody, all this money on bullets when there is so much poverty. From captain.typo at gmail.com Fri Sep 17 18:13:50 2004 From: captain.typo at gmail.com (Captain Typo) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 18:13:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Agent Gmail In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Shivam, On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 19:52:29 +0530, Shivam wrote: > Dear Captain, > I don't understand how the privacy issue should be worrying. As far as > ads go, I find Gmail less intrusive than Yahoo! and Hotmail, or the > big spammers that some Indian email services like Rediffmail and > Indiatimes are. I do'nt like any of these providers, neither I am backing them. Using filters of relative point of view, will only distort the discussion. Gmail has changed its privacy policy in last six months of its starting. They have'nt clearly stated, what will happen in case government of some rouge country asks for watching a certain addresses. In case a mail is not copyrighted, after certain period of time becomes a public property by US law. Two major question arise, What does google do with my mail after delete. If it does'nt delete, then where(in geographical sense) is stored and whose jurisdication it comes under. > Gmail's brand value has no doubt taken a beating - it > had to, and Monica's delightful mail about the "invitations" that > never cease to arrive in your account is illustrative of how Gmail has > gone overboard with the "invitations" strategy. Despite all that, the > reason I use Gmail is that it's better than any other mail service I > have used. Conversations, archiving, the automatic address book system > - it all helps me a lot. As I discovered the many ways in which Gmail > was improving my mail experience, I marvelled at the genius of the > people who made it. So who cares about brand value? Taking discussion to more mundane cribs of gmail interface Some things I miss in gmail. The ability to display attached images or text inline. The ability to search within text message attachments. The ability to save drafts. WAP access. SMTP, POP3 or IMAP access. So its not perfect, but it comes close. > Thanks > Shivam > best Captain -------- dil-e-naadaaN tujhe huaa kya hai ? aaKHir is dard kee dawa kya hai ham haiN mushtaaq aur woh bezaar ya ilaahee ! yeh maajra kya hai ? -- Mirza Ghalib From penguinhead at linux-delhi.org Fri Sep 17 18:43:25 2004 From: penguinhead at linux-delhi.org (Pankaj Kaushal) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 18:43:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announce] Linux Demo Day Message-ID: <414AE2F5.8050908@linux-delhi.org> [Crossposted] We are happy to announce and ask your participation at the Linux Demo Day organized by India Linux Users Group, Delhi (ILUGD, www.linux-delhi.org). If you've heard of it, but haven't tried it, Linux is a computer operating system distinguished from other operating systems (such as Windows or Mac OS) by the fact that it is avaliable freely for use and its source code is available to anyone, and anyone can contribute improvements to the system. It, like Windows, supports a GUI (Graphic User Interface) - meaning it's as easy to use, and less likely to crash. We will be conducting Linux-related talks and presentations in the Hamdard Archives Auditorium, on Saturday, 25th September, by some of our resident experts, and hopefully they will interest people who've already taken the plunge as well as those who are just about to. There'll be lots of demonstrations/talks throughout the day and plenty of opportunities to gain hands-on experience of different Linux distributions and applications for yourself. There is space outside the auditorium, which will be used for giving the demos. The demos and the talks will go on concurrently. We'll also be distributing Linux goodies at low or no cost. Remember, Linux Demo Day is not meant as The Inquisition for differing opinions, but rather a day for diffusion of knowledge. Come be a part of the growing Linux community. Details ~~~~~~~ Venue: Jamia Hamdard Archives Auditorium Hamdard University, New Delhi 110062 Landmark: Adjacent to Batra Hospital. Entry from Gate 6 Date: 25th September 2004 Time: 10:00 am - 6:00 pm (Registration at 9:30 am) Contact: ldd2k4 at linux-delhi.org Entry: Free -- all are invited Cheers! The Linux Delhi Community. From karim at sarai.net Fri Sep 17 19:47:10 2004 From: karim at sarai.net (Aniruddha Shankar) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 19:47:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] HOWTO: Temporary Media Lab, Setup a Message-ID: <414AF1E6.2000404@sarai.net> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 's one of the first spaces that discussed a Temporary Media Lab. For those amongst us who're interested, heres a document I've written on how to set up a media lab: http://www.geocities.com/kream77/A_TemporaryMediaLab.html For those who're not interested in the clicky links, a raw text version's appended. Note that all the "here"s and references to proper nouns point to the relevant webpages. How to set up a Temporary Media Lab* (using Free/Libre/Open Source Software) What is a tml ? To find out one viewpoint, scroll down to the fifth paragraph here. I think a TML is an adhoc encampment of borrowed components and scrounged up and refurbished hardware that people participating in an event or embedded in a situation can use to reflect, remix and report on the environment and locale that they are surrounded by. Of course, the better the hardware and the more involved and lively the participants, the more fun, capable and valuable the lab... I set up a media lab in Hamburg in the beginning of 2004 using Free/Libre and Open Source software and it was cheap, great fun and a huge learning experience. This page talks about how I did it. You could do something like this too, it's really easy. Just remember to plan ahead and maintain a sense of humour. A TML is composed of various parts - ~ * ~ hardware ~ * ~ software ~ * ~ processes Hardware 3 computers - arranged in a star configuration with the monitors facing outwards so no one can see everything that's happening in the lab at the same time - it's an interesting effect. Basically, any computer that has been purchased in the last 2 years will be capable of being part of the TML. Even the cheapest of computers purchased in 2004 will be sufficient and in most respects will surpass the "Recommended" specifications given below. Computer Configurations - Optimal: Pentium4/AthlonXP 2.0 gHz or faster, 512mb RAM or more, at least 60 GB hard disks, nVidia graphics cards (budget ones will do), DVD-writer on one of the machines (DVD-rewriter would be great), CD-rewriter on another one(CD-rewriter on the other two would be great) , at least 17inch monitors for all of them, 100mbps network cards. For audio support, an audio card which supports hardware mixing under ALSA (the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). To find out which audio cards do this, go here and look in the notes column for (4) ... I recommend the Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live or the SoundBlaster PCI 512 - A soundblaster Live alue can be had for USD 15 or INR 780 (prices from pricegrabber, currency conversion from XE ) Acceptable: Pentium3 / AthlonXP in the 1-1.5 gHz range, 256mb RAM, 40 GB hard disks, builtin-graphics cards sufficient (intel 8xx series for pentium3s, nforce / sis chipsets for athlons), CD-rewriter on one machine, 17inch monitor on at least one machine, 100mbps network cards. For audio support, the builtin audio cards are sufficient - but you will not be able to do hardware mixing so you might not get the support of all the features in advanced programs like ardour. Minimum: Celeron / Pentium3 between 600mHz and 1 gHz, 128 mb RAM, 20 GB hard disks, builtin graphics cards, 15" monitors on all of them, 10mbps network cards. For audio support, the builtin audio cards will suffice. Networking - Recommended a 100mbps switch, at least a 10 mbps hub, sufficient CAT5 cabling for all machines. An extra network card is necessary if the external network interface (for example to the network) is through a LAN or standard network - in this case, one computer will have two network cards and will interface (or act as the gateway) between the external network and the Media Lab. Miscellaneous - Unless you are sure of the quality and availability of the electricity, I'd recommend borrowing UPSs for the duration of the event. Peripherals - Scanner: check the list of compatible scanners in the SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) matrix. Look for scanners with "complete" support. Compatible scanners can be amongst the most troublesome peripherals to get for Linux - the ones that have "complete" support are, in many cases, not sold anymore by the manufacturer - an exception is the CanoScan LiDE 20 or the LiDE30 (september 2004) so you might have to hunt around in your local shops or use ingenuity to find one. Make sure that you get the EXACT model number - I was in a media lab that got the canoscan LiDE35 (which was incompatible) rather than the LiDE 30. the HP 2200c is great, if you can get it. To see if the development version of SANE (which might be unstable) supports your scanner, go here for a similar list. An outdated (but still good) list for USB scanners is here . Find one for parallel ports here. If you're in Delhi, check out this site for a good listing of manufacturers. Printer: if you anticipate moderate to heavy printing, you should find a laser printer - the cost per page is much less than that of an inkjet. Almost every printer, be it laser or inkjet, parallel or USB is supported by CUPS, the Common UNIX Printing System. Check out this list ~ and see if you have access to a printer that is supported in the "perfectly" or in the "mostly" column. Make sure you take a few reams of paper and a spare printer ink/toner cartridge. Digital Camera: As far as I know, any camera with an interface to a USB port in a computer will be supported under Linux as a USB storage device. LCD Projector: An LCD projector is fantastic, if you can arrange one - the basic idea is that once it's plugged into the computer, you can display the actual work process in a node of the media lab - great for demonstrations, playing movies, music and for displaying webpages, animations or publicity material. When you're getting a projector, try and find out the make and model of the projector beforehand and google and see if there are any reports of incompatibilities with Linux. Sound Recording : a cheap microphone to record the pearls of wisdom that drop from the lips of the medialab participants... it's fun when you use audacity or hydrogenaudio to remix the voices and chop, cut and paste the things that people say. Software Linux :) kernel of the 2.6.x series - a sample config file for the kernel can be found here. I used Gentoo Linux for the media lab because it's fun, fast and very very customisable but you're free to use more administrator-friendly distributions such as KNOPPIX, Mandrake or SuSE which have excellent hardware detection and tools for administrating the machines. I recommend KDE for the interface if you have computers that are at least "Acceptable" or "Recommended". KDE can be easily set to display an interface in almost every language on earth as can GNOME, which is also a very good choice. If you're running a restricted hardware setup, check out XFCE4 or iceWM. Google is your friend. Servers: make sure sshd the secure shell daemon is running on all of the machines so you can administer them remotely and use SAMBA or nfs to share files between computers. If you don't have access to the Internet, you can use boa as a light web server to demonstrate what the webpages that you'll be creating will look like... Text: for simple composition, kedit or gedit are great. For text with formatting, try abiword or kword. For a full-featured word processor that can, in almost all circumstances, match the best in the field, try OpenOffice.org Writer version 1.1.2 or later. For near-professional quality Desktop Publishing, check out Scribus :) Image: for creating/editing animations, photos or images, use GIMP version 2.x (comparable to Photoshop). Rudimentary image editing can be done in kpaint. To view images as a slideshow, use kuickshow. Inkscape is great for creating vector images and Blender is a very good 3D rendering and drawing package. Web Pages: Use Mozilla Firefox to view webpages. Konqueror is also a very good browser. I use the Mozilla suite for my work as it's a very stable and full-featured browser, if slightly slower than firefox. To create web pages, I use Mozilla Composer and have been experimenting with an experimental version of it called N-VU, in which this web page was written. Make sure you have the netscape-flash plugin installed if you want to see flash animations in the web pages that you visit. Email: It's unlikely that people will be using anything but webmail to check their email in a temporary media lab. If this is not the case, you can use Mozilla Mail, kmail or Evolution. Sound: XMMS is still very good at playing audio files. Under KDE, you could use JuK. To edit audio files, try Audacity or the more advanced Ardour. Video: For the entry level video editor, try Kino. Try Cinepaint or Cinelerra if you want heavy duty tools that have been used to make and edit top-quality movies. Burning CDs and DVDs: To do this, use the superlative K3B. Processes A TML is empty without processes to animate it. The environment that surrounds the lab - a festival, a conference or a meeting should produce a cacophony of media - text about the conference, web pages by passers by, photos, images, animations, scrawls, remixed speech, background music - anything at all ! Here are few process that you can use to animate your lab - and of course, there are many more... blog: A blog is short for a weblog, and refers to a form of personal web publishing with an emphasis on a chronological notation or flow. it's wildly popular these days and there are many free weblog servers that are available for people to use - try blogspot or livejournal. streetlog/herelog - a herelogger observes the environment around the lab - - the conference or festival and makes periodic entries in a weblog - this provides us with a very rich and "non-official" picture of the event. it can be made very fascinating by embedding the following media forms inside: pictures - can be taken using the digicam and edited, played with, filtered, morphed, colour-shifted using the plethora of image editing and manipulation tools that the lab provides. Try making a collage of the participants, I've seen one and it's great! music and sound - it's fun to work and play with music in the background and you can take recordings using the microphone and remix them in audacity, add drum effects using hydrogen audio and even embed them in the weblogs. lab newsletter - use scribus and inkscape to put together a single-sheet newsletter at the end of the conference - this can be printed out using hte printer and photocopied and distributed. Open Source / Free(dom) software was created by people mixing and matching pieces and ideas in a environment very like a crowded street festival or a bazaar - the same method that's used to create extremely interesting media. Have fun with the TML and mail me your suggestions for this document. Cheers, Aniruddha "Karim" Shankar The Sarai Programme, New Delhi Document made with Nvu This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFBSvHlhJkrd6A3rSsRAjRYAJ9uZxPBqxme/qWehFtEodiQzlUE/wCfYBUb vC17c0hS64gZiniCsDL65jc= =91Ps -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From anarchogeek at gmail.com Sat Sep 18 06:34:47 2004 From: anarchogeek at gmail.com (evan) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 18:04:47 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] HOWTO: Temporary Media Lab, Setup a In-Reply-To: <414AF1E6.2000404@sarai.net> References: <414AF1E6.2000404@sarai.net> Message-ID: <86ec40c1040917180446eda8dc@mail.gmail.com> Not to be critical, but you seem to be talking about using pretty high end hardware. It's great if you have resources and can get plenty of ghz boxes but you can do almost everything you're saying on truely recycled boxes (less than 166mhz and 8 to 16 megs of ram). You could take one of those boxes you list at the low end, make it a server, and setup diskless term's connect to it and have a computer lab of 20 computers all running full GUI's. This is what we've been doing in indymedia. For video editing you need higher end boxes, but for audio, photo, and text the network boxes work great. There are also a number of projects now in the works to let you put four heads on a single box. This lets us cut out and share the most expensive part, the cpu, and have four people share the system at the same time. For computer labs it makes a lot of sense, also it's easier to transport a miniITX across a boarder and get the used montiors, mice, and keyboards locally than to try and bring everything. -evan On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 19:47:10 +0530, Aniruddha Shankar wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > 's one of the first spaces that discussed a Temporary Media > Lab. For those amongst us who're interested, heres a document I've > written on how to set up a media lab: > > http://www.geocities.com/kream77/A_TemporaryMediaLab.html > > For those who're not interested in the clicky links, a raw text > version's appended. Note that all the "here"s and references to proper > nouns point to the relevant webpages. > > How to set up a Temporary Media Lab* > (using Free/Libre/Open Source Software) > > What is a tml ? To find out one viewpoint, scroll down to the fifth > paragraph here. I think a TML is an adhoc encampment of borrowed > components and scrounged up and refurbished hardware that people > participating in an event or embedded in a situation can use to reflect, > remix and report on the environment and locale that they are surrounded > by. Of course, the better the hardware and the more involved and lively > the participants, the more fun, capable and valuable the lab... I set up > a media lab in Hamburg in the beginning of 2004 using Free/Libre and > Open Source software and it was cheap, great fun and a huge learning > experience. This page talks about how I did it. You could do something > like this too, it's really easy. Just remember to plan ahead and > maintain a sense of humour. > > A TML is composed of various parts - > > ~ * > ~ hardware > ~ * > ~ software > ~ * > ~ processes > > Hardware > 3 computers - arranged in a star configuration with the monitors facing > outwards so no one can see everything that's happening in the lab at the > same time - it's an interesting effect. Basically, any computer that has > been purchased in the last 2 years will be capable of being part of the > TML. Even the cheapest of computers purchased in 2004 will be sufficient > and in most respects will surpass the "Recommended" specifications given > below. > > Computer Configurations - > Optimal: Pentium4/AthlonXP 2.0 gHz or faster, 512mb RAM or more, at > least 60 GB hard disks, nVidia graphics cards (budget ones will do), > DVD-writer on one of the machines (DVD-rewriter would be great), > CD-rewriter on another one(CD-rewriter on the other two would be great) > , at least 17inch monitors for all of them, 100mbps network cards. For > audio support, an audio card which supports hardware mixing under ALSA > (the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). To find out which audio cards > do this, go here and look in the notes column for (4) ... I recommend > the Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live or the SoundBlaster PCI 512 - A > soundblaster Live alue can be had for USD 15 or INR 780 (prices from > pricegrabber, currency conversion from XE ) > > Acceptable: Pentium3 / AthlonXP in the 1-1.5 gHz range, 256mb RAM, 40 GB > hard disks, builtin-graphics cards sufficient (intel 8xx series for > pentium3s, nforce / sis chipsets for athlons), CD-rewriter on one > machine, 17inch monitor on at least one machine, 100mbps network cards. > For audio support, the builtin audio cards are sufficient - but you will > not be able to do hardware mixing so you might not get the support of > all the features in advanced programs like ardour. > > Minimum: Celeron / Pentium3 between 600mHz and 1 gHz, 128 mb RAM, 20 GB > hard disks, builtin graphics cards, 15" monitors on all of them, 10mbps > network cards. For audio support, the builtin audio cards will suffice. > > Networking - > Recommended a 100mbps switch, at least a 10 mbps hub, sufficient CAT5 > cabling for all machines. An extra network card is necessary if the > external network interface (for example to the network) is through a LAN > or standard network - in this case, one computer will have two network > cards and will interface (or act as the gateway) between the external > network and the Media Lab. > > Miscellaneous - > Unless you are sure of the quality and availability of the electricity, > I'd recommend borrowing UPSs for the duration of the event. > > Peripherals - > > Scanner: check the list of compatible scanners in the SANE (Scanner > Access Now Easy) matrix. Look for scanners with "complete" support. > Compatible scanners can be amongst the most troublesome peripherals to > get for Linux - the ones that have "complete" support are, in many > cases, not sold anymore by the manufacturer - an exception is the > CanoScan LiDE 20 or the LiDE30 (september 2004) so you might have to > hunt around in your local shops or use ingenuity to find one. Make sure > that you get the EXACT model number - I was in a media lab that got the > canoscan LiDE35 (which was incompatible) rather than the LiDE 30. the > HP 2200c is great, if you can get it. To see if the development version > of SANE (which might be unstable) supports your scanner, go here for a > similar list. An outdated (but still good) list for USB scanners is here > . Find one for parallel ports here. If you're in Delhi, check out this > site for a good listing of manufacturers. > > Printer: if you anticipate moderate to heavy printing, you should find a > laser printer - the cost per page is much less than that of an inkjet. > Almost every printer, be it laser or inkjet, parallel or USB is > supported by CUPS, the Common UNIX Printing System. Check out this list > ~ and see if you have access to a printer that is supported in the > "perfectly" or in the "mostly" column. Make sure you take a few reams of > paper and a spare printer ink/toner cartridge. > > Digital Camera: As far as I know, any camera with an interface to a USB > port in a computer will be supported under Linux as a USB storage device. > > LCD Projector: An LCD projector is fantastic, if you can arrange one - > the basic idea is that once it's plugged into the computer, you can > display the actual work process in a node of the media lab - great for > demonstrations, playing movies, music and for displaying webpages, > animations or publicity material. When you're getting a projector, try > and find out the make and model of the projector beforehand and google > and see if there are any reports of incompatibilities with Linux. > > Sound Recording : a cheap microphone to record the pearls of wisdom that > drop from the lips of the medialab participants... it's fun when you use > audacity or hydrogenaudio to remix the voices and chop, cut and paste > the things that people say. > > Software > Linux :) kernel of the 2.6.x series - a sample config file for the > kernel can be found here. I used Gentoo Linux for the media lab because > it's fun, fast and very very customisable but you're free to use more > administrator-friendly distributions such as KNOPPIX, Mandrake or SuSE > which have excellent hardware detection and tools for administrating the > machines. I recommend KDE for the interface if you have computers that > are at least "Acceptable" or "Recommended". KDE can be easily set to > display an interface in almost every language on earth as can GNOME, > which is also a very good choice. If you're running a restricted > hardware setup, check out XFCE4 or iceWM. Google is your friend. > > Servers: make sure sshd the secure shell daemon is running on all of > the machines so you can administer them remotely and use SAMBA or nfs to > share files between computers. If you don't have access to the Internet, > you can use boa as a light web server to demonstrate what the webpages > that you'll be creating will look like... > > Text: for simple composition, kedit or gedit are great. For text with > formatting, try abiword or kword. For a full-featured word processor > that can, in almost all circumstances, match the best in the field, try > OpenOffice.org Writer version 1.1.2 or later. For near-professional > quality Desktop Publishing, check out Scribus :) > > Image: for creating/editing animations, photos or images, use GIMP > version 2.x (comparable to Photoshop). Rudimentary image editing can be > done in kpaint. To view images as a slideshow, use kuickshow. Inkscape > is great for creating vector images and Blender is a very good 3D > rendering and drawing package. > > Web Pages: Use Mozilla Firefox to view webpages. Konqueror is also a > very good browser. I use the Mozilla suite for my work as it's a very > stable and full-featured browser, if slightly slower than firefox. To > create web pages, I use Mozilla Composer and have been experimenting > with an experimental version of it called N-VU, in which this web page > was written. Make sure you have the netscape-flash plugin installed if > you want to see flash animations in the web pages that you visit. > > Email: It's unlikely that people will be using anything but webmail to > check their email in a temporary media lab. If this is not the case, you > can use Mozilla Mail, kmail or Evolution. > > Sound: XMMS is still very good at playing audio files. Under KDE, you > could use JuK. To edit audio files, try Audacity or the more advanced > Ardour. > > Video: For the entry level video editor, try Kino. Try Cinepaint or > Cinelerra if you want heavy duty tools that have been used to make and > edit top-quality movies. > > Burning CDs and DVDs: To do this, use the superlative K3B. > Processes > A TML is empty without processes to animate it. The environment that > surrounds the lab - a festival, a conference or a meeting should produce > a cacophony of media - text about the conference, web pages by passers > by, photos, images, animations, scrawls, remixed speech, background > music - anything at all ! Here are few process that you can use to > animate your lab - and of course, there are many more... > > blog: A blog is short for a weblog, and refers to a form of personal web > publishing with an emphasis on a chronological notation or flow. it's > wildly popular these days and there are many free weblog servers that > are available for people to use - try blogspot or livejournal. > > streetlog/herelog - a herelogger observes the environment around the lab > - - the conference or festival and makes periodic entries in a weblog - > this provides us with a very rich and "non-official" picture of the > event. it can be made very fascinating by embedding the following media > forms inside: > > pictures - can be taken using the digicam and edited, played with, > filtered, morphed, colour-shifted using the plethora of image editing > and manipulation tools that the lab provides. Try making a collage of > the participants, I've seen one and it's great! > > music and sound - it's fun to work and play with music in the background > and you can take recordings using the microphone and remix them in > audacity, add drum effects using hydrogen audio and even embed them in > the weblogs. > > lab newsletter - use scribus and inkscape to put together a single-sheet > newsletter at the end of the conference - this can be printed out using > hte printer and photocopied and distributed. > > Open Source / Free(dom) software was created by people mixing and > matching pieces and ideas in a environment very like a crowded street > festival or a bazaar - the same method that's used to create extremely > interesting media. Have fun with the TML and mail me your suggestions > for this document. > > Cheers, > > Aniruddha "Karim" Shankar > The Sarai Programme, New Delhi > > Document made with Nvu > This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) > > iD8DBQFBSvHlhJkrd6A3rSsRAjRYAJ9uZxPBqxme/qWehFtEodiQzlUE/wCfYBUb > vC17c0hS64gZiniCsDL65jc= > =91Ps > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > _________________________________________ > 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 karim at sarai.net Sat Sep 18 13:15:46 2004 From: karim at sarai.net (Aniruddha Shankar) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 13:15:46 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] HOWTO: Temporary Media Lab, Setup a In-Reply-To: <86ec40c1040917180446eda8dc@mail.gmail.com> References: <414AF1E6.2000404@sarai.net> <86ec40c1040917180446eda8dc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <414BE7AA.6060105@sarai.net> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 evan wrote: | Not to be critical, but you seem to be talking about using pretty high | end hardware. (description of Terminal server setup) and | There are also a number of projects now in the works to let you put | four heads on a single box. Evan, thanks for your comments :), I'll definitely be exploring the less-cash-heavy side of things. The main reason I've kept the computer configuration relatively overpowered is that it's much easier for someone who is not very technically proficient to set up a media lab running on equally-powered peers than it is to configure Remote X (the remote graphical display) and Network Audio Sound (piping the sound for all computers through the network). Since we work heavily with Complex Text Layout scripts (Hindi and, soon, Urdu), it's difficult (but not impossible, yes) to map non-us complex keyboard layouts across the network. I've been following the Brazilian 4-head computer project and it looks really interesting but, again, difficult for someone who is not a hardcore techie to install, configure and get working. Everything in the lab specs that I have given below can be configured graphically with no need to drop into the command line, especially if you're using a consumer-grade distribution like SuSE or Mandrake or one of the friendlier Debian variants. But yeah, it's definitely worth looking into .... maybe for the next media lab :D cheers, aniruddha "karim" shankar -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFBS+eqhJkrd6A3rSsRAoAJAJ404FvIEprQ82Xd5VJAioOSumNJJQCfYv9+ uZYxqmJXne3Hhw3bJ5leNH4= =wam8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From coolzanny at hotmail.com Sat Sep 18 14:36:17 2004 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 14:36:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Urban from the Lens of Space and Time Message-ID: The Urban from the Lens of Time and Space Dear All, The current research is an initial survey of two sites in Mumbai city i.e. the railway station and the seafront. The purpose of the survey is to look at the everyday practice of space and time in a city. How is the Urban undergoing transformation/s with changes in the notions and practices of space and time? While looking at the Urban from this perspective, my hope is also to examine larger questions of public space and private property. The seafront is an important part of the life of a Mumbaiite. It is a breathing space from the pace of the city. Simultaneously, along the seafront are residential buildings and societies, offices and hotels. How is this space then shared? Who is an insider and who is an outsider? How do the negotiations take place and what are the images of each? The two seafronts that I will be examining here are Nariman Point and Worli Sea Face. Similarly, the railway stations are a quintessential part of our heritage in Mumbai � VT and Churchgate at sites and nodes of transport in the city. And this transport is of various kinds, that of economy and workforce, of life and death, of people, ideas and groups and of various kinds of horizons and worldviews. The Seafront and the Railway Station provide a very interesting combination in terms of time and space � the notions of �organization� and �disorganization�, and also the concepts of �shared�, �public� and �community�. Who organizes time and space in both these locations? In terms of time, the seafront with its leisured pace versus the railway station with its rushed, hectic and frenzied pace could provide cues into envisioning the kinds of community spaces which would serve as meeting spaces between different peoples and groups. What kinds of cross-interactions and parallel-interactions take place between these two sites in a city? Following is my first posting of Day 1 at VT Station. Zainab Bawa 14 September 2004 VT Station 6:00 PM This evening, I visited VT station. Today is my first day of observation here and I am clearly apprehensive. I am concerned about the fast pace of the crowds and my slow intentions. I am worried about being pushed and jostled aside by the crowds whose perhaps one point goal at this time is to board their respective trains and get comfortable seats inside the compartments. I wish I was invisible � gayab! I boarded a slow train from Byculla station to reach VT. While in the ladies compartment, I began to think that the compartment and the local train share a distinct relationship with the railway station. The railway station is a site of transition and the space inside the compartment is also a transitory space. But, while the railway station is a site of chaos, the compartment is a space where some order and peace exist. People rush on the railways station, but once inside the compartment, there is clearly a change in the pace. As the train slowed down at VT station, I continued to sit in my seat. On occasions such as these, I become very obedient. Some rules are important to obey if you desire for your safety as well as that of others. Hmmm, maybe laws are actually rules about a certain way of life in which the individual and the community around him can live in harmony. The moment the train slowed down at VT, women rushed inside the compartment like bullets shooting in different directions. The situation was what I would very aptly describe as �shooting in the dark� and reaching your target. Few moments ago, the space inside the compartment was calm, and now there was violent chaos. For these three to five minutes, the compartment space had turned into something completely different. But, at the end of it all, there are no enemies, no foes. It is all about the seats my dears! Cut to VT Station � VT Station is a junction for Harbour Railway Line and Central Railway Line trains. The first train in India had run from Bombay to Thane, something which we Mumbaikers are proud of till date. VT station is an important part of our collective heritage and what I find most interesting is that this heritage is a not a memory of history � it is a practice of everyday. VT is more than a railway station. Its antique British structure is continuously undergoing changes. Let me give you an example of one of the changes which I observed today. I parked myself neatly near a pole from where I could see a section of the station and the crowds. Immediately, my eyes fell upon the newly installed stopwatches on each of the platforms. The stopwatches were ticking away diligently � this is their foremost duty. I played a game with my eyes and my mind. I started moving my gaze quickly from one stopwatch to another and my goodness, the seconds ran past by me into an eternity of time. The stopwatches couldn�t care much for me; neither did they care much for the people who were hurrying away at the station. In contrast was the grandfather clock, suspended from the ceiling right in the center of the station. The grandfather clock had two hands, the long one for the minutes and the shorter one for the hours. The grandfather clock is very deceptive. While the stopwatches were dutifully performing their function of ticking away regardless of the people, the grandfather clock was sarcastically watching the people and laughing away at the irony of man. The grandfather clock was much relaxed � someday I think these stopwatches might have to be hospitalized for hypertension of the nervous system! I hope that the grandfather clock and me will soon have our own ethereal discussions of space and time. The People: AT VT Station, it is important to learn how to watch people. The process is similar to playing ping-pong with several balls in the air. Today, I was feeling dizzy. My weak eyes could not catch up with the lightening speed of the several peoples, but heck, I have to become skillful. People have their own ways of movement on the station. A segment of the people move about in a robotic fashion where their bodies appear to be programmed to this daily activity. Nothing disturbs them. It�s like they automatically know how, where and why they are moving. They are like sieves, sieving through the crowds. Then there is a segment of the crowds which is clearly in a hurry because they are either just in the nick of time to board their trains or that their trains are about to leave in a few seconds and they must hurry if they are to �catch� this train. Then there is another segment of the crowds which is confident � neither in hurry nor leisurely. They are the reassured lot which know that they are well in time for their train. Then, there is clearly a gender distinction i.e. the different ways in which men and women hurry. And even within the same sex, there are marked differences, for instance, the young and the old, the middle-aged, the workingwomen housewife and the singe workingwomen, etc. (As you will see, I have become more adept at noting women than men!) There are two ways to enter and exit VT station. One way is through the subway and the other is through the platform for outstation railway trains. In the evening, people pour inside from both ends and believe you in me, it�s mad! But what is unique about us human beings is the order which we bring into this madness, the manner in which we work our ways out! I am still not certain about the limitations of this process, but for the moment, I am both fascinated and analytical. Today I saw that when men have to wait at VT Station, they usually stand beneath the indicator. They are right in the middle of the crowds. Women, in contrast, stand on the opposite side i.e. at the beginning of each platform, huddled around at the EMU Halt. I understand now that women feel vulnerable amidst crowds and prefer to create their own space, among their own sister fraternity. Usually, the groups of women are the train groups. They are waiting for their other train friends to join in. Some of these groups/individual women are waiting either because they are waiting for �their� train or because �their� train is packed and they are waiting for �their� next train where the prospects of getting seats are brighter, bigger and better. Men also wait for �their� trains � the indicator keeps signaling from time to time about where the next few trains arriving will be bound outwards. The space below the indicator is also a meeting place for men. This meeting place is about �conducting business�. Today when I was standing amidst the men, a man suddenly came from the subway entry towards one of the men in (my) group and shouted out loud, �Bhenchod (fucker), couldn�t you wait another ten more minutes for me? Don�t you know that I come from Churchgate and that takes me a while to get here? Come on now, here is your parcel.� After this friendly-violent exchange of verbal volleys, both men patted each other�s backs, conducted �their business� and went their ways. This is what I call �normal�. There are also meetings which take place between girls-boys and men-women, for different purposes, not necessarily for love, but also for business. There are family meetings at the railway station � the one I saw today was filmi where the mother and daughter were waiting for the latter�s beau to come and meet the mother. Similarly, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law pairs wait for their man (son and husband respectively) to join them at the station and then, the parivaar boards the train � happy family! Pace of the Crowds � Contrasts and Similarities, Visibility and Invisibility: Like I mentioned earlier, the pace of the crowds is hectic, frenzied and crazy. But regulars are well adjusted with all of this. For them, it is about knowing how to go about conducting their own business and dodging with the crowds. No one cares for the other, but yet, cares enough to know how much distance and space to maintain for successful juggling. I strolled along one of the platforms where a Ladies Special Train was parked. I noticed the way in which people were hurriedly walking and running, and sometimes, pushing the slow ones aside so that they can get to their trains and compartments. For the slow-paced, there is a price to pay for their �individuality� here � thou shall either be pushed around or cursed for his/her insensitivity to time and the people around. There are schizophrenics hanging around at the platforms. They have their own slow pace � of course, you could say they are in another world altogether. But these are important people. They are dirty; smell heavily, unclean and unkempt. Some of them stare at you angrily, almost intimidating you; some of them are having their conference with beings who are invisible to the naked eyes of us �normals�. Normals usually ignore the schizophrenics. They will not push them or curse them; they will simply ignore them. In this aspect, the railway station leads me to question the boundaries between �normal and abnormal�, between �crazy and balanced� and between �image and reality�. I could easily think of those normals talking on their hands-free equipments as schizophrenics until I realize that the conversation is not with an invisible, but with somebody at the other end of the phone. I have to sharpen my eyes! The Railway Station is a site of anonymity and transitory visibility. From my observations today, I think this is largely created by the pace and the time (greater visibility in the slack hours; lesser visibility in the peak/rush hours). Two women (apparently close friends) were walking hurriedly at the station to board their train. One of them fell with a thud on the floor. The crowds quickly helped her stand up and on rising, the crowds went their way and she along with her friend went her way. She was briefly visible, but the transitions are so sudden that these memories are highly short-term and subject to quick erasure. I was myself visible from time to time. New groups would gather around me and watch me. As soon as the current group�s trains would arrive, the group would disintegrate and a new collection would gather around me. Organization and Disorganization: While standing at the station, I began to imagine whether the crowds would disperse at any point and whether there would be some �breathing space� at all. Suddenly, on Platform Nos. 7 and 8, two long-distance trains arrived � one for Kasara and the other Karjat. With the arrival of these two trains, the crowds suddenly cleared up for the next five-eight minutes. This was one form of organization-disorganization that I noticed today. Perhaps there might be other ways, and I hope to get familiar with them gradually. Everyday Devices � Mobile Phones versus Wristwatches: What I find highly fascinating these days is to watch the way in which the mobile phone is increasingly becoming the device (can also be read as the-vice/ de-vice) of the everyday. Several people had the hands-free earphones plugged into their ears. The reasons for this behaviour are several. One of the reasons is conversation and talking. The other is listening to radio. Another is listening to the radio and effectively shutting oneself from the crowd. Yet another is listening to the radio and effectively shutting oneself from the pace of the crowd and creating order and peace in one�s mind. The mobile phone has more uses than the obvious one � it is a radio, now also an MP3 Player. It is a watch, for both time and location. I find that the mobile phone is fast replacing the wristwatch. Most people have their phones in their hands; phones show the time just as much as watches do. A look at the phone helps you catch the time as well as missed calls and messages received. The wristwatch is becoming a mere tool of ornamentation. There is a lot more to this play between the mobile phone and the wristwatch, but more on that with more and more observations. Property: I was standing at the pole above which was the indicator. There was a red-colour dustbin tied with a steel chain to the pole. Inside the dustbin was a black plastic bag into which all the rubbish was constantly being dumped. While this might be an insignificant observation, it revealed to me the notion of property. Obviously, the dustbin was chained to the pole so that it would not be stolen away � who would steal it? I do not want to make too many guesses, though there is a lot going on in my mind. But simply, can property be shared? What about heritage - whose property is heritage? Highlight of the Day: The first Ladies Special Train along Harbour Line, from VT to Vashi. I somehow feel I am responsible for this development. Maybe I am a good omen. Conclusion: Speed, time and space, all three elements at play at the Railway Station. I now wish to stand in the Bombay Stock Exchange someday and watch the play of these elements along with the ticking figures � volatile, momentary cash economy. _________________________________________________________________ Is cricket your religion? Check out the cricket shop! http://www.msn.co.in/Shopping/CricketShop/ CDs, books �n all things cricket! From coolzanny at hotmail.com Sun Sep 19 11:14:31 2004 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 11:14:31 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Tresspasses - Legality and Illegality Message-ID: 18 September 2004 News Snippets - Times of India These days, some of the news on the front page of the Times of India relates to infrastructure in either Mumbai City or the metro cities in India. There is this growing wave about cities becoming the hubs of economic capital and migrations in the coming decades. The emphasis on cities is continuously increasing - you can feel the pressure through the news! The main issue under discussion and deliberation is the growing influx of migrants in the city and the subsequent pressures on urban infrastructure. Water scarcities, land shortages, lack of housing, growth of slums (and squalor - a combination which Times of India loves to associate), felling of trees and occupation of forest land by builders, etc. are the prominent urban news items. With these shortages, the boundaries between insiders and outsiders are becoming more and more stark - who owns and who can be disowned? A piece of news some days ago talks about a group of eleven prominent residents in the city who have filed a PIL asking that illegal encroachers be removed from the voters' list. They believe that encroachments on railway land and pavements prevent 'developmental work'. Political parties will not remove illegal slums because those are their vote banks. The ruling parties keep legalizing the slums. Subhash Bhende, litterateur and one of the petitioners says, "We are not against slum dwellers, but against the unauthorized slums that are obstructing infrastructural developments." He believes that voting is not a constitutional right and under the Representation of People's Act, in order to vote, you must fulfill two conditions: you have to be over 18 years of age and an ordinary resident of the area. Bhende therefore argues that election officials should not register names of slum dwellers in the voters' list without inquiring into the legal status of their residence. He adds, "You can't register yourself as a voter by saying 'I live under the lamp-post'." Bhende's proposition is that if these people cannot vote, the government will lose interest in them and will not protect them. "We are not saying that they should be removed or thrown out, we are just saying that this is a way of ending the viscous cycle of increasing encroachments. We can't stop people from coming in the city but at the same time, we have to find some way of solving the problem." Jockin Aruptham, slum activist and Magsaysay award winner is on the other side of the debate. He fears that this stand against slum dwellers and migrants is only going to increase the existing divides in the city. He says, "Today, if we take away the voting rights on the basis of where people stay, tomorrow it could be on the basis of their religion or place of origin." Today's news talks about how the BMC has now dug out the old rule of fining illegal hawkers a fine of Rs. 10,000. The news item reads as follows: 'Mumbai: For the first time, unlicensed hawkers in Mumbai may well be fined a stiff Rs.10,000. A long-forgotten rule allows the civic administration to impose this hefty amount. The corporation is now actively considering imposing the fine as it finds it increasingly difficult to relocate hawkers in the proposed hawking zones. Senior civic officials said the proposal awaits the municipal commissioner's approval. Currently, hawkers are fined Rs.300 to Rs. 400 and their confiscated goods are returned within 48 hours of payment of the fine. On the directions of the supreme court, the corporation has earmarked 236 hawking zones but is finding it extremely difficult to relocate hawkers particularly those entrenched near railway stations and busy junctions.' When I read these news items, I wonder who is a migrant and who is a resident? What kind of timeline are we talking about which legalizes our presence and makes us 'legal residents'? With the burgeoning population growth, I wonder whether there is truly anonymity or whether ghettos are becoming increasingly distinct? These blurred lines of 'legality and illegality', these sharp divides of residents and outsiders - who is defining and dictating these shadow lines? Who decides? Who enforces? Who acts? _________________________________________________________________ The hottest products! The coolest discounts! http://www.msn.co.in/shopping Get them all at MSN Shopping! From rahul_capri at yahoo.com Mon Sep 20 10:08:58 2004 From: rahul_capri at yahoo.com (Rahul Asthana) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 21:38:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Omair Ahmad's sketches of Srinagar In-Reply-To: <4149740F.9000605@sarai.net> Message-ID: <20040920043858.47030.qmail@web51105.mail.yahoo.com> Vivek, Thanks for posting this.It is from instances like these that it appears that our media is not doing its job.Why is the media silent on Kashmir and the North Eastern States?Why have some areas of our country got marginalised from the democracy that we seem to be so proud of? These are questions that we need to ask ourselves more often. Your suggestion of sketches from such areas is quite good.It does not take a reporter to meet a common man and ask how things are going. Regards Rahul --- Vivek Narayanan wrote: > Dear all, > > This below from Omair Ahmad-- quick sketches from > his recent trip to > Srinagar (Kashmir). For our international readers, > Omair also writes, > "For those that don't know a shikara is a small boat > used to navigate > the lakes in Kashmir." > > I am wondering if we can initiate a series of > sketches like this on the > list, especially from areas "in crisis" which also > speak to the banality > of life in such situations, how people immunize > themselves to a > situation of constant conflict. > > Any takers? And comments on the piece below. > > -V. > > > THE SHIKARAWALLA > > ~ On Dal Lake, Afternoon of 10^th September 2004 ~ > > > ~ We spend beyond our means. > > ~ At least three times a week we must have a mutton > meal, otherwise > people talk. > > ~ I just spent ten thousand rupees on a wedding, and > there are 5-6 more > coming up. It is the season. > > ~ This shikara and a small plot of land, it gets us > through. That is > what most of us have. > > ~ That house, there, is the Raja?s: Hari Singh. That > fenced off piece of > land in the middle of the lake is also his. His son, > Karan Singh, > sometimes comes here with his family. > > ~ There are no tenders awarded here, no way to make > another income. In > the whole Valley there is no tender for liquor. > > ~ There used to be so many foreign tourists before, > the owners never > used to allow the Indians into the houseboats. Now > look at what God has > done. > > ~ This year there were some tourists early in the > season, and then that > news of the swelled up lake in China came, and the > flow of people dried up. > > THE HOTEL MANAGER - I > > ~ Dal Gate, Evening of 10^th September 2004 ~ > > The Lights Go Off. > > > ~ See how India oppresses us! Nothing, there has > been no development in > the last 55 years. > > ~ There is no work here, such uselessness, that is > what pushes the young > men into picking up the gun. > > ~ You see that bridge? It has been five years and > they are still > building it. First it was supposed to go that way, > but prices started > falling in this area, so the people forced a change > of direction. > Abdullah government then, Mufti government now, so > now a bridge that > runs in the opposite direction it was supposed to, > and still not finished. > > ~ Officers and Ministers divide and eat up the > money, not like Choudhary > sahib who sent you here. Put a crore in front of him > and he will not > take one rupee. > > ~ Factories exist, but only in the books. There was > an HMT watch factory > here that employed 5,000 ? 6,000 people, but it > closed down because of > the violence. They could put up any industry here, > but the only ones > that come into existence are those on paper, so that > the corrupt can eat > the money. > > ~ I will have to go into debt and buy a generator. > The guests demand > such things. It is so hard to get a loan from a > bank. > > > THE CENTRAL RESERVE POLICE FORCE PERSONNEL > > ~ By Dal Lake, Late Afternoon of 11^th September > 2004 ~ > > ~ Stop. > > ~ Where are you coming from? > > ~ Why from that direction, what were you doing? > > ~ What is in your bag? > > ~ Where are you from? Oh Delhi? Your first trip > here? > > ~ How are you liking the place? > > ~ Aren?t you scared? > > ~ I am from Ghaziabad (shy smile, gap between his > two front upper > teeth). Do you know it? > > ~ Aren?t you scared? > > > THE GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL > > ~ Government Housing, Evening of 11^th September > 2004 ~ > > ~ It is a Hindu marriage. You know that Hindus > rarely divorce here? That > is how it is between India and the Kashmiris. There > is no trust, no > liking, but we will not divorce. > > ~ India has to be more generous, more magnanimous. > Always they start > talks and then break them off on some pretext or > other. The Kashmiri > politicians who have attended the talks are > discredited when they come > back. Their people stop believing in them. > > ~ India has never trusted the Kashmiris, they even > undermined the > government of Sheikh Abdullah, the one who was the > most instrumental in > Kashmir acceding to India. > > ~ There was that Senior Superintendent of Police > from Baramulla that got > arrested when he went to Delhi. He was there for a > meeting and they put > him into jail for a day because they did not believe > his papers or him. > Khajuria, the former Director General of Police > wrote an article that if > somebody of such unimpeachable credentials could be > treated like that, > what was to happen to the rest of the country? > > ~ This is not Punjab. There is no intermarriage, no > fluidity of cultures > here like that. Our heritage, our religion, our > language and our culture > tie us to this place. All my relatives live here. > The militants can > pressure us, and even if we were all to leave, > wherever we went we would > be distrusted. > > ~ The militants do not attack haphazardly. When I > was in charge of > setting up things for the elections I was on their > hit list. My family > and I barely survived an attack. But once the > elections were over, I was > off their hit list. > > ~ There can be palliatives, economic measures, freer > movement for the > young men, but this is cancer in the second stage > and very difficult to > treat. Someone has to die, and we, India, Pakistan, > the Kashmiris, we > are all patients. > > === message truncated === __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From coolzanny at hotmail.com Mon Sep 20 11:36:37 2004 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 11:36:37 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The Sea Front - Urban from the Lens of Time and Space Message-ID: 19 September 2004 Nariman Point 5:15 PM � 6:15 PM Where Have They Gone? Today is a Sunday. When I went to Nariman Point on Wednesday, I did not see a single hawker on the seafront. I thought maybe hawkers nowadays refrain from putting up their mobile stalls on weekdays owing to scant business. But today is a Sunday � I fail to hear the cold-drink sellers running the bottle opener through the glass bottles, making the w-hhhh-rrrr-ing- w-hhhh-rrrr-ing sounds. I do not get the tastes and smells of raw and roasted corn. Neither is the spicy gram-seller there, with his iron pan and ladle, spices, tomatoes, onions and butter, one of my favorite snacks at Nariman Point � I could drool over this forever! Nobody is here. Where have they gone? With the wind? Which wind, easterly or westerly? In their place, I see these surreptitious sellers, walking past people sitting on the sea-face plinth and quietly saying, �Bhutta chaihiye, bhutta? (Do you want corn, corn?)� I see peanut and gram sellers, selling their wares in plastic packets instead of the huge basket with live coals which keeps the grams hot and crispy, wrapping the nuts in the conical paper rocket. I see cold-drink and water sellers, little boys, with about five to six bottles carefully wrapped in two plastic bags and slowly walking past people sitting on the plinth and softly saying, �Pani, pani (water, water)!� Yes, things have changed here. There is a level of surveillance that I see. I sense fear among these surreptitious sellers who, as they walk and call past, steal glances from the corner of their eyes to see if someone is watching them, someone is following them, someone is �seeing� them. They almost appear like the black marketers along cinema halls, quietly mumbling black rates for tickets, watching out for the cops. The eye � it serves a different kind of sight function these days. So does the mind! I don�t exactly know what has happened to the hawkers whose presence added a different colour to the Nariman Point sea face not so long ago. Perhaps they have been shoved away because they don�t have �legal licenses�. And here is where I wonder, what is legal and what is illegal? Does authority have more power than it (in an institutional sense) ought to have? They have gone somewhere � I need to locate them! Pay & Park: This evening I sharpened my eyes and found a little structure along the sea face which said �MCGM Pay & Park�. Yes, now I understand. The Municipal Corporation has introduced the system of payment for parking cars along Nariman Point. I could see MCGM employees, dressed in uniforms, walking around with a pen and a slip book, issuing slips to car owners who park their vehicles along the sea face. These guys are busy as well as leisurely. There are a quite a few of them, surveying newcomers and collecting dues from owners who are leaving. Pay & Park is one of the hottest issues in the city today. There is severe dearth of car parking space while the number of cars is steadily on the rise. There have been discussions and plans between officials in the Municipal Corporation and the Transport Department to create more Pay & Park spots in order to discourage people from using individual cars. Lack of space huh? Shrinking space huh? What is interesting about the cars along the sea face is the interaction between time and space. Most of the car owners are people who have come here to do business � not on the seafront, but either in Hilton Towers or in one of the big offices here. The car owners may then choose to stroll along Nariman Point after business is done, but that�s always an option. Most of them immediately go away in their cars, without taking a look at the sea. Busy-ness and business! Public Space and Access: This evening, as I walked past the sea face, I noticed different kinds of people here, many migrants, mostly from Northern UP and Karnataka, sitting with their families and watching the sea. There are all varieties and classes of peoples � rich, young, old, middle class, upper middle class, lower middle class, clean, dirty, old, girls, boys, men, women, poor � from all over the country and even beyond (meaning foreigners!). As I walked, I realized that here is Nariman Point, a place where you do not have to make a payment to access it. You do not have to buy anything to enjoy the breeze and the sea here. You don�t even have a pay & park system for human beings here (yet!) where the payment for sitting for an hour is ten rupees, for two hours is twenty rupees and so on and so forth! Until the pay & park system don�t apply to us human beings, we can enjoy ourselves! But, some kind of surveillance does seem to be taking place here � I am sensing something with my nose! The Sea and Romance: Couples were everywhere even today. They always seem to abound here. One of the associations that comes to my mind is that between the sea and the idea of romance. There is some relationship between these two elements of life, not just in Mumbai, but universally. Thus, some things are not just ethnic and local; they are universal, like some values that we cherish and uphold. The sea affords some kind of space and luxury to people to bond between themselves. Couples come here not just for romance, but also to resolve skirmishes and conflicts between themselves. One such couple was sitting next to me today, on my left. They were resolving a family conflict. Theirs is an inter-caste love affair. The conflict in their case was centering on language � Gujarati versus Hindi. The boy and girl maintained intimacy between them, but this intimacy was without any touching or kissing. It was a negotiating-understanding kind of body language. There is also this aspect of �talking things out� in a relationship which commonly takes place along the seafront. And the seafront is most apt in this respect � the atmosphere really facilitates the notion of talking things �out�, in the open, between the horizon, the sky and the sea. The seafront also offers the luxury of time where couples simply come here to chat between themselves and establish bonds and intimacies of various kinds in their relationship with each other. It�s not only the couples, but also pairs of father-and-son, families, etc. which express their relationships in different forms here. There are ways in which personal space operates between couples � some maintain a degree of physical distance, some sit close but without holding hands or circling the arms around, some kiss on the cheeks, etc. One couple came and sat to my right today. It was a very, very raw couple, Maharashtrian. The guy and girl came and sat facing the track. At first, I thought that there has been some kind of fight between them. Soon, a little boy�s gimmicks with his tri-cycle brought a laugh on both their faces and also on those sitting around. The ice was melting. Then, the guy turned and sat facing towards the sea. His girlfriend gradually turned in the same direction, though grimacing. The ice was fast breaking away. Finally, the boy held his girl intimately. The girl kept shoving his hand away, but she appeared to enjoy the coziness. While they were romancing, a crow suddenly appeared from nowhere and landed straight near them. The boy got frightened. When they realized that it was only a crow, both of them laughed and the boy pointed his finger towards the crow and said, �No more disturbance now!� Old Man Jolly: I don�t know who he is and where he comes from. I don�t even know his name. But I have seen him at Nariman Point, once in every blue moon. By now, there have been about five such blue moons where I have seen him. He wears this semi-army like attire � very British, like Asrani, the jailor in the film Sholay. He wears a cap. He is old, about seventy, not more, but maybe a little less. His face is freckled. He wears spectacles. He is probably senile. And if he is not, then we are senile! His pants are maroon, socks upto to the knees covering the pants, and he wears a creamish-white shirt. His main possession is an old radio which he hides in a black bag. He wears this bag around his neck, holding the possession on his chest. The radio is loud enough for everyone to hear. The old man will walk gaily, stopping at some points abruptly. When he stops, he will act out something. This time when he stopped, he gazed around and lit up a cigarette. And he did this in the most British and graceful style. I thought he was acting out until I smelt tobacco. I immediately looked away, thinking that I could be the target of his gimmicks. But he wouldn�t care for a little me. He went on with his act and then resumed walking. He is Old Man Jolly! Muslims galore! Too many of them at Nariman Point these days. When I went back home and told mom about their omnipresence at the seafront, she immediately said, �Obviously, this is their month to enjoy. Next month is Ramazan and they will not be able to move out of their homes. Moreover, it was so hot today. Everybody must have come out to enjoy the breeze!� My mother is a clever woman. Her logics are simple and straightforward. Not much theorizing here! Family Foto and Family Video: In the age of the digital video camera and digital camera, photography and video shooting has become �new age� here at Nariman Point. The manual cameras are still in existence; they are not lost in the digital humdrum. Most often, the pictures and videos are the family ones i.e. those taking pictures and videos are family members - of their family, for their family and by their family, one of the versions of democracy. This is some kind of common obsession, both on weekdays and weekends. Foreigners like to shoot the sea and the city�s buildings and skyline. They like to shoot sights and scenes. But for our locals and also for those coming from other states in India, family is the priority � is it because this is what our primary value and priority is? Highlight of the Day: A Sardar with a copy of Paulo Coelho�s �The Alchemist�. The Sardar was with his family. He kept walking here and there with his little child. Then, he finally settled his family on a bench and he went and sat away from them, facing the sea. Contemplatively, he read The Alchemist. I guess the sea and the book were disturbing/influencing him in a different direction! Perhaps, the seafront may someday produce several �queers� who may simply walk away from the mainstream system � no defiance, no rebellion, outright rejection! _________________________________________________________________ Win a trip to Singapore! Experience the magic! http://eu.xmts.net/80450 Click here for details! From amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in Sun Sep 19 12:37:59 2004 From: amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in (Amit Basu) Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 08:07:59 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Poetry of North Calcutta Message-ID: <20040919070759.59566.qmail@web8504.mail.in.yahoo.com> Poetry of North Calcutta This year Prasun Bandopadhyay was awarded Birendra Smriti Puraskar for his remarkable poetic creation called "Uttor Kolkatar Kobita (Keertinasa Prakasani: Kolkata, 2003, bound, pp48, Rs. 25.00)". During the award ceremony, a senior poet Manindra Gupta said that: "Perhaps after Amritalal Bose who wrote in the hay days of colonialism, Prasun is the first poet who has focused on a specific space of this three hunderd year old city. But Prasun has given a different dimension to this space, an original creative twist, which has captured the ambience of North Calcutta once famous for establishing the new urban culture. Located in a micro urban space, these poetries have transgressed its regional boundary." Way back in November 2003 Prasun's book was out unceremoniously, like those hundreds of poetry books that is published in Bengali. I am not an avid poetry reader nor a literary critic, but his poetries took me to a time travel that constantly moved back and forth between colonial and postcolonial times. His historical consciousness is sharp, which problematised the distinction between such time periods and questioned through various symbols and metaphors the modernist project of history. Not at all a good translator though, I am still tempted to share with you some flavour of his creativity: 1 Who would write? Light over a slate coloured afternoon A man moves around with a 'lagi' In this lane and that - And writes One by one Stars. [Till early postcolonial time there were gas lights on many streets of Calcutta, and a man employed by the Municipality used to move around the streets with a long, slender bamboo stick ('lagi') and alight those. This marked the transition of day to evening, a metaphor long cherished by the writers of this city.] 2 Why your mind is full of sorrow Dhananjay? You incessantly search for sorrow In the carnival of life Why don't you drink and visit whores? At the edge of the Ganga, immersed in the sunset What you keep on looking for - alone? Is the meaning of sorrow inscribed there As if the meaning Is written over the flowing water... For sitting there so long Like the steps of the staircase You too will get immersed By the high tide. [The river Hooghly that flows beside Calcutta is still popularly (and affectionately) called Ganga.] 3 The jagojhampo started - What drink son of the brewer has served! Oh I see - Bengal thetar has risen Who's that...Girishbabu... Why so much of smoke - Spotlight - Illumination Who am I...Abu Hossein... Oh how lucky I am! Who are you...Amritalal...Danibabu... Let me see Binod - stretch your feet Let me touch it... Mairi what a great woman! Quiet...Sisirbabu is around... Stop the band...Oh what a mess Can't you see that Alamgir is walking in the green-room. Arabian nights are trembling Marjina - Marjina see what a shame So much garbage around...juiceless party... Who is this...Abdalla...dear khoja Come and listen to my dreams Women of families are singing Why should I allow my man for vices Now you see this box...a gift of science The garden made by humans Are slowly drying up. ['Jagojhampo' was used by Bengalis to mean the starting of the bands played during 'Jatra' or early Bengali theatre. 'Thetar' is the colloquial Bengali word for "theatre." 'Girishbabu' (Girish Chandra Ghosh), 'Amritalal' (Basu), and 'Danibau' were great personalities of early modern Bengali theatre. 'Binod' is Binodini Debi, the actress who was famous for daunting female roles instead of men. She was praised by Ramakrishna, the well known mystic-reformer of nineteenth century Bengal for her devotion and excellence in performance. 'Mairi' is a swearing word in non-elite Bengali presumed to be derived from swearing by 'Mata' (mother) 'Mary' of the Bengali Christians. 'Sisirbabu' (Sisir Kumar Bhaduri) is another doyen of a later generation of modern Bengali theatre. Late Shombhu Mitra has regarded him as his early mentor. 'Khoja' is a castrated male, mostly deployed as watchguards in a 'harem'. Abu Hossein, Alamgir, Marjina and Abdalla are characters from dramas based on medieval history.] 4 Whom they have laid down with Cottonwool in the nostrils and Tulsi leaves over the eyes? Who's gone...Mejobabu...aha! Even last afternoon I saw him gulping down Telebhaja with Gelusi or some tablets... Oh what a glutton he was. He was a nice man...how much...eighty-eight...oh But did you notice him walking? You don't even know how manly he was A traditional elite...broken many families Usurped many properties... Oh what to say Babus from big families were his 'chamchas.' And during that riot Five Mussalmans were running for their lives Followed by goondas with open swords, It was Mejobabu who gave them shelters And himself stood at the main door - Goondas went back scratching their heads. Once during Bijoya When drums were beating fast and heavily At the back of the cowshed - On my boobs Ma what should I say - The country was still not independent... And I was a fully grown young female Oh how afraid I was... You see I am still getting a goose-skin! Passed away? [Tulsi is a small tree regarded religiously by the Hindus and its leaves are also used as an effective herbal remedy. 'Mejobabu' is the man at the middle order of a family hierarchy. 'Telebhaja' is a popular, deep-fired, munchy snacks close to 'Pakaura' from North India. 'Gelusi' is for Gelusil, a popular brand of antacid tablets. 'Chamchas' are fans or psychophants. 'Bijoya' is the concluding day of Durga Puja festival when the image of Durga is immersed in the river.] For me Prasun's poetry captured the urbanity of north Calcutta in a heterogeneous time marked with both colonial and postcolonial symbols. Through various snap shots, thumbnail sketches and old Bengali metaphors, he recreated one of the oldest urban space of Calcutta in the contemporary poetic discourse of Bengal, and each of his forty-five poetry has lines that go beyond the picturesque. His book was mostly circulated through his friends and is not available in the city book stores, even the famous 'Patiram Book Stall' at College Street famous for its little magazine collections! If you are interested to collect a copy or interact with Prasun then you may contact him at:prasun_ban at yahoo.co.in Amit Ranjan Basu Kolkata, 19 September 2004. Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partneronline. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040919/95eeec16/attachment.html From announcer at crit.org.in Thu Sep 16 19:13:35 2004 From: announcer at crit.org.in (Maximum City) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 19:13:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Bombay Lost & Found, 20-21 September 2004 Message-ID: <680CBADE-07E6-11D9-AFD3-000A95A05D12@crit.org.in> Dear Friends: Announcing the release of the critically acclaimed 'Maximum City — Bombay Lost and Found' by Suketu Mehta. The book will be launched in public readings and discussions with the author in Mumbai on 20 and 21 September, and in other cities in India and the U.S. in the coming month. For the book tour schedule and to find the venue nearest to you, please go to http://suketumehta.com/tour.html ABOUT THE BOOK: Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found By Suketu Mehta Suketu Mehta left Bombay at the age of 14. Twenty-one years later, having lived in Paris, London and New York's East Village, he returned to rediscover the only city he calls his own. The result is this stunning, brilliantly illuminating portrait of the megalopolis and its people-a book, seven years in the making, that is as vast, as diverse, as rich in experience, incident and sensation as the city itself. Mehta approaches the life and lives of Bombay from unexpected angles. He takes us into the underworld where Muslim and Hindu gangs manage to wrest some control of the Byzantine political and commercial systems of the city. He follows the life of a bar dancer, whose childhood of poverty and abuse left her no choice but the one she made. He journeys on the famed local trains and out onto the streets and footpaths, where the essential story of Bombay is played out every day by the countless migrants who come in search of a better life. He opens windows into the inner sanctums of Bollywood and the alternative universe at its fringes. And through it all-as each individual story unfolds-we hear Mehta's own story: of the mixture of love, frustration, fascination, and intense identification he feels for and with Bombay. Candid, impassioned, insightful, both surprisingly funny and heart-rending, Maximum City is a revelation of a complex and ever-changing world: the continent of Bombay. DATE: MONDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2004 VENUE: Crossword Books Ground Floor, Mohammed Bhai Mansion Kemp’s Corner, Below the Fly-Over Pedder Road, Mumbai 400026 TIME: 6.00 p.m. ORGANISED BY: Crossword Bookstores http://www.crosswordbookstores.com/ DATE: TUESDAY 21 SEPTEMBER 2004 VENUE: National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) Auditorium Opposite Prince of Wales Museum Shyama Prasad Mukherji Chowk, Kala Ghoda Colaba, Mumbai 400020 TIME: 7.00 p.m. ORGANISED BY: TimeOut Mumbai http://timeoutmumbai.net/ (to reserve a seat, please call the TimeOut Mumbai hotline on +91.22.5660.1200) ABOUT THE AUTHOR: SUKETU MEHTA is a fiction writer and journalist based in New York. He has won the Whiting Writers Award, the O. Henry Prize, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. Mehta's work has been published in the New York Times Magazine, Granta, Harper's magazine, Time, Condé Nast Traveler, and The Village Voice, and has been featured on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Mehta also owrote Mission Kashmir, a Bollywood movie. Mehta was born in Calcutta and raised in Bombay and New York. He is a graduate of New York University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is currently writing an original screenplay for 'The Goddess,' a Merchant-Ivory film starring Tina Turner. REVIEWS: "It's the best book yet written about that great, ruined metropolis, my city as well as his, and it deserves to be very widely read." -- Salman Rushdie “A gripping, compellingly readable account of a love affair with a city: I couldn't put it down.” -- Amitav Ghosh “Maximum City is the remarkable debut of a major new Indian writer. Humane and moving, sympathetic but outspoken, it's a shocking and sometimes heartbreaking book, teeming with extraordinary stories.” -- William Dalrymple "The book is part urban history, part nightmare, part memoir, almost all stunningly written." -- Sreenivasan Jain in Time Out Mumbai To contact the author send an e-mail to suketu at suketu.com and for more information about the book, the release tour schedule, and ordering information, go to http://www.suketumehta.com _____ CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust) Announcements List http://lists.crit.org.in/mailman/listinfo/announcer http://www.crit.org.in _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From definetime at rediffmail.com Fri Sep 17 09:24:12 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 17 Sep 2004 03:54:12 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) Beyond the city limits Message-ID: <20040917035412.30832.qmail@webmail28.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040917/a29319ed/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Beyond the city limits Humanity is about to cross the line from rural to urban. John Vidal on what it means for us Thursday September 9, 2004 The Guardian Honufa came to Dhaka last year. Severe erosion on her family's patch of land on one of the islands in the mouth of the Ganges forced the young Bangladeshi woman to leave her village for the capital. She took a boat and then an overnight bus and ended up in a shantytown called Bari Badh, which sprawls on the slopes of a new flood embankment. Honufa was lucky to find work immediately. She gets about 40p a day breaking bricks with a hammer. A tenth of what she earns goes on fresh water, the same on transport, but almost a third is needed to pay the rent for the room which she shares with two other women and three young children. It's seven foot square, built of bamboo, rusty corrugated iron and cardboard and squats on stilts over a fetid lagoon. The monsoon-swollen water swirls just a few feet below the floor. A latrine at the end of a walkway empties straight into the water. Last month, the whole community of 5,000 people was flooded out. Bari Badh is not typical of Dhaka's slums, some of which are long established and reasonably secure with electricity and drainage. It appeared three years ago, as soon as the embankment was built and it will probably not exist in three years because businessmen are already filling in the lagoon with rubbish in advance of building more solid homes. When that happens, Honufa and the others will be moved on to new, equally vulnerable slums on a new edge of one of the world's most rapidly growing cities. Dhaka, growing more than 5% a year, will have exploded from fewer than 600,000 people in 1961 to a projected 22 million in 2030. Next week, the UN's world urban forum meets in Barcelona and world leaders and demographers will hear that the number of slum dwellers like Honufa could double within 25 years to more than two billion people, almost one in four of the world's projected population. Two days later, the United Nations population fund will release its annual state of the world report which will show that almost 95% of the expected 2.5 billion increase in global population expected over same period will be in African and Asian cities. By then, more than 80% of north America, Europe, Australia and Latin America, and half of Asia and Africa will probably be living in urban areas. Put the global population and poverty trends together and it's clear that the world is making a major transition at a breathtaking pace. Sometime in the next two years, humanity will cross, probably forever, the line from being a rural species to an urban one. It will mark a turning point, a revolution potentially as significant as the passage from the middle ages to the modern age, which will redefine culture, politics and the way we all live. The scale of the redistribution of people now taking place is vast. Just 100 years ago, only one in seven of the world lived in a town or city and there were 16 places thought to have more than one million people. Today there are more than 400 cities with over one million and in 15 years time, a further 150 are expected to join the club. The global urban population increased 36% in the 1990s alone. Contrary to popular imagination, however, the future is not expected to be a world of mega cities like Dhaka, Cairo, or Manila. According to a new book by a group of demographers working with the Washington-based US National Research Council (NRC), the lion's share of the world population increases over the next 25 years will be in towns and cities with fewer than one million people. They expect these places to account for 60% of the developing country urban population. Cities of from one to five million will house another 26%. The authors suggest that the largest cities, although stretched to the limit in poor countries to provide even minimal services for their inhabitants, will be well-placed to attract international money for housing, infrastructure and services. In 15 years, they expect 60 cities to have more than five million people. Of these, a premier league of about 30 "world cities" is developing, all of which are becoming dominant in their regions. The economic globalisation process, says the NRC team, is forcing them to compete more strongly with each other for events such as the Olympics, but also the world's financial markets and business centres. The authors fear, however, that the smaller cities will be increasingly left out and will be under-served by governments who will choose to funnel money into ever more dominant capitals. "The implications of globalisation for smaller cities are potentially disturbing. If capital is diverted from smaller cities toprepare larger cities for their global debuts, significant costs for many of the developing world's urban dwellers could result," the authors say. Massive urbanisation means hundreds of already near-bankrupt cities trying to cope in 20 years with the kind of problems London or New York only managed to address with difficulty in 150 years. The strains are showing in a growing global freshwater and sanitation water crisis, air pollution leading to continent-wide smogs and 48-hour traffic gridlocks, and reports of dwindling food reserves in many countries. According to the UN, hundreds of cities will be in real trouble within a decade. In China, where urbanisation has been extreme in the past 15 years, 400 out of the 670 biggest cities already have serious water deficits. Elsewhere, many cities are depleting underground stocks and finding that saltwater is getting into the aquifers. Competition for supplies is leading to increased conflicts between industry and agriculture, and, while better management could clearly improve supplies in many places, cities are often right up against their financial or physical limits. Dhaka is one of the most extreme. Dr Azhurul Haq, head of the city's water and sewerage authority, speaks for many rapidly growing cities. "The problem here is already so serious that it is hard to understand. Providing water is a nightmare. We need a minimum of 1.6bn litres of water a day. Our theoretical capacity is 1.35bn litres a day and our actual production is 1.26bn litres, which means that a lot of people cannot have water. Seventy per cent of people have no sewerage system at all and their waste finds its way to the rivers and lagoons; 90% of it is untreated. "We have 370 wells, but only 60% of them work. We need to replace 600km of water pipe out of the 2,000km we have. Some pipes are made of asbestos cement, which is very dangerous. We also get 97% of our water from deep underground, which is lowering the water table and is not sustainable." Dr Haq says it would cost at least $400m to get Dhaka's water supplies and sanitation up to a minimum standard. The prospect of having to provide for the eight million more people expected to flock to the city in the next 20 years is daunting. "We live from week to week," he says. "It's all we can do". What scares many governments, planners and policy makers is the very real prospect that the majority of cities in developing countries will become sprawling slums, with people living without piped water or sanitation, with poor standards of housing, and health and nutrition problems on a par with anything found in the most poverty-stricken rural areas today. Last year, the UN commissioned a 300-page report on the growth of slums. The authors found that slum dwellers account for an average 43% of the population of developing countries. In sub-saharan Africa the proportion of urban residents in slums is highest at 71.9%, while Oceania (Australasia and island groups of the South Pacific) had the lowest at 24.1%. South-central Asia accounted for 58%, east Asia 36.4%. They concluded that local authorities were already failing to keep up with the infrastructural problems posed by rapid urbanisation. More surprisingly, they suggested that the greatest underlying reason for the growth of slums was laissez-faire globalisation - the tearing down of trade barriers, the liberalisation and privatisation of national economies, structural adjustment programmes imposed on indebted countries by the IMF, and the lowering of tariffs promoted by the WTO. According to the authors, this "fundamental" economic restructuring of the world, which is seeing rich countries move away from manufacturing and poor countries industrialising, drove rapid urbanisation in the 1990s. In South Korea, cities have been flooded with new arrivals since world trade rules allowed cheap, subsidised rice and other food imports to flood into the market. Fishermen in Senegal, Mexico, Ghana and elsewhere had left the countryside because the global fishing fleets have not only denuded catches, but made it impossible for small operators to compete with big foreign fleets. The young of Burkina Faso and Mali had largely left for cities throughout west Africa in hope of work, rather than try to scrape a living off marginal land. It was seldom the process of globalisation alone that made people leave the land, the authors found, but often the expectation of work and fulfilment, fuelled by global TV networks. But the authors found that globalisation wasn't just one of the major causes of urbanisation, it was actually making life worse for the poor in cities. It may have offered unparalleled opportunities for entrepreneurs, but barely any of the benefits of increased trade were reaching the poor. Research in sub-saharan countries found conditions deteriorating throughout the 1990s in many cities. In the past decade - the period of the greatest wealth creation in history, as well as the largest recorded growth in cities - the rich had gained and the poor had lost. Some developing countries, the authors suggested, would have done better to stay out of the globalisation process altogether if they had the interests of their own people in mind. The situation may actually be worse than imagined. According to Diana Mitlin and David Satterthwaite of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London, the scale and depth of urban poverty is underestimated because of the way poverty is measured in poor countries. They suspect that the poorest half of the urban population may be as malnourished, ill and exploited as the poorest people in rural areas. If this is the case, it demands a different approach from governments and international charities who traditionally focus on rural areas. But is it possible to have cities free from slums? The consensus is yes, but only if countries help to prevent their cities being swamped by congestion, environmental degradation and social unrest. The onus will be on cities themselves, and particularly the self-organising slum dwellers, to find solutions. The solutions, says David Satterthwaite, may not be with global bodies or national governments but with local authorities and urban grassroots groups. He says large-scale self-help community groups are now working together and beginning to take over from traditional developers. "Poor people are becoming the world's most important builders and planners," he says. "All over the world slum dwellers are organising themselves. In India, the National Slum Dwellers federation, with 750,000 members, is working in 50 cities and has provided cheap, but good homes for more than 35,000 households. In Mumbai they have built toilets that serve 750,000 people. "A transnational movement of the urban poor and homeless with millions of member households is growing rapidly. The evidence from many nations that community-driven approaches are more effective and far more cost-effective that conventional government programmes." "It's easy to be pessimistic about the problems," says Ms Maitlin. "But the energy of people to improve their environments is enormous. People are investing a lot because it means so much to them. You can see real progress when people have a vision and get together with local government." Local government is critically important, she says. Molly Sheehan, of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute, says: "Cities are where most of the world's people will live and where an even greater share of the world's resources will be used in the future - from the vehicles' exhaust that pollutes and warms the atmosphere, to the urban demand for timber that denudes forests." She adds, more optimistically: "But they also hold enormous potential for environmental and social progress. Throughout history, higher levels of health and education come after periods of urbanisation." Further reading · The Challenge of Slums, UN-Habitat report, ISBN 1844070379, Earthscan, £25 · Cities Transformed, ed Mark Montgomery et al, ISBN 1844070905, £29.95 · Squatter Citizen, ed Jorge E Hardoy and David Satterthwaite, ISBN 1853830208, Earthscan, £19.95 · Sustainable Cities, ed David Satterthwaite, ISBN 185383601X, Earthscan, &#;163;16.95 · UN population resources From gamestheory2002 at yahoo.com Fri Sep 17 19:02:44 2004 From: gamestheory2002 at yahoo.com (d j) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 06:32:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] posting Message-ID: <20040917133244.8450.qmail@web21326.mail.yahoo.com> http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2003-January/002180.html >From your posting on the lin above. Where are these facts from? Have you ever seena TV show called Myth busters? Many of the coke facts you mentioned they put to the test. turns out they aren't true. Yes, the basic chemical component (phosphoric acid) is in coke but is one on many ingediants. The water facts are too good to be true. almost 100% is a tip of this is BS. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040917/62ef62ff/attachment.html From isast at leonardo.info Fri Sep 17 00:12:13 2004 From: isast at leonardo.info (Leonardo/ISAST) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 11:42:13 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] [Leonardo/ISAST Network] Leonardo Electronic Almanac: September 2004 Message-ID: <200409161842.CJE96615@ms2.netsolmail.com> *sincere apologies for cross-posting* Leonardo Electronic Almanac: September 2004 ISSN#1071-4391 art | science | technology - a definitive voice since 1993 http://lea.mit.edu In LEA's August issue, the central feature is an article co-authored by Motti Benari of Israel and five colleagues who describe their fascinating project, CULTOS, which is based on the intertextual thread, a "new cultural unit." In the article, they present ways of expanding the use of hypertextual and intertextual methods, which can aid in a number of fields, including academic research. In Leonardo Reviews, we present reviews of the books *Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment* and *Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business, 1953-1968*, an unlikely but revealing subject for academic critique. In our news section, we bring you up to date, as always, on the latest developments in the Leonardo/ISAST community, including initiatives to pursue experimental publishing projects, publication of abstracts of academic theses, and a news item that illustrates the urgent need for artists to be aware of potential legal infringement on their civil liberties. All in one issue ... Latest Calls for Papers ------------------------------ * Geography of Pain * LEA is seeking short texts/abstracts (with imagery and project URLs) by artists and scientists, or artist/scientist teams, whose work addresses pain in all its forms. Projects of interest include aesthetic works that address subjective experiences, social conditions, and cultural constructions of pain. Projects on the art of healing are of interest as well, especially multidisciplinary approaches that integrate Eastern and Western traditions. We will also consider current health science, computer science, and engineering research relevant to these topics. Deadline for submissions: 15 October 2004 More info: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/LEA2004/authors.htm#pain * Gallery Special: Global Crossings * The LEA Gallery is looking to make visible the work of international artists, professionals and scholars who live and work in a wide variety of situations where access to established venues for exhibition, display and publication is limited. Difficulty of access may be attributed to cultural, geographic, ethnic, institutional or disciplinary diversity, or issues related to the North/South divide, age, gender, etc. !!! ** Extended Deadline **!!!: 15 November 2004 More info: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/LEA2004/authors.htm#gx Editorial ideas / proposals: lea at mitpress.mit.edu **************************************************************************** **** LEA Information and URLs ------------------------------------------- Receive your FREE subscription to the Leonardo Electronic Almanac e-mail digest at http://mitpress.mit.edu/lea/e-mail -- just provide your email address, name, and password, and check off that you'd like to be added to the Leonardo Electronic Almanac monthly e-mail list to keep on top of the latest news in the Leonardo community. How to advertise in LEA? http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/placeads.html#LEAads For a paid subscription (to become an ISAST member and access archives dating back to 1993): http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=4&tid=27&mode=p The Leonardo Educators Initiative ------------------------------------------------------- The Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS) is a comprehensive database of abstracts of Ph.d, Masters and MFA theses in the emerging intersection between art, science and technology. Thesis Abstract Submittal form at http://leonardolabs.pomona.edu LEA also maintains a discussion list open only to faculty in the field. Students interested in contributing and faculty wishing to join this list should contact lea at mitpress.mit.edu What is LEA? ---------------------- For over a decade, Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) has thrived as an international peer-reviewed electronic journal and web archive, covering the interaction of the arts, sciences and technology. LEA emphasizes rapid publication of recent work and critical discussion on topics of current excitement. Many contributors are younger scholars and artists, and there is a slant towards shorter, less academic texts. Contents include Leonardo Reviews, edited by Michael Punt, Leonardo Research Abstracts of recent Ph.D. and Masters theses, curated Galleries of current new media artwork, and special issues on topics ranging from Artists and Scientists in times of War, to Zero Gravity Art, to the History of New Media. Copyright) 1993 - 2004: The Leonardo Electronic Almanac is published by Leonardo / International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST) in association with the MIT Press. All rights reserved. _______________________________________________ Leonardo-isast mailing list Leonardo-isast at mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/leonardo-isast _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From jo at turbulence.org Thu Sep 16 22:35:19 2004 From: jo at turbulence.org (Jo-Anne Green) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 10:05:19 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Turbulence Spotlight: "ASCII BUSH" by Yoshi Sodeoka Message-ID: <4149C7CF.7070202@turbulence.org> September 16, 2004 Turbulence Spotlight: "ASCII BUSH" by Yoshi Sodeoka http://turbulence.org/spotlight/ASCII_BUSH ASCII BUSH is an ascii video rendition of two State of the Union addresses--one delivered by George W. Bush on January 12, 2003 (just before the Iraq war); the other by his father, George H.W. Bush, on March 6, 1991 (right after Operation Desert Storm). The goal of the project is to "find some artistic meaning in the dreadful and painfully long US presidents' speeches, and to investigate the idea of recycling and making art out of the debris of our culture." BIOGRAPHY Yoshi Sodeoka is a New York based artist and musician who has been producing both art and commercial projects for over a decade. His interactive digital artwork has been featured on numerous CD-ROMs and Web sites and in exhibitions at the San Francisco MoMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, Design Museum, Germany and Art & Design Museum Brazil. In addition, Sodeoka has lectured widely on the topic of digital art and design, and has juried design awards for Art Director's Club, New York and the One Club. He was a contributing writer for Artbyte magazine for which he wrote a bi-monthly column about underground digital culture. Prior to that, he was the founding art director of Word.com, one of the Web's oldest and most influential e-zines, which launched in 1995. For more information about Turbulence, please visit http://turbulence.org -- Jo-Anne Green, Associate Director New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856 Turbulence: http://turbulence.org New American Radio: http://somewhere.org Networked_Performance Blog and Conference: http://turbulence.org/blog -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040916/723e1b03/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From lhnaqvi at hotmail.com Mon Sep 20 16:29:44 2004 From: lhnaqvi at hotmail.com (LH Naqvi) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 16:29:44 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] mir anis in devnagri or roman Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040920/a61b1dbb/attachment.html From rustam at leadindia.org Mon Sep 20 14:00:42 2004 From: rustam at leadindia.org (rustam at leadindia.org) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 14:00:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] =?iso-8859-1?q?=22First_8=22_=97_a_visual_MDG?= Message-ID: The Netherlands launches "First 8" � a visual MDG campaign - 16 September 2004 : A visual MDG-campaign was today released in Amsterdam, Holland. The campaign, called "First 8," seeks to raise people�s awareness of their own responsibility and wants to inspire them to take action in the struggle against poverty and the achievements of the Millennium Development Goals. In addition to an interactive website http://www.first8.org the campaign will send out a booklet to 1.6 million people in Holland and over 25,000 influential leaders all over the world. Rustam Vania From shivamvij at gmail.com Thu Sep 16 19:27:21 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 19:27:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Muslims, Rajputs or Punjabis? Message-ID: An irrelevant enumeration The concept of the Census itself is a colonial and retrograde one designed to benefit an imperialist master. By Shardul Chaturvedi The Indian Express / September 16, 2004 http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=55153 The debate in the media about the 'implications' of Muslim growth is nauseating. The Parivar is jumping with a sense of triumph. Their age-old allegation about Muslims multiplying faster than Hindus have been proved, by a secular agency, under a secular government. Secular gharanas are silent, understandably so, they have routinely dismissed this knowledge as communal propaganda. Now they have nowhere to look. About thirty years after they silenced the last rebel gun in the great revolt, the British decided to make sense of the country they had come to acquire. And from this curiosity, arose the most novel and extraordinary endeavour of human mapping: the Census. Quite understandably, the British did not know where or how to begin, for Indians needed to be defined, classified, measured, numbered and put in categories. What were these categories? Who were to devise them? These were the daunting questions our benevolent masters faced, and not for the first time in their rule and certainly not for the last, they settled for the easiest and the most damaging answer. They summoned a bunch of Maulvis and Brahmins to Calcutta, sat them down, and settled once and for all, the fundamental definitions of a Hindu and a Muslim. Maulvisque and Brahmanical perspectives — parochial, textual, and most certainly very communal — gave the British their basic understanding of Islam and Hinduism. We were defined hence by our most fundamentalist representatives; men who often knew little beyond their Arabic and Sanskrit texts and had very little connections with the actual anthropological realities of India. And with such categories in hand, British officers jumped into the Indian leviathan, numbering and categorising people, deciding their races, observing their noses, measuring their jaw structures, categorising them as Moslems, Hindoos, Parsees, Sikhs, martial, effeminate, brave, treacherous, criminal, thugs, genteel. More often than not, Indian realities did not fit into the categories given to the British by Indian 'representatives'. It was tough to decide whether Punjabi Rajput Muslims in what is now Pakistan, were culturally Muslims, Rajputs or Punjabi. But the thumb rule was: when people did not fall into categories, categories were clamped on to them. This was the great Census of 1881, which rather than generating identities from Indians, imposed them on the people, often herding them into categories they themselves did not comprehend. But soon, informed of who they were, and how much in numbers, of what race, how brave, how respectable, and the rest, Indians quickly internalised the knowledge, and started believing, behaving, demanding, combining and aspiring according to their newly found categories. Rajputs 'realised' that they were warriors, Sikhs — martial, Brahmins — intellectuals, Mewatis — Muslims, Tamils — Dravidians, Punjabis — Aryans and Muslims — a new category — minority. From that day we can safely date Muslim distrust in number politics and in democracy, and the Hindu confidence in it. The Census of 1881 is widely seen as an event of huge consequence in Indian self-image and identity. Unsurprisingly, it marks the beginning of the politics of identity — of communalism, casteism, and racism of the Aryan-Dravidian type. Besides, most Indians, when they learnt that they were not 'adequately' something, became more desperate to mimic the prototype. Categories were hardened, genealogies purified, languages codified and accents chastened. And the Census, a complete colonial artefact in methodology and intent, continues to replicate itself in our times, provoking similar responses, fears and demands. Indians who follow Islam continue to be seen as ''Muslims'' — an almost homogenous monolithic block, and when we are informed that there is something called the Muslim growth rate, we believe in it, though it would be fairly obvious to an even casual observer that Muslims and Hindus of the same class grow at the same rate. Muslims grow faster because more Indian Muslims belong to the lower classes than Indian Hindus and if Muslims were compared to the Hindus of the corresponding classes, the similarity would be striking. But then our Census sees people in terms of their religion, not class, which could be another, perhaps fairer method of understanding people, because members of the same class show social and cultural similarities, which very often members of the same community do not. Most upper classes, for instance, show a decline in the rate of reproduction, irrespective of religion. Except the Jains, who have startled all by their alarming rate of growth, and given that most Jains in India are not particularly poor, there needs to be serious examination of their growth rate. And I am alarmed, not because they constitute any threat to India, but over the simple issue of population explosion. In the similar way I am disappointed that lower and lower middle-class Muslims have not taken to family planning. Addressing such an issue requires complex and sensitive responses, certainly more sensitive than seeing Muslim growth as a threat to the country. The threat logic is confusing. Venkaiah Naidu wants us to believe that if Muslims continue to grow at the current rate, they would soon imbalance the demographic equilibrium and threaten national security. How? By simply overtaking Hindus in numbers? That might, hypothetically, change the cultural idiom of the nation state, but why and how would that threaten national security? (The writer is a history scholar who completed his research from Oxford University.) o o o o o o o o Holding out for a hero It is a strange society that mocks Veer Savarkar By Ashok Malik The Indian Express / 16 September 2004 http://iecolumnists.expressindia.com/full_column.php?content_id=55156 Since delay brings detachment, maybe it is appropriate to revisit the recent controversy around Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Right from the time Mani Shankar Aiyar removed the redoubtable patriot's name from a plaque in Cellular Jail, Port Blair, Savarkar became a political football. Yesterday's mascot was used to fight today's battles. In all this, yet again that old chestnut hit home — Indians have zero sense of history. The past is only relevant as a backward extension of the present. A jejune magazine article informed us Savarkar was a Chitpavan Brahmin, part of a community that seemingly specialised in ''ideologues ... of Hindu nationalism''. One of them was Bal Gangadhar Tilak, accused of introducing ''primordial" Hindu imagery into public discourse. It is the sort of sweeping, breathtaking assessment that leaves you gasping. In one sentence, an entire community has been written off as ''tainted'' by the parameters of contemporary political correctness. In one phrase, the great Tilak has been disowned, handed over to Acharya Dharmendra and the VHP. A decade and a half after the tempestuous secularism/pseudo-secularism debate, are we back to square one? Does it take one half-won election to have all those discredited leftists and professional time-servers come crawling out of the woodwork? Why does Savarkar evoke such passion? He was a thinking man's Hindu, a prodigious mind, an author of repute. His Hindutva (1923) is a persuasive and remarkably evocative document. As such, to the liberal rabble, he is flesh-and-blood refutation of the charge that Hindutva lacks an intellectual tradition. Hence the fervent desire to destroy him, efface him, erase his memory. To see Savarkar minus his context is to do disservice to not just him, but to India. The Poona Brahmins, contrary to what conventional wisdom may be, were among modern India's early elites, along with, for instance, the Parsis of Bombay, the Banglo-Indian bhadralok of Calcutta. These are not groups to be scoffed at; they shaped the consciousness that evolved into Indian nationalism. They are our founding fathers. Yet, it is also true that they were marginalised by Gandhi's mass politics. By the early 20th century, they moved away from the Congress, seeking reference points to the left or the right, in conservatism or socialism. Bengal saw a tension between both strands before the left won. In Maharashtra, Savarkar, influenced more by Mazzini than Marx, went the other way. The big black mark against Savarkar is that he was implicated — though acquitted — in the Gandhi murder case. Even if Savarkar was not directly involved, it is a fair argument that the Hindu political opinion of the times, shaped by the likes of Savarkar, both fed on and fed an antipathy to the Mahatma. If you listen to today's television debates — or read the ghastly chapter on Savarkar in Freedom at Midnight, packed with cheap shots that mar an otherwise readable book — you would imagine the build-up to the Mahatma's murder was an open-and-shut, black-and-white affair. It wasn't; and making Savarkar the scapegoat won't make it so. The contrasting pulls of Gandhi and Savarkar, of Hindu as saint-exemplar and Hindu as warrior-ideal were at their most extreme at Partition. Speak to Punjabis or north Indians of a particular generation and they will tell you Gandhi was considered irrelevant after Partition. When they saw him making friendly gestures towards Pakistan in the midst of bloodletting, they hated him. Yet the moment the Mahatma was killed, the fury was spent, it was Hindu extremism that stood in the dock. The very segments so critical of the Mahatma were numbed by his murder. His death was point of closure for the mad frenzy of Partition. India moved on, developing a collective amnesia about its turbulent, violent birth as a free nation. Gandhi's politics died at Partition; the Congress killed his ethics at Independence and, by the mid-1950s, junked, perhaps correctly, his economics too. The RSS sought to repackage itself, divorce its Hindu politics from the Mahatma's death. For all concerned, Savarkar became the convenient fall guy — the man you could blame everything on. Savarkar loved India as much as Gandhi or Nehru did. His idea of India was different — some would say more organic and inspirational — but his credentials should never have been in question. What sort of society is it that mocks its heroes? It is pertinent to draw an analogy with the United States. The first big ideological debate in American politics was between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. It led to the first contested (as opposed to unanimous) presidential election in 1800, where Jefferson took on Hamilton-backed John Adams. At stake were two very different visions of America. Hamilton was pro-business, he wanted to preserve freedom but rebuild ties with Britain in the interests of trade. Jefferson distrusted London, was taken up by the rhetoric of Revolution-era Paris. In a sense, the Hamilton-Jefferson split anticipated the Republican-Democrat divide of our age. Yet do today's Republicans ask voters to shun Democrats simply because Aaron Burr, Jefferson's vice-president, killed Hamilton in a duel? Isn't that what Mani Shankar Aiyar and Arjun Singh do when they link the BJP to the Mahatma's death? Admittedly the comparison may be overstated. Eighteenth century politics in the US and that in India 150 years later were chalk and cheese. Even so, the larger point remains. Hamilton and Jefferson are both American heroes. Can't Gandhi and Savarkar share space in the Indian pantheon? From shivamvij at gmail.com Sat Sep 18 20:46:06 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 20:46:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] A Cloud over Bhopal Message-ID: India International Centre, Delhi http://www.iicdelhi.nic.in/program/show_allprogram.asp?mode=fourth&im1=programmes&im2=fortschedule Saturday 25/9/2004 AUDITORIUM 18:30 Film A Cloud over Bhopal (video; 56 min; 2001; English) Directors: Javier Linares & Larry Levene Introduction: Sanjoy Hazarika Film based on Dominique Lapierre's book It Was Five Past Midnight in Bhopal. Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moros narrate the moving human and technological disaster which led to the tragedy of Bhopal twenty-years ago Screening will be followed by a discussion: Speaker: Shri Kamal Pareek, formerly with Union Carbide India, Bhopal _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From subasrik at gmail.com Sat Sep 18 19:37:03 2004 From: subasrik at gmail.com (Subasri Krishnan) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 19:37:03 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] F-9/11... Message-ID: <5ac9ecd30409180707329a25a9@mail.gmail.com> Hi, In all my years that i have been coming to Sarai (however sporadic!), I have never seen the kind of crowd that i saw yesterday to watch a film (or anything for that matter). Few random, not really well-thought out thoughts... I am not going get into the number of things the film does not address or the fact that it fails to make linkages between a complex set of realities. To say that its a simplistic film meant for an American audience is I think a fair assessment of the film, yet there are a few glaring ommissions that one can't help but notice. The crux of the film is the War against Iraq that the Bush regime started. What Moore fails to address is the fact that the American administration had already been waging a war against Iraq for over a decade through sanctions. Thousands of Iraqis had already been dying, and this when a Democrat was the President! You don't need to go blow someone's head off to kill someone...'Operation Destroy Iraq' was set in motion much before 'the idiot' (as we all love to call him) decided to bomb the country...but there is no admission of that even once in the film. The other thing that bothered me about the film was the way it ended - the glorification of the 'men who give up their lives for us' (the Americans). I mean how different is it from a Speilberg film? You know this belief system that individuals are doing what they have to do - its their job and they are doing it courageously under the given circumstances. And as Robert Jensen rightly points out in his article there is no representation of any non-white people who are part of peaceful resistance in the US. After watching the film i was left with the same feeling i had after i read his much touted book (Stupid White Men) - that after a point, Moore's gimmicks and rationale (if one can call it that) borders on the ridiculous! I have been talking about the film with my friends since yesterday and i am constantly told that its a 'campaign film', and that it should be seen in that frame of reference...and that the point of the film is to get The Idiot out of power. But seriously I don't see what difference it's going to make. I am sure most of you have thought about this - but really how is Kerry going to be any different? And hence, i can't engage with it just as a 'campaign film' and ignore what I think are glaring blunders (i use that word for the lack of a better one). Sure I want The Idiot to never come back to power, and maybe this film might play a part in making sure that happens. But then what??? That is a question that Moore never bothers to address! cheers subasri PS:Christopher Hitchens ('journalist-historian', former Trotskyite, current poster boy for the neo-conservatives and one of the champions of the War in Iraq) has written a review of the film. The review is virulent at the best of times and I recognize that Hitchens has his own agenda in trashing the film...but it might be worth a read: http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/ PPS: Having said what a lot of people have already said/written/thought about, i loved watching the film. It was thoroughly entertaining. Moore should think about directing a feature film in Hollywood someday!!! From tellsachin at yahoo.com Sun Sep 19 10:05:14 2004 From: tellsachin at yahoo.com (Sachin Agarwal) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 21:35:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] how to get pop3 access from gmail In-Reply-To: <20040918010408.5074628E8BD@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20040919043514.75114.qmail@web41503.mail.yahoo.com> san anyone please tell me how to get pop3 access from gmail . i would be grateful if someone helps by email to me at tellsachin at yahoo.com sachin reader-list-request at sarai.net wrote: Send reader-list mailing list submissions to reader-list at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to reader-list-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at reader-list-owner at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of reader-list digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Re: Agent Gmail (Captain Typo) 2. [Announce] Linux Demo Day (Pankaj Kaushal) 3. HOWTO: Temporary Media Lab, Setup a (Aniruddha Shankar) 4. Re: HOWTO: Temporary Media Lab, Setup a (evan) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 18:13:50 +0530 From: Captain Typo Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Re: Agent Gmail To: reader-list at sarai.net Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Dear Shivam, On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 19:52:29 +0530, Shivam wrote: > Dear Captain, > I don't understand how the privacy issue should be worrying. As far as > ads go, I find Gmail less intrusive than Yahoo! and Hotmail, or the > big spammers that some Indian email services like Rediffmail and > Indiatimes are. I do'nt like any of these providers, neither I am backing them. Using filters of relative point of view, will only distort the discussion. Gmail has changed its privacy policy in last six months of its starting. They have'nt clearly stated, what will happen in case government of some rouge country asks for watching a certain addresses. In case a mail is not copyrighted, after certain period of time becomes a public property by US law. Two major question arise, What does google do with my mail after delete. If it does'nt delete, then where(in geographical sense) is stored and whose jurisdication it comes under. > Gmail's brand value has no doubt taken a beating - it > had to, and Monica's delightful mail about the "invitations" that > never cease to arrive in your account is illustrative of how Gmail has > gone overboard with the "invitations" strategy. Despite all that, the > reason I use Gmail is that it's better than any other mail service I > have used. Conversations, archiving, the automatic address book system > - it all helps me a lot. As I discovered the many ways in which Gmail > was improving my mail experience, I marvelled at the genius of the > people who made it. So who cares about brand value? Taking discussion to more mundane cribs of gmail interface Some things I miss in gmail. The ability to display attached images or text inline. The ability to search within text message attachments. The ability to save drafts. WAP access. SMTP, POP3 or IMAP access. So its not perfect, but it comes close. > Thanks > Shivam > best Captain -------- dil-e-naadaaN tujhe huaa kya hai ? aaKHir is dard kee dawa kya hai ham haiN mushtaaq aur woh bezaar ya ilaahee ! yeh maajra kya hai ? -- Mirza Ghalib ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 18:43:25 +0530 From: Pankaj Kaushal Subject: [Reader-list] [Announce] Linux Demo Day To: reader-list at sarai.net Cc: nigahmedia at yahoogroups.com, coolpeopleofja at yahoogroups.com, abhdelhi at yahoogroups.com Message-ID: <414AE2F5.8050908 at linux-delhi.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed [Crossposted] We are happy to announce and ask your participation at the Linux Demo Day organized by India Linux Users Group, Delhi (ILUGD, www.linux-delhi.org). If you've heard of it, but haven't tried it, Linux is a computer operating system distinguished from other operating systems (such as Windows or Mac OS) by the fact that it is avaliable freely for use and its source code is available to anyone, and anyone can contribute improvements to the system. It, like Windows, supports a GUI (Graphic User Interface) - meaning it's as easy to use, and less likely to crash. We will be conducting Linux-related talks and presentations in the Hamdard Archives Auditorium, on Saturday, 25th September, by some of our resident experts, and hopefully they will interest people who've already taken the plunge as well as those who are just about to. There'll be lots of demonstrations/talks throughout the day and plenty of opportunities to gain hands-on experience of different Linux distributions and applications for yourself. There is space outside the auditorium, which will be used for giving the demos. The demos and the talks will go on concurrently. We'll also be distributing Linux goodies at low or no cost. Remember, Linux Demo Day is not meant as The Inquisition for differing opinions, but rather a day for diffusion of knowledge. Come be a part of the growing Linux community. Details ~~~~~~~ Venue: Jamia Hamdard Archives Auditorium Hamdard University, New Delhi 110062 Landmark: Adjacent to Batra Hospital. Entry from Gate 6 Date: 25th September 2004 Time: 10:00 am - 6:00 pm (Registration at 9:30 am) Contact: ldd2k4 at linux-delhi.org Entry: Free -- all are invited Cheers! The Linux Delhi Community. ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 19:47:10 +0530 From: Aniruddha Shankar Subject: [Reader-list] HOWTO: Temporary Media Lab, Setup a To: nettime-l at bbs.thing.net Cc: reader-list at sarai.net Message-ID: <414AF1E6.2000404 at sarai.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed WARNING: Unsanitized content follows. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 's one of the first spaces that discussed a Temporary Media Lab. For those amongst us who're interested, heres a document I've written on how to set up a media lab: http://www.geocities.com/kream77/A_TemporaryMediaLab.html For those who're not interested in the clicky links, a raw text version's appended. Note that all the "here"s and references to proper nouns point to the relevant webpages. How to set up a Temporary Media Lab* (using Free/Libre/Open Source Software) What is a tml ? To find out one viewpoint, scroll down to the fifth paragraph here. I think a TML is an adhoc encampment of borrowed components and scrounged up and refurbished hardware that people participating in an event or embedded in a situation can use to reflect, remix and report on the environment and locale that they are surrounded by. Of course, the better the hardware and the more involved and lively the participants, the more fun, capable and valuable the lab... I set up a media lab in Hamburg in the beginning of 2004 using Free/Libre and Open Source software and it was cheap, great fun and a huge learning experience. This page talks about how I did it. You could do something like this too, it's really easy. Just remember to plan ahead and maintain a sense of humour. A TML is composed of various parts - ~ * ~ hardware ~ * ~ software ~ * ~ processes Hardware 3 computers - arranged in a star configuration with the monitors facing outwards so no one can see everything that's happening in the lab at the same time - it's an interesting effect. Basically, any computer that has been purchased in the last 2 years will be capable of being part of the TML. Even the cheapest of computers purchased in 2004 will be sufficient and in most respects will surpass the "Recommended" specifications given below. Computer Configurations - Optimal: Pentium4/AthlonXP 2.0 gHz or faster, 512mb RAM or more, at least 60 GB hard disks, nVidia graphics cards (budget ones will do), DVD-writer on one of the machines (DVD-rewriter would be great), CD-rewriter on another one(CD-rewriter on the other two would be great) , at least 17inch monitors for all of them, 100mbps network cards. For audio support, an audio card which supports hardware mixing under ALSA (the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). To find out which audio cards do this, go here and look in the notes column for (4) ... I recommend the Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live or the SoundBlaster PCI 512 - A soundblaster Live alue can be had for USD 15 or INR 780 (prices from pricegrabber, currency conversion from XE ) Acceptable: Pentium3 / AthlonXP in the 1-1.5 gHz range, 256mb RAM, 40 GB hard disks, builtin-graphics cards sufficient (intel 8xx series for pentium3s, nforce / sis chipsets for athlons), CD-rewriter on one machine, 17inch monitor on at least one machine, 100mbps network cards. For audio support, the builtin audio cards are sufficient - but you will not be able to do hardware mixing so you might not get the support of all the features in advanced programs like ardour. Minimum: Celeron / Pentium3 between 600mHz and 1 gHz, 128 mb RAM, 20 GB hard disks, builtin graphics cards, 15" monitors on all of them, 10mbps network cards. For audio support, the builtin audio cards will suffice. Networking - Recommended a 100mbps switch, at least a 10 mbps hub, sufficient CAT5 cabling for all machines. An extra network card is necessary if the external network interface (for example to the network) is through a LAN or standard network - in this case, one computer will have two network cards and will interface (or act as the gateway) between the external network and the Media Lab. Miscellaneous - Unless you are sure of the quality and availability of the electricity, I'd recommend borrowing UPSs for the duration of the event. Peripherals - Scanner: check the list of compatible scanners in the SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) matrix. Look for scanners with "complete" support. Compatible scanners can be amongst the most troublesome peripherals to get for Linux - the ones that have "complete" support are, in many cases, not sold anymore by the manufacturer - an exception is the CanoScan LiDE 20 or the LiDE30 (september 2004) so you might have to hunt around in your local shops or use ingenuity to find one. Make sure that you get the EXACT model number - I was in a media lab that got the canoscan LiDE35 (which was incompatible) rather than the LiDE 30. the HP 2200c is great, if you can get it. To see if the development version of SANE (which might be unstable) supports your scanner, go here for a similar list. An outdated (but still good) list for USB scanners is here . Find one for parallel ports here. If you're in Delhi, check out this site for a good listing of manufacturers. Printer: if you anticipate moderate to heavy printing, you should find a laser printer - the cost per page is much less than that of an inkjet. Almost every printer, be it laser or inkjet, parallel or USB is supported by CUPS, the Common UNIX Printing System. Check out this list ~ and see if you have access to a printer that is supported in the "perfectly" or in the "mostly" column. Make sure you take a few reams of paper and a spare printer ink/toner cartridge. Digital Camera: As far as I know, any camera with an interface to a USB port in a computer will be supported under Linux as a USB storage device. LCD Projector: An LCD projector is fantastic, if you can arrange one - the basic idea is that once it's plugged into the computer, you can display the actual work process in a node of the media lab - great for demonstrations, playing movies, music and for displaying webpages, animations or publicity material. When you're getting a projector, try and find out the make and model of the projector beforehand and google and see if there are any reports of incompatibilities with Linux. Sound Recording : a cheap microphone to record the pearls of wisdom that drop from the lips of the medialab participants... it's fun when you use audacity or hydrogenaudio to remix the voices and chop, cut and paste the things that people say. Software Linux :) kernel of the 2.6.x series - a sample config file for the kernel can be found here. I used Gentoo Linux for the media lab because it's fun, fast and very very customisable but you're free to use more administrator-friendly distributions such as KNOPPIX, Mandrake or SuSE which have excellent hardware detection and tools for administrating the machines. I recommend KDE for the interface if you have computers that are at least "Acceptable" or "Recommended". KDE can be easily set to display an interface in almost every language on earth as can GNOME, which is also a very good choice. If you're running a restricted hardware setup, check out XFCE4 or iceWM. Google is your friend. Servers: make sure sshd the secure shell daemon is running on all of the machines so you can administer them remotely and use SAMBA or nfs to share files between computers. If you don't have access to the Internet, you can use boa as a light web server to demonstrate what the webpages that you'll be creating will look like... Text: for simple composition, kedit or gedit are great. For text with formatting, try abiword or kword. For a full-featured word processor that can, in almost all circumstances, match the best in the field, try OpenOffice.org Writer version 1.1.2 or later. For near-professional quality Desktop Publishing, check out Scribus :) Image: for creating/editing animations, photos or images, use GIMP version 2.x (comparable to Photoshop). Rudimentary image editing can be done in kpaint. To view images as a slideshow, use kuickshow. Inkscape is great for creating vector images and Blender is a very good 3D rendering and drawing package. Web Pages: Use Mozilla Firefox to view webpages. Konqueror is also a very good browser. I use the Mozilla suite for my work as it's a very stable and full-featured browser, if slightly slower than firefox. To create web pages, I use Mozilla Composer and have been experimenting with an experimental version of it called N-VU, in which this web page was written. Make sure you have the netscape-flash plugin installed if you want to see flash animations in the web pages that you visit. Email: It's unlikely that people will be using anything but webmail to check their email in a temporary media lab. If this is not the case, you can use Mozilla Mail, kmail or Evolution. Sound: XMMS is still very good at playing audio files. Under KDE, you could use JuK. To edit audio files, try Audacity or the more advanced Ardour. Video: For the entry level video editor, try Kino. Try Cinepaint or Cinelerra if you want heavy duty tools that have been used to make and edit top-quality movies. Burning CDs and DVDs: To do this, use the superlative K3B. Processes A TML is empty without processes to animate it. The environment that surrounds the lab - a festival, a conference or a meeting should produce a cacophony of media - text about the conference, web pages by passers by, photos, images, animations, scrawls, remixed speech, background music - anything at all ! Here are few process that you can use to animate your lab - and of course, there are many more... blog: A blog is short for a weblog, and refers to a form of personal web publishing with an emphasis on a chronological notation or flow. it's wildly popular these days and there are many free weblog servers that are available for people to use - try blogspot or livejournal. streetlog/herelog - a herelogger observes the environment around the lab - - the conference or festival and makes periodic entries in a weblog - this provides us with a very rich and "non-official" picture of the event. it can be made very fascinating by embedding the following media forms inside: pictures - can be taken using the digicam and edited, played with, filtered, morphed, colour-shifted using the plethora of image editing and manipulation tools that the lab provides. Try making a collage of the participants, I've seen one and it's great! music and sound - it's fun to work and play with music in the background and you can take recordings using the microphone and remix them in audacity, add drum effects using hydrogen audio and even embed them in the weblogs. lab newsletter - use scribus and inkscape to put together a single-sheet newsletter at the end of the conference - this can be printed out using hte printer and photocopied and distributed. Open Source / Free(dom) software was created by people mixing and matching pieces and ideas in a environment very like a crowded street festival or a bazaar - the same method that's used to create extremely interesting media. Have fun with the TML and mail me your suggestions for this document. Cheers, Aniruddha "Karim" Shankar The Sarai Programme, New Delhi Document made with Nvu This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFBSvHlhJkrd6A3rSsRAjRYAJ9uZxPBqxme/qWehFtEodiQzlUE/wCfYBUb vC17c0hS64gZiniCsDL65jc= =91Ps -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 18:04:47 -0700 From: evan Subject: Re: [Reader-list] HOWTO: Temporary Media Lab, Setup a To: Aniruddha Shankar Cc: reader-list at sarai.net, nettime-l at bbs.thing.net Message-ID: <86ec40c1040917180446eda8dc at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Not to be critical, but you seem to be talking about using pretty high end hardware. It's great if you have resources and can get plenty of ghz boxes but you can do almost everything you're saying on truely recycled boxes (less than 166mhz and 8 to 16 megs of ram). You could take one of those boxes you list at the low end, make it a server, and setup diskless term's connect to it and have a computer lab of 20 computers all running full GUI's. This is what we've been doing in indymedia. For video editing you need higher end boxes, but for audio, photo, and text the network boxes work great. There are also a number of projects now in the works to let you put four heads on a single box. This lets us cut out and share the most expensive part, the cpu, and have four people share the system at the same time. For computer labs it makes a lot of sense, also it's easier to transport a miniITX across a boarder and get the used montiors, mice, and keyboards locally than to try and bring everything. -evan On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 19:47:10 +0530, Aniruddha Shankar wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > 's one of the first spaces that discussed a Temporary Media > Lab. For those amongst us who're interested, heres a document I've > written on how to set up a media lab: > > http://www.geocities.com/kream77/A_TemporaryMediaLab.html > > For those who're not interested in the clicky links, a raw text > version's appended. Note that all the "here"s and references to proper > nouns point to the relevant webpages. > > How to set up a Temporary Media Lab* > (using Free/Libre/Open Source Software) > > What is a tml ? To find out one viewpoint, scroll down to the fifth > paragraph here. I think a TML is an adhoc encampment of borrowed > components and scrounged up and refurbished hardware that people > participating in an event or embedded in a situation can use to reflect, > remix and report on the environment and locale that they are surrounded > by. Of course, the better the hardware and the more involved and lively > the participants, the more fun, capable and valuable the lab... I set up > a media lab in Hamburg in the beginning of 2004 using Free/Libre and > Open Source software and it was cheap, great fun and a huge learning > experience. This page talks about how I did it. You could do something > like this too, it's really easy. Just remember to plan ahead and > maintain a sense of humour. > > A TML is composed of various parts - > > ~ * > ~ hardware > ~ * > ~ software > ~ * > ~ processes > > Hardware > 3 computers - arranged in a star configuration with the monitors facing > outwards so no one can see everything that's happening in the lab at the > same time - it's an interesting effect. Basically, any computer that has > been purchased in the last 2 years will be capable of being part of the > TML. Even the cheapest of computers purchased in 2004 will be sufficient > and in most respects will surpass the "Recommended" specifications given > below. > > Computer Configurations - > Optimal: Pentium4/AthlonXP 2.0 gHz or faster, 512mb RAM or more, at > least 60 GB hard disks, nVidia graphics cards (budget ones will do), > DVD-writer on one of the machines (DVD-rewriter would be great), > CD-rewriter on another one(CD-rewriter on the other two would be great) > , at least 17inch monitors for all of them, 100mbps network cards. For > audio support, an audio card which supports hardware mixing under ALSA > (the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). To find out which audio cards > do this, go here and look in the notes column for (4) ... I recommend > the Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live or the SoundBlaster PCI 512 - A > soundblaster Live alue can be had for USD 15 or INR 780 (prices from > pricegrabber, currency conversion from XE ) > > Acceptable: Pentium3 / AthlonXP in the 1-1.5 gHz range, 256mb RAM, 40 GB > hard disks, builtin-graphics cards sufficient (intel 8xx series for > pentium3s, nforce / sis chipsets for athlons), CD-rewriter on one > machine, 17inch monitor on at least one machine, 100mbps network cards. > For audio support, the builtin audio cards are sufficient - but you will > not be able to do hardware mixing so you might not get the support of > all the features in advanced programs like ardour. > > Minimum: Celeron / Pentium3 between 600mHz and 1 gHz, 128 mb RAM, 20 GB > hard disks, builtin graphics cards, 15" monitors on all of them, 10mbps > network cards. For audio support, the builtin audio cards will suffice. > > Networking - > Recommended a 100mbps switch, at least a 10 mbps hub, sufficient CAT5 > cabling for all machines. An extra network card is necessary if the > external network interface (for example to the network) is through a LAN > or standard network - in this case, one computer will have two network > cards and will interface (or act as the gateway) between the external > network and the Media Lab. > > Miscellaneous - > Unless you are sure of the quality and availability of the electricity, > I'd recommend borrowing UPSs for the duration of the event. > > Peripherals - > > Scanner: check the list of compatible scanners in the SANE (Scanner > Access Now Easy) matrix. Look for scanners with "complete" support. > Compatible scanners can be amongst the most troublesome peripherals to > get for Linux - the ones that have "complete" support are, in many > cases, not sold anymore by the manufacturer - an exception is the > CanoScan LiDE 20 or the LiDE30 (september 2004) so you might have to > hunt around in your local shops or use ingenuity to find one. Make sure > that you get the EXACT model number - I was in a media lab that got the > canoscan LiDE35 (which was incompatible) rather than the LiDE 30. the > HP 2200c is great, if you can get it. To see if the development version > of SANE (which might be unstable) supports your scanner, go here for a > similar list. An outdated (but still good) list for USB scanners is here > . Find one for parallel ports here. If you're in Delhi, check out this > site for a good listing of manufacturers. > > Printer: if you anticipate moderate to heavy printing, you should find a > laser printer - the cost per page is much less than that of an inkjet. > Almost every printer, be it laser or inkjet, parallel or USB is > supported by CUPS, the Common UNIX Printing System. Check out this list > ~ and see if you have access to a printer that is supported in the > "perfectly" or in the "mostly" column. Make sure you take a few reams of > paper and a spare printer ink/toner cartridge. > > Digital Camera: As far as I know, any camera with an interface to a USB > port in a computer will be supported under Linux as a USB storage device. > > LCD Projector: An LCD projector is fantastic, if you can arrange one - > the basic idea is that once it's plugged into the computer, you can > display the actual work process in a node of the media lab - great for > demonstrations, playing movies, music and for displaying webpages, > animations or publicity material. When you're getting a projector, try > and find out the make and model of the projector beforehand and google > and see if there are any reports of incompatibilities with Linux. > > Sound Recording : a cheap microphone to record the pearls of wisdom that > drop from the lips of the medialab participants... it's fun when you use > audacity or hydrogenaudio to remix the voices and chop, cut and paste > the things that people say. > > Software > Linux :) kernel of the 2.6.x series - a sample config file for the > kernel can be found here. I used Gentoo Linux for the media lab because > it's fun, fast and very very customisable but you're free to use more > administrator-friendly distributions such as KNOPPIX, Mandrake or SuSE > which have excellent hardware detection and tools for administrating the > machines. I recommend KDE for the interface if you have computers that > are at least "Acceptable" or "Recommended". KDE can be easily set to > display an interface in almost every language on earth as can GNOME, > which is also a very good choice. If you're running a restricted > hardware setup, check out XFCE4 or iceWM. Google is your friend. > > Servers: make sure sshd the secure shell daemon is running on all of > the machines so you can administer them remotely and use SAMBA or nfs to > share files between computers. If you don't have access to the Internet, > you can use boa as a light web server to demonstrate what the webpages > that you'll be creating will look like... > > Text: for simple composition, kedit or gedit are great. For text with > formatting, try abiword or kword. For a full-featured word processor > that can, in almost all circumstances, match the best in the field, try > OpenOffice.org Writer version 1.1.2 or later. For near-professional > quality Desktop Publishing, check out Scribus :) > > Image: for creating/editing animations, photos or images, use GIMP > version 2.x (comparable to Photoshop). Rudimentary image editing can be > done in kpaint. To view images as a slideshow, use kuickshow. Inkscape > is great for creating vector images and Blender is a very good 3D > rendering and drawing package. > > Web Pages: Use Mozilla Firefox to view webpages. Konqueror is also a > very good browser. I use the Mozilla suite for my work as it's a very > stable and full-featured browser, if slightly slower than firefox. To > create web pages, I use Mozilla Composer and have been experimenting > with an experimental version of it called N-VU, in which this web page > was written. Make sure you have the netscape-flash plugin installed if > you want to see flash animations in the web pages that you visit. > > Email: It's unlikely that people will be using anything but webmail to > check their email in a temporary media lab. If this is not the case, you > can use Mozilla Mail, kmail or Evolution. > > Sound: XMMS is still very good at playing audio files. Under KDE, you > could use JuK. To edit audio files, try Audacity or the more advanced > Ardour. > > Video: For the entry level video editor, try Kino. Try Cinepaint or > Cinelerra if you want heavy duty tools that have been used to make and > edit top-quality movies. > > Burning CDs and DVDs: To do this, use the superlative K3B. > Processes > A TML is empty without processes to animate it. The environment that > surrounds the lab - a festival, a conference or a meeting should produce > a cacophony of media - text about the conference, web pages by passers > by, photos, images, animations, scrawls, remixed speech, background > music - anything at all ! Here are few process that you can use to > animate your lab - and of course, there are many more... > > blog: A blog is short for a weblog, and refers to a form of personal web > publishing with an emphasis on a chronological notation or flow. it's > wildly popular these days and there are many free weblog servers that > are available for people to use - try blogspot or livejournal. > > streetlog/herelog - a herelogger observes the environment around the lab > - - the conference or festival and makes periodic entries in a weblog - > this provides us with a very rich and "non-official" picture of the > event. it can be made very fascinating by embedding the following media > forms inside: > > pictures - can be taken using the digicam and edited, played with, > filtered, morphed, colour-shifted using the plethora of image editing > and manipulation tools that the lab provides. Try making a collage of > the participants, I've seen one and it's great! > > music and sound - it's fun to work and play with music in the background > and you can take recordings using the microphone and remix them in > audacity, add drum effects using hydrogen audio and even embed them in > the weblogs. > > lab newsletter - use scribus and inkscape to put together a single-sheet > newsletter at the end of the conference - this can be printed out using > hte printer and photocopied and distributed. > > Open Source / Free(dom) software was created by people mixing and > matching pieces and ideas in a environment very like a crowded street > festival or a bazaar - the same method that's used to create extremely > interesting media. Have fun with the TML and mail me your suggestions > for this document. > > Cheers, > > Aniruddha "Karim" Shankar > The Sarai Programme, New Delhi > > Document made with Nvu > This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) > > iD8DBQFBSvHlhJkrd6A3rSsRAjRYAJ9uZxPBqxme/qWehFtEodiQzlUE/wCfYBUb > vC17c0hS64gZiniCsDL65jc= > =91Ps > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > _________________________________________ > 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 mailing list reader-list at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list End of reader-list Digest, Vol 14, Issue 30 ******************************************* --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? vote.yahoo.com - Register online to vote today! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040918/b987f91e/attachment.html From aman.malik at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 00:50:50 2004 From: aman.malik at gmail.com (Aman Malik) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 00:50:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] NEED HELP PRONTO!!! Message-ID: <95be635604092012203f236ce3@mail.gmail.com> Dear Sir/ Ma'am, Seasons Greetings. This mail is being sent to: A) Those residing in Pakistan or Pakistanis abroad. B) Film critics/ researchers/ faculty members of film schools in India. C) Mass Communication graduates in India. I am currently in the process of commencing a research project that seeks to study the ups and downs in the Lahore Film Industry (aka: Lollywood) prior to and after 1947. This project is a part of my academic curriculum and I hope to complete the research work in about twenty days from now and come out with a paper in about 30 days from now. I am looking primarily for the following help from you... 1) Contacts of researchers/ film critics of Pakistan cinema based within Pakistan or abroad. 2)Contacts of practitioners (artists, directors, distrbutors etc) in the Pakistan film industry. 3)Any research material that you might have on this subject and/or references/ links to places where such material might be sourced from. Being here in India and considering the fact that I have major time constraints, your help in this regard would be extremely valuable. Warm Regards, Aman Malik New Delhi, India. From shekhar at crit.org.in Tue Sep 21 11:39:00 2004 From: shekhar at crit.org.in (Shekhar Krishnan) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 11:39:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail In-Reply-To: <20040919043514.75114.qmail@web41503.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040919043514.75114.qmail@web41503.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Dear All: This debate about GMail, and the request for information on POP3 access, makes me wonder if this is all not a bit OT. But while we're at it... The excitement around GMail baffles me, particularly since any form of web mail, no matter how sexy its feature set, cannot compare to a POP3 mailbox used with your favourite mail client (Eudora, Mozilla, OSX Mail, Outlook). The widespread use of webmail is further baffling, when maintaining a POP3 mailbox costs less than Rs 200 a year, and doesn't tie you to a commercial domain, infringe your privacy by storing your mails on someone else's server, bombard you with advertisements, and confine you to the limits of your browser. The most baffling thing is the tenacity of these commercial webmail services and the fierce loyalty of people to yahoo, hotmail, and now gmail. Is this unique to India, where there is widespread difficulty in obtaining domain name registrations (especially .in domains, because of NCST's kleptocracy), and sheer laziness on the part of most institutions and firms (and their IT service providers!) in alloting mailboxes to their employees. I have recently had an incident in a school where I teach and help with IT, in which the faculty is insisting on retaining their yahoo and hotmail addresses because they are more "secure" than using the school's own registered domain, hosted on a dedicated server for which the school has paid an annual contract. This faculty argued with me that anyone in my IT company, which is contracted to host their web site and mail server could see their mails. Why is the same fear and anxiety absent with large anonymous corporate entities like Microsoft, Yahoo and Google? When I argued with this person that using their own domain (whether through POP3 or web access) is much more secure, I was given a lecture on the wonderful features of GMail and how I too could get invited to join. I wanted to vomit on this person. When did trust in distant corporations replace a relationship with your local service providers? When did free beer replace free speech? Nearly every list to which I am subscribed has seen people hankering after GMail invitations (even free software activists), without any serious discussion of this phenomenon. Why can't we start cooperative mailbox movements, or hosting societies, which will get unique domains registered for people and give them out for free or at a nominal fee, considering the neglible costs of hosting mailboxes? Or for a start, why can't most IT service providers give people mailboxes when they register domains for them, rather than just giving them websites? Anything is better than the gospel of GMail... S.K. _____ Shekhar Krishnan 9, Supriya, 2nd Floor Plot 709, Parsee Colony Road no.4 Dadar, Mumbai 400014 India http://crit.org.in/members/shekhar From shivamvij at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 17:20:21 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:20:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail In-Reply-To: References: <20040919043514.75114.qmail@web41503.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Dear Shekhar, I would love to graduate to POP3 the day I have internet on my desktop. i surf from cybercafes - perhaps there lies part of your answer. Thanks Shivam On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 11:39:00 +0530, Shekhar Krishnan wrote: > Dear All: > > This debate about GMail, and the request for information on POP3 > access, makes me wonder if this is all not a bit OT. But while we're at > it... > > The excitement around GMail baffles me, particularly since any form of > web mail, no matter how sexy its feature set, cannot compare to a POP3 > mailbox used with your favourite mail client (Eudora, Mozilla, OSX > Mail, Outlook). The widespread use of webmail is further baffling, when > maintaining a POP3 mailbox costs less than Rs 200 a year, and doesn't > tie you to a commercial domain, infringe your privacy by storing your > mails on someone else's server, bombard you with advertisements, and > confine you to the limits of your browser. The most baffling thing is > the tenacity of these commercial webmail services and the fierce > loyalty of people to yahoo, hotmail, and now gmail. Is this unique to > India, where there is widespread difficulty in obtaining domain name > registrations (especially .in domains, because of NCST's kleptocracy), > and sheer laziness on the part of most institutions and firms (and > their IT service providers!) in alloting mailboxes to their employees. > > I have recently had an incident in a school where I teach and help with > IT, in which the faculty is insisting on retaining their yahoo and > hotmail addresses because they are more "secure" than using the > school's own registered domain, hosted on a dedicated server for which > the school has paid an annual contract. This faculty argued with me > that anyone in my IT company, which is contracted to host their web > site and mail server could see their mails. Why is the same fear and > anxiety absent with large anonymous corporate entities like Microsoft, > Yahoo and Google? When I argued with this person that using their own > domain (whether through POP3 or web access) is much more secure, I was > given a lecture on the wonderful features of GMail and how I too could > get invited to join. I wanted to vomit on this person. When did trust > in distant corporations replace a relationship with your local service > providers? When did free beer replace free speech? Nearly every list to > which I am subscribed has seen people hankering after GMail invitations > (even free software activists), without any serious discussion of this > phenomenon. > > Why can't we start cooperative mailbox movements, or hosting societies, > which will get unique domains registered for people and give them out > for free or at a nominal fee, considering the neglible costs of hosting > mailboxes? Or for a start, why can't most IT service providers give > people mailboxes when they register domains for them, rather than just > giving them websites? Anything is better than the gospel of GMail... > > S.K. > _____ > > Shekhar Krishnan > 9, Supriya, 2nd Floor > Plot 709, Parsee Colony Road no.4 > Dadar, Mumbai 400014 > India > > http://crit.org.in/members/shekhar > > _________________________________________ > 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 abhitamhane at gmail.com Tue Sep 21 19:05:44 2004 From: abhitamhane at gmail.com (abhijeet tamhane) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 19:05:44 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail In-Reply-To: References: <20040919043514.75114.qmail@web41503.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: perhaps the second part is, many others use the internet from offices or workplaces. For them, the Shekhar's strong and well-worded question, "When did free beer replace free speech?" just doesn't matter! -- abhi. On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:20:21 +0530, Shivam wrote: > Dear Shekhar, > I would love to graduate to POP3 the day I have internet on my > desktop. i surf from cybercafes - perhaps there lies part of your > answer. > Thanks > Shivam > > On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 11:39:00 +0530, Shekhar Krishnan > > > wrote: > > Dear All: > > > > This debate about GMail, and the request for information on POP3 > > access, makes me wonder if this is all not a bit OT. But while we're at > > it... > > > > The excitement around GMail baffles me, particularly since any form of > > web mail, no matter how sexy its feature set, cannot compare to a POP3 > > mailbox used with your favourite mail client (Eudora, Mozilla, OSX > > Mail, Outlook). The widespread use of webmail is further baffling, when > > maintaining a POP3 mailbox costs less than Rs 200 a year, and doesn't > > tie you to a commercial domain, infringe your privacy by storing your > > mails on someone else's server, bombard you with advertisements, and > > confine you to the limits of your browser. The most baffling thing is > > the tenacity of these commercial webmail services and the fierce > > loyalty of people to yahoo, hotmail, and now gmail. Is this unique to > > India, where there is widespread difficulty in obtaining domain name > > registrations (especially .in domains, because of NCST's kleptocracy), > > and sheer laziness on the part of most institutions and firms (and > > their IT service providers!) in alloting mailboxes to their employees. > > > > I have recently had an incident in a school where I teach and help with > > IT, in which the faculty is insisting on retaining their yahoo and > > hotmail addresses because they are more "secure" than using the > > school's own registered domain, hosted on a dedicated server for which > > the school has paid an annual contract. This faculty argued with me > > that anyone in my IT company, which is contracted to host their web > > site and mail server could see their mails. Why is the same fear and > > anxiety absent with large anonymous corporate entities like Microsoft, > > Yahoo and Google? When I argued with this person that using their own > > domain (whether through POP3 or web access) is much more secure, I was > > given a lecture on the wonderful features of GMail and how I too could > > get invited to join. I wanted to vomit on this person. When did trust > > in distant corporations replace a relationship with your local service > > providers? When did free beer replace free speech? Nearly every list to > > which I am subscribed has seen people hankering after GMail invitations > > (even free software activists), without any serious discussion of this > > phenomenon. > > > > Why can't we start cooperative mailbox movements, or hosting societies, > > which will get unique domains registered for people and give them out > > for free or at a nominal fee, considering the neglible costs of hosting > > mailboxes? Or for a start, why can't most IT service providers give > > people mailboxes when they register domains for them, rather than just > > giving them websites? Anything is better than the gospel of GMail... > > > > S.K. > > _____ > > > > Shekhar Krishnan > > 9, Supriya, 2nd Floor > > Plot 709, Parsee Colony Road no.4 > > Dadar, Mumbai 400014 > > India > > > > http://crit.org.in/members/shekhar > > > > _________________________________________ > > 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: > -- http://www.geocities.com/abhitamhane http://abhitamhane.blogspot.com From ritika at sarai.net Wed Sep 22 16:46:14 2004 From: ritika at sarai.net (Ritika) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 16:46:14 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] where was theophilus metcalfe hiding??...from archives Message-ID: <41515EFE.6080401@sarai.net> Hey everybody, in yet another hunt in the Delhi state archives, i found this file from the Cheif Commissioner's proceedings of 1941, created by local bodies department. I found the context of the subject quite interesting, therefore posting it. Thought i'll share. The Delhi Improvement Trust was at its best at this (1940s..)point in time in trying to clean up the city etc. New land was constantly being acquired, for locating people in new areas or for creating memorials etc. In one such effort, land from village bagh Kalali lyeing between present Gol Market and Talkatora Gardens had to be acquired. In a letter to His Ecellency - Marquess of Linlithgow, Chowdhri Mohyid Din writes a very diescriptive and dramatic mail: "..that during 1857, when he British reign in India had not yet been firmly established and concerted mutiny had been raised, darkness had prevaild over the peaceful horizon of Delhi, and terrible had grown the situation when, a nobleman of English blood enters my father' house situated in the village of Bagh Kalali, exactly at the squares lying between the present Gol Market and Talkatora Gardens...This was Sir Theophilus Metcalfe, baronet of Englad. The baronet was trembling from fear of insurgents, and was crying for shelter and safety of life. ...Three days and three nights pass away, danger increases my fathers did not spare a moment, procure a horse and escort baronet's escap to Jhajjor (rohtak) camp, quite safe....For this fidelity and friendship His Honour the Lieut Governor Punjab awarded vast Moafi lands to my fathers and acknowledged their brave services for help in the establishement of British rule in India... Now the Delhi Improvement trust wanted to acquire land under the paharganj Circus Scheme - and the land earlier given by the STATE to Mohyid din, was being acquired by the Delhi improvemnt trust. What follows next in the fat file are series of applications/ letters by Mohyid din on his forefather's greatness and how land shuld not be taken from them. he also give a repetative brief sketch of their loyalty. He elaborates on the nature of service rendered to them.Infact there's also a letter to COmmissioner by Sir metcalfe (though i am bit confues about the time gap..) whereby he praises this guys efforts etc. Testimonials are added to further their case. What happens finally is not known. The file was followed by other file, which when i requisitioned was not availbale. Thats it, cheers ritika -- Ritika Shrimali The Sarai Programme http://blog.sarai.net/users/ritika From penguinhead at linux-delhi.org Thu Sep 23 13:17:22 2004 From: penguinhead at linux-delhi.org (Pankaj Kaushal) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 13:17:22 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail In-Reply-To: References: <20040919043514.75114.qmail@web41503.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <41527F8A.6040804@linux-delhi.org> Shekhar Krishnan wrote: > Dear All: [snip] > When did free beer replace free speech? Nearly every list to > which I am subscribed has seen people hankering after GMail invitations > (even free software activists), without any serious discussion of this > phenomenon. looking at your mail headers, I can see that you use something called Apple Mail 2.6. I can quite clearly see how motivate you really are about free software if not free speach. Pankaj. ( 2B || !2B ) From menso at r4k.net Thu Sep 23 20:17:03 2004 From: menso at r4k.net (Menso Heus) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 16:47:03 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail In-Reply-To: References: <20040919043514.75114.qmail@web41503.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040923144703.GI8315@r4k.net> On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 11:39:00AM +0530, Shekhar Krishnan wrote: > The excitement around GMail baffles me, particularly since any form of > web mail, no matter how sexy its feature set, cannot compare to a POP3 > mailbox used with your favourite mail client (Eudora, Mozilla, OSX > Mail, Outlook). The widespread use of webmail is further baffling, when > maintaining a POP3 mailbox costs less than Rs 200 a year, and doesn't > tie you to a commercial domain, infringe your privacy by storing your > mails on someone else's server, bombard you with advertisements, and > confine you to the limits of your browser. The most baffling thing is > the tenacity of these commercial webmail services and the fierce > loyalty of people to yahoo, hotmail, and now gmail. Is this unique to > India, where there is widespread difficulty in obtaining domain name > registrations (especially .in domains, because of NCST's kleptocracy), > and sheer laziness on the part of most institutions and firms (and > their IT service providers!) in alloting mailboxes to their employees. > > I have recently had an incident in a school where I teach and help with > IT, in which the faculty is insisting on retaining their yahoo and > hotmail addresses because they are more "secure" than using the > school's own registered domain, hosted on a dedicated server for which > the school has paid an annual contract. This faculty argued with me > that anyone in my IT company, which is contracted to host their web > site and mail server could see their mails. Why is the same fear and > anxiety absent with large anonymous corporate entities like Microsoft, > Yahoo and Google? When I argued with this person that using their own > domain (whether through POP3 or web access) is much more secure, I was > given a lecture on the wonderful features of GMail and how I too could > get invited to join. I wanted to vomit on this person. When did trust > in distant corporations replace a relationship with your local service > providers? When did free beer replace free speech? Nearly every list to > which I am subscribed has seen people hankering after GMail invitations > (even free software activists), without any serious discussion of this > phenomenon. Shekhar, Security and privacy wise there's little difference between using POP3 or webmail. In both cases it is stored on a server at which point it is vunerable to attacks. Most webmail solutions offer secure connections over SSL, something only very little POP3 providers support. This means that in case of POP3, your username and password travel cleartext across the internet and in case of Webmail, they're encrypted. Secondly, webmail is a lot more practical for the mobile user who cannot afford a laptop to carry his mail around on. I use the webmail interface my provider (XS4ALL, Netherlands) provides me with to access my mailbox a lot when on holiday or not behind my own computer. My provider also gives me (secure) POP3 access, which I never use. I don't want to have my mail in 1 place and need to go to that 1 place to do something with it. I want my mail online, so I can access it from anywhere, anytime. This is one of the reasons why webmail is so popular. That, and the fact that it is free, 'anonymous' and easy to use. I see little harm in it, as long as people are aware of the privacy statements of the companies they have their webmail with. regards, Menso -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- All extremists should be taken out and shot -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From shivamvij at gmail.com Thu Sep 23 22:39:01 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 22:39:01 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] neo-modism? Message-ID: Different Versions of Neo-modism by Abid Ullah Jan (Thursday 23 September 2004) http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/9921/ "To avoid turning the whole Muslim world into Palestine (s) and Iraq (s) and to avoid turning their own countries from becoming Nazi Germany, the appropriate action for non-Muslims is to identify and just ignore what Neo-mods of Islam are producing in support of Neo-cons' totalitarian policy of global domination." It is interesting to study the same music coming at different frequencies, from different channels set up by different quarters of Muslim Neo-mods — the self-proclaimed "progressive," "liberals," and "moderate" Muslims. The common tunes on all these different channels are apologies for the uncommitted crimes and misconceptions that have no place in Islam. Their common target is the ears of the Neo-cons of the West. These ears want more of the same music to justify their destructive march towards total domination. The direct victims of the Neo-mods music are non-Muslims, mostly those who have no knowledge about the ABC of Islam. Its indirect victims are Muslims in the Muslim lands under the US direct and indirect occupations. When any of these channels of Muslim Neo-mods is discussed in a short write up, it gives the impression as if it is an isolated case, or it has no impact or connection with other channels. That is not the fact. Actually Muslim Neo-modism comes in different versions. All are well connected and all have the same objectives: a) exploit the fear of Islam, b) generate some more in a different way, and c) milk Washington. Collectively they have a wider impact, but again, only in the non-Muslim world. One can easily look around to find different versions of Neo-modism in operation. However, discussing these versions in detail is beyond the scope of a short write up. To give readers an opportunity to independently research, personalities displaying a specific form of neo-modism are given below. It is a common tendency of the Neo-mods to consider every criticism as a personal attack. They consider every critic having some kind of personal vendetta against them. However, that is absolutely not the case simply because their critics are neither on the CIA payroll, nor they get career building opportunities. They don't get scholarships or fellowships at Brookings or Rand in return for criticizing the neo-mods, nor are they promoted on high profile media outlets. The following broad classification of different versions of Neo-modism will show how collectively and mostly unintentionally, they sow the seeds of hatred and terror. They can hardly realize the extent of the damage they are doing to both the East and the West under the fine banners of moderation, building bridges and interfaith interactions. 1. Academic Neo-modism: There are personalities in academic circles, both students and teachers, who have either fully embraced the point of view of the Neo-cons of the West or they just pretend to be on the same wavelength with them when it comes to promotion of radical secularism and military adventurism for imposing all associated ideas on the Muslim world. It is not difficult to find this version of Neo-modism in the world of Dr. Ishtiaq Ahmed (Stockholm University), Muqtedar Khan, Akbar S. Ahmed, and company. These dollar scholars of Islam have distinct views about almost every issue. Take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for example. Muqtedar Khan for example believes, "Allah, through the Qur'an, tells Muslims to forgive injustices that Jews and Christians commit against Muslims," which means, in other words, to accept Israeli oppression in the present context. He writes, The Israeli occupation of Palestine is "perhaps central to Muslim grievance against the West." The use of word "perhaps" means, he is either still doubtful or purposely ignore the reality. He goes on to say that the Israeli government treats its one million Arab citizens "with greater respect and dignity than most Arab nations treat their citizens." It means, there is no need to support the suffering Palestinians. In a New York Times article, Muqtedar Khan writes: "Muslims must realize that the interests of our sons and daughters, who are American, must come before the interests of our brothers and sisters, whether they are Palestinian, Kashmiri or Iraqi." [1] Consider this prioritized classification in the context of the message of Islam. Akbar Ahmed recently appeared with Rabbi Johnny Sax in a documentary celebrating the Jewish New Year and publicly stating that he is ashamed of the brutal murder of Danny Pearl by one of his alleged countryman, yet Rabbi Johnny Sax is not ashamed of the brutal policies of the racist/apartheid state of Israel that has taken lives thousands of Palestinians and butchers them on daily basis. Do we hear Johnny Sax or Ariel Sharon expressing shame and revulsion at the way Palestinians are treated or the atrocities committed by Baruch Goldstein et al? 2. Political neo-modism: This version of Neo-modism is also displayed by Muslims both in the East and the West. Kamal Nawash with political ambitions in the US is no different than Hussein Haqqani with even greater ambitions to be tomorrow's Karzai or Iyad Allawi. Such personalities have their own way of presenting the facts and promoting themselves under the wings of Pipes and JISNA.[2] Some Muslim dictators who are presently in power also hide behind this version of Neo-modism. General Musharraf's attempt at self-perpetuation under the banner of "moderate" Islam is a prime example in this regard. 3. Journalistic Neo-modism: Then there are Muslims in print and electronic media, as well as on the internet who would go to any-length to bash Islam in the name of reformation. Tashbih Syed of Pakistan Today, Khalid Hasan of Daily Times, Najam Sethi of Friday Times. All those who criticize Daniel Pipes for anti-Islam bigotry need to visit the work of these journalists infected with this form of Neo-modism and see the way they have gone far too ahead of Pipes in promoting some ideas that are in total contradiction to the core of Islam. 4. Below-the-belt Neo-modism: This version of Neo-modism has no trace of scholarship or logical argumentation. It has no objective to serve other than self-projection and heaping curses on Islam's basic sources: the Qur'an and Hadith. This trend began with Salman Rushdie, then moved on to the age of Taslima Nasreen and Irashad Manjee and then is trying to become mainstream with all and sundry participating in below-the-belt Neomodism at "sex and umma" section of the MuslimWakeUp.com. The problem is that you cannot even argue with this kind of Neo-mods who are bent upon heaping curses. It is very important to note that 9/11 and subsequent bloody invasions, human rights abuses and occupations would never have been possible without years of Islam-bashing by the neo-cons and their associates. This "intellectual" alliance played a vital role in paving the ground for the political and military alliances to bypass the world opinion and go on the killing spree for domination. All the above forms of Muslim neo-modism, knowingly or unknowingly, support neo-cons' lies and misconceptions about Islam in different ways. It is also interesting to study and compare similarities between the mindset of Neo-cons of the West and Neo-mods of Islam. Freedom of Expression Both of these groups believe in selective freedom of expression. They feel free to not only challenge Divine wisdom by criticizing the Qur'an (which all Muslims believe as the word of God), but also to go to the extent of mocking its verses and making fun of the Ahadiths (saying of Prophet Muhammad PBUH) – together these two sources form the foundation of faith for 1.3 billion people. However, when it comes to criticizing their below-the-belt approach to reformation of Islam, they resort to personal attacks, strongly demanding removal of that critical analysis from the source publication along with apologies from the authors and editors. It seems as if their wisdom is above the Divine wisdom. They have the right to mock the Qur'anic wisdom,[3] but no one has the right to point finger at them. Criticizing the Critic The Neo-mods leave the subject and start criticizing the critic. They forget that no one needs to be an angel to criticize an evil trend. Being evil and being the promoter of evil are two different things. For instance, being a homosexual, knowing that it is against the core principles of Islam, and staying conscious of one's evil acts is far better than not being a homosexual but justifying homosexuality and promoting its cause. So, it is absolutely not that critics of the Neo-mods of Islam are angels from heaven. It is that they simply point out that the Neo-mods participation in demonizing Islam for their personal interests undermines future of both Muslims and non-Muslims. Twist and spin The other commonality with the neo-cons is their quality to spin and put words in others mouth. The article criticizing MuslimWakeUp.com very clearly states that the Neo-mods of Islam are promoting agenda and point of view of the real culprits behind 9/11. MuslimWakeUp.com instead turns it around and presents it as if its team has been called the real culprits behind 9/11. This is the poorest defense of a below-the-belt section at this site. Guilt by Association The Neo-cons and Neo-mods cry foul when they feel that they have been considered guilty by association. However, they forget that not only thousands in the US concentration camps but millions of other Muslims around the world are targeted just for being Muslims. They are harassed and tortured unless they somehow prove themselves to be perfectly "moderate," liberal," or "progressive" Muslims. Racial profiling is nothing by harassment based on simple association with Islam. The Question is: Who, after all, are responsible for this kind of attitude towards Muslims? Why is there an "enemy is Islam" sign hanging outsider a church in the US? If the answer is "terrorists among Muslims," it is absolutely wrong. Muslim "terrorists" are the product of some policies and acts of aggression. A realistic look reveals that the crimes committed by Muslims pale by comparison with the crimes systematically committed by the US and Israel. Despite all that, why is not any sign hanging outside any mosque saying Christianity or Judaism is the enemy? Simply because no one – neither Muslims nor non-Muslims – have the intentions to undermine Christianity or Judaism as a faith, whereas undermining Islamic values and way of life is a clear intention on the part of Neo-cons who promote the so-called war on terror and the "war within Islam." The neo-consim is becoming mainstream due to increasing activity of Muslim Neo-mods. Promotion of hatred The idea is to make non-Muslims aware of these Neo-mods benighted opportunism, who do no more than promoting hatred against Islam and Muslims by cursing and mocking the basic sources of Islam: the Qur'an and Sunnah. That becomes the basis for interference in Muslim lands and justifies invasions and occupations for secularizing them through crusades against Islamic ideology, as the 9/11 Commission report has confirmed. This is no less than sowing the seeds of hatred and terror. Who actually get terrorized with such nonsense? Non-Muslims. Who their leaders in turn terrorize? Muslims. That's how the cycle of terror begins and takes lives of millions on both sides. This is the chain reaction which the Islam-bashing Neo-mods do not realize as ask: what is the correlation between "sex and umma" at MuslimWakeUp.com and the seeds of terror. Discussing sex Only a stupid would believe that people engaged in a frank discussion on sexuality do the work of Paul Wolfwitz. However, critics of "sex and umma" section strongly believe that calling Islam "shitty" and making a mockery of Sahih Bukhari and the Qur'an, above all, are far worse than what Paul Wolfwitz can do. This gives Wolfwitz and Co. the basis for planning, invading, killing and dominating any Muslim country where people may express their desire to live by Islam. Let Paul Wolfwitz come out and say publicly what the Neo-mods on MuslimWakeup.com say about Islam. He would face a flood of worldwide condemnation and reaction. That's why the Neo-mods are no more than gifted mouthpieces for the neo-cons' innermost thoughts and wishes. Let us forget about Islam for a moment. Let us try to find out which part of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism or any principle of common decency allows promotion of out-of-wedlock sexual relations, out of wed-lock births, homosexuality, cursing and mocking the sources of others' religious beliefs, and all other norms that are being promoted by the Neo-mods? For personal interests it is too big a price to pay with presenting Islam as a degraded, outdated, medieval philosophy that oppresses women and does not let people enjoy their sexual life. That is what the Neo-cons want; this is what the Neo-mods provide. Hidden enemies A real understanding of the rising trend of Neo-modism among Muslims would make the Western public realize their hidden enemies, who in the quest for indirectly milking Washington, indirectly lead to wars and occupations. Hidden enemies are not those who mask their faces and shoot the US occupation forces in Iraq and elsewhere. They are well-known enemies of injustice and oppression, not the American people. They are the direct product of occupation, not of Islamic ideology. The real hidden enemies are those, who do not intentionally want to harm the US. They just want to shine their little businesses; have a bit promotion in their career; make a headway in politics; have their articles published in the New York Times; get interviewed on the Fox; or like Musharraf, have a chance to rule his nation for a little longer. However, they forget that the opinions they consider so naïve become seeds for terror in the hands of Neo-cons, who use them as a solid argument to defend their proposed invasions and continued domination of Muslim lands at any cost. Appropriate Action When Iran issued a fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie – the father of neo-modism, we thought he should be intellectually defeated through debate so that others get a lesson out of his failure. However, now we realize how difficult it is to argue with the Neo-mods. Can anyone convince Bush. He is always right together with his team. Same is the attitude of Muslim Neo-mods. What discussion, for instance, can one make, when he gets a message of 100 words out of which 44 go like this: "Amazing garbage! … the ravings of a demented conspiracy-theorist, a raging fundamentalist crackpot and a barking-mad loon. Wow. the IQ of a squashed apricot, the intellectual sophistication of a backward gerbil and the integrity of a crack-whore. A foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." To avoid turning the whole Muslim world into Palestines and Iraqs and to avoid turning their own countries from becoming Nazi Germany, the appropriate action for non-Muslims is to identify and just ignore what the neo-cons and neo-mods produce in support of the Neo-cons' views and policies. No matter how strongly Muslims may cling to the fundamentals of Islam and live by its principles, they are definitely are not the enemies of the West or non-Muslims. Nor is the world the way these neo-mods and neo-cons want us to consider. Notes: [1]. See: M.A. Muqtedar Khan, "A Memo to American Muslims," Column on Islamic Affairs, at: http://www.ijtihad.org/memo.htm and Muqtedar Khan, "Putting the American in American Muslims," The New York Times, September 07, 2003. [2]. To avoid repetition, please refer to http://icssa.org/Islamic_terrorism.htm and http://icssa.org/brand_washing.htm to read this version of Neo-modism in detail. [3]. Sex and umma section of MuslimWakeUp.com is filled with numerous examples where the Qur'anic wisdom has been challenged. From shekhar at crit.org.in Fri Sep 24 02:07:58 2004 From: shekhar at crit.org.in (Shekhar Krishnan) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 02:07:58 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail In-Reply-To: <20040923144703.GI8315@r4k.net> References: <20040919043514.75114.qmail@web41503.mail.yahoo.com> <20040923144703.GI8315@r4k.net> Message-ID: <749915BE-0DA0-11D9-94EC-000A95A05D12@crit.org.in> Dear All: I think my message, being a bit of a rant, was misleading. I am not objecting to the many virtues of webmail vs POP3 for different people who are mobile, checking from cafes, and so on. What annoys the hell out of me is commercialised, free mail services like GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and Rediffmail, and the way in which many otherwise straight-talking people suddenly have become brand ambassadors for these companies, or normally sane colleagues have begun arguing with me about how mailboxes on their own institutional domains are somehow less secure than mailboxes hosted from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. Use webmail, POP3, IMAP, that's your freedom of choice -- the relative convenience and security of any of these depends on your computing environment. Nor am I objecting to the open or closed, free or proprietary nature of the browser or mail client anyone uses to check mail. Both the browser and client I use, as well as the operating system I prefer, are semi-free, mostly proprietary products, and it will be years before I fully switch to a FLOSS desktop and application suite, if ever. I suspect that this is the same for many of us who keep company with the movement, and make money from providing free and open source solutions. I don't like being ideological about FLOSS. My point was a rather narrow one about commercial webmail being turned into a lifestyle emblem, though my point about free beer replacing free speech points to a broader set of issues. What is at stake in the GMail Ideology is the way in which we put trust in distant corporations rather than local service providers, in free beer rather than free speech. Is it because we often have to pay money and give time to support the latter? But like I said in my initial message, perhaps this is all a bit OT... Best S.K. _____ Shekhar Krishnan Srishti School of Art Design & Technology Dodballapur Road Yelahanka, Bangalore 560064 India http://www.srishtiblr.org http://crit.org.in/members/shekhar From keith at thememorybank.co.uk Fri Sep 24 12:43:22 2004 From: keith at thememorybank.co.uk (Keith Hart) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 09:13:22 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail In-Reply-To: <749915BE-0DA0-11D9-94EC-000A95A05D12@crit.org.in> References: <20040919043514.75114.qmail@web41503.mail.yahoo.com> <20040923144703.GI8315@r4k.net> <749915BE-0DA0-11D9-94EC-000A95A05D12@crit.org.in> Message-ID: <4153C912.3060302@thememorybank.co.uk> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040924/f8e2954e/attachment.html From captain.typo at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 14:41:20 2004 From: captain.typo at gmail.com (Captain Typo) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:41:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail In-Reply-To: References: <20040919043514.75114.qmail@web41503.mail.yahoo.com> <20040923144703.GI8315@r4k.net> <749915BE-0DA0-11D9-94EC-000A95A05D12@crit.org.in> Message-ID: Dear Shekhar, On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 02:07:58 +0530, Shekhar Krishnan wrote: > Dear All: > > I think my message, being a bit of a rant, was misleading. I am not > objecting to the many virtues of webmail vs POP3 for different people > who are mobile, checking from cafes, and so on. What annoys the hell > out of me is commercialised, free mail services like GMail, Yahoo, > Hotmail, and Rediffmail, and the way in which many otherwise > straight-talking people suddenly have become brand ambassadors for > these companies, or normally sane colleagues have begun arguing with me > about how mailboxes on their own institutional domains are somehow less > secure than mailboxes hosted from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. It is inevitable, that people starting using and talking about certain service providers who provide better service than the institutional domains. As far as branding goes, it is bound to happen. In fact your mail is branded with so many symbols, but you do'nt even notice. To enlist a few: Sarai Srishti School of Art Design & Technology Bangalore Apple Mail (2.619) FLOSS These words symbolize/brand you in certain frame. It is unlikely, just like you said about FLOSS/proprietory, that branding would perish in near future. > Use > webmail, POP3, IMAP, that's your freedom of choice -- the relative > convenience and security of any of these depends on your computing > environment. Nor am I objecting to the open or closed, free or > proprietary nature of the browser or mail client anyone uses to check > mail. Both the browser and client I use, as well as the operating > system I prefer, are semi-free, mostly proprietary products, and it > will be years before I fully switch to a FLOSS desktop and application > suite, if ever. I suspect that this is the same for many of us who keep > company with the movement, and make money from providing free and open > source solutions. I don't like being ideological about FLOSS. My point > was a rather narrow one about commercial webmail being turned into a > lifestyle emblem, though my point about free beer replacing free speech > points to a broader set of issues. What is at stake in the GMail > Ideology is the way in which we put trust in distant corporations > rather than local service providers, in free beer rather than free > speech. Is it because we often have to pay money and give time to > support the latter? Question is important one, distant corporation verses local provider who has machines hosted in US. tough one to answer still pondering... > > But like I said in my initial message, perhaps this is all a bit OT... > > Best > > S.K. > _____ > > Shekhar Krishnan > Srishti School of Art Design & Technology > Dodballapur Road > Yelahanka, Bangalore 560064 > India > > http://www.srishtiblr.org > > > http://crit.org.in/members/shekhar > > _________________________________________ > 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: > regards Captain From jeebesh at sarai.net Fri Sep 24 14:57:31 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:57:31 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Students Stipends Workshop for Research on the City Message-ID: <4153E883.3010503@sarai.net> Students Stipends Workshop for Research on the City 19-20 August 2004 Sarai-CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054 Each year the Sarai programme supports young research students for short-term studentships to facilitate research on urban life in South Asia. The process includes a public call for applications in September-October, a teaching workshop for selected students, and a public presentation of the research in August, at Sarai. The programme encourages practice-based and cross-disciplinary research, as well as research in the traditional academic mode. This year, 17 proposals were selected for the student stipendship. However, two of the selected candidates did not participate in our preliminary workshop; nor did they show commitment to pursuing their proposed research. A joint proposal also did not finally yield any results, though the researchers had done their field and library work, and were in the advanced stages of their research; serious family and personal problems kept them from participating in the final workshop. Among the 14 final presentations, 8 were by women, 5 by men and 1 by a man-woman team. These students came from diverse social backgrounds; 4 were from minority communities; 3 presentations were in Hindi. Overall, the research material covered a range of disciplines---mass communication, history, literature, film studies, anthropology, sociology, environmental studies, architecture, urban planing and education. Each panel at the final workshop included a discussant, assigned from in-house as well as from among the stipendiaries, who facilitated the question/answer session following the presentations. Several projects were supported by audiovisuals, indicating the students' greater ease with the formats of new media. The presentations were in English and Hindi. Creative, experimental, technologically innovative and anecdotal presentations alternated with the more conventional. There was a lively interactive session on the themes, methods and sources of urban research and the possibilities of networking and resource building, which was initiated by Prabhu Mohapatra, Solomon Benjamin, Ravi Sundaram and Awadhendra Sharan. The stipendiaries offered detailed feedback with regard to their experience of the workshop itself and the preparatory activities and dialogue initiated by Sarai for several months preceding the actual event. It was suggested that if the papers were circulated in advance, they would speak more to each other as well as to the audience; that the student could post electronically in the public domain on the existing Sarai urban web list. Some students asserted that the research experience had been “fun”; that it had helped them to understand their own academic practices better; that they might extend their stipendiary research into wider practice or develop it further in scholarly ways. All found the cross-disciplinary format of the studentship both dynamic and challenging. 19 August 2004 Panel 1/Witnessing the Urban: Memory, Event and Violence /Jerry Cherian /Goa University, Goa / /_/jerrycherian at rediffmail.com/_ “Living in Heritage: The Fontainhas Festival in Panjim” This study attempts to interpret issues of power, culture and identity construction in Fontainhas, known as the Latin Quarter in the city of Panaji, Goa. The settlement is a mix of Catholic and Hindu communities. The paper explores the possible configuration in the social power equation at macro and micro levels. It asks how one-dimensional and often totalitarian meta-narratives of identity, based on the notion of singularity of truth, are claimed, developed and adpated according to place and in relation to other meta-narratives. /Shwetal Vyas /Delhi University, Delhi /generallyalive at hotmail.com/ “Mass Violence, Memory and Mahesh Dattani” This paper describes the writer's efforts to confront and negotiate personal responses to the post-Godhra Hindu-Muslim communal violence in Gujarat, through various discursive frames—literature, film, history and psychoanalysis---including /Final Solutions/, Mahesh Dattani's play on this theme. The researcher explored issues of identity, memory, trauma and loss, within the larger political context. Ravi Sundaram's opening remarks prior to the presentations focused on the need to spend some time thinking about how clearly we could articulate the urban experience, variously defined as the city, urban life, etc. On the one hand, the city is described as a formal unit, and on the other hand it is described as a range of experiences. Two distinct models are foregrounded when speaking of the city. The first is the classic 17^th century European city, that developed from the medieval configuration of the church and the streets leading to it, around which the central square, the market, public spaces, consolidated themselves. The second is the 19^th century city based on rational planning and organization. Another model was that of the colonial city, based on the principle of racial segregation; there was also the model of the Turko-Islamic city built around the relationship between the mosque, the fort and the market. But these categories are not adequate when it comes to understanding the contemporary city. How can we map the discontinuities between the historical and contemporary forms that the urban realm has assumed? Could we even speak of a “city” any more? We speak now of an “urban sprawl” that was characteristic of our cities---Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata. What exactly was happening to our idea of the city? This was a conundrum especially for people such as urban planners, charged with producing the city. How was the city to be represented. When we looked at the question historically, the discontinuities were very sharp; we needed to think about the transition in historical terms as well. The other question that came up when we spoke of the city was whether we should make a distinction between urban history and research on the urban experience. Awadhendra Sharan spoke briefly about the ideas underlying the stipendship programme. He clarified that Sarai's aim was to provoke the asking of larger questions that students might not be encouraged to explore in other contexts. He also expressed some dissatisfaction with the lack of attention that the stipendiaries had paid to the initial resources provided by Sarai in the form of readings and a CD, which few of the students seemed to have explored. The first presentation was by Jerry Cherian on the Fontainhas festival in Panjim, Goa. His work consisted of a short film shot in that location, interspersed with explanations. The film explored the tensions inherent in the practice of the conservation of heritage as imposed by outside agencies, and the alienation that the residents of the neighbourhood experienced during this process. He examined the rift between the Catholic and Hindu communities. The Catholics had a historical sense of connection to the area, and there was a continuity in their narratives. The Hindus were migrants from other parts of Goa and experienced various forms of rupture in their relationship with the locality. The conflict became polarized during the debate regard the naming of Fontainhas, which was also called Mala. Finally it was called the Fontainhas/Mala festival, to assuage the sentiments of both communities. Jerry ended by raising some questions regarding the place of individual narratives within the larger narrative of 'conservation' that was part of the political agenda of various groups. Anand was the discussant for this paper. He began by saying he wished the interviews with the local residents of Fontainhas had been presented in their entirety, because arguments raised in the paper did not coincide with those presented in the film, so it was disorienting while listening to/reading one, and viewing the other. He suggested that it might be useful to look at the role of the local elites and their relationship with the colonial Portuguese state. The upper echelons of the Goan bureaucracy during colonial rule consisted of Hindus who adopted local cultural practices. The paper located community tensions at the wrong places, foregrounding less relevant identity politics. Anand also commented that the paper was a strong critique of the marketing of culture in post-Independent India. Was the effort to make the past/heritage accessible to consumers a desirable project at all, and if so, was it possible to do it in non-essentialist terms? How important is it to make people aware of their past? Were the conservation efforts of local authorities more legitimate than the efforts of local residents to maintain their history on a smaller, immediate and subjective scale? Responding to the questions, Jerry clarified that he had not intended to say that the local authorities were wrong in their effort to hold the festival, his point was that it had been organized without taking the sentiments of the local people into account; nor had they been included in the organizational process. To Anand's question of whether it was at all possible to have a multilayered history within the nationalist frame, he noted that he needed to think about this since he was grappling with these issues for the first time. The second paper, “Mass Violence, Memory and Mahesh Dattani”, was presented by Shwetal Vyas. Focusing on the communal riots in Gujarat in 2002, she asked how the “reality” of the experience of trauma is constructed through various narrative forms, and at various points of time. Smriti was the discussant for this presentation. She raised the central question of whether it was at all possible to adequately describe trauma, no matter how it was accessed, because discursive frames often failed. She brought up the notion of “othering” and related it to the concept of “phobogenesis”, employed by Frantz Fanon in his accounts of the struggle of the Algerian population against their French colonizers. Fanon extends this to negritude in general, and asks how mechanisms of “othering” influence the self. What happens when phobia, the irrational fear of the other, arises in one's mind? The impulse is to distance oneself from the other; distancing is most easily achieved through objectification; when the other is reduced to an object, it is easier to inflict violence. She suggested that the only way to tackle fear that leads to the committing of acts of hatred upon an innocent other is to look within oneself, observe the fear, instead of projecting it upon the other. She recalled a song she had heard on the radio in which the protagonist describes his feeling for his beloved by comparing it to sandalwood burning, and said that this trope took her mind in an unexpected direction. When a sandalwood forest burns there is flame and fragrance simultaneously; in the same manner, cruelty and compassion are always found together, in the same place, they give meaning to one another. During the riots people did brutalize each other, but they also risked their lives to save one another. Vivek added that we could perhaps think of competing versions of history and the tensions between different communities. Shwetal was interested in the idea of phobogenesis, adding that she wished we did not have to experience cruelty in order to experience compassion. Dipu opened the general discussion by noting that both papers were audacious in their scope, and had interesting threads that could be pushed further. He urged Jerry to examine the figure of the migrant, who was neither tourist nor native. He advised Shwetal to focus her gaze further, since the larger question of how to make meaning was an intimidating one. Otherwise she would find herself in an endless debate about the nature of the self, the nature of knowledge, etc. Solly referred to Veena Das's work on the Trilokpuri riots and asked whether the manner in which cities evolve structurally and spatially has anything to do with violence. Not far from the Trilokpuri unauthorized colony was a legal residential colony which supported the residents of Trilokpuri during the demolitions. There seemed to be a differential manner in which different spaces evolved out of different sets of political and other processes. Our understandings of city violence may have something to do with structures. Responding to Jerry's paper, Yasmin noted that most of the issues he had raised were standard in heritage discourse. The new questions that could be asked had to do with the way the everyday was being interpreted in terms of art. Foregrounding this might be useful when asking what motivated various actors, such as the community, the authorities, etc. Ravi Sundaram asked Jerry what constituted the histories of the relationships between these communities. He also asked what constituted the logic of location. He remarked that Jerry was positing a classic heritage problem: the Portuguese had set up this neighbourhood, various communities generated various contestations. There were many directions the debate could go in. One could think about the politics of heritage and cultural divides, since the state had a BJP government. One could look at the financial aspects of selling heritage. One also needed to look at the neighbourhood itself, the dynamics between “insiders” and “outsiders”, how these groups evolved, the identities they claimed. How did this operate in terms of lived experience, representation and heritage? In this instance, the third aspect seemed to have catalyzed tensions between the other two. When brought together, it became less a question of individual narratives and more one of conjunctions. The inquiry around the cultural moment/site of the festival could be an initial step in longer and broader analysis. Jerry acknowledged that midway through his project he recognized that he had somehow lost the richness of the neighbourhood he was trying to describe. Ravi commented that with regard to Shwetal's paper, his concern was not with the categories she was working with, but with the rendition of the trauma narrative, which was the kernel. She was trying to define “reality”, and this sensorium could be rendered in two possible ways: individually, and through the inter-subjective realm. Shwetal said that she realized she did not have an adequate framework for her exploration; she was confused about whether to focus on the subjective, or rely on theoretical frames. Panel 2/Urban Histories /Osamazaid Rahman /Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi /zaid_osama at rediffmail.com/ “Epidemics, Communities and Colonial Urban Policy: Calcutta 1872-1941” This paper examined statistical data with regard to the plague at a particular historical period, in specific urban contexts. It traced the mechanisms of epidemiological surveillance and control strategies in areas occupied by different communities, and described the narrative of the disease as found in the public and medical discourse of the time. This study focused on the settlement patterns of Hindu and Muslim communities in Calcutta during a particular historical period. It was a slide-based statistical analysis, based on the argument migrants into the city were carriers of plague, and the mortality rate was higher in the Hindu settlements which were more densely populated. In the discussion following the presentation, Prabhu questioned the researcher's understanding of the character of epidemics and the sources that had been used. He also suggested that the relationship between the Hindu and Muslim communities should be studied more sociologically, with a more narrative style. Ravi Sundaram asked Osama to clarify the intellectual question at the core of the research, and suggested that he consult historical accounts of plague. It was crucial for the researcher to position himself intellectually regarding his material. Dipu recommended that Osama find a more descriptive way to “read the numbers of death”; and also research the existent discourses of public hygiene/sanitation and their cultural implications, as well as the existent medical discourse and public writing on plague, which could be found in government documents, libraries and newspapers. Ravikant suggested that Osama could also focus on the community traditions and mythologies regarding plague, and compare these to the official viewpoint. Panel 3/Interactive Discussion/Urban Research: Themes, Methods and Sources (/Resource Persons: Solomon Benjamin, Prabhu Mohapatra, Awadhendra Sharan, Ravi Sundaram/) The interactive session on research practices and reflections on fieldwork began with Solly remarking that he seemed to have “fallen into events” which did not turn out to be research practices. He stressed the need to generate categories of analysis and apply theory to these. The field approach might be “fuzzy”, but it had a lot of scope. There was a lot of good, evocative, descriptive writing in Victorian and colonial accounts, which lent themselves to theory. But these categories were insufficient: research keeps changing, subjects, contexts, inputs change. Research is still dominated by bureaucratic language, there was a need to bring in alternative sources and foreground secondary sources. For example, land economy and politics, the patterns of settlement are best understood not through historians but through local informants, who may provide an account that is chaotic and subjective but rich and promising. Prabhu Mohapatra stated that any social science researcher has to face the fact that research is an orientation of one's being in relation to the research material. The material appears chaotic in the first instance, and the encounter is of the dispersal of settled meanings. The material's chaos can be a block or a challenge. On the primary level, the effort is to construct and put a frame on the chaotic material---ultimately, all researchers do this. The secondary level of recognition is phenomenological: the material is patterned independently of the researcher, it is produced by the material itself. Do we see and seek a pattern in the material because this is inherent to the human mind? The emergent pattern may coincide with the existent pattern of the material—a sudden congruence often surprises fieldworkers. If one interacts with material according to a preconceived classificatory scheme, the emergent pattern often conflicts with the scheme. This induces crisis in the researcher, and it /should/ induce crisis. If you are not surprised by the material, it is either a sense of deja-vu, or something is definitely wrong. The modality of this encounter with the material is that it is an act of surprise. All kinds of stories are happening all the time, around the researcher. The final truth of research is that the construction has to be done, the researcher is not the messenger. Structure is forced upon the material, and this coercion should be acknowledged. Prabhu defined research as an “orientation” which allowed one to inhabit a space between pure observation and pure immersion. This state of being is a productive state, and can be connected to a major methodological issue, from the debate on positivism, the status of hypothesis and experimentation. The German social thinker Theodore Adorno claims that as a researcher, you begin with a particular image of what you want to do. The encounter of that image with the material is based on a particular world-view. The material has its own logic, it should rise up and approximate the world-view. This approximation is called research. City/urban research is unique in that the world of representation and the world of imagination have to find common ground with the physical/empirical world, in a particular direction. Ravi Sundaram raised the question of why research was undertaken. He suggested that it was crucial to define the particular intellectual question for oneself in one paragraph or one page. If this short account did not interest the researcher, it would not be possible to produce anything interesting. Curiosity was foundational in this regard. The classic colonial encounter with the native produced the tradition of documenting the “other”; professional academics are obsessed with and challenged by material, driven by it; but in the context of the urban research, the city throws everything out of place. It destabilizes creativity and professionalism. Small sets of planners and architects have gone into urban studies; non-academics, such as artists, the avant garde, Marxists, have produced creative work. The researcher is basically anyone who is curious. Fieldwork needs a particular, often intuitive way of perception that professionalism can kill. There's also a serious need to do associated reading. The ethnographer is the quintessential urban researcher. He/she is not professionally trained as an academic, and is always curious about voice. Dipu remarked that he admired professionals, their skill at finding a way to ground questions, produce knowledge in a certain way. He asserted that the key question in any research project must continually redefine itself. The questioning of the material and of one's relation to the material must go on. Sarai emphasizes fieldwork and processes; how to organize and present the material is training best given by academics. According to Solly, if you look at Western literature on methodology uptil 1945, it was fairly substantial and unified. After this came a substantial disconnect; fieldwork splits off from theory, in urban studies. Sarai is pushing people to build up urban knowledge in a different way. More interaction between researchers could lead to the sharing of field experiences and the desired and continual redefinition of the question. Established categories are “jails”—researchers should be extremely skeptical and unpack all categories, there should be continual exploration of discursive parameters. Ravi Sundaram reiterated that he “would like to hear stories” about how the field “disturbs” researchers, and asked whether contradictions in data makes research interesting; these also included contradictions in the researcher's own life. Asserting that she was speaking “on behalf of the anthropology tribe”, Yasmin made a distinction between “city” and “urban”, two segments of the categories being deconstructed by urban research. Fieldwork was a huge story in itself, and involved complex ethnography. In any research project, an early paragraph expressing the core of the research interest should acknowledge this complexity. Jeebesh commented that “fortunately” he did not belong to any discipline, so did not have to defend himself. But he understood the need for research because of his background as a documentary filmmaker; research was crucial to getting basic material, the images and sound to work with. After World War II research, research became “institutionalized”; and from then till the present day, this had remained its dominant voice. The debate can be accessed through any discipline: for instance, his art practice was shaped not by anthropology or ethnography but by photography. The sources of our critical reflections are from these disciplinary spaces. If there was no interesting question at the core of the research project, any findings would simply be “flat”, “propaganda” and basically useless. The issue is not about an adequate description of the world but an interesting and relevant entry point. The practice has to be interrogated by each researcher individually, not only within the parameters of a discipline. Yasmin remarked that we are conditioned by the accumulated body of knowledge that already exists; with regard to the speech act, there is no such thing as a pure question. Ravi Sundaram said that if you break disciplines, fieldwork produces unique results, fascinating questions. According to Jeebesh, research is a generalized practice involving experiential richness and open narrative forms; in contrast to this, academic and textual knowledge systems and the politics associated with them continue to intimidate and illegitimize all other forms of research. This is “disciplinary terrorism” of the worst kind. Dipu added that there had to be a relationship between the way a question is asked and the way the material is used to answer it: for this, you had to do solid reading, integrate a textual understanding. Jeebesh replied that he was not opposed to reading, but that he felt questions, curiosities, passions were what made research successful. There is a lack of generosity in academic dealings with any practice-based or alternative kind of research. All research space is difficult, tense and contested. Activists attack research fundamentals, but that is not the point either. The point is that if passion is subordinated to methodology, research will lose its meaning, its relevance both to the researcher/practitioner and to the disciplines. Ravi Sundaram clarified that only in South Asia was there a rigid distance between the academic and the practitioner. These boundaries need to be broken through creative interventions. Dipu asked why creativity and method should be separated, and that he like the idea of the “curious interloper” in research. The mark of the good researcher was the ability to produce challenging questions. Location was not that important. If the research question was constantly redefined, the manner in which the question was answered should also be continually interrogated. One should look at the core question and inquire if it could be asked or answered in any other way. Prabhu remarked that interesting research can accommodate many contradictions and points of view, all kinds of voices. There are ways of writing that accommodate plurality and open-endedness. These should indicate that other accounts are as valid and plausible. This is a more generous and ethical approach. “Suppressing evidence” is legally a crime; similarly, in research it is wrong to suppress anything that would undercut one's narrative and claims. The researcher actually combines three functions: that of judge, lawyer and witness. From the standpoint of excitement, putting contradictions together, leaving the findings open: these are tactical ways of presenting research. Simplistic and contrived views set against one another are not interesting. It is not about balance either, the rebel view versus the official view, etc. How do we see different academic modes as constraining, how do we understand the constraint as enabling rather than disempowering? The material produces constraint, but also produces the condition of freedom and allows for the emergence of creative potential. We also need to be careful about the term “action research”: this compounds tautology upon tautology. Research is a form of broad social intervention, like art practice. Sharada referred to Dipesh Chakravarty's research on minority history, making the point that if these narratives were seen as part of a rational cause and effect scheme, subaltern history is validated and assimilated into mainstream history. Citing Ronojit Guha's account of adivasis called to court to give “evidence”, and their later saying “God told us to testify”, as an example of subjectivity that escaped regulation, she also brought up her own research on street children, whose narratives keep changing, whose sense of self is contradictory. These contradictions were part of the “tangible excitement of fieldwork”, where nothing is fixed and the research question keeps expanding and complicating itself; the level of learning is on the researcher's own terms. Osama commented that all research had to follow some methodology, as the data had to be “rationalized” according to one discipline or the other. Jeebesh said there was a need to clarify the concepts by which a dialogue between practitioners could be created. How do practitioners talk to one another, how can interventions in social life come about through collaborative practice---these are crucial questions. But there is an anxiety among practitioners with regard to losing control of their material, and this fear blocks conversations that might be valuable and enriching. Solly described his process of returning to documents and case studies collected earlier, but which had not been processed and so not used. The material was not fixed, nor was it open-ended. Sometimes the narrative followed the desired course, at other times it deviated: Each layer of documentation had its own character—notepad, register, handwritten drafts, typed copies---and these were edited and reconceptualized along the way to the final version. These research formats were also valuable in themselves, and the transparent, contradictory and informal traces of human effort were also valid and valuable. Sadan raised a methodological question, recalling a project that involved interviewing victims of violence, who often wanted to carry on talking; how to end the interview with skill, so that the subject didn't experience the termination as violent. If the subject was allowed to prevail, the researcher himself/herself underwent a process of violence. Responding to Jeebesh's earlier comment, Prabhu asked whether it was fair to censor a discipline by calling it “regimented” and “terroristic”: such accusations were in fact what severed possibilities of dialogue. With regard to Sadan's query, he remarked that all research involves a simultaneous loss and gain of information; simultaneous closure and opening is taking place in all research modes and knowledge forms. Closure is inevitable, and necessary: we have to put structures upon our chaos. We have to keep trying to understand conditions of constraint and conditions of possibility in research. The truth is that we only possess sets of techniques, protocols, and these persist in the manner that certain caste rituals persist. The methodological clashes and impasses are actually based on “stupid” and irrelevant chronological and spatial markers that demarcate research into disciplines, so we have different orders of knowledge formation, through historians, anthropologists, sociologists. Ravi Sundaram concluded the session by remarking that research issues were not about disciplinary demands or research conventions or the politics of information gathering. We need to talk about other forms and creative formats, outside the binaries of fieldwork and archive---this was crucial. But the central problem was the “cruelty” of professionalization. Universities in the US had become a business enterprise for knowledge production. The parameters of the debate have changed: it is not about what kind of knowledge is produced but about who is permitted to produce knowledge. Panel 4/ Neighbourhood, Market and Ecology /Dhara Radia /CEPT, Ahmedabad/ dhararadia at hotmail.com/ “Institutional and Legal Frameworks for the Urban Private Water Market: Ahmedabad City” This study explores the role of water markets, particularly in the context of water supply. It brings out the mechanisms adapted by informal institutes to meet the water demand in Ahmedabad, and maps the local water markets in terms of microstructure, scale and economics. /Sirisha Indukuri /Delhi University, Delhi /sirishaindukuri at yahoo.com/ “Perspectives from Environmental Sociology/Anthropology for the Study of Urban Ecology” The research takes environmental and ecological parameters in sociology and anthropology, normally applied to rural frameworks, and transposes these to urban terrain. It asks what fresh interdisciplinary perspectives emerge from the shift. It reads the urban landscape as a text and studies the society-state interface in relation to environmental concerns. /Jayani Bonnerjee /Jadavpur University, Kolkata /jayanibon at yahoo.com/ “Neighbourhood Patterns and Urban Planning in Calcutta” This study aims to contextualize debates on modern urban planning strategies and the logic of socio-spatiality: the relationships of communities to their neighbourhoods, with particular reference to the Old Chinatown area of Kolkata, and the ethnic/territorial identity politics of that area. Solly opened the discussion after the first presentation on the water market in Ahmedabad, by commenting that a lot of private companies would be interested in the paper for its market research value. The paper could have included interviews with the people involved in this economy. There was also the possibility of comparing the tension around water sale with the water riots in Chile; this information was available on the Internet and also in published form. The study could expand to include a sense of the politics of the process, the political economies inherent in the water struggle; the key question is, who gets the water and at what cost, and what kind of theories need to be drawn upon for understanding this very serious issue. Shwetal pointed out that after the communal riots of 1992, Ahmedabad was referred to as two cities. One side is more developed, this is the “IIM side”; the other is the “chawl/pol/Muslim side”. This dichotomy is systematically built up. The IIM side is run by the “sophisticated bureaucracy” of the Ahmedabad Urban Development Association, while the “chawl” side is run by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and is looked on as “traditional and stagnant”. The lower-income groups dependent on the AMC have a different set of struggles regarding infrastructure; the local landowning castes have sold their property for non-agricultural purposes, such as the building of restaurants, multiplexes, apartments, servicing the high-income groups who demand better infrastructure. Dipu commented that the paper was solidly researched, but more in the way of a “consultancy”; the statistics had little to do with the actual ground-level struggle for water. Also, the paper needed to work out the resource base with regard to the pricing of water in the informal sector: these new findings would make the research original; research “should be more than numbers.” Following Sirisha Indukuri's presentation, Vivek remarked that the paper was an “impressive literature review” which brings together a range of issues and tries to break down the dichotomy of the urban as a built environment and the rural as “natural” environment. He asked for a definition of urban ecology: why do we need to demarcate it, why not just go ahead and “do” it, pick a case study and interrogate the concept through it. The paper needs to engage critically with the texts used, in this expanding field. Biological issues, religious cosmology, urban planning and other discourses are also involved, have to be studied in a focused manner, as we try to understand the shrinking commons of the city and the liminal zones of urban sprawl. Vivek asked if there was a difference between urban ecology and urban studies. Anthropological and ecological discourses are a bit discredited in how they relate to scientific methodology, and their relationship to biological discourse. Ravikant commented that the “net is not wide enough” with regard to the interlinking of categories, and that the language borrowed between disciplines is not problematized at all. Communities get constituted through language, through tropes are borrowed from cultural sources, like the Ramlila. This trend is not problematized either. Dipu suggested that the researcher foreground what she was personally interested in and passionate about, and construct the complexity of the debate with this at the core. According to Yasmin, the paper is caught up in dualisms, which have been discarded in the discourses of anthropology and sociology quite a while ago. She remarked that she was not sure if water and air could be essentialized as values, since they have profoundly different larger implications and meanings for urban and rural contexts. Following Jayani Bonerjee's presentation on the politics of space, community and ethnic identity in Kolkata's Chinatown area, the discussion focused on the differentiation between “community” and “neighbourhood”, terms which tended to be used interchangeably but had very different implications. Ritika commented that formal planning discourse, which implies a uniformity of lifestyle, does not take into account the heterogeneity of communities. Jayani clarified that she was not judging anything, but merely pointing out a certain strand of developmental logic within the debate: her use of the term “community” implied a spatial dimension, not a cultural one. Dipu suggested that it might be a good idea to study localities established before planning became mandatory: the older “paras” and “mohallas”. The study could explore Chinese identity issues and racism as manifested in the planning discourse; and whether they were being selected for purposes of “cultural tourism”. He asked if the researcher had found any evidence that the Chinese were scapegoated for “clean-up” by Kolkata authorities, as it was common to target politically/economically marginalized groups when planning strategies were put into operation. Solly remarked that the paper was “critically astute” with regard to resettlement politics, but needed to present material from the interviews with community residents. There are different political economies involved, a cross-platform of the discourses of development, environment, tourism: is planning a way of exercising social control in all these areas? Sadan added that ethnicity had definitely become a commodity in the global market, and this opened up the complex terrain of assimilation, a packaged Chinatown, complete with the relevant exotica, and ready to be marketed. Jayani replied that this was not her research focus; that she was interested in comparing the old Chinatown in central Kolkata with the newer enclave. Urban planning had introduced physical changes in the newer segment, but could not penetrate the older one, it remained an ethnic pocket and resisted being modernized. Ravi Sundaram stated that US urban planning had mastered the art of combining ethnicity with tourism/heritage development. The notion of community and neighbourhood had become globalized; the representation of self had fissured, or become diasporic. Nothing had escaped commodification, everything in a market economy was commodified. The interesting question was of power, property, control, the key issue was of material space. Sooner or later, identity would also enter this circuit. 20 August 2004 Panel 1/ Work and Space /Sumit Roy and Saumya B.Verma /Mass Communication Research Institute, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi _/finisafricae at gmx.net/_ ; /vermasaumya at rediffmail.com/ “Architectures of Sociability: Workers' Coffee Houses of Delhi, a Case Study of the Tent and Mohan Singh Place Coffee Houses” This paper attempts to create a narrative about two significant domains that provided Delhi's public with the possibility of a distinctive mode of sociality, culture, national and local politics. The dynamic space of the coffee house is posited as an ideal catalyst for the shaping of modern urban sensibilities. /Syed Khalid Jamal /Mass Communication Research Institute, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi /zzjamal at rediffmail.com/ “The Work Culture at Fast Food Chains and Restaurants” This paper explored the economic, social and psychological impact of fast food chains upon the workforce, using participatory research methodology. The effort is to understand the parameters of fast food as a global industry, as well as the particulars of the lives of the employees, their aspirations, illusions and dreams. /N.R.Levin /Delhi University, Delhi _/nrlevin at indiatimes.com/_ “Body Odour as Social Order in Colonial and Postcolonial Kerala” The study analyzed the patterns of social/sexual discrimimation and 'othering' established through local olfactory regimes and their cultural associations, for instance fish, attar, etc. It also focused on the methods of policing and manipulating the image of the female body as cultural property available for utilization by the state, for tourism and related profit-making industries. The first presentation was followed by an animated discussion. Jerry, who was the discussant, said he liked the way the paper was written but at times, as an outsider to Delhi, he found the narrative a bit “loose”. He suggested that the focus stay on the particular mode of sociality fostered by the coffee house, and other views on the space be included. Aarti said that she had enjoyed the paper and was curious about how the narrative had been pieced together, the research process. Ravi Sundaram felt that the paper was a bit “overwritten” and needed some editing in terms of paring down the style; it made an interesting story, but the “adjectivized” introduction and conclusion which built up the Kodak colour” could be avoided. Taking up the paper's allusion to Habermas's concept of a public space for “non-instrumental communication”, he said this was characteristic specially of 18^th century European coffee house culture, and the narrative of political mobilization that the paper had included, was not intrinsically part of this. If reworked, the paper had the potential to accommodate both kinds of narrative. Ravikant pointed out that the coffee house was popular among writers and intellectuals of the Hindi literary circuit; new historians writing in Hindi had produced many “thick” descriptions of the coffee house movement, but these were not that well-known. The paper could include some comparative analysis. Jeebesh commented that he had enjoyed the paper and also appreciated the visuals (handbills and posters that were projected). It provided an insight into the print culture of the past, a different entry point into the public's encounter with print. The housewife's letter of protest was particularly intriguing, because it demonstrated a specific node of circulation of print culture, a relationship of a different order. Saumya added that the effort to create gazettes for the price rise resistance movement included groups of four to five people wearing paper chogas inscribed with anti-hoarding slogans; thus clad, the groups would go down streets picketing shops suspected of hoarding, etc. Prabhu said that he also found the descriptions of the price rise resistance movement fascinating. The small group of highly articulate coffee house patrons—government servants, intellectuals, journalists---expanded into a dispersed public through the political mobilization against the price rise. This perhaps could connect to the fact of Nehru's death and the new state government trying to create its own public. This was always a male public, and the housewife's concern that the coffee house as an “adda” had a negative influence upon the patrons, could serve as an entry point into an analysis of the gendered nature of coffee house sociality. Anand suggested that some sociological comparison be done with contemporary coffee house culture fostered by the presence of large chains like Barista. Syed Khalid Jamal's exploration of the work culture of fast food chains used the methodology of participatory observation: he worked in Pizza Hut himself for the purpose of collecting data, and said that it was very difficult to record his findings. He did not tell his subjects that he was researching them, and they related to him as a friend and colleague, which provoked feelings of guilt in him. He also made observations regarding the work culture in Pizza Corner, McDonald's and Barista. He began by describing the Nirula's advertisment, which offers workers “serious money”, and Domino's, which offer “cool money”--Rs 13/hour, for 12-hour shifts. In general the workers have to often take abuse from customers; if customers complain to the manager, the worker is then berated by his superiors. The workers were commanded to compulsorily “smile”, be patient and accomodating at all times, never argue with the customer, and take all abuse with a “smile”. The management is opposed to workers being friends, and to the workers being social with customers, on any level. Khaled said that his fluency in English was an advantage as he was put to work in the front of the restaurant, interfacing with the customers, whereas those who were not fluent were relegated to the kitchen. Also, “charming faces” were preferred in the front, “ugly faces” in the kitchen. The management did not want workers to speak in Hindi, but most workers struggled with English, at the most they were comfortable with describing the items on the menu. There was a very high turnover of workers, because of the low wages, an average of Rs 2200/month. The workers stole money and food, according to an elaborate system of verbal codes that the management could not interpret. Workers and workplaces were regularly inspected by teams from the head office and official consultants, who had their own means of monitoring employees and reporting discrepancies. There was a good deal of bonding among workers in different fast food chains, who compared notes and worked out schemes to dupe the management together. Most workers who stayed in the low-paid and oppressive jobs in fast food chains did so from financial necessity, and because “Western” work represented a particular kind of progress and acculturation in their scheme of aspirations; also because they hoped this diverse site would create broader social horizons and perhaps a wider range of supportive acquaintances and possible partners. Udita and Meghna, who were to present their paper in a later session, were discussants following the presentation. They remarked that they appreciated the anecdotal value of the narrative, but it was too focused on the researcher's self and needed to include more opinions from other sources. The paper also needed to analyze the nature of “fast food”, and ask if the fast food site is more than just a busy restaurant; also, analyze the workers' self-image in more detail, as well as the networks, friendships, socialization patterns that were created by the particular context. Ravi Sundaram commented that he liked the paper's reflective stance and the way it brought out different worlds; this line of inquiry could be pursued. Dipu asked what implications the study brought out. If the paper was read as a study of space, it was adequate; if read as a study of work, it was inadequate. It was crucial to understand how the mandated “smile” restructured the work experience; the “smile” was not an innocent signifier. The presentation by Levin attempted to look at the experience of the fishworker community, in particular fisherwomen, in the “new” city, a space which was being heavily marketed for the global tourism industry, using the new triadic mantra of ayurveda, spirituality and aromatherapy. Among other things, the study described the traditional Malayali obsession with cleanliness and its relationship to the construction of the (female) body as a sensual object. As the city was made cleaner to attract tourists, there was a parallel demand that the movements of “unclean” people such as butchers, vendors and fisherwomen be controlled, and that these groups (lower castes, traditionally considered foul and polluted) be urged to clean themselves by using soaps and detergents. There are several mythologies around the smell of fish, and community leaders tell of a time when this was considered seductive; but today the same smell is considered offensive, and those who carry the smell are similarly considered offensive, particularly women. Fisherwomen are also “sniffed” by their menfolk when they return from vending, to check for smells of tobacco or attar, which signify that the woman has been in contact with non-community males; attar is associated with Muslim men. The paper contrasted this with the image of the virtuous, immaculately clean and decorously garbed respectable city woman, hair fragrant with the smell of jasmine flowers and coconut oil, that is part of the state's cultural ideology and foregrounded in the discourse around tourism. The paper concluded that there had been a complete elision of the history of sensibilities, of touch, smell, sound and taste; we need to recover this history, and map its trajectories. Sadan was the discussant for this paper. He noted that Levin's study was part of a larger project around development discourse in Kerala, and that the paper posed questions at two levels: body odour and its relationship to the sexual regimes constructed around the (transgressive) bodies of fisherwomen; and the construction of odour itself as a commodity in a global economy, for the profit-making tourist industry. He asked if the city as a space was responsible for catalyzing particular modes of social/sexual categorization and community dynamics, and suggested that the research could also explore concepts of body odour in relation to the advent of the colonial knowledge system in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, when the colonized body was perceived in a different register. He also asked why the paper did not speak of how the fisherwomen perceived themselves; Levin replied that he had only spoken to male community leaders, and that it was very difficult for him, as a male researcher, to convince the fisherwomen to speak with him openly or frankly. Sadan added that in north India too a discourse of sanitation and hygiene was deployed to enforce rigid caste stratification. Yasmin also asked why Levin had excluded male bodies from his analysis. Ravikant commented that “unusual subjects raised unusual expectations”. He recalled the last chapter of Raj Kamal Jha's novel /The Blue Bedspread/, in which a tribal woman carrying datuns to sell in the market is part of an informal exploitative dynamic between her and a policeman, which she negotiates within a matrix of cultural assumptions of working-class women and women belonging to particular castes and communities, who are looked upon as more promiscuous and also more available. Sadan recalled a short story by Manto based on the body odour of a labourer and the feeling of nostalgia it evokes. Dipu pointed out that the study focused on the intersection of the development agenda with a cultural reform movement; and also raised issues about the constructions of the self in modernization discourse, on an individual and community level. Jeebesh commented that just as the Inuit had dozens of words for “snow”, snow being a primary presence in the life of those tribes, societies might narrate smell through particular lexicons. It might be interesting to take the 1990s as the conjuncture and the rail compartment as the site for such analysis. He gave an example from the French cultural theorist Deleuze, who spoke of a conflict in a taxi between the passenger who wished to smoke and the driver who objected to this. The matter went to court, which ruled in favour of the passenger. The ruling centred around the logic of property, the driver claimed that the vehicle is his property but the court stated that having paid the fare, the passenger had in effect rented that property for the duration of the ride. In the 1990s there would have been no case at all, because the discourse of public health, including that of smell, had been constructed as a regulatory apparatus with regard to public space. Prabhu Mohapatra pointed to the interesting case of Ma Amritanandmayi, a renowned contemporary sadhavi from a fisher caste, who blesses her devotess, numbering hundreds of thousands the world over, through hugging each one. Ritika asked how fisherwomen looked at their contributions to the household economy, as they were the wage-earners, and whether this fact gave them leverage with regard to being controlled by their husbands. Iram wanted to know whether the system of policing the bodies of Hindu fisherwomen (as evidenced by their suspicious “sniffing” husbands alert for “Muslim” smells) also operated with regard to the bodies of Muslim women, were these sniffed for “Hindu” smells. Smriti recalled Syed Khaled Jamal's earlier presentation on the workers in fast food chains, and the command that they had to always smile at the customers. Just as the underpaid and underprivileged worker was not seen as an individual but as a mechanical component of his labour, e.g., the fast food worker became fused with a signifier, his mandatory smile, the fisherwomen underwent a similar dehumanization and became fused with the key signifier of their labour, the smell of fish. Such conscious/unconscious objectification further erased and excluded those already in a stigmatized and marginalized position. Ravi Sundaram pointed out that the idea of smell as a marker of change was actually quite an old concept and became sharpened by modernity, but this assertion needed to be more nuanced. The research would become stronger if it included some anthropological exploration of perceptions of the “other” and how smell played a role in constructing the other; and if it mapped the transitions between the changed/changing perceptions. Levin clarified that discrimination on the basis of smell did occur in villages and semi-urban settlements, but the city seemed to be the site of maximum discrimination. It was alleged that in the pre-colonial era a missionary could identify a fisher village from a distance, through its smell. Levin added that as he walked through the fishing villages, his primary index in terms of spatial orientation was not visual but olfactory. With regard to the women's own sense of their bodies, he replied that he did not know, nor were their perspectives recorded in folk songs or the oral tradition, most of which was composed by men. Male fishworkers tended to spend their earnings on themselves, liquor, clothes, etc. Women were the mainstay of the household economically. Since many Muslim localities did not permit Hindus to enter, he had been unable, as a researcher, to access female Muslim subjects. Panel 3/ Visual Cultures / Udita Bhargava and Meghana Singh/, Mass Communication Research Institute, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi; /udita_bhargava at hotmail.com/; _/meghna369 at hotmail.com/_ “Digital Delhi” The study analyzed various formats of the digital medium as these percolate and circulate within urban society. It aims to show how digital technology has entered social spaces, transformed these spaces and their inhabitants. It assesses the agility, mobility and efficiency that digital technology creates for producers, entrepreneurs and practitioners. /Arpita Guha Thakurta/Jadavpur University, Kolkata /redefiningreality at rediffmail.com/ “Mrinal Sen's Calcutta: City as the Site for Regression and Radicalism” This study explores the sociocultural zeitgeist of Calcutta as represented in the films of Mrinal Sen in the 1970s and '80s. It looks at Sen as a political radical and as a chronicler of urban angst, analyzing the aesthetic strategies deployed, and comparing the distraught, dissenting earlier films with the more tranquil, reflective mode of the later phase. /Manoj Kumar/ Delhi University, Delhi /manojlenin at yahoo.co.in/ “/Nabbe ke Dashak mein /Jansatta/* *evam /Navbharat Times/ mein Prakashit Film Sameeksha ka Dastavezikaran evam Vishleshan” (The Documentation and Study of Film Reviews Published in /Jansatta/ and /Navbharat Times/: A Case Study of the 1990s)/ This research documents and traces the cultural perspectives, language and iconography of film reviews in /Jansatta/ and /Navbharat Times, /two leading national daily newspapers, as part of the nascent discourse of media studies taking shape in Hindi in the 1990s. /Aparna Malviya/ Allahabad University, Allahabad /aparnamalviya at yahoo.co.in/ “/Lok Sthanon ka Bhavishya” /(The Future of Public Spaces) This paper examined the socioeconomic usage of particular urban locales in Allahabad. The effort was to map the city as a dynamic zone which accomodated and assimilated community needs. It assessed the psychological impact of new urban cartographies upon those groups dependent upon that contested terrain for their material survival. /Anupam Pachauri /Central Institute of Education, Delhi University “/Paigham Sarkar Bahadur ka: Rajya evam Samaj ka Sarkari Ishteharon dwara Sanrachit EkPortrait”/ (The Ruler's Edict: A Portrait of the State and Society Reconstructed through Government Advertisments) This study was a semiotic analysis of government advertisments/hoardings in particular urban sites. The aim was to explore the aesthetics and politics underlying the state-sponsored choice of particular texts and iconographies, and evaluate the impact of such messaging upon various specifically targeted publics. Udita and Meghna's presentation was in the form of a short film, a compilation of interviews with people about their relationship with new digital technologies. The subjects were from across the socioeconomic spectrum, and had a range of responses to the questions. The research findings indicated that subjects from privileged backgrounds and were professionally trained in the use of this technology seemed to use it to create a discourse of aesthetics through creative projects. “It's not just about dabbling with switches,” says an upper-middle class part-time disc jockey and sound designer. A migrant from Rajasthan who came to the city some years ago and learnt to operate a camera, then opened a video rental business, learnt how to use the new technology on his own, and keeps up with new developments. He employs people from similar backgrounds and feels that the new technology has great emancipatory potential. A lecturer in a mass communication research institute spoke about the amateur/professional divide, and about negotiating the transition from analog to digital technology. Older professionals found this transition different and also have a different perspective: they consider that new technology tends to suppress creativity on some level, is removed from reality and “purity” of sound, and is too machine-intensive. A subject who started out as a janitor and then trained himself to become a cameraman and has achieved professional success also commented on the “symbolic value” of an academic degree. The researchers said they had not expected such diversity of response. The varied opinions problematized the complacent assumptions about the “elitist” nature of technology, and a prevalent anxiety that technology would render things “all too simple”, and subdue creativity. Arpita Guha Thakurta was the discussant for this paper. She asked why the researchers had chosen as subjects only those people for whom technology was a blessing, and not to those who had “lost out” or been displaced by technology. Also, the concept of the “digital other” needed to be fleshed out, as did the examination of the “social spaces” that digital technology had created and transformed. Meghna and Udita responded by saying they were not supporting or criticizing the use of digital technology, but studying its character as a sociocultural and socioeconomic interface. Rakesh commented that the study seemed to be “stuck” between the studio and the camera. The researchers said they recognized this limitation, and that they had intentionally narrowed their field so that it did not become too unwieldy. Dipu remarked that the interviews should have been presented more fully, that their richness was not reflected. This was because of the way the interviews were structured, the researchers could have engaged the speakers in conversation and created a dialogic format, rather than just present direct narration by the subjects. Khaled complimented the researchers on selecting subjects who were self-trained and did not have any link to technology earlier in their lives, but for whom technology had become a central focus as it was their means of livelihood. Ravikant pointed out that while the presentation did create a sense of the kinds of new skills that the subjects picked up through using new technology, it did not focus enough on the way the user/practitioner's self was transformed, as was his/her relationship to society at large. Jeebesh's concern was a larger structural question: the analog movement had needed massive infrastructural support and investment, but with digital technology the costs were lower and dispersed. Today it was possible to enter the digital domain as a user. In this regard, what was the rationale behind creating and endorsing formal infrastructure such as media schools and mass communication institutes? Sabina Gadihoke said that formal academic training ensured that one “did learn a little extra”, but technology could always be used informally, for creative purposes. Using digital technology, so-called “untrained” people were innovating and exhibiting and subverting, continually, but there was still a need for institutes that provided formal grounding and taught media arts/technology as a professional and aesthetic discipline. Ravi Sundaram pointed out that the issue involved more than the breaking of hierarchies. Certain hierarchies and binaries did dissolve with new technology, but others would take their place; new hierarchies would be established that would still invest an academic degree with value. The debate was not about creativity or aesthetics, but about a fundamental change in the discourse of technological innovation in the field of media. Prabhu Mohapatra's concluding remarks focused on the “network”, the key operating concept in any frame of urban research, a particular strand within the larger research question regarding ways of seeing the city. The “network” was a productive entry point into ways of rendering research on the city. The contemporary city had gone through a process of transition from the older traditional binaries between modernity and tradition, which formed the primary categories of analysis. The modern city was a set of networks; but one had to be careful about abandoning the earlier categories altogether. The “network” was not a radical new concept but another window through which to see. Taking up a category involved its fracture and further nuancing of perspective, including perspectives on the older categories. He defined a network as a relationship between several nodes. The nodes could be individuals, communities, clusters of communities, institutions, etc. The network was a dense congregation of relationships; all networks were deeply relational. The hierarchies and parallels within the relationships had to be constantly scrutinized. According to Prabhu, the network was not simply a conduit or channel, but also embodied information within itself; it was not simply a connection but also embodied sets of resources that were accessible only through and within the network. The earlier categories carried within them a notion of stasis and fixity; a network was necessarily mobile, and certain practices had to be created within it to ensure its efficient activation. A network could also be looked at as a practical orientation to the world,. In addition, networks had a significant relationship to time; in effect, networks were “congealed time”, were “deeply temporal entities”. With regard to research methodology, the first fact that should be assimilated is that the urban is an entity of several kinds of contradictions. The city was double-edged; it was segmented as well as unified, and all research on the city has to be expansive as well as rooted. He remarked that historians were necessarily worried and consumed by time, the specificity of the moment, how similar/dissimilar the particular moment in time was to other junctures. History cannot be read or written as if it was a frozen entity. A sense of temporality had to be foregrounded, as did a commitment to the process of social mapping through time. Arpita Guha Thakurta's presentation on the films of Mrinal Sen included clips from his well-known movie /Calcutta. /As discussant following the paper, Shwetal asked why the last sequence of /Calcutta/ was missing, an archival mystery. She also asked about the film as a form of social commentary; its gender perspectives and sensitivity, and whether there was a cinematic equivalent of /ecriture feminin.* */Arpita replied that film as a form could accommodate everything. Sen's films were consciously counter-realist, and adoped Brechtian modes and strategies to “break the attachment that realism demands.” She added that women are not more liberated today, but the forms of exploitation have changed, as compared with some forms seen in the films. Sen's characters are not posited as individuals—they are representatives of certain emotions, events and states. Ravi Vasudevan remarked that he had not seen Sen's films of the '70s “as they are difficult to find”, but it was an interesting exercise to disaggregate the films into their elements and analyze which signifiers are highlighted as motifs. The standard critique of Sen is that he is a “pamphleteer”--how is this role distinct from a mode of public intervention? He is both melodramatic and Brechtian, using ironic compositions and standard syntax together, in his expressive imaginary. This is a distinctive attitude, far more subtle than a pampleteer's approach. Ravi asked if there was a history of debate with regard to the use of montage, editing patterns and structures that alert us to different ways of looking at the city. There was such a thing as too much expressive underwriting, the disembodying of certain conventions. But this was also useful as it made the spectator position himself/herself differently, while acknowledging that the film resorted to typecasting rather than psychological portraiture. Two themes that could be identified in the films were, first, a critique of patriarchal modes of regulation; and second, the question of how public and private spaces were accessed and shared. The hypocrisy of the Bengali middle class was another theme Sen explored with a distinctive cinematic imaginary. Jeebesh remarked that he liked the Mrinal Sen films of the '70s, but not the later Sen films. He added that new film scholarship today paid very little attention to image. The mostly hand-held camera techniques of Sen were a contrast to the flow of images in popular cinema, Sen's shots of disconnect are his means of fitting into the polarities set up of Calcutta as a complex city. Sen manages to create sharp and deeply affective moments, such as the alienated event of “the unknown death”: this has social weight. It implies a social memory and subjectivity that is not dragged into narrative. Cinema should focus on this weight, the excess residue that leaves us a different trace of Calcutta, a quality that is not assimilated. For instance, there is a shot of a person running---a long, exploratory, expansive shot; the images should provoke the spectator to think about how the city is captured in the space and time of that run. Ravi Sundaram supported Jeebesh's insistence that everything not be subordinated to narrative. The cinematic challenge was to show this through form, to resist integrating every complexity and tension into a unity. He pointed out that the Calcutta of that time was the centre of controversial, contested and active politics, expressed in public discourse. Cinema about those times naturally would show this larger scheme. Jeebesh added that the sensorial world of films should register a different order of experience, move outside the boundaries of intellect, should “haunt” the viewer. Close-ups of excesses and violence of any kind created a different sensory experience, technically. Aarti asked if images could be autonomous, and whether they could only be accessed through a particular language, a specific semiology. For instance, the Russian audiences who saw /Mera Naam Joker /would interpret this according to their own cultural narratives and history; but the larger question was whether there was something about the image of the joker that resists being assimilated. Rakesh was the discussant for Manoj Kumar's presentation on film criticism in Hindi. He asked why the researcher had chosen two prominent dailies with good social standing, and disregarded other “good” publications, and also disregarded the tabloids. He acknowledged that the archiving/library system of Hindi media publications was not extensive, but there did exist resources which could be utilized. Anand commented that film critics were also mouthpieces and proponents for particular interests. The B and C-grade film circuits travel to provincial towns and villages, but there is no knowledge of which films are reviewed, and where. There might be some such archive in Mumbai. Lokesh pointed out the film news and interviews appeared in /Punjab Kesri/ on Thursdays; criticism was a main item but the supplements also focused on reviews, plot summary, gossip, etc. Ravikant asked how the researcher saw the relationship between film advertising and criticism. Jeebesh remarked that the research brought out the difference between “cheap” culture and “high”, serious, reflective literature. It was necessary to interrogate the standard, deconstruct the ideological binary between “high” and “low” culture, and remain aware of what is reified and valorized through criticism. It also raised the larger question of the “social construction of taste”, and asks who constructs the idea of the artist, as well as the definition of art. These issues may not seem politically very important in public discourse today, but the social understanding of taste, the nature and place of the author, and the battle with the censor board over the freedom to create and exhibit and circulate “cheap” art---the debate needs to focus on these areas. Ravikant clarified that art cinema and Hindi literature have created a dominant standard of discourse in Hindi, and this exercises a “grip” that does not let us enjoy films for whatever they bring us. Such a standard is the enemy of pleasure. Shwetal added that film publicity and advertising often gives totally wrong information, and that the brand positioning of the publication decides the status of the movie and the politics of review. The errors are not noticed or corrected; instead, they are magnified and replicated, and thus the circuit of non-meaning gets reinforced. Aparna's project, which included visuals, focused on the way public space was used in Allahabad, the various populations and communities who survived on the streets and used the street as their primary living space and also as the primary space in which and through which they eked out a livelihood. She also studied the way people used public gardens. She studied patterns of communication, sociality, the blurring and coalescing of public and private spaces through usage and settlement patterns; she also observed how the organization of space influenced attitudes, behaviour and language. She concluded that different publics need different spaces to be structured according to their needs. For those on the socioeconomic margins, migrants and labourers (who said they had no use for a park/garden, they would rather see space utilized for the construction of public latrines as they did not have even this basic amenity). Levin, the discussant for this paper, commented that the state had tried to set itself up as the custodian of citizens' privacy; and that there was an implied statism in the project. The researcher needed to question the nature of the “public” as an abstraction; “public” was an embodied entity and changed over time; the changes needed to be mapped. In her study, only the middle class seemed to be putting forward legitimate claims to exclusive space; the research needed to be more sensitive to issues of deep social inequality and differential access to resources. Rakesh wished to know what was distinctive about public space in Allahabad, specific to local history. He also asked why the researcher, when speaking of encroachment on public land, had not mentioned the Sangam area, which had been taken over by mahants for their akharas. Aparna responded that she had not wished to enter any debates about the alienation induced by urban life, nor was encroachment the focus of her study. Her intention was to point to the fact that people had no place to live their lives. Ravikant noted that he liked the “moral ambiguity” the paper was grappling with and the manner in which it described how people built their own relationships with the space they occupied. He cited the example of observing a Muslim in the Sangam area, who was too intimidated by Hindu presence to bring himself to take a bath at a mahant-dominated ghat; he moved off to a more general, more crowded and by implication a more secular ghat. Jeebesh suggested that it might be productive for the researcher to conceptually separate “place” and “space”---there was a tension between the idea of a lived space, which had an ambiguous connection with a more general notion of place. The paper needed to push this ambiguity, work out how to deal with the specificities of specific zones. Dipu said he was not sure why the paper seemed to foreground the notion of an unmarked public space; the fact was that even public spaces had markers. At different times of the day, different people used the same space for different purposes, and thus radically altered its character. His impression of Allahabad, after an earlier visit, was of it being spacious and empty; but the paper claimed it was densely textured and inhabited, teeming with life; this strand of the narrative could be developed. Smriti asked if there was something disturbing about the image of the vegetable sellers outside a historic library in Allahabad, and asked whether such activity would have been permitted outside the Rashtrapati Bhavan, for instance. A different moral weight was being assigned to different activities; the vegetables were life-sustaining in every way, for vendors and customers, yet given less respect than books few people read and a building no one, including the state, cared to maintain. Osama remarked that the paper needed to establish some periodicity, without which the details and descriptions of people's lives remained snapshots. Aparna acknowledged that she had not been able to satisfactorily make a distinction between “space” and “place”; and that the library had great historical significance as it had been a central site in the freedom struggle, like the park where Chandrashekhar Azad was shot and killed. The final presentation, by Anupam Pachauri, focused on government hoardings she mapped along the Ring Road in Delhi. She assessed the city as a political and sociological entity within which various publics were constituted by state discourse and where identities were contested. She cited the example of Jahangirpuri where a large number of Gujaratis live; the state had made provisions for the celebration of Janamashtami on a large scale, thus entering the realm of popular culture and celebration. In such a case, what belonged to the state and what belonged to the community? On one hand, the state was enacting the role of the “liberal parent” participating in the “moral development” of those in its charge, through sending out gentle messages to its citizens: “Don't litter”, “Don't urinate here”, “Speed Thrills But Kills”, etc. There was no threat of punitive action if the injunction was violated. Similarly, it urged citizens not to get trapped in various addictions, by using the obvious logic that children needed their parents. It was not clear who was being targeted in these advertisments. Some had clear intent: warnings against HIV/AIDS infection; women being urged to go for breast cancer check-ups; signage providing information about gastroenteritis, cholera and diarrhoea. Perhaps the state was also issuing invitations to citizens to be part of a collective sharing/responsibility, as when during Diwali, it ran successful anti-firework campaigns with children being the prime actors. Ravikant opened the discussion following the presentation with the comment that the research had confined itself to the semiotics of state discourse; private/non-state discourse should also be included in the analysis. There was a convergence of these discourses. He asked why “multinational” advertisments were so successful, being professionally produced, in comparison to “feeble” government advertisments; the copywriters had been defeated, and there was no answer to the question of why the government advertisments were not taken seriously or simply ignored. Also, there were three levels of state discourse to be negotiated, including intra-level discourse: the ruling party, the Delhi state government, and the national government. How were these relationships negotiated semiotically? He urged the researcher to expand her project and look at other signs and texts, and the advertisments that appeared on the radio, television channels, and in print. Dipu suggested that the research critically analyze the thinking behind the signage: why is so much spent on hoardings in the areas of health and education. Is it to educate/raise consciousness about important issues, survival issues? Who is being addressed? What about signs that police the public? How does one connect this to the economics of signage, the colossal amounts advertising agencies earn from “multinational” clients, as compared to what they are paid by the government? Rakesh stated that the advertisments were gender-biased; he also pointed out the paradox that it was a legal offence for the public to write on walls, but the state had invested itself with full rights to issue commands with authority, wherever it pleased. There was also a change in the logic used; for instance, the standard injunction to parents to not get minors married had changed to assertions of autonomy, with the young people of legal age stating in the sign that they were ready now to get married. Smriti commented that the iconography of the government signage was unconvincing, distorted and simplistic, hence did not attract the eye. The signage with regard to AIDS in particular was gothic and designed to arouse anxiety. She gave the example of the government jingle for vasectomy that was regularly broadcast on the radio but never present as a public sign, perhaps because this subject was not considered appropriate, or perhaps it was too difficult to visualize an acceptable signifier. Sadan suggested that the researcher document her sources, formal and informal, her assistants and her interlocutors, more systematically. The final hour of the workshop was an interactive feedback session. Ravi Sundaram remarked that the workshop this year had been planned keeping in mind that the stipendiaries needed backup from Sarai for their research projects. Hence the condition that students send in their papers in order for some preliminary feedback and dialogue, before the research entered its later stages. A lot of students worked on their own, without institutional support. Sarai was planning to include a conceptual essay on its website, with links on the available resources. Solly added that he would be hosting a proper urban studies list as well. Dipu asked the stipendiaries if, in their experience, there was a “disconnect” between the kind of research Sarai expects and what was expected by the academic institutions/universities in general. Shwetal remarked that it was “ingrained” in students to present the theoretical aspects of their work, not the practitioner focus. Ravi replied that formal academic training today doesn't encourage original practice. The preliminary workshop next year would include a session on narrative strategies and also, most crucially, on aspects and techniques of presentation, so that the students would not overrun the time allotted to them, which had happened repeatedly during the sessions. Ravikant recalled a comment by Khaled earlier in the day, that research was “fun”, and asked if other researchers agreed. Jerry said that research was fun experientially, and it was actually a “beautiful” sense of freedom in knowing that the research did not have to conform to the academic pattern. Dipu suggested that if all the papers were circulated in advance, there would be more opportunity for them to speak to each other. Anupam asked if it was possible to put the students on a separate list, like the Reader List, so that they could share findings and also express anxieties about fieldwork, etc. Shwetal countered this by saying she was relieved when she learnt that she did not have to give web updates regarding her work. Ravi Sundaram clarified that the list is not about reporting to Sarai, it is about discussing issues with one's peers, and a way to bring about new collaborations. Most suggestions and useful entry points come from this source. Sarai is “interested in ideas, but not in being reported to.” Sadan, as organizer of the workshop and coordinator of the stipendship programme, also said that Sarai was not a funding agency, but was interested in building intellectual resources and rendering these in the public domain. He also inquired whether the CD reader that had been given to the stipendiaries as a resource/reference at the preliminary workshop, had been used, and to what extent; and also posed the general question as to whether the practice-based research emphasized by Sarai was “helping” the students academically, or whether it was a “hindrance”. Jerry said that “the best part” was that Sarai allowed him to do what he wanted to do, there was no pressure of the typical academic kind. Anupam remarked that she understood her academic practice better, through her stipendiary research; it allowed her to see what she had been unable to earlier see. Shwetal said that she felt she might be able to develop her research paper into a dissertation, in the future, as it had opened up a rande of new interests and interdisciplinary possibilities. From penguinhead at linux-delhi.org Fri Sep 24 15:25:23 2004 From: penguinhead at linux-delhi.org (Pankaj Kaushal) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 15:25:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail In-Reply-To: <749915BE-0DA0-11D9-94EC-000A95A05D12@crit.org.in> References: <20040919043514.75114.qmail@web41503.mail.yahoo.com> <20040923144703.GI8315@r4k.net> <749915BE-0DA0-11D9-94EC-000A95A05D12@crit.org.in> Message-ID: <4153EF0B.2070404@linux-delhi.org> Shekhar Krishnan wrote: > Dear All: > I think my message, being a bit of a rant, was misleading. I am not > objecting to the many virtues of webmail vs POP3 for different people > who are mobile, checking from cafes, and so on. What annoys the hell out > of me is commercialised, free mail services like GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, > and Rediffmail, and the way in which many otherwise straight-talking > people suddenly have become brand ambassadors for these companies, or I resent your uncouth advice on dealing away with Webmail. To the average intellects rampant here, the "gospel of ignorance" seems to be the sage advice, but has anyone noticed that it is a rhetorical advice and never works? > security of any of these depends on your computing environment. Nor am I > objecting to the open or closed, free or proprietary nature of the > browser or mail client anyone uses to check mail. Both the browser and > client I use, as well as the operating system I prefer, are semi-free, What is semi-free? Apple is proprietary. full stop. No one is scrutinizing anyone for their OS/mailer/browser preference, Its just that people who talk about free speech and freedom when they themselves are captives under the clutches of proprietary software 'annoy the hell out me.' > mostly proprietary products, and it will be years before I fully switch > to a FLOSS desktop and application suite, if ever. I suspect that this > is the same for many of us who keep company with the movement, and make > money from providing free and open source solutions. I don't like being > ideological about FLOSS. My point was a rather narrow one about > commercial webmail being turned into a lifestyle emblem, though my point > about free beer replacing free speech points to a broader set of issues. what really bakes my noodle is that you have no problem (not that you should) if I were using Outlook Express on windows XP to send mail from a @timbutoo.univ.edu address, but, it 'annoys the hell out of you' if I use a freely available, secure and convenient Webmail service. I don't like being ideological about corporations but, whether you like it or not free software is an ideology and to be a freeloader is nothing to be proud of. we are getting way too off topic here so i will leave it to that. > What is at stake in the GMail Ideology is the way in which we put trust > in distant corporations rather than local service providers, in free > beer rather than free speech. Is it because we often have to pay money > and give time to support the latter? I personally, will not recommend using gmail to anyone, not because of any of the reasons you have cited but because, their privacy policy sucks and yahoo or hotmail are not any better. But getting an account from your local vendor is not any better either, If the cops knock at his door he will also let them into your POP/IMAP account and actually it will be more easy for them - than the yahoo account, or for that matter for a script kiddie to crack the servers of a local provider. I just can't even begin on the subject of how insecure the local providers you are blaring about really are. So if it is all about privacy then I dont see how the local vendors are any better than yahoo, Privacy is a very soft subject, because its based on trust not skill, unlike security which you can judge or get approved by an expert. So how is it so easy for you to trust Apple or your local provider than say, google, yahoo or microsoft. It is easier for people to trust an abstract corporation than a local vendor, for example, people might feel more safe storing pronography on their gmail account, then say on a server which is maintained by someone that they personally know. Alas, it is never going to work, because, like corruption or thievery or mistrust, it takes a single cell to thwart the whole system, where society necessarily became law-laden, lock-decorated, and mistrustful, and that is the nature of things as it stands. Free Software movement is in opposition to all this. It is about time that propogators of free speech and freedom took a look at where they stand in terms of free software and add it to their artillery to fight this crusade. I'll find a day to massacre them all, And raze their faction and their family... William Shakespeare, in Titus Andronicus Cheers! Pankaj -- ( 2b || !2b) From vivek at sarai.net Fri Sep 24 16:48:04 2004 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 16:48:04 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail In-Reply-To: <4153EF0B.2070404@linux-delhi.org> References: <20040919043514.75114.qmail@web41503.mail.yahoo.com> <20040923144703.GI8315@r4k.net> <749915BE-0DA0-11D9-94EC-000A95A05D12@crit.org.in> <4153EF0B.2070404@linux-delhi.org> Message-ID: <4154026C.5000001@sarai.net> This is a fascinating discussion, which has me tied me up in knots precisely because I can't see that there is a clear-cut position to take, and because many different dilemmas are entangled here. So I have some contradictory questions. At the moment, I tend to agree with Shekhar that getting Gmail, apart from its impressive features (which all other clients will soon have some version of) seems to be primarily a fashionista issue. For instance, why are open source advocates also so gung ho about Gmail (as opposed, say, to other web-based mail programs), when in fact, as far as I know, Google is a rather secretive corporation when it comes to code, and the whole idea of Gmail is thus far about exclusivity and "invitations"? The answer can only be Google's reputation as a "cool" company. The privacy issue is an interesting one. At the moment, I am still intrigued by Google's own statement of privacy, and the link it provides to an institution that studies US federal surveilance: all internet providers, (the latter site, whose name I can't remember, argues) have the ability to monitor and read their clients emails. In this context, the internet service provider needs to take up the social responsibility of acting as an intermediary between individuals and governments on *behalf* of the individual-- ie. *resisting* govermental attempts to requisition their archives to the full extent of the law. In an indirect way then, Google appears to be supporting this position, but I can't say for sure. If it does actively start implementing that policy, then it could be good news for privacy everywhere. This brings us to the idea of service providers. The idea of pitting "distant corporations" against your loving local email provider seems to harbour a nostalgia for the "old days" when neighbours helped each other out and the postman smiled and waved on his way, etc. (The opening sequence of "Blue Velvet", basically.) I personally don't think that local or small-scale capital is necessarily any less oppressive than distant capital-- it all depends-- what are the actual internet service providers like, and whose interests do they serve? The idea of vsnl is appealing because it's state-run, and I'm instinctively all for state-run companies, but it could mean something very different in the context of a Hindutva goverment. So-- apart from nostalgia, what really is the argument for going to your local server for mail as opposed to some more stable, likely-efficient configuration like gmail? As an aside, Shekhar, you say: "I am not objecting to the many virtues of webmail vs POP3 for different people who are mobile, checking from cafes, and so on." But in fact, in your first mail, you did try to establish the complete superiority of POP3! That mail began as follows: "The excitement around GMail baffles me, particularly since any form of web mail, no matter how sexy its feature set, cannot compare to a POP3 mailbox used with your favourite mail client (Eudora, Mozilla, OSX Mail, Outlook)." Is there a nuance I'm missing? If I were using gmail now, I could easily compare all the different mails together, but since I'm not, it's hard to say. Never mind that-- the most interesting thing in Shekhar's initial mail has not been developed, because we're getting too caught up in the practicality and contingency of looking at the present. SK writes: "Why can't we start cooperative mailbox movements, or hosting societies, which will get unique domains registered for people and give them out for free or at a nominal fee, considering the neglible costs of hosting mailboxes?" Well, why can't we? What would the feasibility of such a "collaborative mailbox movement" be, what would work against it, what kinds of challenges would it face? I would want to see some hard imagination on that subject from people who are capable of such imagining. Because I don't agree with Pankaj below that nothing will ever change because human nature is essentially evil, life is a bitch, etc. In the face of such a possible project, discussions about Gmail or not Gmail, POP or WEB all seem fairly trivial to me. And it seems to me that such a project would be very much within the ambit of the FLOSS movement, if it were actually done and made doable. Cheers, Vivek. Pankaj Kaushal wrote: > Shekhar Krishnan wrote: > >> Dear All: >> I think my message, being a bit of a rant, was misleading. I am not >> objecting to the many virtues of webmail vs POP3 for different people >> who are mobile, checking from cafes, and so on. What annoys the hell >> out of me is commercialised, free mail services like GMail, Yahoo, >> Hotmail, and Rediffmail, and the way in which many otherwise >> straight-talking people suddenly have become brand ambassadors for >> these companies, or > > > I resent your uncouth advice on dealing away with Webmail. To the > average intellects rampant here, the "gospel of ignorance" seems to be > the sage advice, but has anyone noticed that it is a rhetorical advice > and never works? > >> security of any of these depends on your computing environment. Nor >> am I objecting to the open or closed, free or proprietary nature of >> the browser or mail client anyone uses to check mail. Both the >> browser and client I use, as well as the operating system I prefer, >> are semi-free, > > > What is semi-free? Apple is proprietary. full stop. No one is > scrutinizing anyone for their OS/mailer/browser preference, Its just > that people who talk about free speech and freedom when they themselves > are captives under the clutches of proprietary software 'annoy the hell > out me.' > >> mostly proprietary products, and it will be years before I fully >> switch to a FLOSS desktop and application suite, if ever. I suspect >> that this is the same for many of us who keep company with the >> movement, and make money from providing free and open source >> solutions. I don't like being ideological about FLOSS. My point was a >> rather narrow one about commercial webmail being turned into a >> lifestyle emblem, though my point about free beer replacing free >> speech points to a broader set of issues. > > > what really bakes my noodle is that you have no problem (not that you > should) if I were using Outlook Express on windows XP to send mail from > a @timbutoo.univ.edu address, but, it 'annoys the hell out of you' if I > use a freely available, secure and convenient Webmail service. > > I don't like being ideological about corporations but, whether you like > it or not free software is an ideology and to be a freeloader is nothing > to be proud of. we are getting way too off topic here so i will leave it > to that. > >> What is at stake in the GMail Ideology is the way in which we put >> trust in distant corporations rather than local service providers, in >> free beer rather than free speech. Is it because we often have to pay >> money and give time to support the latter? > > > I personally, will not recommend using gmail to anyone, not because of > any of the reasons you have cited but because, their privacy policy > sucks and yahoo or hotmail are not any better. > > But getting an account from your local vendor is not any better either, > If the cops knock at his door he will also let them into your POP/IMAP > account and actually it will be more easy for them - than the yahoo > account, or for that matter for a script kiddie to crack the servers of > a local provider. I just can't even begin on the subject of how insecure > the local providers you are blaring about really are. > > So if it is all about privacy then I dont see how the local vendors are > any better than yahoo, Privacy is a very soft subject, because its based > on trust not skill, unlike security which you can judge or get approved > by an expert. So how is it so easy for you to trust Apple or your local > provider than say, google, yahoo or microsoft. > > It is easier for people to trust an abstract corporation than a local > vendor, for example, people might feel more safe storing pronography > on their gmail account, then say on a server which is maintained by > someone that they personally know. > > Alas, it is never going to work, because, like corruption or thievery > or mistrust, it takes a single cell to thwart the whole system, where > society necessarily became law-laden, lock-decorated, and mistrustful, > and that is the nature of things as it stands. > > Free Software movement is in opposition to all this. It is about time > that propogators of free speech and freedom took a look at where they > stand in terms of free software and add it to their artillery to fight > this crusade. > > I'll find a day to massacre them all, > And raze their faction and their family... > William Shakespeare, in Titus Andronicus > > Cheers! > Pankaj > -- > ( 2b || !2b) > _________________________________________ > 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: -- Vivek Narayanan The Sarai Programme Centre for the Study of Developing Societies From definetime at rediffmail.com Mon Sep 20 22:04:39 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 20 Sep 2004 16:34:39 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) Between the lines Message-ID: <20040920163439.1075.qmail@webmail32.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040920/c3515522/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Between the lines BBC political editor Andrew Marr has spent a lifetime reading newspapers. In an extract from his new book, he gives some tips on how to sort the facts from the froth Monday September 20, 2004 The Guardian Know what you're buying Reporting is now so contaminated by bias and campaigning, and general mischief, that no reader can hope to get a picture of what is happening without first knowing who owns the paper, and who it is being published for. The Mirror defines its politics as the opposite of the Sun's, which in turn is defined by the geopolitics of Rupert Murdoch's News International - hostile to European federalism and the euro and so forth. If it is ferociously against Tony Blair, this is probably because Number 10 has been passing good stories to the Sun. Its support for Gordon Brown was, similarly, driven by the need to find a rival when Blair courted Murdoch. It felt jilted. You need to know these things. You need to aim off. Follow the names If you find a reporter who seems to know the score, particularly in an area you know about, cherish him or her. In the trade we generally know who is good. If you are interested in social services and the welfare state, Nicholas Timmins, currently writing for the Financial Times, is essential. If you are interested in think-tank reports and the cerebral end of Whitehall then Peter Riddell of the Times is about the only reporter worth bothering with. But if you want investigative journalism that covers Whitehall, never miss David Hencke and Richard Norton-Taylor, both of the Guardian. Books? Robert McCrum of the Observer writes a weekly column that almost everyone in the publishing world will read. The funniest restaurant reviewer in London? Certainly, the Spectator's Deborah Ross. Best Northern Ireland correspondent? David McKittrick in the Indy. In a crowded market, it is becoming harder to single out individuals since most fields, from sports reporting to the City or food writing, have two or three top acts. And everyone has their own favourites. But the point is, watch the bylines. If you find a friendly style, someone you grow to trust, treasure the name and follow it. My experience as an editor was that many readers were surprisingly attuned to the work of individual writers they knew nothing personally about. Bylines are often the only signal that gold, rather than dross, lies below. Register bias Even when you read the same paper every day, be aware that reporters are now less embarrassed to let the bias show. This is rarely direct party-political bias, but you may find that a columnist is favourably inclined towards one politician - say, that Bruce Anderson of the Independent is generally in favour of the Tory leader of the day, whoever he or she may be; and that Donald Macintyre, of the same paper, scrupulously fair, is generally more sympathetic to Peter Mandelson than most of his colleagues; and that Paul Routledge has a powerful partiality for Gordon Brown. This is all completely legitimate, but worth remembering; it may also point to the source of the story. That matters too: no political journalist in the early 2000s would read a story by the Times's Tom Baldwin without wondering whether he'd been speaking to Alastair Campbell. Baldwin has many sources, but Campbell, in the days of his glory, was a key one, giving that reporter's reporting added interest for the Westminster villagers. Again, worth knowing. Read the second paragraph; and look for quote marks Surprisingly often, the key fact is not in the first paragraph, which is general and designed to grab attention. Look for the hard fact in the next paragraph. If it seems soft and contentless, there is probably very little in the story. Similarly, always look for direct quotation. If a reporter has actually done the work, and talked to people who know things, the evidence will usually be there. Who are the sources? Are they speaking themselves? Are they named? Generic descriptions, such as "senior backbencher" or "one industry analyst" (my mate on the other side of the desk) or "observers" (nobody at all) should be treated sceptically. They can be figments of the reporter's prejudices or guesses, rather than real people. If you keep coming across well-written anonymous quotes, be highly suspicious: these are probably crumbling bricks without the straws of supporting fact. If the headline asks a question, try answering "no" Is this the true face of Britain's young? (Sensible reader: No.) Have we found the cure for Aids? (No; or you wouldn't have put the question mark in.) Does this map provide the key for peace? (Probably not.) A headline with a question mark at the end means, in the vast majority of cases, that the story is tendentious or oversold. It is often a scare story, or an attempt to elevate some run-of-the-mill piece of reporting into a national controversy and, preferably, a national panic. To a busy journalist hunting for real information a question mark means "don't bother reading this bit". And watch out for quotation marks in headlines, too. If you read "Marr 'stole' book idea" then the story says nothing of the kind. If quotation marks are signs of real reporting in the body of a story, in the headline they are often a sign of failed reporting. That story may say someone else thinks Marr has stolen the idea for a book; but if the newspaper was reporting that this was really so, those giveaway squiggles wouldn't be there. As with question marks, headline quotation marks are mostly a warning sign, meaning "tendentious, overblown story follows ... " They certainly save my time in the morning. Read small stories and attend to page two Just because something is reported in a single paragraph does not mean it is insignificant. Busy subeditors, with their own blind spots and unexamined prejudices, and with limited space, often cut the most interesting or significant piece of news down to a few lines. And for reasons explained above, page two is often one of the richest sources of real, hard news. Here are the painstakingly researched articles and important tales suddenly stripped off the front page by a night editor in the small hours of the morning to make way for something "brighter" that may sell from the newsagent's counter. Suspect 'research' Hundreds of dodgy academic departments put out bogus or trivial pieces of research purely designed to impress busy newspaper people and win themselves some cheap publicity which can in turn be used in their next funding applications. If something is a survey, see if the paper reports how many people were surveyed, and when. If the behaviour of rats, or flies, has been extrapolated to warn about human behaviour, check whether the story gives any indication of how many rats, and how much caffeine they were injected with; and then pause for a reality check. If someone is described as an expert, look to see who they work for - and ask, would a real world expert be doing that? Also ask whether they are a doctor, or professor, or simply, "researcher, Jeff Mutt ... " Check the calendar Not simply for April Fool's, but for the predictable round of hardy annuals that bulk up thin news lists. Anniversaries; stories about the wettest/ driest/ longest/ wannest spring/ summer/ autumn; the ritual "row between judges" stories designed to whip up interest before annual book awards, and the equally synthetic "public disgust" stories about art shows. Every year there is a slew of tooth-sucking stories about the Royal Academy summer exhibition being a bit disappointing; about the autumn TV schedules being dominated by bought-in US mini-series or reality TV shows; about the disgusting and inane finalists for the Turner prize. You have read this stuff before; you will read it again next year. On a busy day, flick on. Suspect financial superlatives Even if the underlying rate of inflation is modest, then in the ordinary way of things, prices for many limited goods - Pre-Raphaelite paintings, or seaside huts, or football shirts, are going to be "the highest ever". For the same reason it is completely to be expected that teachers will get "their highest ever pay deals", however excited the minister sounds about this; and that non-executive directors' earnings will be "the highest recorded", however outraged the minister sounds about that. What is interesting is how these raw increases relate to inflation, and therefore to other prices and to each other. Are Van Gogh prices increasing faster than Picasso prices? Are the superstore bosses being paid more than before, relative to their staff? An informative story, as against a merely sensationalist one, will tell you that. Remember that news is cruel Reading the awful things that people apparently say about each other, or newspapers say about them, can be depressing. Is life really so writhing with distaste, failure and loathing? No - only in the newspapers. Acts of kindness, generosity, forgiveness and mere friendliness are hardly ever news; which is why there is a class of readers who turn their backs on newspapers and graze in the sunnier, gentler places of celebrity and women's magazines; or who obsessively trawl favourite internet sites and trusted periodicals to find news sources they feel they can trust, as they cannot trust the press. Finally, believe nothing you read about newspaper sales - nothing Newspaper sales have been falling in Britain for a long time, and steadily. Yet every newspaper manages to tell a heartwarming story about how successful its sales are, almost every month. Work it out for yourself. · My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism by Andrew Marr is published by Macmillan at £20. To order a copy for £18.40 with free UK p&p, call the Guardian Book Service on 0870 836 0875. From definetime at rediffmail.com Tue Sep 21 00:20:25 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 20 Sep 2004 18:50:25 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] F-9/11... Message-ID: <20040920185025.21779.qmail@webmail18.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040920/84e26fa3/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Subasri's comments on Fahrenheit 9/11 echo my own thoughts on the film when I first saw it a month ago. I think most of us expect a 'certain' kind of film to win the Palme d'Or. Even compared to Moore's previous effort Bowling for Columbine, this one is a poorer film. Innumerable academics have done a superior job articulating the issues at the heart of Fahrenheit 9/11. Yet what Moore does with his films and books is that he takes these issues to that vast American audience indifferent to an academic tone of argument. An audience 'protected' from dissenting information within a 'free' society structure. Much is made of the stoic resolve of the Vietnamese not holding a grudge against the American public even after the butchering of 1.5 million people. Chomsky has often said that on the basis of their actions every post WWII American President can be tried for war crimes. Chomsky has maintained his rant for close to five decades now, yet how many outside the academic world are familiar with his writings. This 'vegetable' mass of America which acts as a fig leaf for the US authorities needs to be reached. Michael Moore reaches them in a language they understand, from a point of view they are likely to consider. The 'Idiot' is popular not because of his intellectual chops. Unsettling him necessitates a 'folksy' discourse which academics shun like cancer. Fact that Disney won't distribute it says a lot about how much Fahrenheit 9/11 bothers a section of the American establishment. Stupid White Men was on NYT's bestseller list for months but never reviewed. An 'improper' political documentary breaking US box office records is a huge phenomenon - with potential indirect benefits for the rest of the world. regards, Sanjay PS : I think this article from the Guardian articulates these matters much better ... The beginning of history Fahrenheit 9/11 has touched millions of viewers across the world. But could it actually change the course of civilisation? John Berger Tuesday August 24, 2004 The Guardian Fahrenheit 9/11 is astounding. Not so much as a film - although it is cunning and moving - but as an event. Most commentators try to dismiss the event and disparage the film. We will see why later. The artists on the Cannes film festival jury apparently voted unanimously to award Michael Moore's film the Palme d'Or. Since then it has touched many millions across the world. In the US, its box-office takings for the first six weeks amounted to more than $100m, which is, astoundingly, about half of what Harry Potter made during a comparable period. Only the so-called opinion-makers in the media appear to have been put out by it. The film, considered as a political act, may be a historical landmark. Yet to have a sense of this, a certain perspective for the future is required. Living only close-up to the latest news, as most opinion-makers do, reduces one's perspectives. The film is trying to make a small contribution towards the changing of world history. It is a work inspired by hope. What makes it an event is the fact that it is an effective and independent intervention into immediate world politics. Today it is rare for an artist to succeed in making such an intervention, and in interrupting the prepared, prevaricating statements of politicians. Its immediate aim is to make it less likely that President Bush will be re-elected next November. To denigrate this as propaganda is either naive or perverse, forgetting (deliberately?) what the last century taught us. Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast. Propaganda invariably serves the long-term interests of some elite. This single maverick movie is often reflectively slow and is not afraid of silence. It appeals to people to think for themselves and make connections. And it identifies with, and pleads for, those who are normally unlistened to. Making a strong case is not the same thing as saturating with propaganda. Fox TV does the latter; Michael Moore the former. Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events. It's a tricky question because two very different types of power are involved. Many theories of aesthetics and ethics revolve round this question. For those living under political tyrannies, art has frequently been a form of hidden resistance, and tyrants habitually look for ways to control art. All this, however, is in general terms and over a large terrain. Fahrenheit 9/11 is something different. It has succeeded in intervening in a political programme on the programme's own ground. For this to happen a convergence of factors were needed. The Cannes award and the misjudged attempt to prevent the film being distributed played a significant part in creating the event. To point this out in no way implies that the film as such doesn't deserve the attention it is receiving. It's simply to remind ourselves that within the realm of the mass media, a breakthrough (a smashing down of the daily wall of lies and half-truths) is bound to be rare. And it is this rarity which has made the film exemplary. It is setting an example to millions - as if they'd been waiting for it. The film proposes that the White House and Pentagon were taken over in the first year of the millennium by a gang of thugs so that US power should henceforth serve the global interests of the corporations: a stark scenario which is closer to the truth than most nuanced editorials. Yet more important than the scenario is the way the movie speaks out. It demonstrates that - despite all the manipulative power of communications experts, lying presidential speeches and vapid press conferences - a single independent voice, pointing out certain home truths which countless Americans are already discovering for themselves, can break through the conspiracy of silence, the atmosphere of fear and the solitude of feeling politically impotent. It's a movie that speaks of obstinate faraway desires in a period of disillusion. A movie that tells jokes while the band plays the apocalypse. A movie in which millions of Americans recognise themselves and the precise ways in which they are being cheated. A movie about surprises, mostly bad but some good, being discussed together. Fahrenheit 9/11 reminds the spectator that when courage is shared one can fight against the odds. In more than a thousand cinemas across the country, Michael Moore becomes with this film a people's tribune. And what do we see? Bush is visibly a political cretin, as ignorant of the world as he is indifferent to it; while the tribune, informed by popular experience, acquires political credibility, not as a politician himself, but as the voice of the anger of a multitude and its will to resist. There is something else which is astounding. The aim of Fahrenheit 9/11 is to stop Bush fixing the next election as he fixed the last. Its focus is on the totally unjustified war in Iraq. Yet its conclusion is larger than either of these issues. It declares that a political economy which creates colossally increasing wealth surrounded by disastrously increasing poverty, needs - in order to survive - a continual war with some invented foreign enemy to maintain its own internal order and security. It requires ceaseless war. Thus, 15 years after the fall of communism, a decade after the declared end of history, one of the main theses of Marx's interpretation of history again becomes a debating point and a possible explanation of the catastrophes being lived. It is always the poor who make the most sacrifices, Fahrenheit 9/11 announces quietly during its last minutes. For how much longer? There is no future for any civilisation anywhere in the world today which ignores this question. And this is why the film was made and became what it became. It's a film that deeply wants America to survive. · John Berger is a novelist and critic On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 Subasri Krishnan wrote : >Hi, > >In all my years that i have been coming to Sarai (however sporadic!), >I have never seen the kind of crowd that i saw yesterday to watch a >film (or anything for that matter). Few random, not really >well-thought out thoughts... > >I am not going get into the number of things the film does not address >or the fact that it fails to make linkages between a complex set of >realities. >To say that its a simplistic film meant for an American audience is I >think a fair assessment of the film, yet there are a few glaring >ommissions that one can't help but notice. The crux of the film is the >War against Iraq that the Bush regime started. What Moore fails to >address is the fact that the American administration had already been >waging a war against Iraq for over a decade through sanctions. >Thousands of Iraqis had already been dying, and this when a Democrat >was the President! You don't need to go blow someone's head off to >kill someone...'Operation Destroy Iraq' was set in motion much before >'the idiot' (as we all love to call him) decided to bomb the >country...but there is no admission of that even once in the film. The >other thing that bothered me about the film was the way it ended - the >glorification of the 'men who give up their lives for us' (the >Americans). I mean how different is it from a Speilberg film? You know >this belief system that individuals are doing what they have to do - >its their job and they are doing it courageously under the given >circumstances. And as Robert Jensen rightly points out in his article >there is no representation of any non-white people who are part of >peaceful resistance in the US. After watching the film i was left with >the same feeling i had after i read his much touted book (Stupid White >Men) - that after a point, Moore's gimmicks and rationale (if one can >call it that) borders on the ridiculous! > >I have been talking about the film with my friends since yesterday and >i am constantly told that its a 'campaign film', and that it should be >seen in that frame of reference...and that the point of the film is to >get The Idiot out of power. But seriously I don't see what difference >it's going to make. I am sure most of you have thought about this - >but really how is Kerry going to be any different? And hence, i can't >engage with it just as a 'campaign film' and ignore what I think are >glaring blunders (i use that word for the lack of a better one). Sure >I want The Idiot to never come back to power, and maybe this film >might play a part in making sure that happens. But then what??? That >is a question that Moore never bothers to address! > >cheers >subasri >PS:Christopher Hitchens ('journalist-historian', former Trotskyite, >current poster boy for the neo-conservatives and one of the champions >of the War in Iraq) has written a review of the film. The review is >virulent at the best of times and I recognize that Hitchens has his >own agenda in trashing the film...but it might be worth a read: >http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/ > >PPS: Having said what a lot of people have already >said/written/thought about, i loved watching the film. It was >thoroughly entertaining. Moore should think about directing a feature >film in Hollywood someday!!! >_________________________________________ >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 definetime at rediffmail.com Tue Sep 21 23:26:31 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 21 Sep 2004 17:56:31 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] The spoils of another war Message-ID: <20040921175631.20345.qmail@webmail18.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040921/f5adbf90/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   The spoils of another war Five years after Nato's attack on Yugoslavia, its administration in Kosovo is pushing through mass privatisation Neil Clark Tuesday September 21, 2004 The Guardian 'Wars, conflict - it's all business," sighs Monsieur Verdoux in Charlie Chaplin's 1947 film of the same name. Many will not need to be convinced of the link between US corporations now busily helping themselves to Iraqi state assets and the military machine that prised Iraq open for global business. But what is less widely known is that a similar process is already well under way in a part of the world where B52s were not so long ago dropping bombs in another "liberation" mission. The trigger for the US-led bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was, according to the standard western version of history, the failure of the Serbian delegation to sign up to the Rambouillet peace agreement. But that holds little more water than the tale that has Iraq responsible for last year's invasion by not cooperating with weapons inspectors. The secret annexe B of the Rambouillet accord - which provided for the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia - was, as the Foreign Office minister Lord Gilbert later conceded to the defence select committee, deliberately inserted to provoke rejection by Belgrade. But equally revealing about the west's wider motives is chapter four, which dealt exclusively with the Kosovan economy. Article I (1) called for a "free-market economy", and article II (1) for privatisation of all government-owned assets. At the time, the rump Yugoslavia - then not a member of the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO or European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - was the last economy in central-southern Europe to be uncolonised by western capital. "Socially owned enterprises", the form of worker self-management pioneered under Tito, still predominated. Yugoslavia had publicly owned petroleum, mining, car and tobacco industries, and 75% of industry was state or socially owned. In 1997, a privatisation law had stipulated that in sell-offs, at least 60% of shares had to be allocated to a company's workers. The high priests of neo-liberalism were not happy. At the Davos summit early in 1999, Tony Blair berated Belgrade, not for its handling of Kosovo, but for its failure to embark on a programme of "economic reform" - new-world-order speak for selling state assets and running the economy in the interests of multinationals. In the 1999 Nato bombing campaign, it was state-owned companies - rather than military sites - that were specifically targeted by the world's richest nations. Nato only destroyed 14 tanks, but 372 industrial facilities were hit - including the Zastava car plant at Kragujevac, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Not one foreign or privately owned factory was bombed. After the removal of Slobodan Milosevic, the west got the "fast-track" reforming government in Belgrade it had long desired. One of the first steps of the new administration was to repeal the 1997 privatisation law and allow 70% of a company to be sold to foreign investors - with just 15% reserved for workers. The government then signed up to the World Bank's programmes - effectively ending the country's financial independence. Meanwhile, as the New York Times had crowed, "a war's glittering prize" awaited the conquerors. Kosovo has the second largest coal reserves in Europe, and enormous deposits of lignite, lead, zinc, gold, silver and petroleum. The jewel is the enormous Trepca mine complex, whose 1997 value was estimated at $5bn. In an extraordinary smash and grab raid soon after the war, the complex was seized from its workers and managers by more than 2,900 Nato troops, who used teargas and rubber bullets. Five years on from the Nato attack, the Kosovo Trust Agency (KTA), the body that operates under the jurisdiction of the UN Mission in Kosovo (Unmik) - is "pleased to announce" the programme to privatise the first 500 or so socially owned enterprises (SOEs) under its control. The closing date for bids passed last week: 10 businesses went under the hammer, including printing houses, a shopping mall, an agrobusiness and a soft-drinks factory. The Ferronikeli mining and metal-processing complex, with an annual capacity of 12,000 tonnes of nickel production, is being sold separately, with bids due by November 17. To make the SOEs more attractive to foreign investors, Unmik has altered the way land is owned in Kosovo, allowing the KTA to sell 99-year leases with the businesses, which can be transferred or used as loans or security. Even Belgrade's pro-western gov ernment has called this a "robbery of state-owned land". For western companies waiting to swoop, there will be rich pickings indeed in what the KTA assures us is a "very investor-friendly" environment. But there is little talk of the rights of the moral owners of the enterprises - the workers, managers and citizens of the former Yugoslavia, whose property was effectively seized in the name of the "international community" and "economic reform". As the corporate takeover of the ruins of Baghdad and Pristina proceeds apace, neither the "liberation" of Iraq nor the "humanitarian" bombing of Yugoslavia has proved Chaplin's cynical anti-hero to be wrong. · Neil Clark is a writer and broadcaster specialising in Balkan affairs ngc66798 at hotmail.com From definetime at rediffmail.com Thu Sep 23 11:15:10 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 23 Sep 2004 05:45:10 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] A hierarchy of suffering Message-ID: <20040923054510.27923.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040923/6b3dea72/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   A hierarchy of suffering Since 9/11, America has used its victimhood to demand a monopoly on the right to feel and to inflict pain Gary Younge Monday September 20, 2004 The Guardian The tale of how I became a Nazi and my Nazi harasser became a Jew is as intriguing as it is instructive. Last November I wrote a column about a racist email sent to me by an employee of an insurance company and my frustrations over the manner in which my grievance was handled. The man in question (a white, South African supporter of the British National party who complained of "undesirables flooding into Britain") was subsequently fired. His dismissal was not as a result of my column but because my original complaint had alerted the company to a previously unreported pattern of racist behaviour on his part. Of the numerous responses from the public I received, most were supportive but many were more abusive than the original message. One stood out. Incensed that something as "trivial" as racist abuse could lead to a man losing his job, one reader compared me to the person who betrayed Anne Frank. And so, through contorted metaphor and contemptuous logic, the harasser became the victim and the harassed was transformed into the perpetrator. Victimhood is a powerful, yet contradictory, force. Powerful because, once claimed, it can provide the moral basis for redress, retaliation and even revenge in order to right any given wrong - real or imagined. The defence of everything from the death penalty to affirmative action, Serbian nationalism to equality legislation, are all underpinned, to some degree, by the notion of victimhood. Contradictory because, in order to harness that power, one must first admit weakness. Victims, by their very nature, have less power than their persecutors: victimhood is a passive state - the result of bad things happening to people who are unable to prevent it. In the past, the right has exploited this tension to render victimhood a dirty word - a label synonymous with whingers, whiners, failures and fantasists. Revealing no empathy with the powerless nor any grasp of historical context, they wilfully ignore the potential for victimhood to morph into resistance, preferring instead to lampoon it as a loser's charter. "The left had become little more than a meeting place for balkanised groups of discontents, all bent on extracting their quota of public shame and their slice of the entitlement pie," wrote columnist Norah Vincent three years ago. "All of them blaming their personal failures on their race, their sex, their sexual orientation, their disability, their socioeconomic status and a million other things." Such arguments were always flawed. But increasingly they are beginning to look downright farcical. For if you are looking for someone making political hay out of victimhood nowadays, look no further than the right. The ones most ready, willing and able to turn the manipulation of pain into an art form have found their home among the world's most powerful. Read the Daily Mail and you would believe that Britain is under threat from the most impoverished and vulnerable people in the land. Asylum seekers, immigrants, "welfare cheats" and single mothers are bringing the nation to its knees. While the country is going to the dogs, the Christians are, apparently, heading for the lions. "We, as a people, and the government, must make strenuous efforts to promote and defend our culture, and especially the place of Christianity in it and the rights to self-expression by Christians," wrote Simon Heffer earlier this year. Across the Atlantic, the right's new role as victims is even more prevalent and pronounced. Straight relationships are threatened by the prospect of gay marriage, white workers are threatened by affirmative action, American workers are threatened by third world labourers, America is threatened by everybody. At times, this means the powerful appropriating the icons, tropes and rhetoric of the powerless in their entirety, to hilarious - if disturbing - effect. Last year Roy Moore, the former Republican chief justice of Alabama, led a failed bid to keep a monument of the Ten Commandments in his courthouse. Standing before a group of supporters, some of whom were waving Confederate flags, emblem of the slave-holding South, he said: "If the 'rule of law' means to do everything a judge tells you to do, we would still have slavery in this country." Wearing T-shirts proclaiming "Islam is a lie, homosexuality is a sin, abortion is murder", they then sang We Shall Overcome. In these cases, victimhood serves merely as a pretext for a backlash to reassert, extend or expand the dominance of the powerful. If these people are victims of anything, it is of the threat to their entitlement and privilege. In others, however, genuine suffering acts as a precursor to genuine vindictiveness. The threat of suicide bombings in Israel serves as the rationale for building the wall to protect Israelis from terrorist attack. In the current intifada, the Israelis have lost more citizens than during the six-day war - no one should belittle their pain. Palestinians, on the other hand, have lost about three times as many people due to Israeli military aggression. Who, one wonders, needs protecting from whom - or is some people's pain more valuable than others'? But nowhere is the abuse of victimhood more blatant than in the US presidential election, where September 11 remains the central plank of the Republicans' strategy for re-election. The fact that their campaign begins with the terror attacks is not only understandable but also, arguably, right - this is the most significant thing to happen in the US since Bush assumed office. The trouble is that the campaign's message ends with that day also. September 11 has served not as a starting point from which to better understand the world but as an excuse not to understand it at all. It is a reference point that brooks no argument and needs no logic. No weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? "The next time, the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud?" No United Nations authority? "We will never again wait for permission to defend our country." No link between Saddam and al-Qaida? "They only have to be right once. We have to be right every time." This is the real link between Iraq and 9/11 - the rhetorical dissembling that renders victimhood not a point from which they might identify with and connect to the rest of humanity but a means to turn their back on humanity. They portray America's pain as a result of 9/11 not only as unique in its expression but also superior in its intensity. When 3,000 people died on September 11, Le Monde declared: "We are all Americans now." Around 12,000 civilians have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war, yet one waits in vain for anyone to declare that we have all become Iraqis, or Afghans, let alone Palestinians. This is not a competition. Sadly, there are enough victims to go around. Sadder still, if the US continues on its present path, there will be many more. Demanding a monopoly on the right to feel and to inflict pain simply inverts victimhood's regular contradiction - the Bush administration displays material strength and moral weakness. g.younge at gurdian.co.uk From errafael at mac.com Tue Sep 21 06:43:55 2004 From: errafael at mac.com (Rafael Lozano-Hemmer) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 21:13:55 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] cfp: Life 7.0 awards Message-ID: <81BD56A5-0B6B-11D9-8EC9-000D9368DF7A@mac.com> LIFE 7.0 International Competition - Call for Participation Announcing the sixth edition of the competition on "art and artificial life" sponsored by the Telefonica Foundation in Madrid. We are looking for outstanding electronic art projects employing techniques such as digital genetics, autonomous robotics, recursive chaotic algorithms, knowbots, computer viruses, wetware, embodied artificial intelligence, avatars, evolving behaviours and virtual ecosystems. An international jury -- Chris Csikszentmihalyi (US), Daniel Garcia Andujar (Spain), Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (Mexico/Canada), Jose-Carlos Mariategui (Peru), Fiona Raby (UK) and Nell Tenhaaf (Canada)-- will grant four cash awards totaling 20,000 Euros. The competition's website at http://www.vidalife.org has the guidelines, application form, and information on the previous award-winners, including texts, videos, images and links. Deadline: Wednesday, November 3, 2004. For further information, please visit http://www.vidalife.org For questions concerning eligibility of entries: Nell Tenhaaf, Artistic Director _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From jo at turbulence.org Thu Sep 23 22:25:04 2004 From: jo at turbulence.org (Jo-Anne Green) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 09:55:04 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Turbulence Spotlight: [a net.film] by jess loseby Message-ID: <4152FFE8.5030305@turbulence.org> September 23, 2004 Turbulence Spotlight: [a net.film] by jess loseby http://turbulence.org/spotlight/loseby/index.htm Needs IE 6+ and Flash 7 plug-in David Crawford's "SMS" creates the narrative of the momentary encounter. This work was created to be its distorted mirror. Personal snapshots, harvested by Google using keywords, have been removed from context and through basic digital manipulation new narratives have been imposed on the captured moments. The progression of the film rocks the viewer gently through two augmented perspectives in a series of 20 images. The people and places are unknown but an intimacy is fabricated and connections between unrelated incidents made. BIOGRAPHY Jess Loseby is an established net and digital artist from the UK. Her primary medium is the internet. She exhibits in national and international projects both on and off line. Her work ranges from small and intimate online installations to large scale digital projections and video. Loseby's unashamedly low-tech net installations and video build comparisons of the network and digitality in its frustrations, attention to triviality and repetition as absurdly compatible to the female domestic routine. Themes dealing with individuality and cyber- identity recur frequently as do the faces of her three children who seem to be bound up irrevocably with her digital self. Jess Loseby is young(ish), has three children, one husband and no time! To view more Turbulence Spotlights, please visit http://turbulence.org/spotlight -- Jo-Anne Green, Associate Director New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856 Turbulence: http://turbulence.org New American Radio: http://somewhere.org Networked_Performance Blog and Conference: http://turbulence.org/blog -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040923/9e95482d/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From OAli at mednet.ucla.edu Thu Sep 23 23:21:12 2004 From: OAli at mednet.ucla.edu (Ali, Omar) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 10:51:12 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] RE: neo-modism? Message-ID: <4BDB4406836DD411858900508BCF5EB70A5459C9@medmail7.medctr.ucla.edu> It is best to stay out of this weird argument. "neo-mod" is not a real category. The people being lumped together are the most diverse group. Ranging from an old-fashioned military dictator to professors to young muslims with a sense of humor. I am sure some of them are agents of CIA, Mossad or whatever. And some are just plain crooks. Some are also sincerely tryiing to reform what they see as aberrations. Others are just having fun. I don't know how this whole mishmash hangs together. One little quibble....abidullah Jan insists that there are no mosques with signs saying "jews or christians are the enemy" while there is a church somewhere that says "islam is the enemy". This is plainly not true. There are hundreds of mosques and madrassas in pakistan alone which announce (sometimes on signs posted on the door!) that jews and hindus are our enemy. Not hard to find these people, I wonder how abid missed seeing them all his life? Btw, any information on who this Jan guy is? What does he do for a living? Omar (neither neo nor mod) PS: I do not fail to notice that after announcing "stay out of this weird argument" I did dip my toe in..... ---------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT WARNING: This email (and any attachments) is only intended for the use of the person or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. You, the recipient, are obligated to maintain it in a safe, secure and confidential manner. Unauthorized redisclosure or failure to maintain confidentiality may subject you to federal and state penalties. If you are not the intended recipient, please immediately notify us by return email, and delete this message from your computer. ---------------------------------------------------------- From raghavan at servelots.com Fri Sep 24 12:17:57 2004 From: raghavan at servelots.com (raghavan at servelots.com) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 02:47:57 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Update on PANTOTO Communities Project Message-ID: <100580-22004952464757663@M2W062.mail2web.com> Hi all, Updates on the PANTOTO Communities software...."http://www.pantoto.com/" Please email your queries to "totomaster at servelots.com". Raghavan --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~~~~~Latest News ~~~~~ **Available on Source Forge*** The PANTOTO Communities software is being made available on Source Forge < http://SourceForge.net/projects/pantoto>. The software is available under both GPL and Apache Licenses. Please join the effort. **Release*** We have recently made our second public release of the software. Feature that allow for further customization of user created forms, sorting search results and enhancements have been made to the search features to facilitate online analysis of information. **Localization** Work has commenced on provisioning localization of the PANTOTO Communities software. This is being done using the software that has been developed by the Indic-Sarai fellows. Sarai has been supporting the development of tools that can be used for Indic Language needs of a web application To see their work please visit < http://mail.sarai.net:8080/indic> They also encourage developers/organizations and other working in the area of Indic/localization to participate in the Indicart < http://mail.sarai.net:8080/indic> community. ~~~~About PANTOTO~~~~ What is the PANTOTO? * PANTOTO is a platform independent, web-enabled software product that allows end-users to configure information management systems, online communities, and extranets. * It is targeted at SMEs, not-for-profit organizations and government organizations by being a software that aims to reduce the dependency on the software developer. * Developed in Java, PANTOTO uses a MySQL database and a Tomcat/Resin web-server. The user interface has been developed using the WebMacro template engine. * To know more about the PANTOTO Communities project please visit http://www.PANTOTO.com Who is developing PANTOTO? * Development of the PANTOTO Communities project is being driven by Servelots Infotech Pvt. Ltd. * Servelots is a Bangalore based IT company and its sole agenda is to develop, enhance and service the PANTOTO software. * With a current team strength of ten, the team is expanding, also into other cities, to meet a growing set of customization needs of clients. * PANTOTO is a free/open source software on sourceforge.net, and the developer circle extends beyond the team at Servelots. What is the profile of PANTOTO users? Mostly from the NGO and SME sector. PANTOTO adopters are typically functional experts who are not computer savvy, but are able to put together simple web-based applications for information and community management for their needs. ~~~~Calling for Participation~~~~ * We are currently seeking software developers who have worked with Open Source and in an Open Source Environment. * We also invite particpation from individuals who have experience in information management/documentation/networking with an interest in the social development sector. Working with us in this project requires an understanding of the significance of your contribution to the NGO sector. We are today in an environment where IT resources are inaccessible to the NGO and SME sectors. Visit < http://PANTOTO.com> for more information. ----------------------------------------- PANTOTO Communities - Communities Managing Community Knowledge 3354 KR Road, Bangalore 560070 totomaster at servelots.com < http://PANTOTO.com> ------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From sadan at sarai.net Tue Sep 21 11:21:08 2004 From: sadan at sarai.net (Sadan Jha) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 11:21:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] interview of Partha Chatterjee Message-ID: <414FC14C.9040508@sarai.net> Dear all, This is fwd mail of a web link on a long interview of Partha Chatterjee. I hope you will find it interesting. wishes, sadan. Towards a Postcolonial Modernity: AsiaSource Interview with Partha Chatterjee http://www.asiasource.org/news/special_reports/chatterjee.cfm Partha Chatterjee, founding member of the Subaltern Studies editorial collective, is director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and visiting professor of anthropology at Columbia University. Here he discusses, among other things, his intellectual trajectory, the work of Subaltern Studies, anti-colonial nationalism, the concept of "political society", and the possibilities of an alternative modernity. ---------------------------------- Nermeen Shaikh Managing Editor, Asia Society Online Asia Society 725 Park Avenue New York, NY 10021 t: (212)327-9291 f: (212)452-1422 e: nermeens at asiasoc.org http://www.asiasource.org http://www.asiasociety.org ---------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040921/b7659b8a/attachment.html From sadan at sarai.net Tue Sep 21 14:50:13 2004 From: sadan at sarai.net (Sadan Jha) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 14:50:13 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] call for propsal : Student Stipends for Research on the City Message-ID: <414FF24D.3080906@sarai.net> Call for Proposal *Student Stipends For Research on The City* *Sarai*, an interdisciplinary research and practice programme on the city and the media, at the *Centre for the Study of Developing Societies*, Delhi, invites applications for short term studentships to facilitate research on Urban life in South Asia. The Studentship will provide candidates with Rs.15,000 for the preparation of a research paper to be presented at a workshop in September 2005. Selected scholars will also get an opportunity to participate and discuss their ongoing research in two initial workshops to be held in December 2004 and June 2005. Sarai will take care of travel, boarding and lodging for attending workshops. The candidates may be from any discipline and should be enrolled in Master, M.Phil or Ph.D programme. List of indicative themes: Urban Histories, Architecture and Spatial Transformations, Modernist Planning, Alternative Urban Visions, Urban Memory and Narratives of Violence, Urban Ecologies, Literature and Urbanism, Cinema and the City, Visual Culture, The Future of Public Space, Media Practices and the City, Labour in the City. For a detailed overview of the successful proposals of previous years see : http://www.sarai.net/community/announce.htm *Send your application along with C.V. and one page abstract *indicating the scope, nature and approach of proposed research to Sadan Jha Sarai, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29, Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054. ph: 23960040, 23942199 (extn.307). Inquiries: sadan at sarai.net *DEADLINE for Application: 25 October 2004*. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040921/f10ac324/attachment.html From shivamvij at gmail.com Wed Sep 22 23:32:25 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 11:02:25 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] A year of WordsWithoutBorders Message-ID: >> www.wordswithoutborders.com << September Newsletter Dear Friends of WWB: Back from summer retreats to mundane reality, who needs new news when there's so much of the old we haven't gotten to yet? So, in celebration of everything (unbelievably) accomplished in its first year, WWB offers its first retrospective. Remember the "axis of evil"? See Najem Wali's cosmopolitan view of Basra; Tirdad Zolghadr's arty tour of Tehran; and Han Ung-bin's poignant trip into the mountains of North Korea. For sardonic comedy from (and about) the old "evil empire," turn to Wladimir Kaminer's portrait of the Siberian Paris and Pavel Lembersky's "Snoopy Goes to Kasimov." The literature of China seems more haunted than humorous: see the traditional ghost stories of Pu Song-Ling and Gao Ertai's even more frightful tales of the Cultural Revolution. Welsh and Balkan writers defy demons both historical and personal in Owen Martell's "Other Man" and Ivan Ivanji's "Games on the Banks of the Danube." Argentina and Poland take pride in their literary cultures, with good reason: see Ernesto Sˆ°bato's "Before the End" and Witold Gombrowicz's "Adventures." If politics weighs too heavily on the brain, you can focus on deposed and deceased demogogues and dictators in Mario Benedetti's "Completely Absentminded" and Kim Hong-ik's "He's Alive." Finally, if you haven't taken a spiritual retreat yet, in this political season you'll need it: go to Sohrab Sepehri's gorgeous Sufi poems for a quick hit, Ibn 'Arabi for a more challenging one. And before and during your visits, do consult Lawrence Venuti's "How to Read a Translation," an indispensable guide to traveling in the many worlds we've shared with you this year. Also this month, Arnon Grunberg's "Asylum Seeker" makes the political personal; the Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail issues "Nonmilitary Statements"; and Dubravka Ugresic limns geographical and emotional displacement in "The Ministry of Pain." We also debut two related features this month: a list of foreign writers-in-residence in the U.S., and a public and media relations database to allow readers to search for experts among our contributors. These lists will be continually revised; if you have updates or leads on other visiting writers, do send them along. We'll have another issue for you in October, bringing you Romanian literature selected by guest editor Norman Manea. And if you haven't already seen them, it's well worth the time to check out our prior issues on the literature of Iran, North Korea, Iraq, Russia, the Balkans, Argentina, Poland, the finalists for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, China, the indigenous languages of the United Kingdom, and religious literature. A plug for funding and a chance to win essential reference works: Enter our drawing and WIN a Shorter Oxford English Dictionary or a Norton Anthology if you support WWB. See details on the website. If you have questions or comments, please contact us at wwbinfo at bard.edu. We look forward to hearing from you. Hope you enjoy the site. The Editors Alane Salierno Mason, Founding Editor Dedi Felman, Editor Samantha Schnee, Editor Susan Harris, Managing Editor Words Without Borders - The Online Magazine for International Literature >> www.wordswithoutborders.com << _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From souweine at hawaii.edu Fri Sep 24 17:31:50 2004 From: souweine at hawaii.edu (Isaac D W Souweine) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 17:01:50 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail Message-ID: <153c253153b958.153b958153c253@hawaii.edu> With regards to Vivek's suggestion about circumventing major capitalist email enterprises through the use of small-scale cooperatives: About two years ago, I tried to ditch the major email providers, with their spam and their restrictions and all the other shadiness, for an account with riseup.net, which as far as I can tell is a small email cooperative run by anarchist-leaning activists (not an effort to make any specific characterization of this group, about which I now very little, that was just my sense). On the plus side, the decision felt extremely good (read: righteous). On the minus side, though riseup seems to have a good philosophy (generally speaking) and is definitely making an effort to provide top quality service, I found that the load times were extremely slow and the occasional outages and other problems that arose from the fact that the people who run the service are obviously not doing it as a full time job, made use of riseup more inconvenient than was worth it. Thankfully, I now have access to excellent webmail from the University of Hawaii, which at least is spam and ad free. But my riseup experience did not exactly get me, a simple little end user, amped about bucking the system. Email at this point is a mission critical application. It needs to be fast and versatile and constantly updated viz. feature sets. I am not an expert on privacy issues and so I can't contribute to that side of the discussion, but I'm wondering whether the privacy issues really justify trying to keep pace with corporate interests who are happy to pour money and expertise into providing us this service. That said, I would love to hear from privacy wonks or open sourcers who would be interested in telling me how/why: 1. Im putting my personal information in extreme jeopardy 2. It wouldn't actually be so much work to create cooperatives that evaded the current dominant providers. Yours, Isaac From tellsachin at yahoo.com Thu Sep 23 00:18:53 2004 From: tellsachin at yahoo.com (Sachin Agarwal) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 11:48:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Re: reader-list Digest, Vol 14, Issue 36 In-Reply-To: <20040921063004.9A7A928E8F8@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20040922184853.18503.qmail@web41505.mail.yahoo.com> shekhar, how do i get a pop 3 account. i am being drained by this web acces via mail servers. pls tell clearly that does gmail allow pop 3 access or not. sachin reader-list-request at sarai.net wrote: Send reader-list mailing list submissions to reader-list at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to reader-list-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at reader-list-owner at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of reader-list digest..." Today's Topics: 1. NEED HELP PRONTO!!! (Aman Malik) 2. Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail (Shekhar Krishnan) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 00:50:50 +0530 From: Aman Malik Subject: [Reader-list] NEED HELP PRONTO!!! To: reader-list at sarai.net Message-ID: <95be635604092012203f236ce3 at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Dear Sir/ Ma'am, Seasons Greetings. This mail is being sent to: A) Those residing in Pakistan or Pakistanis abroad. B) Film critics/ researchers/ faculty members of film schools in India. C) Mass Communication graduates in India. I am currently in the process of commencing a research project that seeks to study the ups and downs in the Lahore Film Industry (aka: Lollywood) prior to and after 1947. This project is a part of my academic curriculum and I hope to complete the research work in about twenty days from now and come out with a paper in about 30 days from now. I am looking primarily for the following help from you... 1) Contacts of researchers/ film critics of Pakistan cinema based within Pakistan or abroad. 2)Contacts of practitioners (artists, directors, distrbutors etc) in the Pakistan film industry. 3)Any research material that you might have on this subject and/or references/ links to places where such material might be sourced from. Being here in India and considering the fact that I have major time constraints, your help in this regard would be extremely valuable. Warm Regards, Aman Malik New Delhi, India. ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 11:39:00 +0530 From: Shekhar Krishnan Subject: [Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail To: reader-list at sarai.net Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"; format=flowed Dear All: This debate about GMail, and the request for information on POP3 access, makes me wonder if this is all not a bit OT. But while we're at it... The excitement around GMail baffles me, particularly since any form of web mail, no matter how sexy its feature set, cannot compare to a POP3 mailbox used with your favourite mail client (Eudora, Mozilla, OSX Mail, Outlook). The widespread use of webmail is further baffling, when maintaining a POP3 mailbox costs less than Rs 200 a year, and doesn't tie you to a commercial domain, infringe your privacy by storing your mails on someone else's server, bombard you with advertisements, and confine you to the limits of your browser. The most baffling thing is the tenacity of these commercial webmail services and the fierce loyalty of people to yahoo, hotmail, and now gmail. Is this unique to India, where there is widespread difficulty in obtaining domain name registrations (especially .in domains, because of NCST's kleptocracy), and sheer laziness on the part of most institutions and firms (and their IT service providers!) in alloting mailboxes to their employees. I have recently had an incident in a school where I teach and help with IT, in which the faculty is insisting on retaining their yahoo and hotmail addresses because they are more "secure" than using the school's own registered domain, hosted on a dedicated server for which the school has paid an annual contract. This faculty argued with me that anyone in my IT company, which is contracted to host their web site and mail server could see their mails. Why is the same fear and anxiety absent with large anonymous corporate entities like Microsoft, Yahoo and Google? When I argued with this person that using their own domain (whether through POP3 or web access) is much more secure, I was given a lecture on the wonderful features of GMail and how I too could get invited to join. I wanted to vomit on this person. When did trust in distant corporations replace a relationship with your local service providers? When did free beer replace free speech? Nearly every list to which I am subscribed has seen people hankering after GMail invitations (even free software activists), without any serious discussion of this phenomenon. Why can't we start cooperative mailbox movements, or hosting societies, which will get unique domains registered for people and give them out for free or at a nominal fee, considering the neglible costs of hosting mailboxes? Or for a start, why can't most IT service providers give people mailboxes when they register domains for them, rather than just giving them websites? Anything is better than the gospel of GMail... S.K. _____ Shekhar Krishnan 9, Supriya, 2nd Floor Plot 709, Parsee Colony Road no.4 Dadar, Mumbai 400014 India http://crit.org.in/members/shekhar ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ reader-list mailing list reader-list at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list End of reader-list Digest, Vol 14, Issue 36 ******************************************* --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040922/3c97bcd8/attachment.html From tellsachin at yahoo.com Fri Sep 24 00:15:31 2004 From: tellsachin at yahoo.com (Sachin Agarwal) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 11:45:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] [indpakpeacemarch] Time report: LoC inaccurate: India In-Reply-To: <20040923063005.5FCF628E099@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20040923184531.9218.qmail@web41509.mail.yahoo.com> Time report: LoC inaccurate: India September 20, 2004 ****************** India on Monday termed as 'completely and wholly inaccurate' a report in Time magazine that suggested that India will offer to 'adjust' the Line of Control 'by a matter of miles eastwards'. The American magazine, which has put Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the cover of its latest issue, quoted an unnamed Indian official as saying that while in New York, Singh will make an offer to help defuse the situation in Kashmir. Reacting to the report, an official spokesman accompanying Singh said, "This is completely and wholly inaccurate. Any suggestion that the prime minister will make such an offer is factually wrong. "As has been said on several occasions, including at the prime minister's press conference at 10 Downing Street this afternoon, the prime minister looks forward to his meeting with President Gen Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan in New York, and to discuss all matters of bilateral interest including a review of the composite dialogue. But "There is no question of any territorial concession being offered by India to Pakistan." --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040923/6226cde1/attachment.html From ttsetan at yahoo.com Tue Sep 21 11:08:48 2004 From: ttsetan at yahoo.com (tenzin tsetan) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 06:38:48 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: FOCUS TIBET at Delhi Universrty Message-ID: <20040921053848.76239.qmail@web50607.mail.yahoo.com> Note: forwarded message attached. --------------------------------- ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040921/be59cb2d/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Friends of Tibet (INDIA)" Subject: FOCUS TIBET at Delhi Universrty Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 07:14:45 -0400 (EDT) Size: 3901 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040921/be59cb2d/attachment.mht From webmaster at straightdope.com Fri Sep 24 10:46:31 2004 From: webmaster at straightdope.com (webmaster at straightdope.com) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 01:16:31 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] The Straight Dope 09/24/2004 Message-ID: The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams http://www.straightdope.com You are subscribed as: [reader-list at sarai.net] To unsubscribe CLICK on the URL below this line: mailto:leave-straightdope-list-3661366Y at lyris.jokeaday.com If you can't "click" above, then send a blank email to: leave-straightdope-list-3661366Y at lyris.jokeaday.com ____________________________________________ THE STRAIGHT DOPE 09/24/2004 Dear Cecil: For years I've tolerated my friend's need for a strict vegan diet. I am lectured nearly daily about the benefits of veganism and the injustice of my murderous, meat-craving lifestyle. It's gotten to the point that we can't go out anywhere decent because there are few places vegan-friendly enough to suit his tastes. He has many redeeming qualities, so our friendship remains strong despite our philosophical differences. However, if there were an issue that would be a deal breaker, it would be his terrible, terrible gas. Its pure, unmitigated evil is indescribable. I'm pretty sure that in a highly concentrated form it could change laws of physics. Just god-awful. To make a dumb question long, are the rumors about vegan body odor, and specifically vegan gas, really true? Or is my friend just a naturally awful-smelling individual? --Scott, via e-mail ~~~~~~ Looking for the perfect gift for that wedding, birthday, or bar mitzvah? Straight Dope books are the very thing! See http://www.straightdope.com/store.html ~~~~~~ Cecil replies: Notwithstanding your assurances about redeeming qualities, Scott, I have to wonder what's keeping this relationship going. It can't be your friend's pleasant personality, since he continually hectors you and accuses you of sordid crimes. It isn't his scintillating conversation, unless lectures on your murderous meat-craving lifestyle are your idea of diverting chat. It's obviously not his attractive physical presence. So what are you getting out of this--stock tips? Weekly payments? Great head? For more, see: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040924.html STAFF REPORT Dear Straight Dope: My boyfriend is a trivia freak, and he has recently gotten me hooked on the Straight Dope website. We frequently have arguments about his more unbelievable pieces of trivia. Recently he told me spiders run on a sort of hydraulic system and that's why their legs bunch up when they die. Please help me prove him wrong--it would give me so much joy to be right just once. --Rachael, Darwin, Australia SDSTAFF Doug replies: I'm afraid your boyfriend is partially correct on this one. All arthropods, be they spiders, scorpions, mites, centipedes, lobsters, barnacles, pillbugs, or insects, need some internal hydraulics in order to move their appendages properly. Your boyfriend wins on a technicality, though . . . For more, see: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mspiderhydraulic.html STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 02/01/1985 Dear Cecil: Is it possible, as a method of pest control, to produce a virus which doesn't kill the critter, but only sterilizes it? That way the little pests could all infect each other and we'd be rid of them in no time. How about it, Cecil? --Have to Know, Chicago Cecil replies: Sounds like the greatest idea since the Black Death, H. Starting situation: we've got bugs! Ending situation: we've got bugs with germs! I am not seeing that this is an improvement. Luckily, a less malign solution to the bug question has been developed: the first practical cockroach contraceptives. I'm serious. For more, see: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_066.html ____________________________________________ Here's how you can get your OWN FREE Subscription: Send a blank mailto:join-straightdope-list at jokeaday.com ____________________________________________ Copyright 1995 - 2004 Chicago Reader, Inc. All Rights Reserved You may forward this document by email ONLY if you include the entire document INCLUDING the information at the bottom of this publication ____________________________________________ Visit our good friends at Joke A Day http://www.jokeaday.com They're kind enough to mail THE STRAIGHT DOPE for us. Join the World's Largest Daily Humor List and receive daily laughs in your email by sending mailto:join at jokeaday.com From vivek at sarai.net Fri Sep 24 18:08:42 2004 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 18:08:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: how to get pop3 access from gmail In-Reply-To: <153c253153b958.153b958153c253@hawaii.edu> References: <153c253153b958.153b958153c253@hawaii.edu> Message-ID: <41541552.9050905@sarai.net> Isaac-- (By the way, the initial suggestion was Shekhar Krishnan's.) I take it as a given that any new initiative, like Linux itself at one point, will be ragtag and shambolic, but this does not mean that it could flourish at some point in the future, with enough imaginative input and problem solving. So you have a point, and I'm not thinking of getting webmail from my nearest anarchist collective any time soon (unless you count Sarai itself as a kind of buttoned-up collective) but the question is, has one the will to envision it, or do we just cede the possibility in the interest of present contigency? Perhaps it's already too late? Also-- I wonder if there could be other reasons for circumventing corporate mail other than privacy, because I'm not so sure that a non-corporate collective would allow any more privacy-- probably less, if anything-- and could be tapped and knocked by governments just like the big boys routinely are. V. Isaac D W Souweine wrote: >With regards to Vivek's suggestion about circumventing major capitalist >email enterprises through the use of small-scale cooperatives: > >About two years ago, I tried to ditch the major email providers, with >their spam and their restrictions and all the other shadiness, for an >account with riseup.net, which as far as I can tell is a small email >cooperative run by anarchist-leaning activists (not an effort to make >any specific characterization of this group, about which I now very >little, that was just my sense). On the plus side, the decision felt >extremely good (read: righteous). On the minus side, though riseup >seems to have a good philosophy (generally speaking) and is definitely >making an effort to provide top quality service, I found that the load >times were extremely slow and the occasional outages and other problems >that arose from the fact that the people who run the service are >obviously not doing it as a full time job, made use of riseup more >inconvenient than was worth it. > >Thankfully, I now have access to excellent webmail from the University >of Hawaii, which at least is spam and ad free. But my riseup experience >did not exactly get me, a simple little end user, amped about bucking >the system. Email at this point is a mission critical application. It >needs to be fast and versatile and constantly updated viz. feature >sets. I am not an expert on privacy issues and so I can't contribute to >that side of the discussion, but I'm wondering whether the privacy >issues really justify trying to keep pace with corporate interests who >are happy to pour money and expertise into providing us this service. > >That said, I would love to hear from privacy wonks or open sourcers who >would be interested in telling me how/why: > >1. Im putting my personal information in extreme jeopardy >2. It wouldn't actually be so much work to create cooperatives that >evaded the current dominant providers. > >Yours, >Isaac > > >_________________________________________ >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 aa917 at nyu.edu Fri Sep 24 19:01:08 2004 From: aa917 at nyu.edu (Anjali Arora,NYU) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 19:01:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Project:Window to the world Message-ID: Hi , I am a graduate student at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. As part of my thesis this year, I plan to develop a web-based project tentatively titled 'Window to the World', and the objective is to offer an alternative view of daily events around us, an attempt to break free of the stranglehold that large media companies have on what we see & how we see it. More details about this project can be seen at my blog http://social.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/mt/aarora/thesis/. Please feel free to post any suggestions to this blog too. Essentially I am looking for regular contributors from around the world . I welcome any suggestions you may have, people I could contact in the Indian sub-continent about this etc. Also please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might be interested. I look forward to building a great project together. Best. -Anjali --------------------------------------------------------------------- Anjali Arora, Interactive Telecommunications Program, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University aa917 at nyu.edu http://www.artbrush.net/ From cugambetta at yahoo.com Fri Sep 24 21:30:30 2004 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 09:00:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] re: F-911 Message-ID: <20040924160030.57297.qmail@web12206.mail.yahoo.com> Hi all, Just a quick response to the postings about Farenheit 911... I think Berger is right on when he concludes his critique. What is most important about this movie (for me, at least), was its call for the United States to end its dependence on the military industrial complex... though industrial seems like the wrong word these days. i have moved back to Florida, a year back, and it is incredible the kind of information infrastructure this economy of contemporary war requires. i live in Orlando, and there are many young people i met at community college who are in one way or another affiliated with the military, ie: working for military contractors (logistics, info systems), having relatives in the army etc. Coincidentally, Lockheed Martin and its network of smaller contractors constitutes a large chunk of the local economy in Orlando (next to tourism... Disney etc). Even in my own lifetime, I have had 3 relatives in the military... grandfather, uncle and an uncle (not to mention the many more distant relatives). Farenheit 911 forces a lot of long overdue public introspection on just how militarized the United States actually is (especially after George W), and how dependent we are on the military economy (and how dependent this economy is on the underclass and lateral mobility). Gore Vidal nicely titles his essays on the issue: "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace." It is interesting that despite the Republican Party's traditional efforts to "scale back government," government related jobs are being touted as an expanding sector, especially jobs that fall under national security. i believe johns hopkins, for instance, has begun a "homeland security" program, with more likely to follow at other universities. it's an expanding market for universities and potential employees... i'm not too optimistic about the reversal of this trend. i think many people were very shaken up by the film here... it did put things in terms that people could understand, relating stories that the general public could relate to. that someone could make a blockbuster striking at the heart of this economy of violence and perpetual inequality (both inside the united states and how it deals with the rest of the world) is a really, really incredible thing. i'm always skeptical of moore's appeal to the "common man," because i think the common man, at least in the US, has been largely bought out... but who knows--i'm glad he's optimistic about it all, even if it seems naive or overstated. surely pessimism and cynicism have not paid off. pessimism and apathy got us stuck with one of the most cynical, callous regimes i have ever seen in the United States. Curt _______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today! http://vote.yahoo.com From monica.mody at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 07:13:35 2004 From: monica.mody at gmail.com (Monica Mody) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 07:13:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] The schedule for Jagah: In Search of Spaces Message-ID: <4badad3b04092418436175591f@mail.gmail.com> The Nigah Media Collective presents Jagah: In Search of Spaces THE GENDER AND SEXUALITY EXHIBITION THE MONTH OF FREE SPEECH: CAMPAIGN AGAINST CENSORSHIP Venue: Arpana Fine Arts Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts and Literature, 4/6 Siri Fort Institutional Area, New Delhi 110049 Date: 25-27 September 2004 Jagah is a space where one can hang out, meet people, talk and share experiences, without having to struggle to fit. A jagah for expression and mediations on gender and sexuality, on our bodies and our desires, our silences -- both chosen and imposed. A space one can claim as one's own, one without judgments, one that is not just about "art", but about creativity, expression, and resistance. THE EXHIBITION FEATURES photographs| paintings| posters| poems| installations| films| music videos| baithak| Jagah's apna blog | Sarai Media Lab Queer Salon, where nothing is excluded from conversation 25 Sep. Shaleen Rakesh, Naz Foundation India 26 Sep. Saleem Kidwai, co-author of Same-Sex Love In India 27 Sep. Nivedita Menon, University of Delhi & Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Sarai-CSDS/ Raqs Media Collective (between 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.) Performances/films 25 Sep. Vidya Shah sings Amir Khusro, Bulle Shah, Sultan Bahu & thumris Namita Malhotra's "Queering Bollywood" 26 Sep. Youth4Peace performs Essentially Yerma in Imphal, a play recreating the recent incidents of violence and protest in Manipur 27 Sep. Songs by the Almost Famous singers Parth, Sharmi and Tatva Wong Kar Wai's "Happy Together" (6 p.m. onwards) Contact: nigahmedia at yahoo.com, 9811269257/ 9810253342/9810755476, http://www.geocities.com/nigahmedia -- Art can take our unexpressed thoughts and desires and fling them with clarity and coherence on the wall, a sheet of paper, or against the silence of history. - Adrienne Rich _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 21:10:20 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 21:10:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Workshop on Humanism in the Age of Rising Global Fundamentalism In-Reply-To: <20040924051013.18239.qmail@ns.yesglobalweb.net> References: <20040924051013.18239.qmail@ns.yesglobalweb.net> Message-ID: From: Yogi Sikand All India Workshop on Humanism in the Age of Rising Global Fundamentalism On December 17th and 18th, 2004 At Centre for the Study of Social Change M N Roy Human Development Campus, F Block, Plot No. 6 Opp. Govt. Colony Bldg. No. 326, Bandra (E), Mumbai 400051 Registration fee : Rs.200/- All rationalists, humanists, grassroots workers and academicians are invited Sangeeta Mall Managing Editor, The Radical Humanist, 2A, Regency Park, Edenwoods, Thane 400601, Bombay, India Phone : 00 91 22 5891085 _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Sep 24 21:24:10 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 21:24:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] The Hoot This September [text version] Message-ID: The Hoot Watching media in the subcontinent SEPTEMBER 2004 www.thehoot.org The Hoot is a media watch website, the only one of its kind on the subcontinent. It is run by the Media Foundation in New Delhi. The more the media matters, the more we must track what it does. The Hoot brings you in-depth reports from all parts of the sub-continent and further afield. As the watchdog's watchdog we take a hard-edged look at issues that plague the media, and offer riffs and reflections on what is in the news and what ought to be. On The Hoot you will find stories that you won't find anywhere else. MEDIA WATCH Homosexual victim exposes the Delhi press In the case of a double murder in Delhi, it is the "dark underbelly" of print journalism rather than homosexuality that needs to be examined, argues Aniruddha Dutta. http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot84817%20PM1328&pn=1 TV ads hard sell to children In India, "hard-sell" is that much easier. The lack of laws regulating advertising ensure unscrupulous manipulation of the target audience. By Charumathi Supraja (Women's Feature Service). http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144115Hoot43926%20PM1301&pn=1 Circus maximus Dhananjoy's was the closest we got to a televised execution in India. In true Sriharikota style, writes Jay Mazoomdaar, most channels gave viewers an excited countdown to it. http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot90421%20PM1316&pn=1 Hanging sparks theatrics in Indian state After the media overkill of the hanging of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, which spurred a rash of play time hangings by children in West Bengal, popular folk opera plans to exploit the story. By Ranjita Biswas (OneWorld.net). http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot102308%20PM1319&pn=1 Living off Page Three Nafisa Joseph provided fodder for the sensation seekers, writes Padmalata Ravi. http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot104228%20PM1313&pn=1 FOR JOURNALISTS Decades of Living Dangerously Journalism can be both dangerous and a heady experience, says veteran Pakistani journalist Mariana Baabar. http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot104657%20PM1314&pn=1 Media's Man of Iron An Indian Express editorial on Ram Nath Goenka's birth centenary. http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web2196523410Hoot122909%20AM1320&pn=1 Sarai-CSDS independent fellowships 2004-05 Applications Invited for Independent Research Fellowships 2004-05 by the Sarai Programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. Deadline for proposals: 15 October 2004. http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot93250%20PM1340&pn=1 CNN young journalists award for 2004 The second edition of the CNN award for young journalists in South Asia has been extended to Pakistan. Deadline: 15 October 2004. http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot85400%20PM1330&pn=1 Free copies of energy reporting handbook Journalists reporting on energy and development issues in resource-rich countries are invited to reserve a copy of a free handbook by Revenue Watch and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue to be released early in 2005. http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot93924%20PM1341&pn=1 Democracy Fellowships The Democracy Fellowships were established by the National Endowment for Democracy, Washington D.C., in 2001 to enable activists, scholars, and journalists from around the world to deepen their understanding of democracy. http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web61952349Hoot30105%20PM1337&pn=1 MEDIA & GENDER Maligning women with impunity A libellous and judgemental Tamil press repeatedly crosses the line in reporting on women in the dock, writes Krithika Ramalingam. http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web61952349Hoot25726%20PM1336&pn=1 MEDIA RESEARCH Coverage of elections 2004 -- Part II >From a national and regional party perspective, 7 national parties completely dominated TV news channels with 85 per cent of the total election coverage. Extracts from Monitoring Television Content: General Elections 2004: Citizen's Response, a study conducted by Viewers Forum and Centre for Advocacy and Research. http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144115Hoot45948%20PM1302&pn=1 Coverage of elections 2004 -- Part III The media appears to have followed media opportunities created by political parties, especially the BJP. A study conducted by Viewers Forum and Centre for Advocacy and Research. http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot111402%20PM1306&pn=1 Media monitoring: Discovering Pakistan Unprecedented journalistic access during the March-April period of cricket diplomacy produced a rush of goodwill stories on Pakistan in Indian newspapers. Presenting the first of a series of the Panos-Hoot monitoring project, on how newspapers in India and Pakistan report on each other's countries. The first period covers reporting from March 17 to April 17 in the Times of India, the Hindu, Dainik Bhaskar and Dainik Jagran. By Shubha Singh http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web2031010152Hoot81223%20PM1307&pn=1 INDO-PAK MONITORING Indo-Pak monitoring, Part II While the major part of the coverage was positive, there was also an element that indicated the mistrust between the two countries. The second in a series in on how newspapers in India and Pakistan report on each other's countries — A Panos-Hoot monitoring project. The first period covers reporting from March 17 to April 17 in the Times of India, the Hindu, Dainik Bhaskar, and Dainik Jagran, and reports in Pakistan newspapers covered by the POT service. By Shubha Singh http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web219652377Hoot72939%20PM1326&pn=1 Indo-Pak news monitoring, Part III Analysts in the Dainik Jagran and Dainik Bhaskar debate implications of Indo-Pak detente. By Shubha Singh http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot105759%20PM1334&pn=1 PRESS FREEDOM India bans TV channel in the Northeast A day before India's Independence Day, the Manipur government asked the Information Service Television Network (ISTN) to shut down transmission with immediate effect. By Syed Zarir Hussain (OneWorld.net). http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot101818%20PM1318&pn=1 REGIONAL MEDIA Assam media changes its attitude to Ulfa After the Independence Day blasts which killed civilians, the press in Assam turns against the Ulfa. By Nava Thakuria http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web21021056225Hoot80137%20PM1325&pn=1 'Bhagya' will enrich scribes in Assam A new daily promises better salaries to journos, but has suspect origins: the proprietor is out on bail, and the editor has an FIR lodged against him. By Nava Thakuria http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot85355%20PM1332&pn=1 VIEWS FROM THE REGION Alive from Kathmandu We'd like to welcome our viewers back to this specially exaggerated edition of EmpTV's 25-hour-a-day Breakneck News. By Kunda Dixit (Nepali Times). http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web203145144114Hoot92537%20PM1339&pn=1 == Please circulate this widely Write to editor at thehoot.org Did you get this newsletter as a forward? We'll send it to you every month. Subscribe by sending a blank mail to thehoot-subscribe at yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thehoot/join _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From sastry at cs.wisc.edu Sat Sep 25 23:44:46 2004 From: sastry at cs.wisc.edu (Subramanya Sastry) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 23:44:46 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] Fellowship posting #5 & #6 Message-ID: This is a combined posting for the last 2 months, and this marks the end of my 6-month fellowship. I will be applying for an extension and continue development of NewsRack. -Subbu. ########################################################################### News Rack: Automating News Gathering and Classification ------------------------------------------------------- Abstract: From db at dannybutt.net Sun Sep 26 09:38:20 2004 From: db at dannybutt.net (Danny Butt) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 14:08:20 +1000 Subject: [Reader-list] Students Stipends Workshop for Research on the City In-Reply-To: <4153E883.3010503@sarai.net> Message-ID: Kia ora, I'd like to express my appreciation to Jeebesh, the Sarai programme and the students for sharing the results of this panel. As discussed at your panel, the question of who is allowed to produce knowledge is crucial, also important is how knowledge is permitted to travel, and what knowledge we encounter in the boundaries created through our own disciplinary practices and interests (even those of us in interdisciplinary fields). For me, the report is an exciting document of both Sarai's commitment to fostering the open circulation of knowledge, and also to the quality and sophistication of the work being carried out by young researchers in the region. I think many would agree that such thoughtful engagement with questions of disciplinarity, methodology, and social change are rare in the "Western academic system". I look forward to continuing encounters with the work of the participants in the future! Best regards, Danny On 9/24/04 7:27 PM, "Jeebesh Bagchi" wrote: > Students Stipends Workshop for Research on the City > 19-20 August 2004 > Sarai-CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054 > > Each year the Sarai programme supports young research students for > short-term studentships to facilitate research on urban life in South > Asia. The process includes a public call for applications in > September-October, a teaching workshop for selected students, and a > public presentation of the research in August, at Sarai. The programme > encourages practice-based and cross-disciplinary research, as well as > research in the traditional academic mode. -- http://www.dannybutt.net #place: location, cultural politics, and social technologies: http://www.place.net.nz From coolzanny at hotmail.com Sun Sep 26 14:19:54 2004 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 14:19:54 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The Seafront - The urban through the lens of space and time Message-ID: 22 September 2004 Nariman Point 6:00 PM This evening, I walked along Nariman Point before settling down in my usual place. My usual place is a bit diagonally away from the main entrance to Hilton Towers Hotel, very close to the new MCGM Pay & Park shack. As I walked, I noticed a man in his late-twenties, talking on the cell phone. This one seemed like the South Mumbai office-executive, belonging to the upwardly mobile group. He was smiling as he chatted away on his phone. The cell phone is an important part of the life of young people in this city. These young people are the by-products of the new market economy including call center workers and young executives and professionals in fields like PR, Advertising, Finance, Media and Journalism, etc. The cell phone is a medium to ‘stay in touch’. It allows you the luxury to chat/communicate with your loved ones, with your friends and the support group in your life. While these days newspapers are flashing the deal about young people having cell phones because parents want to keep tabs on their babies, my own perspective is that the cell phone is an important emotional support system through which you can access your personal support network. The cell phone has different relevancies for different age groups. Often I see young joggers along Nariman Point and Worli Sea Face, jogging away in their track pants and sports shoes and panting hard, but with a smile on their face as they simultaneously chat with their ‘someone special’ (could be anybody) through the hands free. This young man today was also wearing his happy smile as he was talking on the phone. He had a glow on his face. In the humdrum, frenzies and frazzles of the everyday (with elements of time, economy, cash, security, restrictions and bans on restrictions and rush), the cell phone is a vital equipment in times of loneliness and solitude when time seems unceasing and unrelenting and the phonebook comes to your rescue. You browse through your phonebook and make a few calls to people. One of my acquaintances often does this when he is unable to face empty time – he will start making calls to people he hasn’t been in touch with for a while and feel good about the conversations. Someday I will try to pull him into having a conversation with us here! The cell phone is an everyday equipment, now accessible to people belonging to different economic classes. It is increasingly appearing to replace the land phone. Mobile technology for mobile peoples – new sounds and technologies replacing the old – what is the value of the old in the age of the new? Today is an unusually hot and tiring day. For me it has been a long day of research and juggling between the centuries of AD, BC (Before Christ I mean) and the present, speculating on the future. But despite the heat and me, the crowd on the sea face is as usual; rather, I find the place to be more crowded today. In the past, when we friends in college used to come here in the evenings, there was usually less crowd. These days, the crowds have increased phenomenally and there is no concept of over crowding on Nariman Point on weekends. It seems like overcrowded everyday! In one of my meetings with a practicing architect in the city, he mentioned to me about his idea of ‘shared spaces’. He drew parallels to the beaches in North America and the seafront in Mumbai where, the residents of the locality/area have greater stake and space on the seafront/beaches on weekdays while they retreat and let ‘outsiders’ use the space on weekends. During all these days of my visit to Nariman Point, I am finding it hard to locate the concept, notion and practice of ‘residents’. It seems to me that the residents’ breed is almost non-existent here. Maybe I am required to visit this place in the early mornings to do a rain check. There are speculative theories floating in mind. One of the theories is the movement of residents from Nariman Point to Bandra. This movement is a critical one as South Mumbai is no longer the exclusive glamorous spot of the city; Bandra and Andheri are taking over big time. The concept of resident and outsiders is perhaps more noticeable at the seafronts at Bandra including Bandstand and Carter Road (with its famous Joggers’ Park). Again, the news doing the rounds is that Nariman Point will soon be receiving a 30-crore facelift from our dear government. I don’t know yet what the facelift entails – I simply hope it’s not a cosmetic surgery! Another theory involves that I change my own location at Nariman Point and move over to the residential locales where residents will most likely be seen! Let’s move further. I settled myself on my usual spot (gradually becoming my comfort zone) and began watching. These days, people watch me as I sit with a note pad and a pen. I guess most of them mistake me for some sort of a journalist. I also like acting this way. I think I have become an actress – bahurupi of a cunning kind! Maybe this will help me someday when I do the rounds of people’s houses, asking for food and being invited in for shelter along with food! College-going Romance: The seafront on weekdays and Saturdays is the hub for college-goers, mainly those studying in colleges around South Mumbai. You can notice college-goers in groups of fours, fives and sixes or in pairs. Pairs could be girl-girl, boy-boy or girl-boy. This evening, my eyes were stuck on different girl-boy pairs, mainly those walking on the track (mobile you may call them). One of the girl-boy pairs was an interesting one – the girl was very clearly keen in expressing her affections for her guy. While the guy held the girl around her waist as they walked, the girl would speak a little and then rush up to the guy’s cheeks and kiss him. She did this about three times. She couldn’t care for the people around her – not that I consider her actions as immoral, but what I found interesting was her practice of space. She was clearly unaffected by the senior citizens around, by the crowds around. The crowds were also not bothered about her. And that’s the jolly part of Nariman Point – nobody in the crowd is here to keep a watch on anyone else. Each one is a free individual here. As against this, you have the surveillance and brigades of morality at Bandra. Watchmen and guards constantly do the rounds at the sea faces at Bandra because residents complain that they are ‘disturbed’ by the kissing and physical intimacies of young things who come to the sea face! (‘Heart Attacks – an Alternative Perspective’ will probably be the title of my next venture!) What is also interesting about college romance and especially in today’s times is that at the seafront, there is no concept of pace of time for the couples. It is about being here and having a good time sans restrictions and social mores. The concept and practice of time for the young professionals, especially those who are cutting college and getting into jobs and professions is that of pace of time. The pace at work, office and beyond is rushed, stressed and suffocating. To get relief from this pace is the concept and practice of parties where time takes on a different guise. I believe parties are about consumption of time, an economy based on boredom. I am a bit hesitant, but I guess I should just say this that the practice of time at the sea face is not about consumption. It is distinctly different. It is very closely connected with the notion of space and by space I mean a widening and expanding space, not a shrinking space (Caution: read not space in physical terms here). Jogging: Today I watched the old and mid-life crisis facing joggers. Their faces were pensive and stressed. I think jogging is a stress reliving activity. I am not sure whether jogging is a matter of habit, but it seems to me that people get into cycles of jogging – cycles of health trips, business trips, fashion and fad trips, etc. If you watch carefully, most people jogging and walking are actually talking to themselves in their minds. Watch out for the grimaces, the facial expressions – there is a wide variety of them. Old Man’s Romance and Senior Citizens’ Meetings: Today I caught a brief glimpse into old couples’ romance at Nariman Point. Now, this romance is of types and varieties. One of the couples was sitting opposite me. The old woman took out an apple and broke it into halves. She gave one half to the old man and nibbled away at the other herself. Both of them looked affectionately at each other as they talking, eating and enjoying the breeze which had begun to blow by now. Another was a senior citizen couple. They were Gujarati and seemed like regular walkers along the sea face. Between themselves, they were discussing the state of affairs with respect to their everyday lives. A car halted at the road and a plush elderly woman who had a slight walking disability came and joined them. She bought her own chair and this clearly seemed like the trio’s meeting place. The old Gujarati ben (sister) and the plush lady got chatting while the old man put his attention to the more mundane outside and quipped into the conversation in between. Seafront Sexuality – Mirrors and Angles: Today we shall talk a little bit about eunuchs. They have a sense of smell and they know when exactly to come out. Two eunuchs began to do the rounds of the plinth. They always target couples. This time, one of them lay beside the boy and refused to get up until the couple gave them something and the couple finally gave in! Normally, the men from the couples resist to patronize eunuchs while females think it is auspicious to give something lest the eunuchs curse and this leads to the break-up of relationships. In this sense, young nubile girls in fresh romance are very superstitious. I have yet to see how people receive eunuchs and transvestites here at Nariman Point given the current trends of gender plurality and New Age Bollywood. Hope to come back to this at some point soon! Old Man Jockey: was here again today. He is definitely a regular. This evening, he was walking with the usual gait. He stopped and stared at me and shouted out loud, ‘Hullo!’ Embarrassed, I quickly dug my eyes into my notebook. He went ahead. Evening Wears On and As Darkness Cometh: The crowd increases in intensity as the sun sets and the sky wears a cloak of black (no diamonds here – planetary stars are a rarity, we have Bollywood stars instead!). These days, the sun sets early and evening wears on soon and crowds throng more and more at Nariman Point. Have to watch what happens in the darkness! Highlight of the Day: Old man with earplugs. This time, the earplugs were the ‘hearing aid’, not the hands free. I am sharpening my eyes! _________________________________________________________________ Life on the fast tracks! http://server1.msn.co.in/sp04/tataracing04/ Know all about it! From sastry at cs.wisc.edu Sun Sep 26 22:25:34 2004 From: sastry at cs.wisc.edu (Subramanya Sastry) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 22:25:34 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] RETRY: Fellowship posting #5 & #6 Message-ID: Looks like my previous posting got truncated! So, resending the mail. -Subbu. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- This is a combined posting for the last 2 months, and this marks the end of my 6-month fellowship. I will be applying for an extension and continue development of NewsRack. -Subbu. ########################################################################### News Rack: Automating News Gathering and Classification ------------------------------------------------------- Abstract: From sastry at cs.wisc.edu Sun Sep 26 22:31:07 2004 From: sastry at cs.wisc.edu (Subramanya Sastry) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 22:31:07 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] TRY #3: Fellowship posting #5 & #6 (fwd) Message-ID: Not sure if there is a problem with mailman and/or there are some special character combinations is throwing it off, but, the 2nd attempt also got truncated, it appears (based on checking the reader-list web archive). I am trying again, this time, after removing the abstract completely. -Subbu. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- This is a combined posting for the last 2 months, and this marks the end of my 6-month fellowship. I will be applying for an extension and continue development of NewsRack. -Subbu. ########################################################################### News Rack: Automating News Gathering and Classification ------------------------------------------------------- Overview of this posting - ------------------------ While I had conceived to have a minimal stable system in place by the middle of August, I will take another 7-10 days before I can make public the preliminary version of the service. I am in the midst of testing out the current user interface and tool. I will publicise the URL once it is ready. In this posting, I will provide: (1) a very broad overview of the current capabilities of NewsRack (2) the technologies involved in developing NewsRack (3) (ongoing) challenges in developing this (4) future directions for developing this further (5) summary of visits to NGOs and discussions about news gathering and classification work done at those places If you are not interested in the technical aspects of NewsRack, you can skip sections 2 and 3. - ----------------------- 1. Current capabilities - ----------------------- As it stands today, NewsRack can be deployed as a web-based service with multiple users using the service or as a standalone tool on one's desktop. Note that this distinction is somewhat cosmetic, because both uses require a web server over which NewsRack runs. In the web-based service incarnation, the installation will be on a web-server that is accessible on the internet. However, in a standalone-tool incarnation, the web-server serves pages locally. 1.1 Collaborative development of filtering rules - ------------------------------------------------ To use NewsRack, a user has to register with the system. Once registered, the user has to create a profile for downloading news and classifying it. This profile (via filtering rules) tells NewsRack (a) what news sources to download from (b) what news clippings to select (c) and how to classify the selected news items. The filtering rules are done using a 2-step process of (1) specifying keywords and associating them with concepts, and (2) using concepts to compose rules. By using concepts (as opposed to keywords) in filtering rules, concept definitions can evolve over time (new keywords added, useless keywords removed, etc.) *without* having to modify the filtering rules themselves. This also keeps the filtering rules simple and easy to understand. For example, a filtering rule for dam-rehabilitation category could be: [dam] AND [rehabilitation] where [dam] and [rehabilitation] are concepts. If tomorrow, governments have a new rehabilitation policy which is referred in the newspapers as NRPD (National Rehabilitation Policy for Dams), one could add the new keyword "NPRD" to the [rehabilitation] concept without modifying the filtering rule for the dam-rehabilitation category. The changes take effect at all places where this concept is referenced. This ability simplifies the maintenance/evolution of the filtering rules over time. The second interesting feature about NewsRack is that all concept definitions and filtering rule definitions can be shared and extended. Thus, a pool of concepts can be collaboratively developed. For example, if one user has defined the concepts [World Bank], [India], [dams], [privatisation], another user who wants to monitor news about world bank projects in india can use these concepts without having to redefine them, and if necessary extend those concepts to suit her needs. Thus, NewsRack allows for knowledge sharing across users and once a critical knowledge base is in place, any new user should be able to develop his/her profile very quickly. 1.2 RSS vs non-RSS news sources - ------------------------------- RSS (Rich Site Summary OR RDF Site Summary, depending on the version) is being widely used to push content from websites to users in contrast to the earlier model where users visited websites. With RSS feeds, a user can subscribe to several news feeds, install a RSS news reader on her computer, and updates from several websites are available in a single window without having to visit several different websites. So, whereas users visited websites (for website updates) via browsers which understand HTML, website updates now come to users via RSS readers which understand RSS. RSS is most pertinent to sites that have frequent updates (like newspapers). Right now, NewsRack only supports news sources with RSS feeds. This was the easiest to develop and test other features of the system. Once the current system is deployed, I will work on supporting news sources that do not provide RSS feeds. The primary technical challenge here is to download all news clippings published that day, and to extract date, title, author information for each clipping. RSS feeds provide all this information in a very easy format. At this time, Indian Express and Rediff provide RSS feeds. However, I do not have full confidence that these feeds cover all news items that are published on their website. I am in the process of verifying this. But, in the future, all newspapers will likely support RSS feeds. 1.3 Archiving of news clippings - ------------------------------- All selected news clippings are also archived locally. This archiving is done by extracting the text-based content of the clipping and stripping away everything else. At this time, while this filtering process works well, the output can be subject to further "beautification" to remove the still-remaining extraneous text not directly associated the news content. - -------------------- 2. Technical details - -------------------- This section can be skipped if you are not interested in the technical details of NewsRack. 2.1 Using Struts - ---------------- NewsRack has been developed using Java using the Servlet technology. It can be installed on any web server that supporters Java Servlets. The application has been developed using the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. Thus, there are 3 separate components to NewsRack (1) the application model with definitions of Users, Concepts, Categories, Profiles, News Items, etc. (2) the view that provides data presentation and user input, and (3) a controller to dispatch requests and control flow. I have used the Struts framework of the Apache Jakarta project to implement this MVC pattern. Using Struts has simplified the development of the user interface (the V of MVC). I have used the Velocity templating engine to develop the various output screens of NewsRack. The current version has been tested on Resin 2.1.12 web server. But, the system should also run on Tomcat -- I will test this soon to verify. 2.2 Backend archiving - --------------------- In the current implementation of NewsRack, all backend archiving of news, user profiles (including concept definitions and filtering rules) is done using XML files over the file system provided by the OS. Thus, the back end can be seen as a simple XML database. I have tried to implement the database layer as an abstract interface so that in future, other backed database implementations like MySQL can be used (which might become necessary as the system evolves). Ideally, the MySQL backend can be implemented without serious changes to the other components of NewsRack. 2.3 Specification format for the news filter - -------------------------------------------- The format for specifying concept definitions, filtering rules, news sources, and user profiles is based on XML. Initial feedback from people who had not heard of XML or those who are non-techies has been that they can easily write these XML-based profile specifications. At this time, I have not provided any GUI for developing this XML specifications. One could use any simple text editor (like Notepad on Windows or vi/vim/emacs on Unix) or other XML editors to develop these specifications. As discussed in Section 1.1, the filtering rules are written using 2-step process. An example here will clarify this process. Concept definitions ------------------- dam dam reservoir mega-dam narmada narmada ssp sardar sarovar ssp sardar sarovar narmada nigam limited ssnnl Category definitions -------------------- narmada dam narmada AND dam sardar-sarovar-dam ssp Thus, the process of modifying concepts is a matter of adding/deleting or changing existing keywords for that particular concept. Filtering rules are simple boolean expressions composed using AND/OR keywords. Negation support is still sketchy because the semantics of negation are not clear in this context. What does it mean to say (NOT dam), for example? In addition, context-based qualification is also supported. For example, "maheshwar" could be the name of a person or a temple or a place. However, if the article talks of dams or about river narmada, mention of "maheshwar" could be a reference to the Maheshwar dam! Likewise, a reference to Ms.Roy could be a reference to Arundhati Roy if earlier in the article, there are references to Arundhati Roy. Context-based qualifications attempt to capture these scenarios. 2.4 Implementation of news filtering - ------------------------------------ For every issue that the user has defined, NewsRack examines all the filtering rules, and collects all concepts that have been used in the profile. NewsRack then generates a lexical analyzer (or scanner) to recognize the keywords for each concept that has been used. NewsRack generates a scanner by generating a scanner specification file for JFlex, a publicly-available Java-based scanner generator. NewsRack also supports JavaCC, another publicly-available Java-based scanner generator. However, experimentation shows that JFlex generated scanners are faster and more compact than JavaCC generated scanners. When a news article is passed through this lexical analyzer, all keywords that are encountered trigger the corresponding concepts to be recognized. By analyzing all concepts that are recognized and their frequency, the news article is then assigned to one or more categories based on the filtering rules that match. At this time, the concept analysis and rule matching algorithm is somewhat rudimentary and it can be refined and extended over time. 2.5 Support for RSS feeds - ------------------------- Currently, I am using the publicly available RSS4J Java API for parsing RSS news feeds. This has been downloaded from SourceForge. Over this, NewsRack implements caching to prevent downloading the same article repeatedly for different users, and across different sessions. - --------------------- 3. Ongoing challenges - --------------------- When I started this project, I was not familiar with XML, Java Servlets, Struts, MySQL, JDBC, or with Java-based web applications. So, quite a bit of the last 6 months has been spent getting acquainted with these technologies, experimenting with them, and proceeding with the development. 3.1 Using XML - ------------- Some of my lack of experience shows in the XML specification for defining concepts, rules, news sources, and profiles. For example, the concepts defined earlier could become less verbose by using attributes as follows: While the verbosity of the current specification is not a drawback (I was told by novice XML users that the attribute-less specification is actually simpler), future extensions could provide support for these less-verbose specifications. 3.2 Developing a web application - -------------------------------- Initially I started using Servlets and Webmacro to implement the user interface. However, I later on switched to using Struts to develop the user interface. This decision has helped me develop the initial system much more quickly than would have been possible otherwise. But, the user interface development has proved to be much more difficult and involved than I had imagined when I first began the project. While I have implemented the back end news archiving as a simple XML database, I might have to switch to MySQL (or other databases) at a later point. At that time, I will familiarize myself with JDBC on a need-to-know basis. 3.3 Supporting non-RSS based news sources - ----------------------------------------- On the one hand, while supporting non-RSS seems as simple as downloading all content for that day from a newspaper's website, things are more challenging than this. If I want to save on download bandwidth, I will have to do more selective downloading. But, more importantly, in order to integrate downloaded news within NewsRack, I have to extract date, title, author information for each clipping. While doing this extraction for any one particular newspaper is a simple matter of writing rules to recognize these patterns, the harder question is if there is a general way of extracting this for all newspapers, or if custom patterns would have to be developed each time a new non-RSS news source is added? It is in this respect that RSS acquires added importance. All this information is readily available in a RSS feed. In addition, well-developed RSS feeds can also provide brief abstracts of the news items which can prove invaluable in browsing the news archive. 3.4 Managing the news archives - ------------------------------ Once the tool is up and running for a few weeks, the news collection for any particular category might continue to grow. At that time, the challenge will be in terms of presenting these news items to the user in a way that does not overwhelm him. Furthermore, support might have to be provided to refine the classification system, and reclassify on the fly. 3.5 Bandwidth requirement for downloading news - ---------------------------------------------- There are a couple of problems with the current monolithic version of NewsRack. Firstly, very few installations will be possible because of the bandwidth required to download newspaper content every day. For example, with 10 newspapers, it is likely that monthly download might be of the order of almost 1GB. It is very likely that only very well-funded organizations or organizations/individuals in the US or other developed countries could afford the necessary bandwidth. Public installations as a web service (as envisaged currently) can help address this problem. 3.6 Challenges with copyright issues - ------------------------------------ While there can be potential problems with creating local copies of news clippings without getting permission from newspapers, by highlighting the not-for-profit motive of this tool, this problem can be avoided. Perhaps, others can throw more light on this matter. - ---------------------- 4. Further development - ---------------------- Most immediately, I am working on making public the first release of this tool which provides the very rudimentary services of filtering for RSS news feeds. I am hoping to have this ready within the next 7-10 days. I will also put out examples, documentation on the filter specification process, and in using the tool. After that the most immediate task at hand will be to fix bugs that will invariably pop up. Once the system stabilizes, I will work on providing support for non-RSS news sources. At that time, the tool itself will acquire a semblance of completeness in terms of covering most of the English-language Indian newspapers. The other most important feature that needs to be supported is the ability to search the news archive. In parallel, I will work with existing NGOs/users to develop a collaborative library of concepts, and filtering rules. Beyond this, there are a number of desirable features that will make the tool very useful. I list them here but will not elaborate on them here: - ability to refine/debug the filtering rules (based on looking at all unclassified news articles) - ability to download and classify news from regional language newspapers - ability to select news from the archive and automatically generate a newsletter based on the selected news clippings - ability to remove an item from a category or move/copy an item from one category to another - ability to reclassify an existing news archive whenever a profile is modified - ability to sort news items on other axes (like date, author, news source) - ability to decentralize news downloading across multiple installations of NewsRack. I have ideas about how several installations of NewsRack at multiple sites could collectively download all required news content such that any individual installation only downloads a fraction of the entire content. When the tool reaches this stage, it might begin to resemble a peer-to-peer model of news downloading. At some point in the near future, I am going to register the project on SourceForge and invite other developers to join in. - ------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Summary of visits/discussions with NGOs regarding news gathering - ------------------------------------------------------------------- I have very close experience with this process of news gathering when I used to maintain the www.narmada.org website for over 2 years. I still have a marginal involvement with maintaining the website. Updating the press clippings section on this site was one of the most laborious tasks initially. At a later time, using 'wget' scripts to download entire content of newspapers and 'grep'-ping the content for certain keywords, a lot of this task was simplified, and the manual work came down to about half-an-hour a day. Yet, the entire process has been less than satisfactory as can be seen by the current breakdown in the process of updating the press clippings section, several broken links to articles, and lack of any form of topic-wise/sector-wise classification of articles. When I spent some time at Environment Support Group, Bangalore, I noticed that a lot of time used to be spent in this process of collecting news, marking them, cutting, and filing them. Besides, there was a perennial problem of backlog, sometimes resulting in a pile of newspapers that had to be gone through. When I visited CED, Bangalore, I found out that they also had a process for selecting news clippings and filing them. While they had an electronic archive, news was added to the electronic archive by downloading articles (previously marked in the physical version of the newspapers) from the web, extracting the text content. There was no automated process here. I have also had 4-5 people express interest in NewsRack based on my postings to PRC-list and reader-list. Shripad from Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, and Himanshu from SANDRP Delhi or others who have expressed interest in the tool. They said that they might use Newsrack if it proved satisfactory and saves them time. Most recently, when I was in Delhi and visited Sarai, I was quite amused to see on the whiteboard something to the effect of: "everyone should spend at least 3 hours every week scanning relevant news clippings and adding it to the database". When I visited CSE, I found out that at CSE, over 80 news publications are monitored every day, over 500 news clippings are processed, and that they have about 5-8 full time employees just for this purpose! I was told that "news collection is the pain point of many organizations". The scale of operations here was quite fascinating. Every day, the news that was identified was then abstracted to generate a daily news digest that was circulated within CSE. Furthermore, the classified news was used to generate various monthly digests -- called the Green Files, which was a collection of most relevant and important environment-related news. The process of selecting news was done on the basis of a keyword thesaurus that had about 4800 keywords! This thesaurus has been developed over a period of almost 20 years. The thesaurus is the knowledge-base of CSE's library operations that aids them in selecting news and classifying them into the various files based on the particular issue that the article addressed. The web-people at CSE were curious to see how the tool develops and felt that it might be useful -- though they were understandably cautious to see/judge how well the news classification could be automated and how much work could be saved. My gut feeling, based on talking with several people, is that there is definite value, interest, and curiosity about News Rack. A lot will depend on how easy it is to develop the knowledge base, to specify the filtering rules, and how well the classification performs. The rule specification language itself is pretty straightforward and everyone who has seen the format has felt comfortable with it. So, the real test will be in terms of how well the classification performs, and how much effort is involved in refining filtering rules. Deployment, experimentation, and further refinement of the tool is the way forward from here on. But, I am confident that the tool will find its use in this space of news gathering and classification. From definetime at rediffmail.com Sat Sep 25 23:47:14 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 25 Sep 2004 18:17:14 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) article on Edward Said Message-ID: <20040925181714.12054.qmail@webmail46.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040925/79fef1b8/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Extract from an article on Edward Said: ...His major work, Orientalism, was published in 1978, and made him world famous. It was translated into 36 languages, and continues to prompt debate and inform argument against certain ideological and racist attitudes that still shape ideology in the United States and Britain ... ... Here, we return to the subject of silence, and in Orientalism he explores how a liberal, progressive confidence in civilisation sought to denigrate the achievements of other civilisations. This confidence is enshrined in a famous minute on Indian education, written by Macaulay for the East India Company in 1832, which Said discusses early in Orientalism. Macaulay admitted he had "no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic", but went on to assert: "The intrinsic superiority of the western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education ... It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England." As Said remarks, this is no "mere expression" of an opinion, because Macaulay has an ethnocentric opinion with ascertainable results: speaking from a position of power he was able to make an entire subcontinent submit to studying in a language not its own. It was reading Said on Macaulay and then reading the complete minute that made me realise that the beautiful standard English RK Narayan employs in his subtle novels is pitched at such a perfect level - a level with no vernacular resonance - that it reads, with a deliberate irony, as though it is translated from Narayan's native Tamil. Narayan, I remember, was attacked by VS Naipaul, and from time to time Said criticises Naipaul as a writer who tells western power what it wants to hear about its former colonies. Full article: http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1311404,00.html From definetime at rediffmail.com Sun Sep 26 22:35:19 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 26 Sep 2004 17:05:19 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) Bush dynasty: Profits of War Message-ID: <20040926170519.28784.qmail@webmail29.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040926/a3a87ee8/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington Saturday September 25, 2004 The Guardian George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy. The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty. Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election. While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war. Tantalising Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world. Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942. Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland. The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen. The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized. The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes. A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort". Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921. In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking. One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125. The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family. August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again. By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam. By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war. Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions. In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war. There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation. There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper. Erwin May, a treasury attache and officer for the department of investigation in the APC, was assigned to look into UBC's business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn't actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC's president. May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: "Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest." May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel travelled to these companies through UBC. By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman HJ Kouwenhoven - who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen's Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen's steel and coal mine empire in Germany. Within a few weeks, Homer Jones, the chief of the APC investigation and research division sent a memo to the executive committee of APC recommending the US government vest UBC and its assets. Jones named the directors of the bank in the memo, including Prescott Bush's name, and wrote: "Said stock is held by the above named individuals, however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam, Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC," according to the memo from the National Archives seen by the Guardian. Red-handed Jones recommended that the assets be liquidated for the benefit of the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler's rise to power. The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz. Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel magnate who also owned part of IG Farben, the powerful German chemical company. Flick's plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest. The US National Archive documents show that BBH's involvement with CSSC was more than simply holding the shares in the mid-1930s. Bush's friend and fellow "bonesman" Knight Woolley, another partner at BBH, wrote to Averill Harriman in January 1933 warning of problems with CSSC after the Poles started their drive to nationalise the plant. "The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected," wrote Knight. "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have. You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors." But the ownership of the CSSC between 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and 1942 when the US government vested UBC and SAC is not clear. "SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935, but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a few traces in 1938 and 1939," says Eva Schweitzer, the journalist and author whose book, America and the Holocaust, is published next month. Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after the invasion, but while Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those belonging to the still neutral Americans (and some other nationals) were treated more carefully as Hitler was still hoping to persuade the US to at least sit out the war as a neutral country. Schweitzer says American interests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Nazis bought some out, but not others. The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war. Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty". Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family." Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place. In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp. The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear their case. A ruling is expected within a month. The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented." The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director. Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable to pay compensation." The US government and the Bush family deny all the claims against them. In addition to Eva Schweitzer's book, two other books are about to be published that raise the subject of Prescott Bush's business history. The author of the second book, to be published next year, John Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 70s. Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered on Bush. Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time. "You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks - but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he said. "This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich's defence industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted," said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg. "The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen," said Loftus. "At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn't until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it's absolute horseshit. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were." "There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it," said Loftus. "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany." Loftus said Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time. "My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two evil geniuses, they didn't care about the Nazis any more than they cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks." What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share. Loftus disputes this, citing sources in "the banking and intelligence communities" and suggesting that the Bush family, through George Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There is, however, no paper trail to this sum. The third person going into print on the subject is John Buchanan, 54, a Miami-based magazine journalist who started examining the files while working on a screenplay. Last year, Buchanan published his findings in the venerable but small-circulation New Hampshire Gazette under the headline "Documents in National Archives Prove George Bush's Grandfather Traded With the Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor". He expands on this in his book to be published next month - Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media and the Religious Right. In the article, Buchanan, who has worked mainly in the trade and music press with a spell as a muckraking reporter in Miami, claimed that "the essential facts have appeared on the internet and in relatively obscure books but were dismissed by the media and Bush family as undocumented diatribes". Buchanan suffers from hypermania, a form of manic depression, and when he found himself rebuffed in his initial efforts to interest the media, he responded with a series of threats against the journalists and media outlets that had spurned him. The threats, contained in e-mails, suggested that he would expose the journalists as "traitors to the truth". Unsurprisingly, he soon had difficulty getting his calls returned. Most seriously, he faced aggravated stalking charges in Miami, in connection with a man with whom he had fallen out over the best way to publicise his findings. The charges were dropped last month. Biography Buchanan said he regretted his behaviour had damaged his credibility but his main aim was to secure publicity for the story. Both Loftus and Schweitzer say Buchanan has come up with previously undisclosed documentation. The Bush family have largely responded with no comment to any reference to Prescott Bush. Brown Brothers Harriman also declined to comment. The Bush family recently approved a flattering biography of Prescott Bush entitled Duty, Honour, Country by Mickey Herskowitz. The publishers, Rutledge Hill Press, promised the book would "deal honestly with Prescott Bush's alleged business relationships with Nazi industrialists and other accusations". In fact, the allegations are dealt with in less than two pages. The book refers to the Herald-Tribune story by saying that "a person of less established ethics would have panicked ... Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman informed the government regulators that the account, opened in the late 1930s, was 'an unpaid courtesy for a client' ... Prescott Bush acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill." The Prescott Bush story has been condemned by both conservatives and some liberals as having nothing to do with the current president. It has also been suggested that Prescott Bush had little to do with Averill Harriman and that the two men opposed each other politically. However, documents from the Harriman papers include a flattering wartime profile of Harriman in the New York Journal American and next to it in the files is a letter to the financial editor of that paper from Prescott Bush congratulating the paper for running the profile. He added that Harriman's "performance and his whole attitude has been a source of inspiration and pride to his partners and his friends". The Anti-Defamation League in the US is supportive of Prescott Bush and the Bush family. In a statement last year they said that "rumours about the alleged Nazi 'ties' of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser." However, one of the country's oldest Jewish publications, the Jewish Advocate, has aired the controversy in detail. More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business. From definetime at rediffmail.com Mon Sep 27 11:04:55 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 27 Sep 2004 05:34:55 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) IMF / World Bank policies hit women hardest Message-ID: <20040927053455.28444.qmail@webmail46.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040927/faf0a35a/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   When he eats little, she eats less Developing countries' crippling debt hits women hardest. And the policies of the IMF and World Bank make matters worse Noreena Hertz Friday September 24, 2004 The Guardian At the International Monetary Fund, only one in nine senior employees are women. At the World Bank, less than 1% of the staff work on issues relating to gender. In the world of international finance it is men in grey suits who manage world debt. But on the ground, in the world's poorest countries, it is women who shoulder the developing world's debt burden. Make no mistake, debt is a feminist issue. To be eligible for loans from the World Bank and the IMF in order to repay their debts, impoverished countries are made to follow these two institutions' narrow set of macroeconomic policies. These policies seem reasonable to the men who insist on them: the privatisation of state-owned enterprises and public utilities; a tight rein on public expenditure; the opening up of markets to foreign investors. But a compelling body of research now shows that these policies exacerbate poverty in poor countries, and harm girls and women the most. Take the capping of public expenditure. One of the first things that governments don't do in order to meet this particular requirement is invest in infrastructure development like water and sanitation. This disproportionately affects women because it is women in developing countries who, as a result, walk up to 15km each day to collect water; it is women who on these journeys risk their own security. The Sudanese militia, for example, has been reported to prey on the women in Darfur who have to walk long distances to find water. It is girls who become "prisoners of daylight" because of a lack of toilet facilities, fearful to go for a pee until it is dark. The reining in of public expenditure hurts girls in other ways, too. In order to meet this requirement, almost all developing countries have adopted a policy of charging for healthcare and school fees. And when parents faced with school fees have to choose between spending their money on sending their daughters or sons to learn, guess who gets to go to school? When the state doesn't provide healthcare, it is daughters not sons who are taken out of school to become care-givers; it is girls who become the unpaid nurses. And then, of course, there's the fact that in order to be able to find additional monies to repay the loans, countries need to generate foreign exchange. That is not gender-neutral, either. The focus on the export of cash crops to repay the debt often means that key foodstuffs become more scarce and expensive at home. And it is mothers who, as a consequence, sacrifice their own food intake in order to be able to feed their children, and who bear the brunt of the resultant malnutrition. In the most extreme cases women become a key source of foreign exchange themselves. The export of women from Thailand and elsewhere in south-east Asia to work as domestic servants overseas is a well-documented key foreign exchange generating industry for many developing world governments, an industry actively encouraged by the World Bank. A less well-known and highly disturbing fact is that the Philippines government, in the late 1970s, actively promoted the mail order bride industry in order to repay its debt. All this money spent on debt repayments is money that could, and should, be spent on other things. Sub-Saharan Africa pays out $30m a day in debt service. This in a continent in which 40 million children will lose at least one parent to Aids within the next decade and only 60,000 people are receiving anti-retroviral drugs because their governments cannot afford them. In Ethiopia, where only one in six women receive antenatal care, debt repayments total four times as much as public spending on health. In Niger, where the infant mortality rate is the highest in the world, more is spent on debt repayments than on health. Women don't have to remain the unheard victims of the debt crisis; the men in grey can be made to listen. If women in the developed world would unite with those in the developing countries to seek to address the injustice of debt in the poorer countries, they would be highly effective. With Britain next year assuming the EU presidency and chairing the G8, and with a general election approaching, British women in particular have a major role to play in defusing the developing world debt threat. All our political parties are very aware of how crucial the female vote will be to secure election victory. Move over Mondeo man, it's Worcester woman's vote that each party is trying to win. Labour is particularly aware of the need to attract the female vote. Recent research by Mori shows that it is women over 35 who are most dissatisfied with the government, and that foreign affairs is now in the top five issues of women's concern. With the government aware of these findings, women now have a huge opportunity to shape policy. And there are a number of campaigning groups - such as the World Development Movement and the Bretton Woods Project - which they can join to do just that. Developing country debt is already on the radar screens of many women's groups - the Mothers' Union highlights developing country debt as one of the most critical issues that the world needs to resolve. Women and children must not continue to suffer because their governments are forced not only to repay what are essentially unpayable and often illegitimate debts, but also to play by a set of rules that do not take gender into account. With party conference season upon us and a general election within sight it's important to remember that politicians can be swayed by what it is that women want. IOU: The Debt Threat and Why We Must Defuse It, by Noreena Hertz, is published by Fourth Estate. hertzn at yahoo.co.uk From geert at xs4all.nl Sat Sep 25 21:31:57 2004 From: geert at xs4all.nl (geert) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 16:01:57 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] list discusses "the city as target" Message-ID: <1096124464.712.9.camel@koffertje> -----Forwarded Message----- From: Jordan Crandall To: underfire at smtp.v2.nl Subject: welcome Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 08:58:29 -0400 Hello, As of Monday, the Under Fire discussion forum will begin again for another 12-week period. As before, we will periodically invite guest hosts to introduce topics for discussion. Ryan Bishop, Gregory Clancey, and John William Phillips will initiate the discussions next week with a focus on "the city as target", including issues around the militarization of urban space, from the concrete to the imaginary, and the rhetorics of tracking and targeting. With the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq and the looming US presidential election, there are sure to be many other urgent lines of discussion opening up. Please feel free to participate as you wish, with text or image, polemics or poetics - either addressing the issues on the table or adding topics of your own. The first book in the Under Fire series was published over the summer (ISBN: 90 73362 61 X). The conversations that occur online between now and December will be compiled in volume 2, to be released early 2005. An Under Fire conference and screening program will be held in the context of the DEAF (Dutch Electronic Arts Festival) in Rotterdam on November 14. Details will follow. By accessing http://www.wdw.nl/ENG/text/projects/crandall/fr_crandall.htm you can catch up on the history of Under Fire and visit the discussion archive. I would like to extend a special thanks to our sponsoring institutions -- the Witte de With center for contemporary art and the V2_Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam - and to all of you who participated in the discussions last spring. We are looking forward to seeing you again here during the coming weeks, and to encountering our new colleagues who have recently joined the forum. Jordan Crandall _______________________________________________ Under Fire a forum on the organization and representation of violence Witte de With center for contemporary art http://www.wdw.nl to post a message, send to: underfire at list.v2.nl for list information and subscription management: https://list.v2.nl/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/underfire for discussion archive: http://www.wdw.nl/underfire-archive From nc-agricowi at netcologne.de Mon Sep 27 12:46:31 2004 From: nc-agricowi at netcologne.de ({videoChannel}) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 09:16:31 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] video channel://call for proposals Message-ID: <20040927091631.844D6C42.FB6DA94F@127.0.0.1> VideoChannel a common project environment of --> Cinematheque at MediaCentre www.le-musee-divisioniste.org and [R][R][F]2004--->XP www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/ . invites video artists for participating and submitting proposals of video works . Subject: "Memory & identity" and/or "Violence" Running time: minimum 1 minute - maximum 10 minutes Dimensions: 320x240 pixels extended deadline: 30 October 2004. Following digital formats are accepted--> URL, in case the work is posted online or for download--> mpeg, Quicktime (.mov), with DiVX compression (.avi), Real Video (rm) Windows Media (.wmf), Flash video (.swf). Selected artists maybe invited to send their work on DVD for optional offline screening. . Due to the optionally large size of the videos, please do not attache any video work to the submission, but make the media file available for download from your server. . Only works combining an excellent artistic expression with an excellent image quality will be selected. . Please use this form for submitting: ******************* 1.name of artist, email address, URL 2. short biography/CV (not more than 300 words) 3. 1 work only -->title, year of production, running time a) URL of the posted work online or b) URL from where the media file can be downloaded 4. short work description (not more than 300 words each) . The artists or owners of the video works will keep all rights on their submitted works . Confirmation/authorization: The submitter declares and confirms that he/she is holding all author's rights and gives permission to include the submitted work in "VideoChannel" online environment until revoke. Signed by (submitter) Please send the complete submission to mediacentre at le-musee-divisioniste.org subject: Video Channel . deadline 30 October . The video submissions to this call will be launched on occasion of the physical installation during 404 New Media Art Festival Rosario/Argentina which will take place in December 2004. . ********************************** As part of the global networking project [R][R][F]2004--->XP www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/ . VideoChannel will collect during the coming months a) curatorial contributions of video works from many countries on the globe b) video works of individual artists which are based on the subjects "memory & and identity" and "violence" . VideoChannel is that "Memory Channel" within [R][R][F]2004--->XP, which is always installed sepearately in all physical installations, all accepted videos will be screened in physical space . [R][R][F]2004--->XP will be developing and operating through 2006. . ***************************** Cinematheque at Media Centre www.le-musee-divisioniste.org/mediacentre/ and [R][R][F] 2004--->XP www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004 the progressive project environment in the framework of A Virtual Memorial www.a-virtual-memorial.org . are corporate members of [NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne the experimental platform for netbased art -->founded, directed and curated by Agricola de Cologne. . Copyright 2000-2004. All rights reserved. ******************************* _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From shivamvij at gmail.com Sat Sep 25 20:36:57 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 20:36:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Censorship: the most challenged books of last year Message-ID: [From the literature at yahoogroups.com mailing list, sorry for crossposting. Shivam] From: shahara97 at aol.com Subject: info on Banned Book week September 25-October 2 . If you disagree with censorship please use this gif on your webpages, etc... for more info visit: http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/ here is a blurb (and there are other stories all over, please share): Every year, the ALA prepares a list of the most challenged books for the previous year, as a guide so everyone, including parents and students, understand how insidious the practice is and how unfortunate it is that kids around the country are losing access to books that millions of other children cherish. The books, in order of most frequently challenged, are: The "Alice" series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, for sexual content, using offensive language, and being unsuited to age group. The "Harry Potter" series, for its inclusion of wizardry and magic. "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck, for using offensive language. "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture" by Michael A. Bellesiles, for inaccuracy. "Fallen Angels" by Walter Dean Myers, for racism, sexual content, offensive language, drugs and violence. "Go Ask Alice" by Anonymous, for drugs. "It's Perfectly Normal" by Robie Harris, for homosexuality, nudity, sexual content and sex education. "We All Fall Down" by Robert Cormier, for offensive language and sexual content. "King and King" by Linda de Haan, for homosexuality. "Bridge to Terabithia" by Katherine Paterson, for offensive language and occult/satanism Judy Blume - who was recognized last week by the National Book Foundation for her contributions to American letters - is the second-most censored author of the past 15 years. Alvin Schwartz, who writes the Scary Stories series, tops the list. J.K. Rowling is fourth, but she has published fewer books than either Blume or Schwartz, and her first book was released in the US in late 1999. At Nimbus - 2003 last year, Judith Krug, director of the OIF, spoke about censorship and the Harry Potter books. She noted that "some people believe that just the act of reading Harry will actually automatically convert readers into witches[, and that another] major complaint is that the books glorify evil. When this charge is hurled, I patiently explain that these books are about good and evil." Ms. Krug said: "In addition to witchcraft, we've heard complaints that Harry Potter encourages disrespect for adults and authority, and that the Dursleys are mean. In one case, the complainant alleged that the novels promote drug useâ€"all those portionsâ€"and we've seen a handful on the grounds that the series promotes Wicca and, therefore, violates the separation of church and state." In tandem with Banned Books Week, the ALA has provided a guide for parents on issues related to kids and reading, and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, who joined us at the TLC/FictionAlley screening of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban at an IMAX theater last June, is highlighting how bookstores fight censorship. The ALA writes: "Kids and curiosity go together. Sometimes the books that challenge the minds of children the most are the books that some people feel are inappropriate for them. Children are thinkers, and they can only grow if we give them the opportunity to read all types of literature. While parents are understandably curious and sometimes concerned about what our child reads, the ALA recommends that if a parent is uncomfortable with a book assigned in class, they should request an alternative selection. However, taking action to remove a book from a school or library limits the access of all the members of the community, not just those who dislike the work. As Dr Krug said, "removing the book imposes the will of that one parent, or group of parents, on all the other parents and children in the community." You can find a list of the 100 most challenged books here. If you need to report a challenge to a book, you can visit this page for more information. From shivamvij at gmail.com Sun Sep 26 17:18:48 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 17:18:48 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] =?utf-8?q?Press_Conference_on_Peoples=E2=80=99_Di?= =?utf-8?q?gnity_Rally_in_Delhi_on_5th_December_at_Ramlila_Grounds?= In-Reply-To: <6d43b66d7865.6d78656d43b6@vsnl.net> References: <6d43b66d7865.6d78656d43b6@vsnl.net> Message-ID: From: nacdor at vsnl.net Press Conference for Peoples' Dignity Rally and World Dignity Day Some prominent peoples' organizations, dalit networks and social movements from all over the country have come together for the first time and they are organizing a Peoples' Dignity Rally in Delhi on 5th December at Ramlila Grounds. More than 50,000 dalits, tribals, workers, Muslims and others are expected to join the Rally, to raise issues of their livelihood, dignity and justice and press for their demands. All over the world, 5th December will be observed as the World Dignity Day: International Day of Solidarity to the struggles of Indian dalits, tribals, minorities and other marginals. The Social Movements International Network/ World Assembly of Social Movements, an international umbrella of mass organizations and social movements, has given this call recently in conjunction with the Peoples' Dignity Rally in Delhi. To apprise you about the Peoples' Dignity Rally, its issues and demands and to brief you about the International Day of Solidarity and its major programs all over the world, we are organizing a Press Conference on 27th September. Representatives of various organizations from all over the country will address the press conference. Programme Date: 27 September 2004 Time: 3:00-5:00 p.m. Venue: Indian Women's Press Corp, 5, Windsor Place, Janpath Round Circle, New Delhi 110001 For more information and confirmation, please contact: World Dignity Forum Secretariat National Press- Deepa Menon- 26516695/ 26854405, Ext: 20 Regional Press- Prashant Lila Ramdas – 30903429 With warm regards Ashok Bharti, National Coordinator, National Conference of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR) and Coordinator, World Dignity Forum Mukul Sharma, Coordinator, World Dignity Forum _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From coolzanny at hotmail.com Mon Sep 27 20:23:47 2004 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:23:47 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Everybody's day Out! Message-ID: 26 September 2004 Worli Sea Face 5:30 PM Day Out For All! Today is a Sunday. Worli Sea Face is ultra-crowded on Sundays. I have landed here early today, I mean early by Sunday-standards! I sat down a little away from the place where I usually sit. It is sunny, hot, humid and not yet very crowded. On my left, there are two young boys who are working out logistical details of a project. One of them is enthusiastic and is pushing his friend to get done with the detailing soon. Both of them seem to be enjoying their workspace here � it helps them think �in the open�. After they are done, they go over for a walk and start discussing happenings in their personal lives. Joggers are here today, but in sparse numbers. One of the joggers is wearing white canvas shoes, like the kind I used to wear in school for PT. These have become rare in the age of Nike and Reebok. There is a pregnant woman and her husband is walking her along with a friend of theirs. She is very happy and content and she is also expectant (obviously!). Babies� Day Out � The Balloon Man and his little clients: Today is Babies� Day Out at Worli Sea Face. Kids are running and jumping. They are in a world of their own. Sitting opposite me is a man selling balloons. He is blowing balloons and setting up his display. There are four types of balloons � the round apple-shaped ones, cylindrical balloons, Mickey Mouse shaped ones and the heart shaped balloons. The balloon man is in no hurry. As he is blowing the balloons and setting up his display, he makes the familiar sound and call of the balloon man which involves rubbing his palms hard on the blown balloon surface. This makes a screeching sound � �keetch-keetch-screech� type. Many people get irritated with this noise. Today, as the balloon man was making this sound, a group of youngsters walking on the sea face in unison put their hands on their ears and uttered irritated squeals. I hadn�t noticed the balloon man all along. I was even oblivious of the sounds. A little girl aged three, dressed in a yellow frock was walking smoothly along the sea face with two men accompanying. Suddenly, she got into this mad fit and ran towards the balloon man. She had recognized him and was delighted with the sight of the balloons. She strongly desired to have one when one of the men pulled her away. Her mad fit drew my attention. Goodness, children recognize the balloon man even today? Instantly, another little girl of about age three, dressed in a green frock, ran towards the balloon man and picked one piece. Her father paid the balloon man while the little girl had already begun her play. The balloon man is an important part in the life of this city�s children. I don�t know whether his popularity levels have gone down in today�s times, but the scenes I saw today made me realize that children still express joy when they see balloons. Balloons, even now, evoke that sense of wonder, awe and desire in them � what are these astral things, light and soar in the sky? Maybe some things don�t lose out their value even in changing times! A few minutes before the balloon man was done with his display and ready to go around, a little kid came and stood before him. He held out a Mickey Mouse balloon which the child accepted and began its play. The balloon man and the children share a distinct relationship with each other. There is an element of mutual understanding between them. So also between the Jhoolewala and his little fastidious customers. Kids have their own constructs and practices of relationships with different distinct peoples in the city. Perhaps for the child it is not the city which it processes � it processes certain universal symbols and peoples which it has already gotten familiar and acquainted with in its immediate environment. There were quite a few balloon sellers at the sea face today. And they had customers too! Parents� Day Out � instructions and lessons to babies: I find a lot of parents here today. These parents belong to the genre of those having little kids between the ages of one and three � the young parents. Dads are particularly prominent today. They are giving their babies lessons in walking and talking. One little girl passed by me and was struck when she saw the waters of the sea. She yelled loud to her mother, �mumm-mumm� which in baby talk means water. She was delighted with the vast expanse of �mumm-mumm�. Her mother affirmed her baby�s recognition by repeating �mumm-mumm� and then asked her baby to walk along. Some fathers were helping their children walk, protecting them from falling. Some were giving cycling lessons to their babies. These men appeared engrossed and content. Maybe Sunday is the day for parenting for them and the sea face is an apt place and space for these little and warm relationships. It is also pregnant mothers� day out today. Apart from the one I had spotted earlier, there were quite a few when I went walking around later. All of them were escorted by their husbands. Sunday and the sea face is a special occasion. Men use this time to be with their partners after the rushes of office and work through the week. All kinds of couples are here today � the middle class, the upper middle-class, the conservative, the liberal � all kinds! It�s also families� day out today and again, all kinds of families � Goan, Christian, Parsi, Maharashtrian, South Indian, etc. The sea face is some kind of space, though I cannot call it a meeting place because people stick to themselves and don�t really go out of the way to interact with �others�. I was trying to make analyses through the hordes of people. I felt that Sunday is a day for weekly walks and jogs for some couples. I remember Dad, Mom, Simmin and me coming here for Sunday evening walk quite regularly. Transformations: The Sunday mela of hawkers with jhoolas, roasting of corn, and what not is not here anymore. But it exists in different forms. The hawkers have now moved to places away from the main track. One such place is the pavement at the turning which is both entry and exit to the sea face. People patronize the jhoolewala and the food stalls there in large numbers. The other place which I discovered today through a long and deliberate walk today is the fag end of the sea face. Here, there are active and persistent stall owners and sellers � the familiar coconut water seller, bhel-puri and pani-puri guys, corn fellows with their handcarts and ice-cream men. Thus, hawkers have now been relegated to very specific places � they have been shifted from the spaces of �centre of attraction� to the �side-ways and far back�. Upavan : This fag end of Worli Sea Face is now an interesting location on the overall seafront. A little park has been constructed here. It is named �Mini Forest� or �Upavan� in Hindi. There is a clear list of what you are NOT supposed to do in the park i.e. you cannot indulge in commercial photography here, cannot sleep here, no playing radios or loud music, no selling eatables inside the park, no dogs allowed in, and some more. The park is sponsored and maintained by a private company. There is a little office with security guards in there. I glanced through the park from the outside. Do you call this park a �privately owned� or a �privately maintained� space? Who owns the park? I find the presence of this park interesting. It is a �meant-for-public-space� on a public space. Can you call it an encroachment? What realms of legality does this fall in? The designers have tried to create a forest-like atmosphere inside. After all, it has to live up to its name! There are little banana plantations interspersed with young sapling plantations of various kinds of trees. The park has a little Kuch Kuch Hota Hai type structure in between i.e. a little open space with four poles and a roof over it, like the kinds you see in the Yash Chopra films in which the hero and heroine take shelter during heavy rains (after they are already drenched) and background music starts to play for romance and effect! The name Mini Forest really amused me � attempted jungle in a concrete jungle! There were some people sitting inside our Mini Forest. Some of them were facing the sea and enjoying the atmosphere. Some joggers were taking rest in here after having jogged for a while and stretch. This evening, after having sat down for an hour, I decided to go for a walk. I walked all along, in an attempt to feel the atmosphere. One breed which I noticed prominently while walking was that of sahelis (female friends). A lot of them seemed like office colleagues. They were sitting facing the sea and discussing personal lives. While counseling was going on between them at one level, at another level, the sahelis were walking and having a good time. It is their day out also today. Maharashtrian bais were plenty too today. I wonder whether they are regulars or is this just a season of Ganesh devotees from everywhere who are here in the city for ten days? I also wondered whether these bais belong to the genre of ultra-important maids in rich men�s houses. Most of them were pretty well dressed and had adorned gold jewellery. There were also Shiv Sainik type youths around here today. Worli is home of several Maharashtrians and Ganesh festival is celebrated with pomp and glory here. As evening wore on, the crowds increased. People were leisurely sitting at the sea face. Dog owners had come out to walk their dogs. Senior citizens had formed their little groupings, this time in little corner between the crowds as against their usual prominence and presence on weekdays. Perhaps these regular senior citizens were sharing space with visitors � chalo, inko bhi aaj mazaa karne dete hai! While I walking out, I noticed more and more people arriving at the sea face. Wow! It is everybody�s day out today! Scene of the Day: This one is very special, belonging to the babies� and dogs� day out category. A couple was walking their little dog. I don�t know what breed you call this, but its� this very, very short black dog, bulky and it walks like a little baby. On the other side, there was a family consisting of father, mother grandmother and little year and a half old baby. The baby was fascinated with the doggie � she was wondering about this creature which has four legs. Immediately, the baby got down on her knees and two hands and began imitating the dog�s walk. The family and the dog owner couple helped facilitate the game between the two. At one point, both the baby and the doggie came face to face with each other and the doggie who got intimidated gave a snarl in the baby�s face to which the father immediately pulled his child away. Then the baby once again drew close to the dog. She was continuously imitating the dog�s walk on her knees and hands. Both would come close and either the dog owners would pull their doggie away or the dad would pull his child away � kids know no boundaries. They are a delight, a quintessential part of the everyday cinema! This little baby had unknowingly introduced the two unknown families, unintentionally creating a meeting place! _________________________________________________________________ Steam up your desktop! http://www.msn.co.in/cinema/ Get the hottest wallpapers. From shivamvij at gmail.com Mon Sep 27 23:13:29 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 23:13:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) Bush dynasty: Profits of War In-Reply-To: <20040926170519.28784.qmail@webmail29.rediffmail.com> References: <20040926170519.28784.qmail@webmail29.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: The sins that men commit live on after them. And ethical activits use them to target their children. Bush is a bad boy because his grand daddy was Hitler's pal. And gosh, if Hitler had kids, the collective might of pre-election sensationalist leftist journalists and hacktivists would have forced them to commit suicide. Yours provokingly, Shivam On 26 Sep 2004 17:05:19 -0000, sanjay ghosh wrote: > > > How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power > > Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president > > Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington > Saturday September 25, 2004 > The Guardian > > George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. > The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. > > His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy. > > The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. > > The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty. > > Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election. > > While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war. > > Tantalising > > Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world. > > Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942. > > Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland. > > The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen. > > The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized. > > The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes. > > A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort". > > Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921. > > In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking. > > One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125. > > The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family. > > August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again. > > By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam. > > By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war. > > Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions. > > In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war. > > There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation. > > There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper. > > Erwin May, a treasury attache and officer for the department of investigation in the APC, was assigned to look into UBC's business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn't actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC's president. > > May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: "Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest." > > May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel travelled to these companies through UBC. > > By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman HJ Kouwenhoven - who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen's Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen's steel and coal mine empire in Germany. > > Within a few weeks, Homer Jones, the chief of the APC investigation and research division sent a memo to the executive committee of APC recommending the US government vest UBC and its assets. Jones named the directors of the bank in the memo, including Prescott Bush's name, and wrote: "Said stock is held by the above named individuals, however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam, Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC," according to the memo from the National Archives seen by the Guardian. > > Red-handed > > Jones recommended that the assets be liquidated for the benefit of the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler's rise to power. > > The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz. > > Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel magnate who also owned part of IG Farben, the powerful German chemical company. > > Flick's plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest. > > The US National Archive documents show that BBH's involvement with CSSC was more than simply holding the shares in the mid-1930s. Bush's friend and fellow "bonesman" Knight Woolley, another partner at BBH, wrote to Averill Harriman in January 1933 warning of problems with CSSC after the Poles started their drive to nationalise the plant. "The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected," wrote Knight. "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have. You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors." > > But the ownership of the CSSC between 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and 1942 when the US government vested UBC and SAC is not clear. > > "SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935, but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a few traces in 1938 and 1939," says Eva Schweitzer, the journalist and author whose book, America and the Holocaust, is published next month. > > Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after the invasion, but while Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those belonging to the still neutral Americans (and some other nationals) were treated more carefully as Hitler was still hoping to persuade the US to at least sit out the war as a neutral country. Schweitzer says American interests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Nazis bought some out, but not others. > > The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war. > > Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty". > > Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family." > > Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place. > > In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp. > > The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear their case. A ruling is expected within a month. > > The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented." > > The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director. > > Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable to pay compensation." > > The US government and the Bush family deny all the claims against them. > > In addition to Eva Schweitzer's book, two other books are about to be published that raise the subject of Prescott Bush's business history. The author of the second book, to be published next year, John Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 70s. Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered on Bush. Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time. > > "You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks - but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he said. > > "This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich's defence industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted," said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg. > > "The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen," said Loftus. "At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn't until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it's absolute horseshit. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were." > > "There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it," said Loftus. "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany." > > Loftus said Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time. "My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two evil geniuses, they didn't care about the Nazis any more than they cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks." > > What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share. Loftus disputes this, citing sources in "the banking and intelligence communities" and suggesting that the Bush family, through George Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There is, however, no paper trail to this sum. > > The third person going into print on the subject is John Buchanan, 54, a Miami-based magazine journalist who started examining the files while working on a screenplay. Last year, Buchanan published his findings in the venerable but small-circulation New Hampshire Gazette under the headline "Documents in National Archives Prove George Bush's Grandfather Traded With the Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor". He expands on this in his book to be published next month - Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media and the Religious Right. > > In the article, Buchanan, who has worked mainly in the trade and music press with a spell as a muckraking reporter in Miami, claimed that "the essential facts have appeared on the internet and in relatively obscure books but were dismissed by the media and Bush family as undocumented diatribes". > > Buchanan suffers from hypermania, a form of manic depression, and when he found himself rebuffed in his initial efforts to interest the media, he responded with a series of threats against the journalists and media outlets that had spurned him. The threats, contained in e-mails, suggested that he would expose the journalists as "traitors to the truth". > > Unsurprisingly, he soon had difficulty getting his calls returned. Most seriously, he faced aggravated stalking charges in Miami, in connection with a man with whom he had fallen out over the best way to publicise his findings. The charges were dropped last month. > > Biography > > Buchanan said he regretted his behaviour had damaged his credibility but his main aim was to secure publicity for the story. Both Loftus and Schweitzer say Buchanan has come up with previously undisclosed documentation. > > The Bush family have largely responded with no comment to any reference to Prescott Bush. Brown Brothers Harriman also declined to comment. > > The Bush family recently approved a flattering biography of Prescott Bush entitled Duty, Honour, Country by Mickey Herskowitz. The publishers, Rutledge Hill Press, promised the book would "deal honestly with Prescott Bush's alleged business relationships with Nazi industrialists and other accusations". > > In fact, the allegations are dealt with in less than two pages. The book refers to the Herald-Tribune story by saying that "a person of less established ethics would have panicked ... Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman informed the government regulators that the account, opened in the late 1930s, was 'an unpaid courtesy for a client' ... Prescott Bush acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill." > > The Prescott Bush story has been condemned by both conservatives and some liberals as having nothing to do with the current president. It has also been suggested that Prescott Bush had little to do with Averill Harriman and that the two men opposed each other politically. > > However, documents from the Harriman papers include a flattering wartime profile of Harriman in the New York Journal American and next to it in the files is a letter to the financial editor of that paper from Prescott Bush congratulating the paper for running the profile. He added that Harriman's "performance and his whole attitude has been a source of inspiration and pride to his partners and his friends". > > The Anti-Defamation League in the US is supportive of Prescott Bush and the Bush family. In a statement last year they said that "rumours about the alleged Nazi 'ties' of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser." > > However, one of the country's oldest Jewish publications, the Jewish Advocate, has aired the controversy in detail. > > More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business. > > > > _________________________________________ > 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 definetime at rediffmail.com Tue Sep 28 08:19:25 2004 From: definetime at rediffmail.com (sanjay ghosh) Date: 28 Sep 2004 02:49:25 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) What Women Want (in UK) Message-ID: <20040928024925.2019.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040928/d68f07c5/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------   Extracts from a article wherein the Guardian's formidable feminist think-tank details 'what women want' on the eve of the Labour party conference. Equal pay (Polly Toynbee) The headline writers were excited. "Females heading departments earn more than males," said the latest report from the Chartered Management Institute. For the first time, women heading corporate departments earned more than men. Good grief. But what's the catch? They are special: only a quarter of department heads are women. There are more women managers than five years ago, but women still make up only one in seven of company directors. There are very few on the boards of top FTSE companies, and no woman in the greedy stratosphere of those earning seven-figure salaries. Does any of that matter? Not a lot. But it is symbolic that the cards are stacked against even these highest flyers. However, the serious pay battle has never been about well-off women. The most oft quoted fact about inequality and the pay gap is that, on average, women working full-time get 18% less than men. But that does not begin to reflect the true status of women. The most shocking fact is that 43% of all working women are earning less than £5 an hour. Half of all women in full-time jobs, and 80% of those in part-time work, are earning well below the Council of Europe's decency threshold of £6.31 an hour. For most of the women who have flooded back into the labour market in the past 30 years, work is not a sign of "liberation" - but of abject drudgery for sub-survivable wages. Low pay and women's inequality are one and the same phenomenon. Solve one and you solve the other. When Labour extols the wonders of Britain's "flexible" market, it means low-paid women in jobs without prospects working flexible hours so they can do most of the childcare and housework at the same time as one, or maybe two, jobs that don't pay the bills. Tax credits subsidise their employers to pay wages that no one can live on. Cleaning, caring, catering and cash registers - the four Cs - are what occupy most working women. But because these are traditionally women's jobs, they are undervalued and underpaid. When the Equal Pay Act came in 30 years ago, the hope was that women would quickly move into higher paid men's work, but job segregation is as rigid as ever. Women have not become well-paid bricklayers, plasterers or plumbers, and are unlikely to in the foreseeable future. The only way they can earn equal pay is through society revaluing the work they do. The skills of the carer in the old people's home, the hospital cleaner, the nursery nurse and the classroom assistant are tasks as vital as any. Equal pay for work of equal value has to be brought in: the system for fair comparison is there, but mostly unused. Women's pensions are a critical issue. The great majority of poor pensioners are women who have taken time out to care, and who have been earning low wages; they are excluded from entitlement because they have earned too little. They need better, fairer credits towards their pensions so they end up with equal rights. Summary · Every employer to carry out an equal pay review every few years. Government to force every state employer and contractor to conduct and act on pay reviews immediately. · A pensions system that does not penalise women for caring, and which recognises different working patterns. · Everyone's pay should be published. Without unions in most workplaces, employers get away with secretive and unjust pay structures. Openness is the only guarantee of fairness. · The minimum wage to be increased to come into line with the European decency threshold of £6.31 an hour. · An increase in the carer's allowance to at least the same level as the basic state pension. · In July, the government promised the unions to end the two-tier workforce, whereby those employed by contractors (eg, cleaners in hospitals) are paid less than direct state employees, affecting mainly low-paid women. This needs to be implemented at once, not phased in. · Every employer should be obliged to allow unions in once a year to talk to the workforce, to make union organising feasible in hostile environments. Polly Toynbee Work-life balance (Madeleine Buntin) Britain is the only country in the EU that still has an opt-out from the European working time directive, which puts a limit of 48 hours on the working week. As a result, we have the biggest proportion of people working over 48 hours a week in Europe. This work culture is effectively a form of discrimination against women because it becomes impossible to combine a job with long hours with the caring responsibilities which fall, more often than not, to women. The long hours culture impacts on the labour market at both ends - the poorest paid and some of the best paid - and in both cases, most women get squeezed out. What we want is women having the same opportunities as men, and the only way to achieve that is a working culture that allows for life outside the job. One of New Labour's greatest achievements has been the introduction in 2003 of the right for parents of children under six to request flexible work. A million parents took up the option, of whom 800,000 had their requests accepted. In follow-up surveys on the legislation's impact, employers have said they are satisfied. There are two crucial steps to building on this success. First, the right must be extended to carers. Six million people look after a sick or disabled relative in the UK; they should have the right to request part-time work. Second, the right must be extended to parents of all children under 16; there is now a wealth of research indicating how difficult and important the teenage years are, and parents may well need to give additional support. We should be given the right to work flexibly, not just to request it - perhaps with conditions such as a minimum year's employment and a right of refusal if a case was proven of damage to the employer's business. The problem with the current situation is that it is something of a personal lottery - no trade union representation is allowed to help employees frame their request - and many people are deterred from asking by a hostile work culture. What is urgently needed is a much wider range of part-time jobs with better career prospects. At the moment, taking a part-time job means a big pay cut and dropping several skill levels. The right to flexible working would be the lever to turn that around. Summary · Phase out the opt-out to the working time directive, limiting the working week to 48 hours in line with the rest of Europe. · Right to request flexible working must be extended to the UK's six million carers, and to all parents of children under 16. · Granting a right to flexible working for parents of children under six. Madeleine Bunting Rape convictions (Katharine Viner) Few like to look at them, but the statistics on rape convictions are unbearably bleak: reported rape has trebled in the past decade; less than 6% of reported rapes result in a conviction; less than 20% of rapes are reported to the police. There is more rape, and it is easier to get away with. The law itself is not to blame. MP Vera Baird was the driver behind the Sexual Offences Act, which came into force in May. A man may no longer claim that he believed a woman was consenting to sex; a jury must instead be convinced that his belief was "reasonable". This change could have a big impact, with more pleas of guilty at an early stage and the message sent out that the smug, "But I thought she wanted it, m'lud" defence is no longer enough. But the act must be closely monitored if it is to have any effect at all, because it is in the hands of judges, lawyers and juries. Our judiciary, not renowned for its regiment of women (there are 11 among 156 of the most senior judges), needs to be evaluated carefully to check that it interprets the new law properly. How did Judge Michael Roach let off trainee croupier Michael Barrett with a conditional discharge for having sex with a 12-year-old girl with the comment, "I trust you to behave yourself now"? Do judges have a clue about the reality of today's social culture, of contemporary gender relations? As for the police, we need sexual assault referral centres (Sarcs) in each of the 43 police forces - where victims have access to women doctors, counsellors and specialist non-uniformed officers. There is evidence that specialist treatment by the police is more likely to end in a conviction, and yet there are only eight Sarcs in the whole of England and Wales. We also need public funding for rape crisis centres, which are aimed at more long-term psychological support. Three have closed in the past three months, demonstrating the low priority our culture gives to the victims of sexual abuse. And finally, the public. It is jurors who acquit presentable young men who look just like their sons; it is jurors who assume that women in short skirts are asking for it. So what is needed is a high-profile, hard-hitting public information campaign debunking the myths about rape. Just as aggressive public information broadcasts changed the way the public sees drink-driving, which was absolutely acceptable 30 years ago, so outdated thinking on sexual violence must be highlighted and quashed. For example: a low-cut top does not excuse rape; nor does bleached hair or being drunk. Rape is rarely committed by strangers; former stranger-rapists understand the courts well enough to know that if they get to know a woman before they rape her then they will probably get away with it. The overwhelming majority of rapists are friends, boyfriends, husbands, ex-lovers, men in bars. Summary · Tight monitoring of judges over the new Sexual Offences Act. · Sarcs in each of the 43 police areas in England and Wales. · Public funding for rape crisis centres · High-profile public information campaign debunking myths about rape. Katharine Viner Political representation (Anne Perkins) Sixty years ago, the women of Blackburn constituency Labour party rebelled, demanding that at least one woman should be on the shortlist of candidates. They got their way, and in due course got Barbara Castle for an MP. Blackburn was not the only constituency where women who had grown accustomed to exercising authority during the war years influenced candidate selection. Labour's first landslide in 1945 saw 24 women MPs victorious, all but three of them Labour. But by 1983, there were fewer women MPs than in 1945. It wasn't until the next Labour landslide in 1997 that more than 100 women were elected - only for the total to fall again in 2001. Such a pattern of under-representation demands correction by intervention. Experience in Wales (where there is a 50:50 gender split in the assembly), Scotland and the European parliament all show that positive action such as all-women shortlists and twinning works. Research repeatedly confirms that women, especially young women, feel a parliament that looks so unlike their own lives cannot represent them. But women in parliament also bring diversity to debate and decision-making. The current generation of women in government communicate, in a less adversarial way, a different view of politics from their male colleagues. Their perspective can make them less awed by traditional lobbies and quicker to see perhaps unintended implications of policy decisions on women and families. Following such hype and promise, the last election was a gloomy moment. After the government refused to reintroduce the legally suspect all-women shortlists that had made such a contribution in 1997, the number of women MPs fell for the first time since 1979. The embarrassment persuaded the government to amend the Sex Discrimination Act to allow positive discrimination in the selection of political candidates until a sunset clause comes into effect in 2015. Since the start of 2003 the party has operated "with a strong presumption" that MPs who retire will be replaced by a candidate from an all-women shortlist. If Labour's share of the vote holds up, after the next election there should be a new record number of women MPs. But they will still be predominantly Labour. The Liberal Democrats, and especially the Conservatives, choke on the idea of direct intervention and this government insists it would be wrong to impose it on them. Both parties have increased the number of women candidates, although not necessarily in winnable seats, but they are a long way from the culture shift that will broaden their parties' gene pool (at the current rate of progress, it will be 300 years before the Tory party has full gender equality). Summary · All political parties to undergo compulsory reviews of their selection processes with particular emphasis on equal opportunities. · Equal access to all training opportunities for candidates and selection committees; employers should be encouraged to support political participation by their workforce. Anne Perkins Parental leave (Natasha Walter) Imagine a new family - mother, father, and baby. The parents pledged one another, in the innocent days of pregnancy, to care for their child equally. As the day draws nearer, they decide to take all the time away from work that they can. For the mother, that means up to a year away from work, the first six weeks paid at 90% of her earnings, the next 20 weeks at £102.80, the next six months unpaid. The father, who has been employed for exactly the same amount of time, finds he is allowed just two weeks away from work, rewarded at the standard rate of £102.80. After those two weeks, for 10 hours a day, the mother is alone with the child. For those hours, the father is back in the rhythm of work. The parents feel the clash in their priorities, and sometimes feel as if they are speaking across a great rift. She begins to say: "He tries, but he just can't get work out of his head." He begins to think: "I try, but I'll never be as good as she is at under standing what is needed at home." From the very beginning, the father is considered marginal to his baby's life, and so is pushed back to work quickly - in turn making him more marginal. Equalising rights to leave will not revolutionise our society overnight, but it will go some way towards changing this self-perpetuating pattern of inequality. If parents were entitled to a long block of shared paid leave, they could negotiate something more equal between themselves. She might take four months off, then he might take four months, and then she might take another four months; or they might both take six months of leave as half-weeks, so that together for a year they "job-shared". This is something that fathers should be campaigning for, too, since the current system of leave locks a father out at a time when new relationships are being made and new priorities decided. On Monday women's minister, the Patricia Hewitt, said that the government was looking at introducing a year's paid leave, in which the last six months could be transferred to the father. But since these last six months would be paid at the standard allowance of £102.80, few fathers will take it up. Governments cannot reforge the experiences of domestic life, but government can at least make the landscape in which we operate more level. The current system of maternity and paternity leave is an iron barrier to the movement towards equality, and it is time that the government dismantled it and built a gateway instead. Summary · More paid leave to be shared between parents as they wished. This could be job shared, eg each parent taking half-weeks for six months. · Leave paid at a rate in line with best practice in other European countries. · A higher rate of statutory allowance for parents who are not employees; self-employed workers are only entitled to £102.80 a week for six months, and as such are pushed back to work too soon. Natasha Walter complete article : http://politics.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,12913,1311890,00.html From shivamvij at gmail.com Tue Sep 28 14:52:29 2004 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 14:52:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] MIT: Study for free Message-ID: MIT's OpenCourseWare is a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. OCW supports MIT's mission to advance knowledge and education, and serve the world in the 21st century. It is true to MIT's values of excellence, innovation, and leadership. MIT OCW: Is a publication of MIT course materials Does not require any registration Is not a degree-granting or certificate-granting activity Does not provide access to MIT faculty 900 Courses Now Available. www.ocw.mit.edu From smitashu at vsnl.com Mon Sep 27 17:18:08 2004 From: smitashu at vsnl.com (s choudhary) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 17:18:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Discussion group on Chhattisgarh Message-ID: <011401c4a48a$4ecfcd60$d7e941db@n4r8e2> Dear friend, We are a group linked with Chhattisgarh, and would like to contribute in development for the State. We think we would benefit from an exchange with concerned people, who would share their experiences with us. We invite you to join this present day chaupal and participate in discussions about Chhattisgarh, its people and their development. To join you need to send a blank email to chhattisgarh-net-subscribe at yahoogroups.com or log in at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chhattisgarh-net May I also request you to forward this request to whoever you think may be interested. I look forward to an enriching experience for all of us. Shubhranshu Choudhary Freelance Journalist 312, Patrakar Parisar Sector 5, Vasundhara Ghaziabad 201012 India Ph - + 91 98110 66749 e mail - smitashu at vsnl.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040927/443e26f0/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From lokesh at sarai.net Tue Sep 28 21:33:16 2004 From: lokesh at sarai.net (Lokesh) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 21:33:16 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] rally against exploitation Message-ID: <41598B44.5030201@sarai.net> Let's Raise Our Voice Against Exploitaion ! After five days of Hunger Strike by students # teachers In support of the strike of workers for their legal mininum wage. Students - Teachers - Karamchari Rally Venue - From Gwyer Hall Date - 29 September 2004 (Wednesday) Time - 11 AM Students # Workers Rally Venue - From Gwyer Hall Date - 29 September 2004 (Wednesday) Time - 7 PM Please Join The Rally IN Large Numbers UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY FOR WORKERS RIGHTS Let's Raise Our Voice Against Exploitaion ! Friends, We are appalled that in this University across various construction sites, poor workers are being denied their minimum wage of Rs. 110/- for 8 hours work. Many have been working for over three months and haven't been given any remuneration, Many don't have food to eat. Moreover due to insanitary living conditions and the absence of any medical services-many are unwell with diarrohea and viral fever. Little children have respiratory disorders and many have broken out into boils. It is estimated that construction workers number over three crore in India and out of them 30% are women and children. Half of the plan and budgetary expenditure are spent on construction activites. The impoverished workers in the unorganised sector do not earn enough to make both ends meet. The tenacious nexus between labour courts, construction mafia and police have further adversely affected the rights of workers and their bargaining capacity vis-a-vis employers. Both the previous NDA and current UPA government have not done anything to redress such a situation. They have even failed to evolve any mechanism to ensure that workers get their legal minimum wage. These workers are neither unionised nor they can resort to litigation which is not simply time consuming but else expensive. Whenever they try to raise their voice, the contractors goons and even police threaten them. Some concerned students and teachers have intervened in two of such sites and pressurised the authorities and the contractors (Nagarjun Constuctions & Shokeen Construction Company) to accept the worker's demands. The campaign is far from being over. This time it is the Gwyer hall where 80 workers are on strike with students and teachers. The contractor is adamant and threatening the workers to leave. A community kitchen is also being run with contribution from students, teachers and non-teaching employees of the university. The workers are showing tremendous sense of unity and we cannot remain a moot witness to it. The only resort to this issue is your support in pressurizing the university authorities and the contractor to pay up immediately. Students & teachers from different colleges & Depts. like Ramjas, Miranda House, KMC, St.Stephens, Hindu, Khalsa, Deptment of African Studies, Political Sc., English, History are participating in the strike. After 10 days of students workers strike from 24 of sept. the campaign took another drastic turn when some students and teachers sat on relay-hunger strike. We call upon you to join us and support us in whatever way possible through funds, medicines and by joining us in the strike. Venue of strike # Gwyer Hall Front Gate. Night meeting - Backyard of Gwyer Hall UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY FOR WORKERS RIGHT Mob : 9891790516, 31401679, 9891448511 e-mail : univcom4workersright at rediffmail.com From jeebesh at sarai.net Wed Sep 29 12:58:36 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 12:58:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Digital Colonial Documents Project Message-ID: <415A6424.4040008@sarai.net> H-ASIA September 28, 2004 Announcing a new resource: Digital Colonial Documents Project (India) (x-post Indology) ************************************************************************ From: Peter Friedlander Dear List Members, You might be intersted in this new resource we are making available The Digital Colonial Documents Project (India) is intended to promote study of the rare seminal documents which were influential in the formation of the notions of nation, state and culture during the colonial period. It includes full text versions of the Indian Census Reports for 1871, 1881, 1891 and 1901, Murrays Guide to India for 1859, The Indian Education Report of 1882, Mill's History of British India and other documents. See http://www.chaf.lib.latrobe.edu.au/dcd/default.htm From isast at leonardo.info Tue Sep 28 22:27:38 2004 From: isast at leonardo.info (Leonardo/ISAST) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 09:57:38 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [Leonardo/ISAST Network] LEA Special Issue cfp: MultiMedia Performance Message-ID: <200409281657.CKW00380@ms2.netsolmail.com> ** Sincere apologies for cross-posting ** ** Worldwide Call for Submissions ** LEA Special Issue: MultiMedia Performance Guest Editors: Annette Barbier, Craig Harris and Marla Schweppe (mmedia at astn.net) http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/LEA2004/authors.htm#mmedia The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN No: 1071-4391) is inviting papers and artworks that showcase MultiMedia Performance. This category includes works which span a range of practices, which challenge the way performance has heretofore been defined and examines the ways in which new technologies have opened up the meaning and practice of performance. We expect that performance includes a live component, be it on line, in an interactive installation, or on stage. LEA encourages international artists / academics / researchers / students to submit their proposals for consideration. We particularly encourage young authors and contributors from outside North America and Europe to send proposals for articles/gallery/artists statements (if applicable). Expressions of interest and outline should include: - A brief description of proposed text (300 words) - A brief author biography - Any related URLs - Contact details In the subject heading of the email message, please use Name of Artist/Project Title: LEA MultiMedia Performance  Date Submitted. Please cut and paste all text into body of email (without attachments). Deadline for expressions of interest: 10 December 2004 Deadline for proposals: 15 February 2005 Please send proposals or queries to: Annette Barbier, Craig Harris and Marla Schweppe mmedia at astn.net and Nisar Keshvani LEA Editor-in-Chief lea at mitpress.mit.edu http://lea.mit.edu **************************************************************************** **** LEA Information and URLs ------------------------------------------- Receive your FREE subscription to the Leonardo Electronic Almanac e-mail digest at http://mitpress.mit.edu/lea/e-mail -- just provide your email address, name, and password, and check off that you'd like to be added to the Leonardo Electronic Almanac monthly e-mail list to keep on top of the latest news in the Leonardo community. Manuscript Submission Guidelines: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/submit How to advertise in LEA? http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/placeads.html#LEAads For a paid subscription (to become an ISAST member and access archives dating back to 1993): http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=4&tid=27&mode=p What is LEA? ------------- For over a decade, Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN No: 1071-4391) has thrived as an international peer reviewed electronic journal and web archive covering the interaction of the arts, sciences, and technology. LEA emphasizes rapid publication of recent work and critical discussion on topics of current excitement. Many contributors are younger scholars and artists with a slant on shorter, less academic texts. Contents include Texts; Artists using new media; Feature Articles comprised of theoretical and technical perspectives; the LEA Gallery exhibiting new media artwork by international artists; Leonardo Reviews, edited by Michael Punt, Leonardo Research Abstracts of recent Ph.D. and Masters theses, curated Galleries of current new media artwork by international artists, and Special Issues on topics ranging from New Media Poetry, to Zero Gravity Art, to the History of New Media. The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (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-isast mailing list Leonardo-isast at mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/leonardo-isast From univcom4workersright at rediffmail.com Tue Sep 28 21:14:43 2004 From: univcom4workersright at rediffmail.com (workersright workersright) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 15:44:43 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Rally Against Exploitation Message-ID: <20040826085400.30853.qmail@webmail46.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040928/838b856a/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- Let's Raise Our Voice Against Exploitaion ! After five days of Hunger Strike by students – teachers In support of the strike of workers for their legal mininum wage. Students - Teachers - Karamchari Rally Venue - From Gwyer Hall Date - 29 September 2004 (Wednesday) Time - 11 AM Students – Workers Rally Venue - From Gwyer Hall Date - 29 September 2004 (Wednesday) Time - 7 PM Please Join The Rally IN Large Numbers UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY FOR WORKERS RIGHTS Let's Raise Our Voice Against Exploitaion ! Friends, We are appalled that in this University across various construction sites, poor workers are being denied their minimum wage of Rs. 110/- for 8 hours work. Many have been working for over three months and haven't been given any remuneration, Many don't have food to eat. Moreover due to insanitary living conditions and the absence of any medical services-many are unwell with diarrohea and viral fever. Little children have respiratory disorders and many have broken out into boils. It is estimated that construction workers number over three crore in India and out of them 30% are women and children. Half of the plan and budgetary expenditure are spent on construction activites. The impoverished workers in the unorganised sector do not earn enough to make both ends meet. The tenacious nexus between labour courts, construction mafia and police have further adversely affected the rights of workers and their bargaining capacity vis-a-vis employers. Both the previous NDA and current UPA government have not done anything to redress such a situation. They have even failed to evolve any mechanism to ensure that workers get their legal minimum wage. These workers are neither unionised nor they can resort to litigation which is not simply time consuming but else expensive. Whenever they try to raise their voice, the contractors goons and even police threaten them. Some concerned students and teachers have intervened in two of such sites and pressurised the authorities and the contractors (Nagarjun Constuctions & Shokeen Construction Company) to accept the worker's demands. The campaign is far from being over. This time it is the Gwyer hall where 80 workers are on strike with students and teachers. The contractor is adamant and threatening the workers to leave. A community kitchen is also being run with contribution from students, teachers and non-teaching employees of the university. The workers are showing tremendous sense of unity and we cannot remain a moot witness to it. The only resort to this issue is your support in pressurizing the university authorities and the contractor to pay up immediately. Students & teachers from different colleges & Depts. like Ramjas, Miranda House, KMC, St.Stephens, Hindu, Khalsa, Deptment of African Studies, Political Sc., English, History are participating in the strike. After 10 days of students workers strike from 24 of sept. the campaign took another drastic turn when some students and teachers sat on relay-hunger strike. We call upon you to join us and support us in whatever way possible through funds, medicines and by joining us in the strike. Venue of strike – Gwyer Hall Front Gate. Night meeting - Backyard of Gwyer Hall UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY FOR WORKERS RIGHT Mob : 9891790516, 31401679, 9891448511 e-mail : univcom4workersright at rediffmail.com From rajarambhadu at yahoo.co.in Wed Sep 29 14:39:46 2004 From: rajarambhadu at yahoo.co.in (rajaram bhadu) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 14:39:46 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Study of cultural transition in urban slums of Jaipur city. Under sarai fellowship 2002-03 Message-ID: Here is my last posting concerning with the study on cultural transition in urban slums of Jaipur city. This posting is after too long interval. But someone can relate it with the previous postings. With thanks, Rajaram Bhadu Study of cultural transition in urban slums of Jaipur city Under sarai fellowship 2002-03 Last posting As media is a powerful medium to provide informations and depiction of popular (modern?) cultural forms in urban slums, therefore, it become imperative to explore how far media are effecting these sections. The exposure and impact of media was measured by modifying the schedule. The media included in this exercise were films, radio, television and print media (including newspapers and magazines). The numbers of respondent were 50, (23 females and 27 males). Selected there urban slums i.e. Manoharpura, Nagtalai and Paldimeena. The range of the age of the respondent between 18 to 35 years. The age group is quite curious to know the things and also in confronting position against prevalent value system. If we go thorough the educational levels of these respondents, we find that out of 50 respondents 62% are literate, 14% just literate, simply able to read and write and use the arithmetic in their daily routine life and 24% are illiterate. Illiterate respondents felt hurdle in the interaction with media, they are on the wavelength with the communication on the basis of the language of sings and symbols. The larger group of respondents belong with scheduled castes as lower strata of the society. Majority of the respondents come from nuclear family. These phenomena similar with the urban social structure. Once upon a time radio was in fashion in these communities. Till first round of the TV extension, radio and tape recorder were the only entertainment channels in slums, but at this time radios are merely remnants of the old fashion, i.e. only 10 %. TV took a major place in the every house of the respondents. There is few person (16%) who is interested in the newspapers/magazines. There are exceptional cases in these sites who does not watch small screen regularly. So the whole sensitive part of these slums is within the range of this visual equipment. Only 10% of our respondents are the listeners of radio. The readership of newspaper and magazines is growing slowly, although these magazines may be focused on films or popular kind of subject. On TV screen, the majority of our respondents are almost regular audience of the social melodramas (56%) and comic episode (74%). Although entertainment is the prior concern of the viewers but they watch keenly the reflection and behaviors presented by these episode. Films and religions episodes have a tight grip on the mental world in these communities. Inspite of, to use the modern manner in the life, religious faith and attitudes have not loosened its roots. Secondly, the religious stories and sagas are familiar and well known among the people. The picutrization of the miracles and strange incidents are also factors behind the popularity of these episodes. Action and suspense in movies and serials are also popular form on the screen. In reference of sources of information, it was found that nearly 62% of the respondents considered television as in important source of information which 12% consider that it occur through conversation with peer groups, 14% agreed that radio also provide information and only 12% favored newspapers and magazines. In these communities verbal interaction is predominate. So the impact of print media is not limited to particular reader, through verbal interaction it diffused. One person read newspaper loudly and other two or three person listen it carefully or person who read anything else, summarized this to other in oral form. In the process information from print media disseminated in a large rank. This practice of oral tradition is effective still in slums. As the response shows media initiate its role of political consciousness in respective communities. But not so effectively. The illiteracy and social barriers may be the major hurdles in the direction. The impact of media regarding acceptability of the elementary education in respective communities is decisive. As well as, the pressure of urban life and living style are also major factors in this concern. In the context of girl's education, media is playing also an important role. In health issues, media played a quite significant role in respective slums. The numbers of respondents is less in favor of early marriage (only 18%) whereas, large number of the respondents (82%) are against the early marriage. The majority of the respondents (78%) realize a tremendous change in their role within and beyond the family's sphere. The number of negative respondents is very less (12%). It may be possible that they could not conceive the question or they felt hesitation to answer on it. The realization of a positive difference in their role by respondents is an important factor. The virtual world of visual media is transferring the hard reality of viewer's life. Even in the slums, respondents sometime find her selves like the visual characters on screen or the paper. The knowledge and information inputs reduce the power of the physical assets and money. Women (respondents) feel liberated from traditional limitations and find more meaningful role in the society. Like other positive attributes this changed role is a major indicator in the status of women especially in her self-image. At an extreme point, some respondents find their role models in media especially visual and follow their manners and style. Actually this is the matter of identification. Depending on their motives and values, viewers imagine as if they were on the scene. They develop empathy with some characters who happened to be somehow like them and identify themselves with the same or adopt them as models, sharing their feelings and values and copying them. From sastry at cs.wisc.edu Wed Sep 29 17:35:22 2004 From: sastry at cs.wisc.edu (S Subramanya Sastry) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 07:05:22 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Please suggest names for this space! Message-ID: <1096459522.415aa502e29ed@www-auth.cs.wisc.edu> Hello all, Please suggest a name for this IT Space/Group/Collective. We have been struggling to come up with an appropriate name for this. The writeup below gives you an idea of what this group is about, and the kind of activities we have taken up. Many thanks, Dinesh and Subbu. (dinesh at servelots.com, sastry at cs.wisc.edu) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In Bangalore, during the last 3 months, several of us have come together to create a space to reflect on societal impacts of IT, and to initiate "relevant" social and technical projects. As part of this, some of things we hope to do are to: - critically reflect on social and cultural impacts of IT and the IT industry, both in and around Bangalore, and more broadly. - critically examine projects with missions ranging from IT for poverty reduction, IT for development, bridging the digital divide, and the like. - initiate technical projects that are more "tuned in" to local contexts, (while working on developing an understanding as to what that means). - perhaps impact IT curriculum, IT policy. - etc .. The goal, right from the beginning, has been to create a multi-disciplinary and diverse group, and keep it open to people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. We are striving to not let it turn into a space that becomes a celebration of IT, nor into one of IT-bashing. We hope to maintain a certain creative tension and discomfort with the goal of pushing the envelope of understanding. While the specific outcomes will be dictated by the composition of the group, their energies, ideas, and enthusiasm, we hope that they would include the following: (a) discussions, invited groups, task groups (b) articles, reports, analyses, studies (c) ideas for concrete projects Thus far, in our past 5 meetings, we: - briefly touched on social and cultural impacts of the IT industry. - screened a portion of the 6-part PBS documentary "The News Americans" that followed the life of an Indian IT professional. - talked about student projects at universities, and how that space could be leveraged for locally relevant projects. - had a presentation by Dr.Solly Benjamin about land issues vis-a-vis the IT industry - had a meeting to discuss the possibility of offering a course that presents a perspective of technology (and in this case IT) that goes beyond the technical and weaves in the social, cultural, political, economic contexts that interact with technology. For people who know of Sarai, maybe it is easy to imagine this as something similar where the people involved are not employed but form an dynamic set of enthusiats concerned about the issue and are experts in their task groups. From menso at r4k.net Wed Sep 29 20:01:26 2004 From: menso at r4k.net (Menso Heus) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 16:31:26 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] MS launches Windows XP Starter edition in Hindi Message-ID: <20040929143126.GC8315@r4k.net> Hi all, Thought the article below might be of interest to you. - Menso http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/aptech_story.asp?category=1700&slug=Microsoft%20India NEW DELHI -- Microsoft Corp. announced Wednesday that it would offer a low-cost, localized version of its Windows XP operating system in India to tap the large market potential in this country of 1 billion people, most of whom do not speak English. The Windows XP Starter Edition, designed for first-time personal computer users in India's national language, Hindi, will be "significantly cheaper" than the Windows XP, said Rajeev Kaul, managing director of Microsoft India. Kaul, however, didn't divulge the price, saying the software would be available only through desktop manufacturers and the price decided weeks before its launch early next year. If the Hindi version works well, the company plans to offer the software in 14 other Indian languages. "It is easy to use, and is the most affordable version of Windows so far," Kaul said of the Starter Edition, which is also being rolled out in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Russia. The new software, analysts say, is an attempt by Microsoft to protect its market share from the open-source Linux system and software piracy. Although Microsoft still accounts for 90 percent of the desktop software market in India, several major computer retailers, including IBM and Sun Microsystems, in the past year have begun offering hardware with locally adapted Linux installed. "In some ways, it is the recognition of the kind of momentum that we have had in the market place," said Javed F. Tapia, India director of Red Hat, which distributes customized versions of Linux software. Linux is open-source software available for little or no cost to computer vendors and users because no licensing fee is charged in its basic form. "Though open source is not free, people think it is so cheap that it is virtually free. To counter this psychology, Microsoft may also want to create the impression that Windows is so cheap that it is also virtually free," said Pawan Kumar, the chief of VMoksha Technologies, a Bangalore-based software services firm. "Now Windows may be used increasingly in assembled computers, cutting down piracy there. It is good for the market in the long run," Kumar said. Computer sales in India have been buoyant, growing 35 percent annually in recent years. But companies like Microsoft benefit little from the boom, because about 80 percent of the computers are assembled by local manufacturers who mostly install pirated software. "It will also help in bridging the price gap between the branded computers and those assembled by local manufacturers," said Vinnie Mehta, executive director of the Manufacturing Association of Information Technology in India. A locally assembled computer costs anything between $325 and $545, depending on whether it is loaded with pirated or licensed software. Windows XP costs about $150 and its pirated version can be had for $10 to $20. Microsoft officials insisted, however, that the new software is neither aimed at countering competition from Linux, nor curbing piracy. Kaul said the main objective is to create new buyers in India, where only 12 out of 1,000 people own a computer. More than 300 million people could afford a computer if it was loaded with a software that comes in a local language and offers easy-to-handle tools, he said. Microsoft developed the Starter Edition after conducting a survey of 1,000 middle-class households across India to determine their requirements and the price they were willing to pay for a computer, Kaul said. Key features of the new software include enhanced help, country-specific motifs, and "preconfigured settings" for features that might confuse novices. It has a redesigned help menu with a detailed "Getting Started Guide" and offers wallpaper photos of the Taj Mahal, the Royal Bengal tiger and the Indian flag. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The good Earth -- we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy." - Kurt Vonnegut -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From coolzanny at hotmail.com Thu Sep 30 11:39:49 2004 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 11:39:49 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reading the City through its Railway Stations Message-ID: Understanding the City through its Railway Stations - A Train Ride Along Various Western Railway Stations Today is the day of Ganesh Visarjan which means that the idols of Lord Ganesha will be immersed in the sea. It is not a public holiday, but several offices remain closed, particularly in the latter half of the day which is the time when traffic hassles begin. At 9:00 AM in the morning, the city was sleepy eyed, not a regular Mumbai Monday morning. I arrived at Bombay Central Station. Gradually I saw people pouring out from the mouth (errr … entrance) of the station. Mumbai city is waking up late today. Having bought the tickets, I proceeded towards the platforms. The aim of today’s journey is to get a perspective of various Western Railway Stations from the eyes and angle of a commuter inside a train compartment. The route I am going to travel to-and-fro is as follows: Bombay Central – Mahalaxmi – Lower Parel – Elphinstone Road – Dadar – Matunga Road – Mahim – Bandra – Khar Road – Santacruz – Vile Parle – Andheri Both ways, I ferried myself through slow trains. Usually, traveling by slow trains along Central Railway is quite a task for me; the pace of time is too slow then and I begin to feel irritated after a point. However, today, traveling by slow trains to Andheri and back did not seem as much a task. Perhaps this is because I am used to this route since the last six years now. As I was traveling up and down, I remembered the words of Trupti Nayak, one of my interviewees while I was researching on local trains. She had said to me, “Train travel is very structured. You know that after Kandivali, Borivali station will arrive.” I believe Western Railway is much more structured than Central Railway. The certainties are much greater in the case of the former than the latter. Mumbai Central Station: Mumbai Central Station is a unique set-up. It has the local train network and the outstation train network. Trains to North India arrive and depart from here. But it is much better organized than VT station which is also the hub of local trains as well as outstation trains. The local train station is on the dull side. It hasn’t changed much ever since I have known it from 1997. The same goes with the outstation trains platform – except for the introduction of McDonalds here, everything else remains the same. What is very interesting about the Mumbai Central Local Train Station is the amount of hoardings advertising underwear for men. Some of the ‘brand’ names are Dixcy, Rupa and VIP. The hoardings stand out in your face. No other station is as garishly decorated with men’s underwear advertisements as this one! Another aspect of the hoardings is the little postcard-size boards which always have the latest Bollywood film posters. These are present at every railway station, however big or small. The current posters at Mumbai Central Station are those of the film ‘Shaque – The Mystery’. Shaque appears to be one of the B or C grade Bollywood films. At different railway stations, you will find different film announcements depending on the type of audience which is sure to patronize them. For example, at Sion Station, A grade Bollywood films will be advertised and this is partly because of the presence of a Cinestar Multiplex Theatre close to the station. I think advertising at railway stations is a matter of strategy, strategizing and reaching out to certain specific classes of the masses. When I arrived at Mumbai Central Station after completing my return journey from Andheri, I walked through the outstation trains’ platform. An interesting development at different railway stations is the establishment of UTI (Unit Trust of India) ATM centers. Most stations along Western Railway have at least one such UTI ATM center. I call these ATM structures ‘sophisticated tapris’ (a tapri is a Mumbai slang for a roadside stall which sells cheap stuff, mainly food items). Outside each UTI ATM center is a security guard belonging to one of the fancy security agencies like TOPS, Lion’s, etc. The guard usually looks very bored. But his presence on the railway station is a novelty for me. It is also a source of irritation because for me, he is clearly an outsider. He is not a part of my imagination of a railway station. Further, he does not even fit in the landscape of a railway station, a perfect misfit. A railway station is about transition. Here is a permanent structure in this realm of fast transitions. Perhaps it is the notion of surveillance at the railway station which I am unable to digest. I shall have to do something about this irritating constipation. Does that mean I have to reconcile with the security guard’s presence? I hope not … Inside the train – from Mumbai Central to Andheri: The train chugged along. We arrived at Mahalaxmi station which I have always drawn parallels with a Chinchpokli or a Currey Road station along Central Railway. However, these days, Mahalaxmi Station has its own esteem and prominence. It is becoming the young executives’ railway station. Geographically, Mahalxmi station is one of the entry routes to Worli and Parel, both of which are upcoming hubs of advertising and media agencies, therefore the increasing executives’ crowd. Mahalxmi is also infamously famous for the death of Nadia, filmmaker Kaizaad Gustad’s assistant. She died here at Mahalxmi station during the shoot of the film ‘Mumbai Central’. But I guess this incident/accident is not a very critical part of people’s memory of their railway station. It therefore becomes interesting to examine how a railway station is part of people’s everyday memory. What kinds of memories are these? Are these ultra-short term memories given that the transitions are rapid and the speed is like that of a bullet? What role does ‘time’ play in the development of these memories bearing in mind that ‘time’ is a unique conception and practice at the railway station? >From Mahalaxmi, the train proceeded to Lower Parel and Elphinstone Road stations. Both these stations are pretty much like the Siamese Twins. The feel at these two stations is that of Maharashtra and Marathi Culture. As you pass by these stations, you notice the old chawls of Mumbai, the notions and practices of locality and neighbourhoods, a way of life where time plays a very different role and priorities are organized not around individuals but around communities. Lower Parel is another station which is the hub of transport of peoples working in advertising and media corporations. Further, the sale of mill land in this area is giving rise to new enterprises and shifts. Lower Parel is now the new horse bet i.e. it is touted to become a posh area, like another South Mumbai. Bacchi Karkaria in one of her pieces in the Times of India had condescendingly stated that while once Chinchpokli was seen as a squalor area, the potential of Lalbaug and Parel becoming plush neighbourhoods and localities will now give a different connotation, flavor and feel to the idea of living at Chinchpokli. It will now no longer be associated with squalor, but might just become a light joke and a new parlance in the language of the city! Talk about imaginations, media and the generation and practice of city! We reach Dadar. Western Railway Dadar station is a complete contrast to Central Railway Dadar station. In one of my early meetings with a friend who has a business in hoardings, he had mentioned that advertising space for hoardings is very expensive along Western railway. Yet MNCs want to advertise along these stations because of the kind of crowd using these stations and the potential visibility of their products and services. At Dadar Western Railway Station, you will currently find the entire station full of Sony Max hoardings. I am coming to believe that Sony Television has a monopoly over this station and also perhaps at Kurla station. The latest Sony television serials are advertised here in full spring. The changes in the hoardings are devoutly periodic. For instance, when Sony launched the serial ‘Yeh Meri Life Hai’, the hoardings stayed on for about two weeks and immediately thereafter, they switched to putting up hoardings propagating ‘Saakshi’, another new serial launched on weekends on Sony. These days, Sony Max is advertising its season of Amitabh Bachan films. The strategy of advertising along this station is based on ‘visibility’. The hoardings are very prominent, large in size and lettering, brightly coloured, suspended from the ceiling at very regular intervals, with the idea that in case you haven’t noticed them while standing at the station, you will definitely have fleeting glimpses of them as your train starts speeding away from the station. Thus, the placement of the hoardings is right from the start of the platform to the absolute end. In this way, whether you are departing from the station or arriving, you will see these hoardings irrespective. A lot of this now reminds of me things which Naomi Klein had pointed out in her famous book ‘No Logo’. What then becomes interesting is the very notion and exercise of ‘space’ in an urban setting. While physical space is rapidly shrinking, every aspect of that physical space is being captured by MNCs and it translates into staking claim on our personal spaces. These hoardings and advertisements are very surreptitious tactics of territoriality on our everyday memories, taking us away from our locality and transporting us to an arena of the globe. The globe is then presented as a market, a market of various kinds of products which claim to fill us with happiness and fulfill our aspirations. And my fear is that this illusion is harmful in ways which damage not only our locality, but also our ecology and threatens our very existence. We are not only drugged, but are damned and doomed! (Where is Jesus? I hope he is not being taken away from the Cross and put up on one of those hoardings …) >From Dadar, we move to Matunga Road station which has always been a dry and dull station. It has its parallels with Khar station in terms of anatomy, but Khar belongs to a different genre because it is home to another kind of elite in the city. Mahim junction is an interesting station. It is the middle-classes’ locality and neighbourhood, but has its own vibrancy. Food stalls are aplenty here. People normally hang around here in groups because Mahim is a classical old community in the city. Mahim in fact is one of the seven islands that this city was once made up of (the islands have now been ‘reclaimed’). Mahim station has its own form of organization and disorganization. Women are seen with their friends and groups here. You will find them anxiously running around the station because they are hassled about their train. Or you will find them supremely relaxed and joking about. I am coming to believe that women and the railway station have a very different relationship. Men can be zombies when it comes to the railway station. Women present diverse practices, ideas, imaginations and conceptions. BANDRA – here is the absolute lifestyle station. Bandra is a very, very old station. The paint at the station is nearly worn out and perhaps without the hoardings, the atmosphere at the station would be completely different. It is a rushed station at every point in the day. Different crowds are its users. The morning consists of the office-goers and the collegians. The late hours of morning and mid-day consist of late office-goers and late collegians. At this hour, you will also find women traveling for family affairs. Bandra station also has the Harbour Line platform which a completely different crowd uses. The Harbour Line platform is located at the far end of the station, almost kept separate for a separate category of people. By the early evening, you will find the crowd consisting of people arriving here from college. By 5 PM, this station is teeming with people. But despite the rush, the crowd is very disciplined. There is a strange thread of organization running here. Bandra is again the hub of MNC advertising. Lifestyle products are hugely advertised here. These days, the hoardings are advertising the new Orange phone from which you can watch Television Clips (talk about how mobile phones are becoming everyday devices!). Like Dadar, the hoardings around this station are also changed periodically and regularly. Bandra is a lifestyle neighbourhood anyway. Even the class of people using the station is the upwardly mobile group. Those from the middle classes aspire to reach the level of upward mobility, particularly the youth. These days, the target of all MNCs and the Global Market is the youth in the city. Talk about vulnerability and gullibility – are these two the different or the same sides of the volatile dollar? Khar, Santacruz, Vile Parle and Andheri is a route where we can trace patterns of middle-class consumption and neighbourhoods. Excepting Vile Parle, the other three are areas which combine the old and the new. Khar, Santacruz and Andheri are not just urban neighbourhoods. They consist of old villages of fishermen in the city. Similarly, people living in these areas consist of age-old residents and the mobile new ones. These localities represent the aspirations of the people to move towards the ideal of gaadi, duplex makaan and lifestyle, something along the likes of the Great American Family Dream. Amenities, services and products are being customized to serve the individual – yet, who is this individual and whether his individuality/identity is dependant on this kind of customization? What is individuality? Khar Station is a bland station. The real drama takes place outside the station. By the evening, Khar is a deserted station. Most people frequent to Bandra. In terms of safety, Khar is not the most ideal station. The pace of time along Khar station is also slow and slack by late evening. In a sense, Khar represents an extension of Bandra, like moving along the same spectrum. Santacruz Station is again a crowded station by the day and the evening. Afternoons are fine here, though there is a distinct crowd here in the afternoons in terms of mummies and babies. Santacruz (West) is lifestyle while Santacruz (East) is relaxed. Both these localities are sharply contrasting. Hence the station is both, a point of meeting and departure for/of the different categories of crowds. Vile Parle is a fun station. Again, Vile Parle is the route towards Andheri and it is also like a spectrum along the same line. Consumption is a sharp feature here. Vile Parle and Andheri has its unique crowd which it boasts of. Presence of colleges like Mithibai and NM and localities like Irla, JVPD Scheme moving towards Link Road, Seven Bungalows, Yari Road and Lokhandwala Complex are evidences to the consumption patterns in the form of products and Multiplex Cinema Halls. Vile Parle (East) is a different ball game. Essentially, Vile Parle is a Gujarati neighbourhood and hence, food is a delicacy of this area. Step out of the station and there’s food for everybody’s pockets. The station itself has its own unique pace. ANDHERI – it is a mad station in summary. While the railway station is one site, it cannot be distanced from the bus depot which is almost tied to the station like the umbilical cord. In the mornings, crowds throng from Andheri station to the bus depot and in the evenings, crowds emerge from the bus depot and become users of the station. During monsoons, Andheri is a dreaded station. Yet, it is one station you cannot ignore. The station witnesses organization and disorganization at various points in the day. Also, there are clear sites and locations of organization and disorganization. Hoardings are an important form of advertising here too. But the advertisements are clearly job related. For instance, the current hoardings are advertising careers in a Citibank Company called ‘E-Serve’. E-Serve promises nine levels of fast growth and a brilliant career involving foreign trips. At the time of the IT Boom, Andheri station was laced with advertisements about computer courses and the promise of how an IT Job would be the most appropriate step in fulfilling your aspirations of a comfortable life. Andheri is again a youth station like Bandra. It is the office executives’ station as well as of the middle classes hailing from Virar, Nala Sopara, Bhayendar, Mira Road and Dahisar. I got off at Andheri Station and started walking around the station. It is a corporate office culture station here. Young men are dressed in formals, with a tie and their badges suspended from around their necks. It is a clear indication that in today’s time, your identity is linked to either where you are working or what you are working as. Thus, in order to appear a fit in the crowd, I need to ensure that I have a decent MNC job. The initial stages of ‘growth’ involve ‘where you are working’ and gradually, you progress to how many prestigious places you have worked with and what is your position and ‘value’ in the market. What’s also important to note is that the car loan market will have several buyers in Andheri area, the idea being that you start with train travel and as you reach the top rungs of the corporate ladder (and the movement is very quick these days), you purchase a car. If you are in Mumbai, check out the traffic outside Andheri Station (West). It is a driver’s nightmare. Executive Summary (pun intended): Today was an eye-opening trip. I believe its importance lay in perspective – watching a railway station and conceiving the neighbourhood from inside the train compartment and, gradually reading the city. Transformations in the urban are rapid – it is not simply in terms of the exterior or the structure; rather, the changes lie also in attitudes, lifestyles, habits and patterns. The ultimate dream that is being marketed today is exactly the same as the ‘Great American Family Dream’. The question is whether this is The Dream? What of locality? What of the past? What of heritage? Is all of this being buried in the grave of globalization? Most importantly, is the intention to establish a monoculture, some sort of a UNIFORM CIVILIZATION (pun intended!)? _________________________________________________________________ Get answers to life�s queries. http://www.astroyogi.com/newmsn/astroshopping/astrologerservices/astrotalk.asp At your own time and leisure. From nc-agricowi at netcologne.de Wed Sep 29 15:07:36 2004 From: nc-agricowi at netcologne.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?my=5Fmission://?=) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 11:37:36 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] My mission://updates & call for entries Message-ID: <20040929113736.16F67FE5.BBF3177E@127.0.0.1> my mission://update --->29 September 2004 . Contents: ://New entries ://Call for entries ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . ---> "My Mission" The ongoing collection of textual self-representations in form of artistic statements ----> as part of "{self}_representation 2003" - the new show on Le Musee di-visioniste www.le-musee-divisioniste.org <> or www.le-musee-divisioniste.org/start1.htm was launched on 30 September 2003 and celebrates now its 1st anniversary in the framework of [R][R][F]2004--->XP www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004 presentation during Biennale of Electronic Art Perth/Australia 7 September - 17 November 2004 www.beap.org The project is proud to include now 103 entries, these artists joint recently "My Mission" Cecilia Lueza, Lee Welch, Eric B. Petersen GORZO, Klaus W. Eisenlohr, Luckywings Teo Spiller, Peter Svedberg, Ann Tracy Leandro Katz, Francisco Vidal, C.D. Beltran ------> And these artists form the basis of "My Mission": --------> MM, Brian Routh, Volker-Behrend Peters, Veronica C. Wilkinson David Hlongwane, Natasha Randell Sandra Becker, Anahi Caceres Daniel Young, David Crawford, Cendres Lavy Gita Hashemi, Barry Smylie, Sergej Jakovlev Igor Ulanovsky, Rene Joseph, Mr. Robert Montini Robin Miller, Eva Lewarne, Eric Van Hove Jorn Ebner, Dr. Hugo, Wendy Lu Richard Ellis, Harriet Jameson Pellizzari, RAnders Xavier Malbreil, Graham Thompson, Álvaro Ardévol Lisa Ndejuru , Cezar Lãzãrescu, Julie Andreyev Carla Della Beffa, Catherine Daly, Xavier Pehuet, Kristin Calabrese, Sol Kjøk Michael Crane, Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga, Blair Butterfield Anthony Lealand, gintas k, Luigia Cardarelli Ksenija Kovacevic Pino Boresta, Dizzy, Aikaterini Gegisian, Jeremy Newman, Carole Loeffler, Michael Haskett, Ida Dominici, kosmoagonia, Alberto Frigo , Heather J. Tait, Miss C Johnston, Nitin Shroffs, Shaukat Khan, Ann Tracy, Luna Nera, Clemente Padin, Nigel Petherick X Rokeby, Michael Branthwaite, Boel Olsson, Cyrill Duneau, Domenico Olivero, Marcello Mercado Ijosé Benin, Stella Maris Angel Villegas Zon Sakai, Doren Garcia, Fabian GilesSeth Thompson, Lynne Taetzsch, J. d. V. d'Aragon Aranita John Kannenberg,, Garnet Abrahams Scott Becker, Lois Klassen, Richard Osborn Aynil, Nathan James, Jubal Brown . Enter the project via www.le-musee-divisioniste.org <> or www.le-musee-divisioniste.org/start1.htm <> or go directly also to: www.le-musee-divisioniste.org/exhibitionhall/2003/self/mymission.htm <> . But I am sure--> there are much more artists who have a mission. Come and join the project by responding to this call: . "My Mission" - call for submissions **************************** . invites artists to submit to the recently initiated project "My Mission", collection of textual self-representations in form of artistic statements. . Please send your statement as a short text in plain email format (not more than 500 words), how you see your mission as an artist, if you have any. . "My mission" is an ongoing project with an open end, so you can send your statement at any time. No deadline. . All serious submissions will be immediately included. . Please send your submission including your name and email address, to info at le-musee-divisioniste.org <> subject line: My Mission . *********************************** "{self}_representation 2003" is curated and created by Agricola de Cologne . for Le Musee di-visioniste www.le-musee-divisioniste.org <> - corporate member of [NewMediaArtProjectNetwork] :||cologne - the experimental platform for net based art - operating from Cologne/Germany. _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From ajaykumar at ajaykumar.com Wed Sep 29 17:12:21 2004 From: ajaykumar at ajaykumar.com (Ajaykumar) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 17:12:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] online contribution Message-ID: Goldsmiths and The Royal College of Art Press Release 1st August 2004 pages of madness An on-line exhibition of insidious beauty, sensuality, and contemplation A re-conception of concrete poetry and ciné-roman in multi-media A disturbing artistic exploration of racism's engendering of mental illness One hundred million years to view this in entirety or fifteen seconds in snapshot pages of madness, a new web exhibition by ajaykumar, practicing artist, and academic at Goldsmiths, University of London and the Royal College of Art, is currently on-line for public viewing. You are invited to visit the exhibition at: http://www.pagesofmadness.com The exhibition focuses on mental illness in ethnic minorities following recent medical research which suggests that, due to social factors such as systematic racism, black people in the UK are significantly more likely than white people to suffer from mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. A recent high profile case was that of boxer, Frank Bruno. Drawing on medical evidence and the artists' own experiences of mental health issues, the on-line exhibition provides an experimental response to this phenomenon, taking the psyche of a mentally ill person using interplays of text, sound, photographic and video image. It includes reconceptions of concrete poetry and the ciné-roman, investigations in narrative space and construction, and explorations of the contemporary notions of cyberspace and Asian ideas of void. Exhibited in an on-line gallery, the work primarily uses only two colours: black and white. Spare poems engage with images; both fade in and out in a random sequence so a permutation is never repeated. A total of 250 images are presented with a soundtrack to emphasise constancy rather than variation. Notes to editors: o pages of madness is part of an ongoing collaboration with Diverse Minds magazine, which will see a future web exhibition on the theme of mental illness and asylum seekers. o Project consultant: Dr Richard Parkin, Barnet Psychiatric Unit, Barnet Hospital, London o pages of madness has received a Millennium Award from the Peabody Trust. Press enquiries: Janet Aikman, Goldsmiths Communications and Publicity, tel 020 7919 7909, ext-comms at gold.ac.uk _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From vivek at sarai.net Thu Sep 30 12:39:49 2004 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 12:39:49 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] naomi klein on iraq - year zero Message-ID: <415BB13D.5050505@sarai.net> Dear all, For those who haven't read this yet-- the article below is long but really worth the read: an excellent fusion of economic and social analysis, a different way of looking at the Iraq mess, a terrible parable of what happens when the free market dream were to be enacted in its purest form. Some of the story you'll be familiar with but not all of it. V. http://harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html Posted on Friday, September 24, 2004 Harper's Magazine, September 2004 Baghdad Year Zero Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia By Naomi Klein. It was only after I had been in Baghdad for a month that I found what I was looking for. I had traveled to Iraq a year after the war began, at the height of what should have been a construction boom, but after weeks of searching I had not seen a single piece of heavy machinery apart from tanks and humvees. Then I saw it: a construction crane. It was big and yellow and impressive, and when I caught a glimpse of it around a corner in a busy shopping district I thought that I was finally about to witness some of the reconstruction I had heard so much about. But as I got closer I noticed that the crane was not actually rebuilding anything—not one of the bombed-out government buildings that still lay in rubble all over the city, nor one of the many power lines that remained in twisted heaps even as the heat of summer was starting to bear down. No, the crane was hoisting a giant billboard to the top of a three-story building. SUNBULAH: HONEY 100% NATURAL, made in Saudi Arabia. Seeing the sign, I couldn’t help but think about something Senator John McCain had said back in October. Iraq, he said, is “a huge pot of honey that’s attracting a lot of flies.” The flies McCain was referring to were the Halliburtons and Bechtels, as well as the venture capitalists who flocked to Iraq in the path cleared by Bradley Fighting Vehicles and laser-guided bombs. The honey that drew them was not just no- bid contracts and Iraq’s famed oil wealth but the myriad investment opportunities offered by a country that had just been cracked wide open after decades of being sealed off, first by the nationalist economic policies of Saddam Hussein, then by asphyxiating United Nations sanctions. Looking at the honey billboard, I was also reminded of the most common explanation for what has gone wrong in Iraq, a complaint echoed by everyone from John Kerry to Pat Buchanan: Iraq is mired in blood and deprivation because George W. Bush didn’t have “a postwar plan.” The only problem with this theory is that it isn’t true. The Bush Administration did have a plan for what it would do after the war; put simply, it was to lay out as much honey as possible, then sit back and wait for the flies. * * * The honey theory of Iraqi reconstruction stems from the most cherished belief of the war’s ideological architects: that greed is good. Not good just for them and their friends but good for humanity, and certainly good for Iraqis. Greed creates profit, which creates growth, which creates jobs and products and services and everything else anyone could possibly need or want. The role of good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for corporations to pursue their bottomless greed, so that they in turn can meet the needs of the society. The problem is that governments, even neoconservative governments, rarely get the chance to prove their sacred theory right: despite their enormous ideological advances, even George Bush’s Republicans are, in their own minds, perennially sabotaged by meddling Democrats, intractable unions, and alarmist environmentalists. Iraq was going to change all that. In one place on Earth, the theory would finally be put into practice in its most perfect and uncompromised form. A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen. Every policy that liberates multinational corporations to pursue their quest for profit would be put into place: a shrunken state, a flexible workforce, open borders, minimal taxes, no tariffs, no ownership restrictions. The people of Iraq would, of course, have to endure some short-term pain: assets, previously owned by the state, would have to be given up to create new opportunities for growth and investment. Jobs would have to be lost and, as foreign products flooded across the border, local businesses and family farms would, unfortunately, be unable to compete. But to the authors of this plan, these would be small prices to pay for the economic boom that would surely explode once the proper conditions were in place, a boom so powerful the country would practically rebuild itself. The fact that the boom never came and Iraq continues to tremble under explosions of a very different sort should never be blamed on the absence of a plan. Rather, the blame rests with the plan itself, and the extraordinarily violent ideology upon which it is based. * * * Torturers believe that when electrical shocks are applied to various parts of the body simultaneously subjects are rendered so confused about where the pain is coming from that they become incapable of resistance. A declassified CIA “Counterintelligence Interrogation” manual from 1963 describes how a trauma inflicted on prisoners opens up “an interval—which may be extremely brief—of suspended animation, a kind of psychological shock or paralysis. . . . [A]t this moment the source is far more open to suggestion, far likelier to comply.” A similar theory applies to economic shock therapy, or “shock treatment,” the ugly term used to describe the rapid implementation of free-market reforms imposed on Chile in the wake of General Augusto Pinochet’s coup. The theory is that if painful economic “adjustments” are brought in rapidly and in the aftermath of a seismic social disruption like a war, a coup, or a government collapse, the population will be so stunned, and so preoccupied with the daily pressures of survival, that it too will go into suspended animation, unable to resist. As Pinochet’s finance minister, Admiral Lorenzo Gotuzzo, declared, “The dog’s tail must be cut off in one chop.” That, in essence, was the working thesis in Iraq, and in keeping with the belief that private companies are more suited than governments for virtually every task, the White House decided to privatize the task of privatizing Iraq’s state-dominated economy. Two months before the war began, USAID began drafting a work order, to be handed out to a private company, to oversee Iraq’s “transition to a sustainable market- driven economic system.” The document states that the winning company (which turned out to be the KPMG offshoot Bearing Point) will take “appropriate advantage of the unique opportunity for rapid progress in this area presented by the current configuration of political circumstances.” Which is precisely what happened. L. Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. occupation of Iraq from May 2, 2003, until he caught an early flight out of Baghdad on June 28, admits that when he arrived, “Baghdad was on fire, literally, as I drove in from the airport.” But before the fires from the “shock and awe” military onslaught were even extinguished, Bremer unleashed his shock therapy, pushing through more wrenching changes in one sweltering summer than the International Monetary Fund has managed to enact over three decades in Latin America. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank, describes Bremer’s reforms as “an even more radical form of shock therapy than pursued in the former Soviet world.” The tone of Bremer’s tenure was set with his first major act on the job: he fired 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers. Next, he flung open the country’s borders to absolutely unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties, no inspections, no taxes. Iraq, Bremer declared two weeks after he arrived, was “open for business.” One month later, Bremer unveiled the centerpiece of his reforms. Before the invasion, Iraq’s non-oil-related economy had been dominated by 200 state-owned companies, which produced everything from cement to paper to washing machines. In June, Bremer flew to an economic summit in Jordan and announced that these firms would be privatized immediately. “Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands,” he said, “is essential for Iraq’s economic recovery.” It would be the largest state liquidation sale since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But Bremer’s economic engineering had only just begun. In September, to entice foreign investors to come to Iraq, he enacted a radical set of laws unprecedented in their generosity to multinational corporations. There was Order 37, which lowered Iraq’s corporate tax rate from roughly 40 percent to a flat 15 percent. There was Order 39, which allowed foreign companies to own 100 percent of Iraqi assets outside of the natural-resource sector. Even better, investors could take 100 percent of the profits they made in Iraq out of the country; they would not be required to reinvest and they would not be taxed. Under Order 39, they could sign leases and contracts that would last for forty years. Order 40 welcomed foreign banks to Iraq under the same favorable terms. All that remained of Saddam Hussein’s economic policies was a law restricting trade unions and collective bargaining. If these policies sound familiar, it’s because they are the same ones multinationals around the world lobby for from national governments and in international trade agreements. But while these reforms are only ever enacted in part, or in fits and starts, Bremer delivered them all, all at once. Overnight, Iraq went from being the most isolated country in the world to being, on paper, its widest-open market. * * * At first, the shock-therapy theory seemed to hold: Iraqis, reeling from violence both military and economic, were far too busy staying alive to mount a political response to Bremer’s campaign. Worrying about the privatization of the sewage system was an unimaginable luxury with half the population lacking access to clean drinking water; the debate over the flat tax would have to wait until the lights were back on. Even in the international press, Bremer’s new laws, though radical, were easily upstaged by more dramatic news of political chaos and rising crime. Some people were paying attention, of course. That autumn was awash in “rebuilding Iraq” trade shows, in Washington, London, Madrid, and Amman. The Economist described Iraq under Bremer as “a capitalist dream,” and a flurry of new consulting firms were launched promising to help companies get access to the Iraqi market, their boards of directors stacked with well-connected Republicans. The most prominent was New Bridge Strategies, started by Joe Allbaugh, former Bush-Cheney campaign manager. “Getting the rights to distribute Procter & Gamble products can be a gold mine,” one of the company’s partners enthused. “One well-stocked 7-Eleven could knock out thirty Iraqi stores; a Wal-Mart could take over the country.” Soon there were rumors that a McDonald’s would be opening up in downtown Baghdad, funding was almost in place for a Starwood luxury hotel, and General Motors was planning to build an auto plant. On the financial side, HSBC would have branches all over the country, Citigroup was preparing to offer substantial loans guaranteed against future sales of Iraqi oil, and the bell was going to ring on a New York- style stock exchange in Baghdad any day. In only a few months, the postwar plan to turn Iraq into a laboratory for the neocons had been realized. Leo Strauss may have provided the intellectual framework for invading Iraq preemptively, but it was that other University of Chicago professor, Milton Friedman, author of the anti-government manifesto Capitalism and Freedom, who supplied the manual for what to do once the country was safely in America’s hands. This represented an enormous victory for the most ideological wing of the Bush Administration. But it was also something more: the culmination of two interlinked power struggles, one among Iraqi exiles advising the White House on its postwar strategy, the other within the White House itself. * * * As the British historian Dilip Hiro has shown, in Secrets and Lies: Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ and After, the Iraqi exiles pushing for the invasion were divided, broadly, into two camps. On one side were “the pragmatists,” who favored getting rid of Saddam and his immediate entourage, securing access to oil, and slowly introducing free-market reforms. Many of these exiles were part of the State Department’s Future of Iraq Project, which generated a thirteen-volume report on how to restore basic services and transition to democracy after the war. On the other side was the “Year Zero” camp, those who believed that Iraq was so contaminated that it needed to be rubbed out and remade from scratch. The prime advocate of the pragmatic approach was Iyad Allawi, a former high-level Baathist who fell out with Saddam and started working for the CIA. The prime advocate of the Year Zero approach was Ahmad Chalabi, whose hatred of the Iraqi state for expropriating his family’s assets during the 1958 revolution ran so deep he longed to see the entire country burned to the ground—everything, that is, but the Oil Ministry, which would be the nucleus of the new Iraq, the cluster of cells from which an entire nation would grow. He called this process “de-Baathification.” A parallel battle between pragmatists and true believers was being waged within the Bush Administration. The pragmatists were men like Secretary of State Colin Powell and General Jay Garner, the first U.S. envoy to postwar Iraq. General Garner’s plan was straightforward enough: fix the infrastructure, hold quick and dirty elections, leave the shock therapy to the International Monetary Fund, and concentrate on securing U.S. military bases on the model of the Philippines. “I think we should look right now at Iraq as our coaling station in the Middle East,” he told the BBC. He also paraphrased T. E. Lawrence, saying, “It’s better for them to do it imperfectly than for us to do it for them perfectly.” On the other side was the usual cast of neoconservatives: Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (who lauded Bremer’s “sweeping reforms” as “some of the most enlightened and inviting tax and investment laws in the free world”), Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and, perhaps most centrally, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. Whereas the State Department had its Future of Iraq report, the neocons had USAID’s contract with Bearing Point to remake Iraq’s economy: in 108 pages, “privatization” was mentioned no fewer than fifty-one times. To the true believers in the White House, General Garner’s plans for postwar Iraq seemed hopelessly unambitious. Why settle for a mere coaling station when you can have a model free market? Why settle for the Philippines when you can have a beacon unto the world? The Iraqi Year Zeroists made natural allies for the White House neoconservatives: Chalabi’s seething hatred of the Baathist state fit nicely with the neocons’ hatred of the state in general, and the two agendas effortlessly merged. Together, they came to imagine the invasion of Iraq as a kind of Rapture: where the rest of the world saw death, they saw birth—a country redeemed through violence, cleansed by fire. Iraq wasn’t being destroyed by cruise missiles, cluster bombs, chaos, and looting; it was being born again. April 9, 2003, the day Baghdad fell, was Day One of Year Zero. While the war was being waged, it still wasn’t clear whether the pragmatists or the Year Zeroists would be handed control over occupied Iraq. But the speed with which the nation was conquered dramatically increased the neocons’ political capital, since they had been predicting a “cakewalk” all along. Eight days after George Bush landed on that aircraft carrier under a banner that said MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, the President publicly signed on to the neocons’ vision for Iraq to become a model corporate state that would open up the entire region. On May 9, Bush proposed the “establishment of a U.S.-Middle East free trade area within a decade”; three days later, Bush sent Paul Bremer to Baghdad to replace Jay Garner, who had been on the job for only three weeks. The message was unequivocal: the pragmatists had lost; Iraq would belong to the believers. A Reagan-era diplomat turned entrepreneur, Bremer had recently proven his ability to transform rubble into gold by waiting exactly one month after the September 11 attacks to launch Crisis Consulting Practice, a security company selling “terrorism risk insurance” to multinationals. Bremer had two lieutenants on the economic front: Thomas Foley and Michael Fleischer, the heads of “private sector development” for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Foley is a Greenwich, Connecticut, multimillionaire, a longtime friend of the Bush family and a Bush-Cheney campaign “pioneer” who has described Iraq as a modern California “gold rush.” Fleischer, a venture capitalist, is the brother of former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. Neither man had any high-level diplomatic experience and both use the term corporate “turnaround” specialist to describe what they do. According to Foley, this uniquely qualified them to manage Iraq’s economy because it was “the mother of all turnarounds.” Many of the other CPA postings were equally ideological. The Green Zone, the city within a city that houses the occupation headquarters in Saddam’s former palace, was filled with Young Republicans straight out of the Heritage Foundation, all of them given responsibility they could never have dreamed of receiving at home. Jay Hallen, a twenty- four-year-old who had applied for a job at the White House, was put in charge of launching Baghdad’s new stock exchange. Scott Erwin, a twenty-one-year-old former intern to Dick Cheney, reported in an email home that “I am assisting Iraqis in the management of finances and budgeting for the domestic security forces.” The college senior’s favorite job before this one? “My time as an ice-cream truck driver.” In those early days, the Green Zone felt a bit like the Peace Corps, for people who think the Peace Corps is a communist plot. It was a chance to sleep on cots, wear army boots, and cry “incoming”—all while being guarded around the clock by real soldiers. The teams of KPMG accountants, investment bankers, think-tank lifers, and Young Republicans that populate the Green Zone have much in common with the IMF missions that rearrange the economies of developing countries from the presidential suites of Sheraton hotels the world over. Except for one rather significant difference: in Iraq they were not negotiating with the government to accept their “structural adjustments” in exchange for a loan; they were the government. Some small steps were taken, however, to bring Iraq’s U.S.-appointed politicians inside. Yegor Gaidar, the mastermind of Russia’s mid- nineties privatization auction that gave away the country’s assets to the reigning oligarchs, was invited to share his wisdom at a conference in Baghdad. Marek Belka, who as finance minister oversaw the same process in Poland, was brought in as well. The Iraqis who proved most gifted at mouthing the neocon lines were selected to act as what USAID calls local “policy champions”—men like Ahmad al Mukhtar, who told me of his countrymen, “They are lazy. The Iraqis by nature, they are very dependent. . . . They will have to depend on themselves, it is the only way to survive in the world today.” Although he has no economics background and his last job was reading the English-language news on television, al Mukhtar was appointed director of foreign relations in the Ministry of Trade and is leading the charge for Iraq to join the World Trade Organization. * * * I had been following the economic front of the war for almost a year before I decided to go to Iraq. I attended the “Rebuilding Iraq” trade shows, studied Bremer’s tax and investment laws, met with contractors at their home offices in the United States, interviewed the government officials in Washington who are making the policies. But as I prepared to travel to Iraq in March to see this experiment in free- market utopianism up close, it was becoming increasingly clear that all was not going according to plan. Bremer had been working on the theory that if you build a corporate utopia the corporations will come—but where were they? American multinationals were happy to accept U.S. taxpayer dollars to reconstruct the phone or electricity systems, but they weren’t sinking their own money into Iraq. There was, as yet, no McDonald’s or Wal-Mart in Baghdad, and even the sales of state factories, announced so confidently nine months earlier, had not materialized. Some of the holdup had to do with the physical risks of doing business in Iraq. But there were other more significant risks as well. When Paul Bremer shredded Iraq’s Baathist constitution and replaced it with what The Economist greeted approvingly as “the wish list of foreign investors,” there was one small detail he failed to mention: It was all completely illegal. The CPA derived its legal authority from United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483, passed in May 2003, which recognized the United States and Britain as Iraq’s legitimate occupiers. It was this resolution that empowered Bremer to unilaterally make laws in Iraq. But the resolution also stated that the U.S. and Britain must “comply fully with their obligations under international law including in particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907.” Both conventions were born as an attempt to curtail the unfortunate historical tendency among occupying powers to rewrite the rules so that they can economically strip the nations they control. With this in mind, the conventions stipulate that an occupier must abide by a country’s existing laws unless “absolutely prevented” from doing so. They also state that an occupier does not own the “public buildings, real estate, forests and agricultural assets” of the country it is occupying but is rather their “administrator” and custodian, keeping them secure until sovereignty is reestablished. This was the true threat to the Year Zero plan: since America didn’t own Iraq’s assets, it could not legally sell them, which meant that after the occupation ended, an Iraqi government could come to power and decide that it wanted to keep the state companies in public hands, or, as is the norm in the Gulf region, to bar foreign firms from owning 100 percent of national assets. If that happened, investments made under Bremer’s rules could be expropriated, leaving firms with no recourse because their investments had violated international law from the outset. By November, trade lawyers started to advise their corporate clients not to go into Iraq just yet, that it would be better to wait until after the transition. Insurance companies were so spooked that not a single one of the big firms would insure investors for “political risk,” that high- stakes area of insurance law that protects companies against foreign governments turning nationalist or socialist and expropriating their investments. Even the U.S.-appointed Iraqi politicians, up to now so obedient, were getting nervous about their own political futures if they went along with the privatization plans. Communications Minister Haider al-Abadi told me about his first meeting with Bremer. “I said, ‘Look, we don’t have the mandate to sell any of this. Privatization is a big thing. We have to wait until there is an Iraqi government.’” Minister of Industry Mohamad Tofiq was even more direct: “I am not going to do something that is not legal, so that’s it.” Both al-Abadi and Tofiq told me about a meeting—never reported in the press—that took place in late October 2003. At that gathering the twenty-five members of Iraq’s Governing Council as well as the twenty-five interim ministers decided unanimously that they would not participate in the privatization of Iraq’s state-owned companies or of its publicly owned infrastructure. But Bremer didn’t give up. International law prohibits occupiers from selling state assets themselves, but it doesn’t say anything about the puppet governments they appoint. Originally, Bremer had pledged to hand over power to a directly elected Iraqi government, but in early November he went to Washington for a private meeting with President Bush and came back with a Plan B. On June 30 the occupation would officially end—but not really. It would be replaced by an appointed government, chosen by Washington. This government would not be bound by the international laws preventing occupiers from selling off state assets, but it would be bound by an “interim constitution,” a document that would protect Bremer’s investment and privatization laws. The plan was risky. Bremer’s June 30 deadline was awfully close, and it was chosen for a less than ideal reason: so that President Bush could trumpet the end of Iraq’s occupation on the campaign trail. If everything went according to plan, Bremer would succeed in forcing a “sovereign” Iraqi government to carry out his illegal reforms. But if something went wrong, he would have to go ahead with the June 30 handover anyway because by then Karl Rove, and not Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, would be calling the shots. And if it came down to a choice between ideology in Iraq and the electability of George W. Bush, everyone knew which would win. * * * At first, Plan B seemed to be right on track. Bremer persuaded the Iraqi Governing Council to agree to everything: the new timetable, the interim government, and the interim constitution. He even managed to slip into the constitution a completely overlooked clause, Article 26. It stated that for the duration of the interim government, “The laws, regulations, orders and directives issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority . . . shall remain in force” and could only be changed after general elections are held. Bremer had found his legal loophole: There would be a window—seven months—when the occupation was officially over but before general elections were scheduled to take place. Within this window, the Hague and Geneva Conventions’ bans on privatization would no longer apply, but Bremer’s own laws, thanks to Article 26, would stand. During these seven months, foreign investors could come to Iraq and sign forty-year contracts to buy up Iraqi assets. If a future elected Iraqi government decided to change the rules, investors could sue for compensation. But Bremer had a formidable opponent: Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the most senior Shia cleric in Iraq. al Sistani tried to block Bremer’s plan at every turn, calling for immediate direct elections and for the constitution to be written after those elections, not before. Both demands, if met, would have closed Bremer’s privatization window. Then, on March 2, with the Shia members of the Governing Council refusing to sign the interim constitution, five bombs exploded in front of mosques in Karbala and Baghdad, killing close to 200 worshipers. General John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, warned that the country was on the verge of civil war. Frightened by this prospect, al Sistani backed down and the Shia politicians signed the interim constitution. It was a familiar story: the shock of a violent attack paved the way for more shock therapy. When I arrived in Iraq a week later, the economic project seemed to be back on track. All that remained for Bremer was to get his interim constitution ratified by a Security Council resolution, then the nervous lawyers and insurance brokers could relax and the sell-off of Iraq could finally begin. The CPA, meanwhile, had launched a major new P.R. offensive designed to reassure investors that Iraq was still a safe and exciting place to do business. The centerpiece of the campaign was Destination Baghdad Exposition, a massive trade show for potential investors to be held in early April at the Baghdad International Fairgrounds. It was the first such event inside Iraq, and the organizers had branded the trade fair “DBX,” as if it were some sort of Mountain Dew-sponsored dirt-bike race. In keeping with the extreme-sports theme, Thomas Foley traveled to Washington to tell a gathering of executives that the risks in Iraq are akin “to skydiving or riding a motorcycle, which are, to many, very acceptable risks.” But three hours after my arrival in Baghdad, I was finding these reassurances extremely hard to believe. I had not yet unpacked when my hotel room was filled with debris and the windows in the lobby were shattered. Down the street, the Mount Lebanon Hotel had just been bombed, at that point the largest attack of its kind since the official end of the war. The next day, another hotel was bombed in Basra, then two Finnish businessmen were murdered on their way to a meeting in Baghdad. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt finally admitted that there was a pattern at work: “the extremists have started shifting away from the hard targets . . . [and] are now going out of their way to specifically target softer targets.” The next day, the State Department updated its travel advisory: U.S. citizens were “strongly warned against travel to Iraq.” The physical risks of doing business in Iraq seemed to be spiraling out of control. This, once again, was not part of the original plan. When Bremer first arrived in Baghdad, the armed resistance was so low that he was able to walk the streets with a minimal security entourage. During his first four months on the job, 109 U.S. soldiers were killed and 570 were wounded. In the following four months, when Bremer’s shock therapy had taken effect, the number of U.S. casualties almost doubled, with 195 soldiers killed and 1,633 wounded. There are many in Iraq who argue that these events are connected—that Bremer’s reforms were the single largest factor leading to the rise of armed resistance. Take, for instance, Bremer’s first casualties. The soldiers and workers he laid off without pensions or severance pay didn’t all disappear quietly. Many of them went straight into the mujahedeen, forming the backbone of the armed resistance. “Half a million people are now worse off, and there you have the water tap that keeps the insurgency going. It’s alternative employment,” says Hussain Kubba, head of the prominent Iraqi business group Kubba Consulting. Some of Bremer’s other economic casualties also have failed to go quietly. It turns out that many of the businessmen whose companies are threatened by Bremer’s investment laws have decided to make investments of their own—in the resistance. It is partly their money that keeps fighters in Kalashnikovs and RPGs. These developments present a challenge to the basic logic of shock therapy: the neocons were convinced that if they brought in their reforms quickly and ruthlessly, Iraqis would be too stunned to resist. But the shock appears to have had the opposite effect; rather than the predicted paralysis, it jolted many Iraqis into action, much of it extreme. Haider al-Abadi, Iraq’s minister of communication, puts it this way: “We know that there are terrorists in the country, but previously they were not successful, they were isolated. Now because the whole country is unhappy, and a lot of people don’t have jobs . . . these terrorists are finding listening ears.” Bremer was now at odds not only with the Iraqis who opposed his plans but with U.S military commanders charged with putting down the insurgency his policies were feeding. Heretical questions began to be raised: instead of laying people off, what if the CPA actually created jobs for Iraqis? And instead of rushing to sell off Iraq’s 200 state-owned firms, how about putting them back to work? * * * >From the start, the neocons running Iraq had shown nothing but disdain for Iraq’s state-owned companies. In keeping with their Year Zero-apocalyptic glee, when looters descended on the factories during the war, U.S. forces did nothing. Sabah Asaad, managing director of a refrigerator factory outside Baghdad, told me that while the looting was going on, he went to a nearby U.S. Army base and begged for help. “I asked one of the officers to send two soldiers and a vehicle to help me kick out the looters. I was crying. The officer said, ‘Sorry, we can’t do anything, we need an order from President Bush.’” Back in Washington, Donald Rumsfeld shrugged. “Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.” To see the remains of Asaad’s football-field-size warehouse is to understand why Frank Gehry had an artistic crisis after September 11 and was briefly unable to design structures resembling the rubble of modern buildings. Asaad’s looted and burned factory looks remarkably like a heavy-metal version of Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, with waves of steel, buckled by fire, lying in terrifyingly beautiful golden heaps. Yet all was not lost. “The looters were good- hearted,” one of Asaad’s painters told me, explaining that they left the tools and machines behind, “so we could work again.” Because the machines are still there, many factory managers in Iraq say that it would take little for them to return to full production. They need emergency generators to cope with daily blackouts, and they need capital for parts and raw materials. If that happened, it would have tremendous implications for Iraq’s stalled reconstruction, because it would mean that many of the key materials needed to rebuild—cement and steel, bricks and furniture—could be produced inside the country. But it hasn’t happened. Immediately after the nominal end of the war, Congress appropriated $2.5 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq, followed by an additional $18.4 billion in October. Yet as of July 2004, Iraq’s state-owned factories had been pointedly excluded from the reconstruction contracts. Instead, the billions have all gone to Western companies, with most of the materials for the reconstruction imported at great expense from abroad. With unemployment as high as 67 percent, the imported products and foreign workers flooding across the borders have become a source of tremendous resentment in Iraq and yet another open tap fueling the insurgency. And Iraqis don’t have to look far for reminders of this injustice; it’s on display in the most ubiquitous symbol of the occupation: the blast wall. The ten-foot-high slabs of reinforced concrete are everywhere in Iraq, separating the protected—the people in upscale hotels, luxury homes, military bases, and, of course, the Green Zone—from the unprotected and exposed. If that wasn’t injury enough, all the blast walls are imported, from Kurdistan, Turkey, or even farther afield, this despite the fact that Iraq was once a major manufacturer of cement, and could easily be again. There are seventeen state-owned cement factories across the country, but most are idle or working at only half capacity. According to the Ministry of Industry, not one of these factories has received a single contract to help with the reconstruction, even though they could produce the walls and meet other needs for cement at a greatly reduced cost. The CPA pays up to $1,000 per imported blast wall; local manufacturers say they could make them for $100. Minister Tofiq says there is a simple reason why the Americans refuse to help get Iraq’s cement factories running again: among those making the decisions, “no one believes in the public sector.”[1] This kind of ideological blindness has turned Iraq’s occupiers into prisoners of their own policies, hiding behind walls that, by their very existence, fuel the rage at the U.S. presence, thereby feeding the need for more walls. In Baghdad the concrete barriers have been given a popular nickname: Bremer Walls. As the insurgency grew, it soon became clear that if Bremer went ahead with his plans to sell off the state companies, it could worsen the violence. There was no question that privatization would require layoffs: the Ministry of Industry estimates that roughly 145,000 workers would have to be fired to make the firms desirable to investors, with each of those workers supporting, on average, five family members. For Iraq’s besieged occupiers the question was: Would these shock-therapy casualties accept their fate or would they rebel? * * * The answer arrived, in rather dramatic fashion, at one of the largest state-owned companies, the General Company for Vegetable Oils. The complex of six factories in a Baghdad industrial zone produces cooking oil, hand soap, laundry detergent, shaving cream, and shampoo. At least that is what I was told by a receptionist who gave me glossy brochures and calendars boasting of “modern instruments” and “the latest and most up to date developments in the field of industry.” But when I approached the soap factory, I discovered a group of workers sleeping outside a darkened building. Our guide rushed ahead, shouting something to a woman in a white lab coat, and suddenly the factory scrambled into activity: lights switched on, motors revved up, and workers—still blinking off sleep—began filling two-liter plastic bottles with pale blue Zahi brand dishwashing liquid. I asked Nada Ahmed, the woman in the white coat, why the factory wasn’t working a few minutes before. She explained that they have only enough electricity and materials to run the machines for a couple of hours a day, but when guests arrive—would-be investors, ministry officials, journalists—they get them going. “For show,” she explained. Behind us, a dozen bulky machines sat idle, covered in sheets of dusty plastic and secured with duct tape. In one dark corner of the plant, we came across an old man hunched over a sack filled with white plastic caps. With a thin metal blade lodged in a wedge of wax, he carefully whittled down the edges of each cap, leaving a pile of shavings at his feet. “We don’t have the spare part for the proper mold, so we have to cut them by hand,” his supervisor explained apologetically. “We haven’t received any parts from Germany since the sanctions began.” I noticed that even on the assembly lines that were nominally working there was almost no mechanization: bottles were held under spouts by hand because conveyor belts don’t convey, lids once snapped on by machines were being hammered in place with wooden mallets. Even the water for the factory was drawn from an outdoor well, hoisted by hand, and carried inside. The solution proposed by the U.S. occupiers was not to fix the plant but to sell it, and so when Bremer announced the privatization auction back in June 2003 this was among the first companies mentioned. Yet when I visited the factory in March, nobody wanted to talk about the privatization plan; the mere mention of the word inside the plant inspired awkward silences and meaningful glances. This seemed an unnatural amount of subtext for a soap factory, and I tried to get to the bottom of it when I interviewed the assistant manager. But the interview itself was equally odd: I had spent half a week setting it up, submitting written questions for approval, getting a signed letter of permission from the minister of industry, being questioned and searched several times. But when I finally began the interview, the assistant manager refused to tell me his name or let me record the conversation. “Any manager mentioned in the press is attacked afterwards,” he said. And when I asked whether the company was being sold, he gave this oblique response: “If the decision was up to the workers, they are against privatization; but if it’s up to the high- ranking officials and government, then privatization is an order and orders must be followed.” I left the plant feeling that I knew less than when I’d arrived. But on the way out of the gates, a young security guard handed my translator a note. He wanted us to meet him after work at a nearby restaurant, “to find out what is really going on with privatization.” His name was Mahmud, and he was a twenty-five-year-old with a neat beard and big black eyes. (For his safety, I have omitted his last name.) His story began in July, a few weeks after Bremer’s privatization announcement. The company’s manager, on his way to work, was shot to death. Press reports speculated that the manager was murdered because he was in favor of privatizing the plant, but Mahmud was convinced that he was killed because he opposed the plan. “He would never have sold the factories like the Americans want. That’s why they killed him.” The dead man was replaced by a new manager, Mudhfar Ja’far. Shortly after taking over, Ja’far called a meeting with ministry officials to discuss selling off the soap factory, which would involve laying off two thirds of its employees. Guarding that meeting were several security officers from the plant. They listened closely to Ja’far’s plans and promptly reported the alarming news to their coworkers. “We were shocked,” Mahmud recalled. “If the private sector buys our company, the first thing they would do is reduce the staff to make more money. And we will be forced into a very hard destiny, because the factory is our only way of living.” Frightened by this prospect, a group of seventeen workers, including Mahmud, marched into Ja’far’s office to confront him on what they had heard. “Unfortunately, he wasn’t there, only the assistant manager, the one you met,” Mahmud told me. A fight broke out: one worker struck the assistant manager, and a bodyguard fired three shots at the workers. The crowd then attacked the bodyguard, took his gun, and, Mahmud said, “stabbed him with a knife in the back three times. He spent a month in the hospital.” In January there was even more violence. On their way to work, Ja’far, the manager, and his son were shot and badly injured. Mahmud told me he had no idea who was behind the attack, but I was starting to understand why factory managers in Iraq try to keep a low profile. At the end of our meeting, I asked Mahmud what would happen if the plant was sold despite the workers’ objections. “There are two choices,” he said, looking me in the eye and smiling kindly. “Either we will set the factory on fire and let the flames devour it to the ground, or we will blow ourselves up inside of it. But it will not be privatized.” If there ever was a moment when Iraqis were too disoriented to resist shock therapy, that moment has definitely passed. Labor relations, like everything else in Iraq, has become a blood sport. The violence on the streets howls at the gates of the factories, threatening to engulf them. Workers fear job loss as a death sentence, and managers, in turn, fear their workers, a fact that makes privatization distinctly more complicated than the neocons foresaw.[2] * * * As I left the meeting with Mahmud, I got word that there was a major demonstration outside the CPA headquarters. Supporters of the radical young cleric Moqtada al Sadr were protesting the closing of their newspaper, al Hawza, by military police. The CPA accused al Hawza of publishing “false articles” that could “pose the real threat of violence.” As an example, it cited an article that claimed Bremer “is pursuing a policy of starving the Iraqi people to make them preoccupied with procuring their daily bread so they do not have the chance to demand their political and individual freedoms.” To me it sounded less like hate literature than a concise summary of Milton Friedman’s recipe for shock therapy. A few days before the newspaper was shut down, I had gone to Kufa during Friday prayers to listen to al Sadr at his mosque. He had launched into a tirade against Bremer’s newly signed interim constitution, calling it “an unjust, terrorist document.” The message of the sermon was clear: Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani may have backed down on the constitution, but al Sadr and his supporters were still determined to fight it—and if they succeeded they would sabotage the neocons’ careful plan to saddle Iraq’s next government with their “wish list” of laws. With the closing of the newspaper, Bremer was giving al Sadr his response: he wasn’t negotiating with this young upstart; he’d rather take him out with force. When I arrived at the demonstration, the streets were filled with men dressed in black, the soon-to-be legendary Mahdi Army. It struck me that if Mahmud lost his security guard job at the soap factory, he could be one of them. That’s who al Sadr’s foot soldiers are: the young men who have been shut out of the neocons’ grand plans for Iraq, who see no possibilities for work, and whose neighborhoods have seen none of the promised reconstruction. Bremer has failed these young men, and everywhere that he has failed, Moqtada al Sadr has cannily set out to succeed. In Shia slums from Baghdad to Basra, a network of Sadr Centers coordinate a kind of shadow reconstruction. Funded through donations, the centers dispatch electricians to fix power and phone lines, organize local garbage collection, set up emergency generators, run blood drives, direct traffic where the streetlights don’t work. And yes, they organize militias too. Al Sadr took Bremer’s economic casualties, dressed them in black, and gave them rusty Kalashnikovs. His militiamen protected the mosques and the state factories when the occupation authorities did not, but in some areas they also went further, zealously enforcing Islamic law by torching liquor stores and terrorizing women without the veil. Indeed, the astronomical rise of the brand of religious fundamentalism that al Sadr represents is another kind of blowback from Bremer’s shock therapy: if the reconstruction had provided jobs, security, and services to Iraqis, al Sadr would have been deprived of both his mission and many of his newfound followers. At the same time as al Sadr’s followers were shouting “Down with America” outside the Green Zone, something was happening in another part of the country that would change everything. Four American mercenary soldiers were killed in Fallujah, their charred and dismembered bodies hung like trophies over the Euphrates. The attacks would prove a devastating blow for the neocons, one from which they would never recover. With these images, investing in Iraq suddenly didn’t look anything like a capitalist dream; it looked like a macabre nightmare made real. The day I left Baghdad was the worst yet. Fallujah was under siege and Brig. Gen. Kimmitt was threatening to “destroy the al-Mahdi Army.” By the end, roughly 2,000 Iraqis were killed in these twin campaigns. I was dropped off at a security checkpoint several miles from the airport, then loaded onto a bus jammed with contractors lugging hastily packed bags. Although no one was calling it one, this was an evacuation: over the next week 1,500 contractors left Iraq, and some governments began airlifting their citizens out of the country. On the bus no one spoke; we all just listened to the mortar fire, craning our necks to see the red glow. A guy carrying a KPMG briefcase decided to lighten things up. “So is there business class on this flight?” he asked the silent bus. From the back, somebody called out, “Not yet.” Indeed, it may be quite a while before business class truly arrives in Iraq. When we landed in Amman, we learned that we had gotten out just in time. That morning three Japanese civilians were kidnapped and their captors were threatening to burn them alive. Two days later Nicholas Berg went missing and was not seen again until the snuff film surfaced of his beheading, an even more terrifying message for U.S. contractors than the charred bodies in Fallujah. These were the start of a wave of kidnappings and killings of foreigners, most of them businesspeople, from a rainbow of nations: South Korea, Italy, China, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey. By the end of June more than ninety contractors were reported dead in Iraq. When seven Turkish contractors were kidnapped in June, their captors asked the “company to cancel all contracts and pull out employees from Iraq.” Many insurance companies stopped selling life insurance to contractors, and others began to charge premiums as high as $10,000 a week for a single Western executive—the same price some insurgents reportedly pay for a dead American. For their part, the organizers of DBX, the historic Baghdad trade fair, decided to relocate to the lovely tourist city of Diyarbakir in Turkey, “just 250 km from the Iraqi border.” An Iraqi landscape, only without those frightening Iraqis. Three weeks later just fifteen people showed up for a Commerce Department conference in Lansing, Michigan, on investing in Iraq. Its host, Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, tried to reassure his skeptical audience by saying that Iraq is “like a rough neighborhood anywhere in America.” The foreign investors, the ones who were offered every imaginable free-market enticement, are clearly not convinced; there is still no sign of them. Keith Crane, a senior economist at the Rand Corporation who has worked for the CPA, put it bluntly: “I don’t believe the board of a multinational company could approve a major investment in this environment. If people are shooting at each other, it’s just difficult to do business.” Hamid Jassim Khamis, the manager of the largest soft-drink bottling plant in the region, told me he can’t find any investors, even though he landed the exclusive rights to produce Pepsi in central Iraq. “A lot of people have approached us to invest in the factory, but people are really hesitating now.” Khamis said he couldn’t blame them; in five months he has survived an attempted assassination, a carjacking, two bombs planted at the entrance of his factory, and the kidnapping of his son. Despite having been granted the first license for a foreign bank to operate in Iraq in forty years, HSBC still hasn’t opened any branches, a decision that may mean losing the coveted license altogether. Procter & Gamble has put its joint venture on hold, and so has General Motors. The U.S. financial backers of the Starwood luxury hotel and multiplex have gotten cold feet, and Siemens AG has pulled most staff from Iraq. The bell hasn’t rung yet at the Baghdad Stock Exchange—in fact you can’t even use credit cards in Iraq’s cash-only economy. New Bridge Strategies, the company that had gushed back in October about how “a Wal-Mart could take over the country,” is sounding distinctly humbled. “McDonald’s is not opening anytime soon,” company partner Ed Rogers told the Washington Post. Neither is Wal-Mart. The Financial Times has declared Iraq “the most dangerous place in the world in which to do business.” It’s quite an accomplishment: in trying to design the best place in the world to do business, the neocons have managed to create the worst, the most eloquent indictment yet of the guiding logic behind deregulated free markets. The violence has not just kept investors out; it also forced Bremer, before he left, to abandon many of his central economic policies. Privatization of the state companies is off the table; instead, several of the state companies have been offered up for lease, but only if the investor agrees not to lay off a single employee. Thousands of the state workers that Bremer fired have been rehired, and significant raises have been handed out in the public sector as a whole. Plans to do away with the food-ration program have also been scrapped—it just doesn’t seem like a good time to deny millions of Iraqis the only nutrition on which they can depend. * * * The final blow to the neocon dream came in the weeks before the handover. The White House and the CPA were rushing to get the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution endorsing their handover plan. They had twisted arms to give the top job to former CIA agent Iyad Allawi, a move that will ensure that Iraq becomes, at the very least, the coaling station for U.S. troops that Jay Garner originally envisioned. But if major corporate investors were going to come to Iraq in the future, they would need a stronger guarantee that Bremer’s economic laws would stick. There was only one way of doing that: the Security Council resolution had to ratify the interim constitution, which locked in Bremer’s laws for the duration of the interim government. But al Sistani once again objected, this time unequivocally, saying that the constitution has been “rejected by the majority of the Iraqi people.” On June 8 the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution that endorsed the handover plan but made absolutely no reference to the constitution. In the face of this far-reaching defeat, George W. Bush celebrated the resolution as a historic victory, one that came just in time for an election trail photo op at the G-8 Summit in Georgia. With Bremer’s laws in limbo, Iraqi ministers are already talking openly about breaking contracts signed by the CPA. Citigroup’s loan scheme has been rejected as a misuse of Iraq’s oil revenues. Iraq’s communication minister is threatening to renegotiate contracts with the three communications firms providing the country with its disastrously poor cell phone service. And the Lebanese and U.S. companies hired to run the state television network have been informed that they could lose their licenses because they are not Iraqi. “We will see if we can change the contract,” Hamid al-Kifaey, spokesperson for the Governing Council, said in May. “They have no idea about Iraq.” For most investors, this complete lack of legal certainty simply makes Iraq too great a risk. But while the Iraqi resistance has managed to scare off the first wave of corporate raiders, there’s little doubt that they will return. Whatever form the next Iraqi government takes—nationalist, Islamist, or free market—it will inherit a shattered nation with a crushing $120 billion debt. Then, as in all poor countries around the world, men in dark blue suits from the IMF will appear at the door, bearing loans and promises of economic boom, provided that certain structural adjustments are made, which will, of course, be rather painful at first but well worth the sacrifice in the end. In fact, the process has already begun: the IMF is poised to approve loans worth $2.5- $4.25 billion, pending agreement on the conditions. After an endless succession of courageous last stands and far too many lost lives, Iraq will become a poor nation like any other, with politicians determined to introduce policies rejected by the vast majority of the population, and all the imperfect compromises that will entail. The free market will no doubt come to Iraq, but the neoconservative dream of transforming the country into a free-market utopia has already died, a casualty of a greater dream—a second term for George W. Bush. The great historical irony of the catastrophe unfolding in Iraq is that the shock-therapy reforms that were supposed to create an economic boom that would rebuild the country have instead fueled a resistance that ultimately made reconstruction impossible. Bremer’s reforms unleashed forces that the neocons neither predicted nor could hope to control, from armed insurrections inside factories to tens of thousands of unemployed young men arming themselves. These forces have transformed Year Zero in Iraq into the mirror opposite of what the neocons envisioned: not a corporate utopia but a ghoulish dystopia, where going to a simple business meeting can get you lynched, burned alive, or beheaded. These dangers are so great that in Iraq global capitalism has retreated, at least for now. For the neocons, this must be a shocking development: their ideological belief in greed turns out to be stronger than greed itself. Iraq was to the neocons what Afghanistan was to the Taliban: the one place on Earth where they could force everyone to live by the most literal, unyielding interpretation of their sacred texts. One would think that the bloody results of this experiment would inspire a crisis of faith: in the country where they had absolute free reign, where there was no local government to blame, where economic reforms were introduced at their most shocking and most perfect, they created, instead of a model free market, a failed state no right-thinking investor would touch. And yet the Green Zone neocons and their masters in Washington are no more likely to reexamine their core beliefs than the Taliban mullahs were inclined to search their souls when their Islamic state slid into a debauched Hades of opium and sex slavery. When facts threaten true believers, they simply close their eyes and pray harder. Which is precisely what Thomas Foley has been doing. The former head of “private sector development” has left Iraq, a country he had described as “the mother of all turnarounds,” and has accepted another turnaround job, as co-chair of George Bush’s reelection committee in Connecticut. On April 30 in Washington he addressed a crowd of entrepreneurs about business prospects in Baghdad. It was a tough day to be giving an upbeat speech: that morning the first photographs had appeared out of Abu Ghraib, including one of a hooded prisoner with electrical wires attached to his hands. This was another kind of shock therapy, far more literal than the one Foley had helped to administer, but not entirely unconnected. “Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not as bad as it appears,” Foley told the crowd. “You just need to accept that on faith.” ----------------- About the Author Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and writer/producer of The Take, a new documentary on Argentina’s occupied factories. http://www.nfb.ca/thetake/ -------------------- Notes 1. Tofiq did say that several U.S. companies had expressed strong interest in buying the state-owned cement factories. This supports a widely held belief in Iraq that there is a deliberate strategy to neglect the state firms so that they can be sold more cheaply--a practice known as "starve then sell." [Back] 2. It is in Basra where the connections between economic reforms and the rise of the resistance was put in starkest terms. In December the union representing oil workers was negotiating with the Oil Ministry for a salary increase. Getting nowhere, the workers offered the ministry a simple choice: increase their paltry salaries or they would all join the armed resistance. They received a substantial raise. From lalitbatra77 at yahoo.co.in Thu Sep 30 13:40:04 2004 From: lalitbatra77 at yahoo.co.in (lalit batra) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 09:10:04 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Niyogi Memorial Convention Message-ID: <20040930081004.48629.qmail@web8406.mail.in.yahoo.com> NIYOGI MEMORIAL CONVENTION ON LABOUR STRUGGLES FOR JUSTICE Thirteen years after the martyrdom of Shankar Guha Niyogi his legacy lives on. Guided by his creative and charismatic leadership, the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha redefined trade union struggles by breaking the narrow shackles of economism. Under the slogan of “sangharsh aur nirmaan”, this movement touched and transformed all aspects of people’s lives – it established a worker’s hospital, led vibrant anti liquor movements, and actively promoted local history and traditions. It created an active relationship with the movements of the peasantry and labour in the surrounding countryside. The slogan “Naye Bharat Ke Liye Naya Chattisgarh” captures this people-centric model of development. Niyogi’s vision of a society free of oppression stands in stark contrast to the lop-sided priorities of the development model being implemented in Chhattishgarh today. Shankar Guha Niyogi was murdered in the early hours of 28th September 1991 by the industrial mafia of Chattisgarh. At that time he was organising contract workers in Bhilai. Even as the government of Madhya Pradesh was wooing foreign investors and promising a dispute free industrial haven, workers were unionising. The burgeoning agitation launched by the contract workers for the implementation of labour laws under his leadership posed a threat to the profits of industrialists, and also to the unchallenged supremacy they enjoyed in the area for decades. His cold-blooded murder sent shock waves throughout the nation. In the trial for his murder, the trial court for the first time in the legal history of the country convicted three industrialists on the charge of conspiracy for the murder of a trade union leader. The final appeals in this matter have been argued before the Supreme Court and the judgment is now awaited. The theme of the convention is “Labour Struggles for Justice” in today’s context of dilution of labour laws, attack on fundamental rights like the right to strike, and growing repression of workers. PROGRAMME Session 1: 3.00 pm to 5.00 pm Aruna Roy, Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Samiti, Rajasthan on Rural Workers’ Issues and Struggles Jayati Ghosh, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University on Changing Macroeconomic Policies and Growing Repression of Workers Arundhati Roy, Author and Social Activist on Global Political Context of an Increasingly Anti-Labour World Economic Order Sudha Bharadwaj, Secretary, Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha on Challenges Before the Workers’ and Peasant Movement in Chhattisgarh Indira Jaisingh, Legal Expert on Judiciary and Workers Rights Session 2: 5.00 pm to 6.00 pm Comments by representatives of Trade Unions and Workers’ Organizations Chairperson: Dunu Roy, Environmental Activist, Hazards Centre, New Delhi Venue : Deputy Speaker’s Hall, Constitution Club, Viththalbhai Patel House, New Delhi Date : 5th October 2004 K.J Mukherjee Smita Gupta Vrinda Grover SOLIDARITY GROUP FOR CHHATTISGARH WORKER’S MOVEMENT ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partner online Go to: http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matrimony From lalitbatra77 at yahoo.co.in Thu Sep 30 13:42:03 2004 From: lalitbatra77 at yahoo.co.in (lalit batra) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 09:12:03 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Niyogi Memorial Convention Message-ID: <20040930081203.77444.qmail@web8409.mail.in.yahoo.com> NIYOGI MEMORIAL CONVENTION ON LABOUR STRUGGLES FOR JUSTICE Thirteen years after the martyrdom of Shankar Guha Niyogi his legacy lives on. Guided by his creative and charismatic leadership, the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha redefined trade union struggles by breaking the narrow shackles of economism. Under the slogan of “sangharsh aur nirmaan”, this movement touched and transformed all aspects of people’s lives – it established a worker’s hospital, led vibrant anti liquor movements, and actively promoted local history and traditions. It created an active relationship with the movements of the peasantry and labour in the surrounding countryside. The slogan “Naye Bharat Ke Liye Naya Chattisgarh” captures this people-centric model of development. Niyogi’s vision of a society free of oppression stands in stark contrast to the lop-sided priorities of the development model being implemented in Chhattishgarh today. Shankar Guha Niyogi was murdered in the early hours of 28th September 1991 by the industrial mafia of Chattisgarh. At that time he was organising contract workers in Bhilai. Even as the government of Madhya Pradesh was wooing foreign investors and promising a dispute free industrial haven, workers were unionising. The burgeoning agitation launched by the contract workers for the implementation of labour laws under his leadership posed a threat to the profits of industrialists, and also to the unchallenged supremacy they enjoyed in the area for decades. His cold-blooded murder sent shock waves throughout the nation. In the trial for his murder, the trial court for the first time in the legal history of the country convicted three industrialists on the charge of conspiracy for the murder of a trade union leader. The final appeals in this matter have been argued before the Supreme Court and the judgment is now awaited. The theme of the convention is “Labour Struggles for Justice” in today’s context of dilution of labour laws, attack on fundamental rights like the right to strike, and growing repression of workers. PROGRAMME Session 1: 3.00 pm to 5.00 pm Aruna Roy, Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Samiti, Rajasthan on Rural Workers’ Issues and Struggles Jayati Ghosh, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University on Changing Macroeconomic Policies and Growing Repression of Workers Arundhati Roy, Author and Social Activist on Global Political Context of an Increasingly Anti-Labour World Economic Order Sudha Bharadwaj, Secretary, Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha on Challenges Before the Workers’ and Peasant Movement in Chhattisgarh Indira Jaisingh, Legal Expert on Judiciary and Workers Rights Session 2: 5.00 pm to 6.00 pm Comments by representatives of Trade Unions and Workers’ Organizations Chairperson: Dunu Roy, Environmental Activist, Hazards Centre, New Delhi Venue : Deputy Speaker’s Hall, Constitution Club, Viththalbhai Patel House, New Delhi Date : 5th October 2004 K.J Mukherjee Smita Gupta Vrinda Grover SOLIDARITY GROUP FOR CHHATTISGARH WORKER’S MOVEMENT ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partner online Go to: http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matrimony From vivek at sarai.net Thu Sep 30 17:17:27 2004 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 17:17:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Arun Kolatkar Message-ID: <415BF24F.3050202@sarai.net> Source: The Hindu (http://www.hinduonnet.com/2004/09/27/stories/2004092702971000.htm) By Ranjit Hoskote Arun Kolatkar sculpted poetry out of language with the chisels of surprise and epiphany. THE SHOCK of discovering earlier this year that poet Arun Kolatkar, who passed away in Pune on Saturday, was suffering from cancer galvanised his friends into bringing out as many of his uncollected writings as they could, in a race against time. Through their labour of love, Mr. Kolatkar broke a publishing silence of nearly 30 years in July, when two of his books were launched to the applause of several hundred readers: Kala Ghoda Poems and Sarpa Satra. With Mr. Kolatkar's passing, the Indian literary scene has lost a major presence. His is the third major loss that the subculture of Indian writing in English has suffered this year, after Nissim Ezekiel's death in January and Dom Moraes' in June. A bilingual writer, he will also be mourned by his readers in Marathi. Mr. Kolatkar's legendary reputation is built on Jejuri (1976), a memorable cycle of 31 poems woven around a temple-town in western Maharashtra. Although brought out by Clearing House, a poets' collective, and circulated among small circles of readers, Jejuri won the prestigious Commonwealth Poetry Prize and ran into three editions; it has also been translated into German. Mr. Kolatkar published a similarly dazzling volume of his Marathi poems in 1976, titled Arun Kolatkarchya Kavita. This was followed, in recent years, by the collections Chirimiri, Bhijki Vahi and Droan. With his leonine silver mane and brooding look, his apparently formidable grimness easily broken by a sudden grin, Mr. Kolatkar was one of those distinctive figures who bring a special flavour to the life of a metropolis. For several decades, he was invariably to be found, on Monday and Thursday afternoons, sipping his tea at a table that was virtually reserved for him at the Wayside Inn in Kala Ghoda, the heart of Bombay's colonial Fort quarter. Thus installed, he would look out of the French windows at the street-people gathered around the foot of the area's famed mahogany tree, or traversing its cobbled surfaces. He memorialised this experience in Kala Ghoda Poems, its cast including the idli-vendor, the blind man, the seller of rat-poison, and the lepers' tin-pan band. Born in Kolhapur in 1932, Mr. Kolatkar worked in advertising for much of his life. Although he was trained at Mumbai's Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy School of Art, his imagination rebelled against institutions; he was nourished, rather, by his private engagements with literature, painting, design and society. He often viewed experience as if through a camera, rendering what he saw and felt as a sequence of stills or as deftly edited footage. His ability to inveigle a series of events into a pattern was impeccable; he enjoyed an enviable understanding of the image and its ability to unsettle the viewer or reader. The evidence of his poetry suggests that advertising may have enhanced his taste for the bizarre perspective and the oblique entry-point into situations. He had a magical gift for translating the familiar into the wonderful, by focussing on details or tweaking our programmed approaches to objects, people and relationships. In his poems, wry irony underpins the miracle of t! hings seen and touched, people met and sized up. Mr. Kolatkar had no patience with the solemn academics who attempted to constrain him within such simple-minded schema as `faith versus reason' or `tradition versus modernity', merely because the eponymous Jejuri of his first book is a temple-town dedicated to Khandoba, a manifestation of Shiva. The mass of academic writing on Mr. Kolatkar has substantially missed the point of his poetry; for, as Arvind Krishna Mehrotra writes, "The presiding deity of Jejuri is not Khandoba, but the human eye." Whether in Jejuri, Kala Ghoda Poems or Sarpa Satra, Mr. Kolatkar's poetry orchestrates a play of scales: the epic alternates with the intimate, the Self weaves through the Other. In Sarpa Satra, he assumed the alternately elegiac and excoriating voice of a private self beset by public terrors, tempted into cynicism but mandated to bear witness to history. Through the narrative of Janamejaya's snake sacrifice, held by the ruler to avenge his father's killing by a snake-king, Mr. Kolatkar addressed mythic themes that still resonate in India's public life — ecological devastation, the military occupation of farflung provinces, and the staging of pogroms. As a bilingual writer operating from a postmodern position, Mr. Kolatkar eluded the vigilance squads of linguistic absolutism. Working between and across both his languages, he was pointedly demotic rather than classical in his emphasis; so that, while his English is often the American of the cowboy Western or the film noir, his Marathi is invariably veined with the `Bambaiyya Hindi' patois. Mr. Kolatkar treated literature, not as a language art, but as a plastic art; he sculpted poetry out of language with the chisels of surprise and epiphany. From aesthete at mail.jnu.ac.in Thu Sep 30 14:03:04 2004 From: aesthete at mail.jnu.ac.in (Dean School of Arts and Aesthetics) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 14:03:04 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] chandralekha Message-ID: <1096533184.99215880aesthete@mail.jnu.ac.in> An evening with Chandralekha… The legendary Dancer/Choreographer Date:5th October, 2004 Time: 5 pm. Venue: SAA Auditorium Chandralekha has been expressing her aesthetic and political vision through dance-making. At once conscious of the deep history of the traditions she employs—Yoga, Bharata Natyam and Kalaripayattu (an Indian martial art)—and the need to address contemporary issues, Chandralekha establishes a bold new paradigm for the contemporary Indian artist. ============================================== This Mail was Scanned for Virus and found Virus free ============================================== _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements