From hpp at vsnl.com Wed Nov 1 14:02:35 2006 From: hpp at vsnl.com (hpp at vsnl.com) Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 08:32:35 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] The Singur Story Message-ID: Dear friends Attached is a narration and analysis of the Singur farmers' resistance movement against the acquisition of their farmland for setting up the Tata motor-car factory in West Bengal. I would be grateful for your critical comments and suggestions but, more importantly, I seek your support for the farmers struggle for survival. Warm regards Sumit Chowdhury Kolkata Mobile: 98302 49430 .................... ‘We will give blood, not our land’ Sumit Chowdhury Hei samalo, hei samalo Hei samalo dhan ho Kasteta dao shan ho Man kobul ar jan kobul Aar debo na, aar debo na Rokte bona dhan Moder pran ho! Hey watch over, hey watch over Hey watch over the paddy ho Hone your sickle ho Life and honour, we pledge No more we’ll give, no more The paddy sown with our blood Our life ho! Salil Choudhuri’s immortal song on the Tebhaga movement is echoing in the lush paddy fields of Singur. Almost every farmer family in Singur is saying, ‘We’ll give blood but not our land.’ The land that gives them the golden harvest is their mother. And, to take away the honour of their mother comes, riding the juggernaut of ‘industrialisation,’ that same government that has declared ‘agriculture is our foundation.’ But mother’s honour cannot be compromised. ‘No way will we give up our land,’ Singur is saying. The Singur saga began in May, during the elections to the state Assembly. Many of us remember seeing on television, the Chief Minister, having won a whopping majority of seats, addressing the press at the party headquarters. An official hands him a piece of paper, glancing through which the Chief Minister’s eyes brighten up. With a big smile on his face, he says he won’t tell but eventually lets the cat out of the bag – Ratan Tata has expressed through a letter that the Tatas are interested in setting up a factory in West Bengal producing a cheap automobile. The very next day, a representative of the Tata empire comes down to hold an extended meeting at the Writers’ Buildings. A few days later, the emperor himself turns up. A deal is struck – no one knows what transpired – and as their factory site, the Tatas opt for a tract of land in Hooghly district, alongside the spanking new Durgapur Expressway and near Kolkata. This site is Singur. The Tatas asked for 1000 acres. Desperate to bring in investments in West Bengal, the state government accepted their demand without blinking or taking a good look at the proposal. Subsequently, the government, not even bothering to consult the local bodies, became hyperactive in acquiring the land. Apprehensive of losing their sole safeguard to life, the farmers spontaneously got together to launch a resistance movement under the banner of ‘Krishijami Raksha Samiti’ (Association for the Protection of Agricultural Land). >From the very beginning, the farmers’ wives and daughters have been in the forefront of the movement. With ‘Life and honour pledged,’ they began to ‘Hone the sickle.’ The state government, hardly bothered about the plight of the farmers, remained stubborn, repeatedly reiterating that the Tata factory would come up on that piece of land. Thus, began the conflict between the farmers and the government. Singur became the name of a new peasant struggle, a name that has created ripples in the stagnant political waters of West Bengal. A catastrophe for farmers The five villages on whose farmland the Tata factory will be built are Gopalnagar, Beraberi, Bajemelia, Khaser Bheri and Singher Bheri. These are typical Bengal villages, tranquil, charming and green. The residents are mostly farmers, yet a touch of the urban breeze is palpable. Most of the houses, lining the winding, unpaved village road, are pucca, every home has electricity and television, quite a few of the village youth ride motorbikes, the children go to school and some have achieved higher education. Singur’s cultivated plots are small and fragmented. Only a handful has land above one or two bighas. Those owning bigger plots are mostly absentee, living in Kolkata, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Those who stay in the villages cultivate their own land, producing bumper crops. In general, those with less than five bighas are considered poor, subsistence farmers but Singur’s farmers, despite having tiny plots, are not too badly off. The major reason for this is that Singur’s land, coated with silt from the Hooghly and Damodar rivers and their tributaries, is extremely fertile. To say that it is single-crop is to blatantly distort the truth. What doesn’t grow here – paddy, jute, potato, cauliflower, pumpkin, brinjal, cucumber, so many types of greens and vegetables! About six to 12 crops grow on Singur’s highly productive fields. Paddy and potatoes grown here are the finest. There are five cold storages, five deep and 27 mini tubewells in the locality, a clear indication that the land is well irrigated. No wonder, the areas of darkness, like Amlasole and Belpahari, where starvation deaths are common, have been far from casting their long shadows over the villagers of Singur. It is around land that Singur’s economy revolves. Not only the landowners, a sizeable population of bargadars, wage-labourers and sharecroppers – mostly belonging to the lower castes or the adivasi community – depend on the land for their livelihood. Besides, there is the migrant agricultural work force coming from Burdwan and other parts of Hooghly districts during the peak harvest period. There are also land-related occupations that help feed several families. For instance, the cycle-cart (called ‘van’) driver who carries the land’s produce to the cold storage or the wholesaler, the vendor who sells rice or vegetables in the market, the supplier dealing with seeds and fertilisers, the carpenter and the blacksmith who make or repair farming tools, so on. On any given day, about a thousand people detrain at Kamarkundu junction to work in Singur on jobs directly or indirectly related to farming. The markets at Beraberi and Bajemelia thrive almost entirely on Singur’s farming community. Land is so vital for Singur’s residents that if it goes their survival will be at stake. So, when the government is taking over their land, they are putting up a stiff resistance. They will give their lives but will not give up land. No matter what the government claims and the media propagates, records show that less than 27 percent of the 11,000-odd landowners have till date voluntarily given up their land. Those who have acquiesced are either absentees or have done so out of fear or coercion. Meanwhile, the Land and Land Revenue Department, invoking the colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894 (suitably amended in 1984), have taken over 997 acres required for the Tata factory. This land has been declared as khas (vested) and is being sold to the West Bengal Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation for handing over to the newly-formed company, Tata Motors. Under pressure, because of a massive public outcry, the government agreed to raise the compensation amount to 52 percent of the market price of land and, to persuade landowners to sell their land, announced special incentives to those who would do so on their own. Yet, the government continued, and is still continuing, to extend the deadline for voluntary handing over and receiving the compensation cheques, the latest being October 31. Clearly, not too many landowners are buying the government’s extravagant assurances that selling off the land will benefit the farmers. The new God will deliver Why have the Tatas plumbed for this 4-12-crop land in Singur is not difficult to guess. Being near Kolkata and adjacent to the brand-new expressway can be alluring in terms of connectivity and communicability. Uncultivable or low-lying marshlands – such as the one available in Singur itself, on the other side of the highway – are not liked by one of India’s largest capitalist enterprises because filling up such land will incur a huge expense. Having a sharp business sense, the industrial house is not willing to spend even a single paisa on developing land for industrial use. They are happy as long as mountains of profit accrue. If it means disaster for the farming community, so be it. Whatever the trade-off between the Tatas and the Left Front government in West Bengal, it is shrouded in secrecy, in spite of the RTI. Apparently, the smaller Front partners and even some of the cabinet ministers have been kept in the dark. A local television channel has revealed that a considerable Rs 140 crores will go out of the state exchequer to buy the land and pay compensations while the Tatas will be gifted that land in lieu of a cheque for Rs 20 crores, that too five years later. The industry house will be spared the ignominy of purchasing the stamp duty; and when the factory is under construction or in operation, it will be provided water free from the burden of taxation even as the power rates will be slashed to what the domestic consumer pays with great difficulty. Needless to add, like many other big real estate and industrial projects coming up in the state, no EIA has been carried out. The government did not deny the surprise revelations on television. Instead, the minister of industries promptly told the press that the deal referred to was for an earlier proposal and no firm pact had yet been made with the Tatas. The Chief Minister, however, contradicted him soon after, informing that a package deal had been struck. The question is, if there is no agreement as yet, where was the need to acquire land at such breakneck speed? What if the Tatas back out now for some reason? Later, the minister of industries declared that the arrangement with the Tatas could not be made public as it was a ‘trade secret.’ The Chief Minister also made it clear that he would reveal only what he felt could be revealed. So much for the right to information and transparency in governance! The government and the party running the government for 30 years are promising the heaven in defence of the Tatas. They are comforting their vote-bank, and their doubting cadres, saying that the ‘automobile hub’ growing around the Tata factory will work as a miracle to turn-around the decadent state of the state’s economy. History, of course, tells a different story. The Tatas are coming here to do business, not for the well being of the people of West Bengal. Orissa and Jharkhand, where the Tatas have invested in steel plants, mines, aquaculture and an assortment of projects in the past seven decades, are the poorest states in the country. Industrial and other ventures by the Tatas have not changed the lives of the ordinary folk in these places. On the contrary, a terrible curse had befallen on the forest-dwelling and pastoral communities wherever the Tatas went. It may be recalled that the Kalingnagar incident earlier this year, in which 12 adivasi men, women and children lost their lives in police firing, took place when the farmers displaced by the Tata steel-plant project were agitating against the non-payment of compensation. The argument put forward by the minister of industries that the Tata motorcar factory will create vast employment opportunities is unadulterated nonsense. The market targeted for the small car to be produced here is the two-wheeler owners who dream of a car and, to make it easy on their pocket, the car’s market price has been fixed at Rs one lakh. To produce a car at such a discounted price, and keep a good enough margin for the company, a large workforce cannot be employed. In keeping with the globalising times, the technology, too, will be state-of-the-art, surely not labour-intensive. At most, a few hundred jobs will result and those recruited will be from the hallowed precincts of the IITs and the IIMs. The honourable minister has argued that even if there is no direct employment in Tata Motors, the ancillaries will open up the floodgates. He, of course, is not suggesting how many such ancillaries will come up and how much employment generated by these. It is only a speculative presumption not based on any rigorous calculation. Whether the hundreds of small, supporting units will also be technology-dependent and how much agricultural land these occupy is yet a guessing game. If at all an industrial paradise does descend on Singur will the farmers have the requisite skill to work in a sophisticated factory? Facing such tricky question, the government announced the launching of two industrial training centres to train the local youth. It could not, however, give any assurance that those receiving training at these centres will get jobs either with Tata Motors or the ancillaries. In fact, the Tatas were categorical that no such jobs can be guaranteed. The Tatas’ demand for 1000 acres for their car factory puts a question mark on their intentions. To set the doubts at rest, the minister of industries recently cited the example of the Honda automobile production unit in Gurgaon. He told the press that the Gurgaon plant has come up on 1250 acres of land and produces three-lakh cars per year. A visit to the Honda website discloses another set of facts – the unit has come up on 250 acres and produces six-lakh cars annually. Yes, the Minister is an honourable man! The legal provision being used by the government for acquiring the 1000 acres states clearly that land can be acquired with due compensations for ‘public purpose.’ So, when, in this case, land is being acquired for a corporate establishment for purely commercial purpose, will it be wrong to assume that the government is acting illegally? But then legality and ethics are not exactly the government’s forte when it comes to appeasing the industrialists. The manner in which the decision to acquire the land was taken bears out an authoritarian, top-down streak in the government’s functioning. None of the democratically elected local bodies – the zilla parishad, the panchayat, the gram sabha – were consulted or taken into confidence. The party, too, sent out orders from its central office and the issue was not discussed with the grassroots workers. Clearly, ‘decentralisation,’ ‘participatory democracy’ or ’democratic centralism’ are mere catchwords. In the wake of rising public opinion against the displacement of farmers from their land, both Tata Motors and the government, backed by party luminaries, went into a public relations exercise. Both, citing the examples of its Pune automobile hub and the Jamshedpur steel town, harked back to the Tatas’ noble tradition of ‘social welfare and community development.’ Reality check, however, may not corroborate. Any sensitive soul visiting Tatanagar may well perceive that the beneficiaries of ‘social welfare and community development’ have been the Tata managerial class living in luxuriant style whereas the original inhabitants have not even received the crumbs but pushed to the margins. Well, the Tatas deservedly have the right to blow their own trumpet because it is their business to blow their own trumpet but how could a Left government and the Left leaders go into raptures over the big, bad capitalist who till the other day was their sworn enemy? Expediency does make strange bedfellows. Since announcing its New Industrial Policy in 1994, the Sangramer Hatiyar (Weapon of struggle) government in West Bengal, backed by the party in power, has been treading the neo-liberal path with great gusto. As the Left leaders elsewhere in the country were fuming against the globalising policies of successive central governments, their counterparts in the state, with full blessings of these same central leaders, were increasingly taking a pro-globalisation, pro-capitalist stance, albeit in a guarded manner. With the installation of the incumbent Chief Minister on the throne, fawning on the capitalists has become rather a habit. The leaders of the main Left party now daily rub shoulders with the captains of the corporate world, ideals and ideology, even the Left rhetoric, having been given the complete go by. That these leaders are willing to go to any length to please the industrial tycoons becomes evident in the Singur issue. They are putting forward weird arguments, telling out-an’-out lies, issuing contradictory statements, being suspiciously secretive, carrying out a disinformation campaign and spreading canard, even using abusive language, about the resisting farmers. Tata is now their new God whose ‘responsible business house’ and ‘social service’ legacy the leaders of the main Left party cannot but get gaga over. Going by their recent statements, one may wonder if the Tatas’ advertising agency’s newest address is 33 Alimuddin Street. The editorial published in Ganashakti about the Tatas’ acquisition of the multinational steel giant, Corus, reads more like a Tata publicity brochure. And this when their party in Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and other states have vowed not to give an inch of farmland to the Tatas or any other industrial marauder. Having long abandoned even the rudimentary land reform that has been keeping them in power for so long, the leaders of the main Left party in the state have nothing more to offer to the people of West Bengal. And they are pinning all their hopes on the Tatas to deliver. The night of the long sticks The Singur farmers’ stiff opposition to the Tata project has struck alarm bells. The government’s nervousness, its discomfort with the rising popular support for the movement is becoming more and more conspicuous. In the dead of night on 25-26 September, in a pre-planned move, it let loose a reign of terror on thousands of unarmed demonstrators at the BDO office in Singur town. It was the first day cheques were being handed over to those who had agreed to part with their lands and the demonstration against this had begun in the morning. By the afternoon, several cases were detected in which those who had already sold off their land to others, but the mutation process was not complete, were being given cheques, denying the present legal owner. Protesting such illegal deeds by government officials, the demonstrators sat on a dharna at the BDO office, even gheraoing the District Magistrate for a brief period. The firebrand leader of the only opposition party in the state arrive d with her troupe and she, too, joined the dharna. Soon after midnight, power was cut off and a huge police force, reportedly under the influence of alcohol, mercilessly thrashed men, women and children with lathis. The leader of the opposition party, also a Member of Parliament, was manhandled and, with her sari torn to shreds, packed off in a police car to Kolkata. She had to be admitted to a nursing home a couple of days later for severe pain in her chest caused by a ‘blunt trauma’ in the lungs. Hundreds were severely injured in the police assault and 72 put behind bars. Women with children in their arms were arrested under the Arms Act and/or charged with murder. Payel Bag, a two-and-a-half-year-old, spent four days in prison, along with two other boys who are yet to reach their teens. 26-year-old Rajkumar Bhul became the first martyr of the Singur struggle after he collapsed with severe internal haemorrhage from police beating. Bhul’s mother, in an open letter to the Chief Minister, has squarely blamed him for her son’s death. Two other persons are said to be still on the missing list. On the first visit to Singur by this writer as part of a fact-finding team two days after the police action, and during subsequent trips, the hapless and angry women in the villages – some with broken arms, bandaged eyes and scars here and there – said that the policemen were drunk, cursed in the filthiest language, kicked and molested them. The national General Secretary of the main Left party, who has never been to Singur, announced from the BTR Bhawan in New Delhi soon after the lathi-charge that Singur’s land is one-crop, that the farmers there are queuing up to hand over land, that the demonstrators were anti-‘development’ hoodlums. The same comrade General Secretary has written the introduction to a recent publication titled The Left and Environmentalism! The best actor award, however, goes to the Left Front Chairman. The language used by the once-upon-a-time student leader, now a member of the politburo, to insult and humiliate the land-losing farmers of Singur will make any civilised person hang his head in shame. In defending an indefensible act, the leaders of the ‘party of the proletariat’ have lost all sense of proportion and self-respect. The Chief Minister and the other stalwarts of his party were in the country’s capital on the night of the carnage, apparently to attend a high-profile party meeting. Sceptics, however, see it as an attempt to establish an alibi. On earlier occasions, whenever there has been brutal police action on democratic movements, as in 1994 on the struggling workers of Kanoria Jute Mill, ministers and party leaders were en masse some place else. In any case, apart from the party get-together, the Chief Minister and his colleagues had a long session with the Tata top brass. At the end of the closed-door meeting, the Tatas announced a ‘community development’ package for the Singur farmers that contained a lot of promises and platitudes but not much substance. Sticks were delivered at Singur and carrots dangled from New Delhi – a brilliant strategy indeed! Returning to Kolkata, the merciful Chief Minister acted Jesus Christ – ‘Forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.’ Two days later, bowing to the pressures of public opinion, he admitted that sending the police there was ‘unwarranted,’ as if he didn’t know. Then, after all the acts of the play have been played out, he summoned an all-party meeting – what was he doing all these days, partying with the industrialists? For nearly five months, the farmers in Singur, who would lose their land, have been agitating but the government never thought it appropriate to hold talks with them. Sitting on brute majority, it was trying to find a way out through political jugglery. The opposition party didn’t come to the all-party jamboree, the other parties did. These and all other Left Front partners lodged their strong protest against the police action and the handing over of farmland to industries. Yet, at the end of the meeting, the government announced that the Tata Motors factory would come up on Singur at any cost. The opposition parties and the Naxalite groups called for a 12-hour statewide bandh on October 9 to protest the police atrocities. As it usually happens with bandhs, it was more or less total and passed off peacefully except for stray incidents. But this bandh, it had appeared to this writer from conversations with ordinary people, was spontaneous. The party in government, rather stupidly, threatened to unleash its cadres on the streets to foil the strike, making people even more stay indoors, fearing violence. The fact that there were hardly any skirmishes between pro-bandh and anti-bandh supporters meant that cadres also took it as a paid holiday. Evidently, they could not be motivated. The bandh, nevertheless, failed to rid the government of its obduracy. It has now taken the ‘terror’ path to intimidate the protesting farmers. Contingents of rifle-carrying policemen have been posted in every nook and corner of the otherwise quiet and peaceful villages. During this writer’s interactions with the Singur villagers, a number of women complained about how the police were daily harassing them and how their movements out of their homes are being restricted after sundown. Any outsider dropping in are ‘suspected of being Maoists’ and are interrogated – the fact-finding team, of which this writer was part of, was intercepted and questioned by the OC, Singur thana, himself. The police are occupying the tea-stalls in the markets where now no one dares to visit, resulting in loss of business for the poor tea-stall owners. They are also camping in the school building which they have turned into a drinking den. The government, surely, is ushering in ‘development’ with an iron hand. Threats are being issued from the corridors of authority as well. When the police action failed to dampen the fighting spirit of the farmers, the honourable minister of industries warned that he would suspend all developmental work in Singur if the Tata factory was not allowed to be set up there. The message is unmistakable: Give up your land, or else you will not be treated as citizens of West Bengal. The minister’s words have been taken literally by some unidentified miscreants. In the last couple of weeks, two of the five deep tubewells, providing irrigation water to the controversial land, were vandalised one after the other in the dark of the night. The pumps had been there since before the Left Front came into power and the villages are usually free from theft or robbery. Also, mind you, a strong police force was patrolling the villages. The villagers, angry as hell, cannot be faulted if they believe that the wreckage was the handiwork of goons hired by the party in power and the intention was to deny water to the ripening crops in the field. The panchayat pradhan, a big landowner and an influential party leader of the area, passed the incidents off as the work of those opposing the land acquisition in an effort to blemish his party. He, of course, did not explain how the farmers could do something that would destroy their own crop. Sanity in the line of reasoning se ems to have melted into thin air in a resurgent West Bengal. The struggle continues The Singur struggle is a do-or-die resistance movement by the farmers against attempts by monopoly industrial capitalism to establish its hegemony. Everyone in the villages have come together to fight the looming threat to their lives and livelihoods. Women and the youth are the life force of the movement – mahila samitis and youth committees were formed in the very first days. The men, even though they have grown up in the patriarchal rural world, have wisely left the front lines to the womenfolk. The entire family is participant in the struggle, including the elderly and the children. For, it’s a struggle for survival. The landless bargadars, registered or not, and the poor, marginalised farmers with negligible land are playing the lead role in the Singur resistance. It was this section that took the initiative in forming the ‘Krishijami Raksha Samiti’ and has been the vanguard of almost all the protest actions. Now, they have been joined by the seasonal, migrant labourers. After all, a struggle for survival is a struggle of the poorest. The resistance movement has been completely peaceful till now. Meetings, michhil (rally), bikhkhobh (demonstration), Arandhan (no cooking), Nishpradip (no lights), rasta abarodh (road blockade), bandh (strike), so on have taken place without a whiff of violence. Yet, the movement is not passive or listless; there have been enough pointers that it has vigour, vitality and determination. The way the farmers chased away the Tata officials, the women with brooms in hands blocked the government officials’ entry into the villages and the villagers, overlooking the watchful eyes of party-cracy, showed black flags to the Land and Land Revenue Minister holds out the promise that the movement can rise above the habitual and, if need be, turn more militant. Singur, it may be recalled, was a major arena of the Tebhaga movement. The British masters and their government of the zamindars unleashed the police and the army on the peasantry to suppress their struggle but the peasants of Singur did not yield and refused to part with their share of the harvest. There is a tiny hamlet in the vicinity called Chhoto Kamlapur where the movement had a strong base. Chhoto Bakulpurer Jatri, Manik Bandyopadhyay’s short fiction set against the backdrop of Tebhaga, was inspired by the spirited struggle of the peasants of this village. After six decades, the same spirit appears to have been revived in Singur. It is amazing how a battle for survival opens up the creative energies of ordinary people whose abundant talents could not have otherwise seen the light of day. This writer was particularly impressed by the powerful poetry that has been penned by an elderly peasant woman regarding the movement. Songs parodying popular Hindi and Bengali tunes by another elderly housewife – the Chief Minister, the government and the Tatas were the butt of the jokes – were remarkable for their sense of satire. A people’s movement is not only about protest actions, it is also an expression of people’s dreams and imaginations. Only a cynic will have misgivings that the Singur movement is a genuine people’s movement. Nothing like this has been seen in West Bengal since the much-celebrated workers’ movement at Kanoria Jute Mill in the mid 90s. In the case of Kanoria, the battle lines were drawn between the mill-owner and the workers, with the government tacitly supporting the former. In Singur’s case, the farmers are directly confronting the state. Kanoria was a essentially a conflict of class interests that held out a cultural dimension. Singur, on the other hand, is not much of a class struggle but a struggle for survival consequent of government policy. It, therefore, has a greater political content than Kanoria. All the opposition political formations in the state, including the various Naxalite factions, have joined hands to extend their support to the farmers’ struggle. The smaller Left Front partners, too, are not happy with the government’s land-grabbing for industrial houses. Bickering between the big brother and the smaller stakeholders in cabinet and Front meetings have become the norm of the day. For the first time in three decades, the opposition is uniting while cracks are showing in the Left Front. The two main opposition parties, one still aligned with the NDA and the other leading the UPA government at the centre, are in no position to take the Singur movement to its logical end. The coalitions these parties are part of are the very perpetrators of the globalisation onslaught that is at the root of robbing the farmers of their farmlands in the name of ‘development.’ How can these parties be sincere about the farmers’ struggle to save their land? How can they wholeheartedly oppose the policies they themselves are pursuing in the states they are ruling in? It is no surprise, therefore, that these parties are vying with each other to assure the Tatas that they don’t want them out of West Bengal. Some have even gone to the extent of locating the site for the Tata factory in the vast wastelands of Purulia, Bankura and West Medinipur. They are also suggesting that huge tracts of land are locked up in the innumerable closed factories where the motorcar-making plant can be located. Regrettably, quite a few well-meaning groups and individuals supporting the Singur farmers are voicing a similar argument. The questions that these may consider raising instead are why such enormous amount of land lie fallow even after 30 years of Left Front and why so many thousands of factories are closed or closing down. In the case of the former, the land should be made cultivable and distributed among the ever-growing number of landless bargadars; in the case of the latter, the factories should be reopened and all the workers who lost their jobs reinstated and paid their dues. The mainstream opposition parties are trying to make political capital out of Singur. And the media is trying to create an impression that it is just a wrestling match between the party in government and the parties in opposition. Nothing can be further from the truth. The battle of Singur transcends narrow, electoral party politics. When confronted with the question of survival, the farmers couldn’t be bothered about which party is with them and which party against. Herein lies the strength of the Singur movement. Herein also lies the downside of the movement. No movement, however strong its democratic credentials, can endure on sheer spontaneity. To be meaningful, to carry it forward, a movement needs be guided by an all-embracing ideological vision which, in the case of Singur, the rag-tag opposition parties are unable to provide. Besides, when the adversaries are India’s biggest corporate house and a party, which in 30 years of its rule has spread its tentacles in all spheres of life, the fight can be taken on only with a rock-solid organisation. The fact is, none of the backers of the Singur movement have it. Yet, all of West Bengal, particularly the entire farming community, is looking to Singur. In the coming months, nearly 60,000 acres of farmland will be acquired by the state government and handed over to national and multinational capitalist enterprises for setting up SEZs, townships, knowledge cities, health cities, retail outlets, shopping malls, expressways, so on. Approximately, two-thirds of these will go to the Salim group, the notorious Indonesian business house. None of the projects for which land will be taken are productive investments and their employment-generating potential is almost negligible. With loss of land and age-old occupation, thousands of farmers will be reduced to begging in the streets. If the Singur movement gains steam, the farmers elsewhere will be stirred into resisting the neo-liberal aggression. If Singur fizzles out, West Bengal’s agriculture and the farming community will head for oblivion. In this sense, the Singur struggle is also crucial for the farmers’ fury raging across the country. The state government has announced that land will be handed over to Tata Motors at the soonest, if possible by October 31. But the farmers are not going to give in. The police assault on September 25-26 has only steeled their resolve to resist. They are now getting ready for the final battle to take on the might of the state. Whatever the outcome, Singur has already put its stamp on the history of people’s resistance to neoliberal globalisation. And the history of peasant revolt in Bengal. 30 October, 2006 Sumit Chowdhury is a documentary filmmaker and social activist. He is the editor of the paper Ekhon Sanhati. From budhaditya_chattopadhyay at rediffmail.com Wed Nov 1 08:26:17 2006 From: budhaditya_chattopadhyay at rediffmail.com (budhaditya chattopadhyay) Date: 1 Nov 2006 02:56:17 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] announcements: seminar on sound culture Message-ID: <20061101025617.1586.qmail@webmail30.rediffmail.com> Department of Film Studies Jadavpur University   Presents National Seminar on   Sound Cultures and Indian Cinema   Anita Banerjee Memorial Hall UG Arts Building, Ground Floor   November 7, 8, 2006   Programme   Nov 7, 2006   Inauguration                                                                              10-30 am   Chair: Prof. Biswajit Chatterjee, Dean, Faculty of Arts   Inaugural Address by Prof. Shyamal Kanti Sanyal, Vice-Chancellor   Welcome Address by Chief Guest, Sri Kumar Shahani, filmmaker and author   Tea Break                                                                                10 -50 am   Session 2 Chair:  Sanjoy Mukhopdhyay    M. Madhava Prasad                                                               11-00 am ?The Slow Birth of the Listening Spectator?   Moinak Biswas                                                             12-00 am                                            ?Speaking through Troubles Times?                                     Lunch Break                                                                               1-00 ? 1-45 pm   Session 3 Chair: Ashish Rajadhyaksha   Budhaditya Chattopadhyay                                                 1-45 pm ?Sound Memories: In search of Lost Sounds in Indian Cinema?   Tea Break                                                                                3-00 - 3-15 pm     Session 4 Chair: Anjum Katyal   Amlan Dasgupta                                                                      3-15 pm ?Music Contests: Reflections on Musical Values in Popular Cinema?   November 8, 2006   Session 1 Chair: Rangan Chakravarty   Ashish Rajadhyaksha                                                               10-30 am ?Why Were All Indian Films Post-Dubbed until Very Recently? Or, An Indian Aesthetic Theory for Sound Mixing?? Ranjani Mazumdar                                                                    11-30 am ?The Urban Soundscape of Bombay Cinema?   Lunch Break                                                                            12-30 pm- 1-15 pm   Session 2 Chair: Shyamal Sengupta   Anindya Sengupta                                                                      1-15 pm ?Seeing through Sound: Certain Tendencies in the Soundtrack of Ray\'s Films of the 1970s?   Shubham Roy Choudhury                                                       2-15 pm ?Sound of Fear?   Tea Break                                                                                3-15 pm ? 3-30 pm   Session 3 Chair: Ranjani Mazumdar   Madhuja Mukherjee                                                                    3-30 pm ?Sound in Early Bengali Films: The Case of New Theatres?   Session 4                                                                                 ?4-30 pm   Valedictory Address       -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061101/02429852/attachment.html From shai at filterindia.com Wed Nov 1 17:44:50 2006 From: shai at filterindia.com (shai at filterindia.com) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 17:44:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Experimenta 2007 Call for Entries Message-ID: <7F1233E8BF6B43B28D93CEE4DA63CD55.MAI@Weird.cx> EXPERIMENTA is an international film and video festival held in Bombay, India for the past 4 years; now in its 5th year, EXPERIMENTA 2007 moves to Bangalore. EXPERIMENTA seeks films from any country that challenge popular and conventional modes of cinema. Abstract to obscure compositions from any genre produced on the margins of contemporary screen-culture are welcome. Innovative, cutting edge and non-traditional work that attempts to aesthetically extend the parameters of the mediums of film and video is encouraged. Preview copies must be submitted for selection purposes. All lengths of film are considered. Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis until the final selection is complete. Filmmakers are encouraged to submit their entries as soon as possible. EXPERIMENTA is a curated film festival and is a Filter India project. To type in and print out a submission form, visit: http://www.filterindia.com/callexp07.htm For information on Filter India, visit: http://www.filterindia.com PLEASE CIRCULATE THIS EMAIL From sunil at mahiti.org Thu Nov 2 01:51:49 2006 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2006 01:51:49 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Asia Source II: Call for Applications Message-ID: <1162412510.10366.70.camel@localhost.localdomain> Dear Friends, This is a call for applications for Asia Source II: Free and Open Source Technologies for NGOs [Non Government Organisations] and SMEs [Small and Medium Enterprises] from 22nd to 30th of January 2007 in Indonesia. The organisers are International Open Source Network, Tactical Technology Collective, InWEnt, ICT Watch and Aspiration Tech. Supporters include Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany, Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries, Asia Pacific Development Information Network - United Nations Development Network and International Development Research Centre, Canada Please see: http://www.iosn.net/regional/asiasource-2007 for more details. DATES Asia Source II is an 8 day long event from 22nd to 30th of January 2007, to be held in Sukabumi about 3 hours drive from Jakarta in Indonesia. If you would like to participate, you will need to attend the entire event, which means arriving in Jakarta on or before 21st of January and leaving on or after 31 January 2007. WHO SHOULD ATTEND This is an event for experienced professionals actively working with the NGO or SME sector in South Asia and South East Asia, with a history of working with service and advocacy NGOs, educational organisations, NGO resource centres, community centres, health information organisations, SMEs and SME support agencies in South Asia and South East Asia. Like previous source camps, there will be an equal proportion of technical and non-technical people at the event as we are hope to introduce “those who know technology” to “those who need technology”. Towards this end, sessions will vary from the highly technical to completely non-technical. To be eligible to attend, you will need to answer the questions below, providing detailed information about projects you have worked on. The application deadline is 30th of November. We are interested in all kinds of NGO and SME technical experience, but areas of particular focus will include the following: * TRACK ONE: Open Publishing and Broadcasting: Communication Strategies and Writing Effectively. Graphic Design, Web Tools [Content Management Systems, Blogs, Wikis] and Audio/Video Production and Streaming. Script Writing and Story Boarding. File Formats and Conversion Utilities. Shooting and Editing Methodologies. Who should attend: Campaigners, Content Developers, Web Masters, Activists, Fundraisers, Graphic Designers, Film Makers, Radio Professionals, New Media Practitioners and Archivists. * TRACK TWO: Alternative Hardware and Access: Refurbished Hardware, Thin Clients, Hardware Hacking, Wireless Solutions and Community Radio. Who should attend: Server Administrators, Network Administrators, Trainers, E-Riders, Rural Community Organisers, Relief Workers, Privacy Activists and ICT4D Professionals. * TRACK THREE: FOSS Implementation and Migration: Moving an NGO or SME from proprietary software to FOSS. Participatory Design and Planning, Evaluating FOSS, End-User Training and Support Techniques, Dealing with Desktops, Proxy Server, Firewall, Mail Server and Groupware. Change management and migration strategies. Who should attend: Server Administrators, Network Administrators, Trainers, E-Riders, ICT4D Professionals and Software Developers * TRACK FOUR: Information Management: Mapping Information Sources and Requirements. Best practices for Creating Specifications, Information Architecture and User Interface Design. Web-based Databases, Geographical Information Systems, Customer Relationship Management, Application/Communication Security and Disaster Management Systems. Who should attend: Heads of Organisations, Senior Management, Campaigners, Activists, Fundraisers, Archivists, Community Organisers, Environmentalists, Relief Workers and Health Workers. Demonstrating that you have worked on projects in one or more of the above areas will make your application stronger. Proven training experience and an outline of how you will share the acquired skills after "Asia Source II" will also be an asset. All participants at Asia Source II are required to be proficient desktop users of computers, have been involved in at least one NGO or SME project before and to have an existing awareness of the concept of Free and Open Source Software. Applications from women are highly encouraged by the event organisers. FEES AND SUBSIDIES Participants will arrange for their own travel to Jakarta. Once there, transport to the venue from the airport in Jakarta will be provided. All meals and accommodation during the meeting will be provided, for the modest participation fee of 75 USD. There are a limited number of participation fee subsidies available to cover this 75 USD for those who are not able to raise the funds. International travel subsidies are also available for participants who would not otherwise be able to attend the meeting. Please apply as soon as possible for subsidies as there availability is limited. As we have limited space and funds, we cannot accept all participant applications and cannot reimburse the expenses for all of them. Between the 5th and 20th of December we will personally inform each applicant by email if we are able to invite him/her and in some cases reimburse expenses. Please send the completed application form in plain text format to asiasource2 at apdip.net The deadline for sending your completed application form is 30 November. Please refer below for the format of the application form. We will confirm receipt of the application immediately and will ask you to check and reserve (if you do not have to make any advance payment) your flight to Jakarta. BACKGROUND In January 2005, we organised a Source event - an eight day technology camp - called "Asia Source" for 60 participants from the voluntary sector and 60 information technologists from 20 countries from South Asia and South East Asia in partnership with Tactical Technology Collective[TTC] and Mahiti, supported by Hivos, Open Society Institute. This camp was one in a series of international camps on the use of free and open source software being organised by TTC across the developing world. See: http://www.tacticaltech.org/asiasource and http://replication.tacticaltech.org ORGANISERS * International Open Source Network, www.iosn.net, Thailand * Tactical Technology Collective, tacticaltech.org, Netherlands * InWEnt - Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung gGmbH (Capacity Building International), www.inwent.org, Germany * ICT Watch, www.ictwatch.com, Indonesia * Aspiration Tech, www.aspirationtech.org USA SUPPORTERS * Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany (BMZ), www.bmz.de/en/ through InWEnt * Hivos - Humanistisch Instituut voor Ontwikkelingssamenwerking (Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries), www.hivos.nl, Indonesia * Asia Pacific Development Information Network - United Nations Development Network, www.apdip.net Thailand * IDRC – International Development Research Centre, www.idrc.ca Canada APPLICATION FORM Please answer the following questions. You do not need to write long responses, but please provide us with enough information to understand your skills and interests, and to have a sense of why you want to attend Asia Source II and how you can contribute to the event. Please provide answers to all the following questions. 1) Basic personal information: a. Name: b. Gender: c. Date of Birth: d. Nationality: e. Country where you live and work now: f. Affiliation/organisation: g. E-mail address: h. Telephone and emergency contact number(s): i. Anything else we should know about you (allergies, diet, medical condition, special needs): 2) What is your experience of working with NGOs and SMEs. What kinds of projects and initiatives have you worked on? 3) Have you been involved with any technology projects for NGOs or SMEs? If so please briefly explain them. 4) Where are you from, where do you live now, and what is your current professional affiliation (organisation you work for, mission of the organisation, position you have in the organisation, is your organisation an SME or a NGO, etc.)? 5) Which track would you choose to be part of? Please select: TRACK ONE: Open Publishing and Broadcasting TRACK TWO: Alternative Hardware and Access TRACK THREE: FOSS Implementation and Migration TRACK FOUR: Information Management 6) How would you classify yourself, i.e. NGO, SME, women’s rights, localisation, technical, software developer, hardware developer etc.? 7) Please describe your current technical expertise and ability. 8) Why are you interested in attending Asia Source II; what do you hope to learn? 9) Asia Source II participants are encouraged to teach as well as to learn. What tutorials, development sessions or discussions would you like to lead (or help lead)? 10) Are you able/willing to share the acquired skills in your work environment after "Asia Source II"? If yes, how and how many people do you plan to reach? 11) Will you need to receive a participation fee subsidy in order to attend Asia Source II? If so, please explain why. 12) Will you need to receive a travel subsidy in order to attend Asia Source II? If so, please explain why and estimate how much (in US$) your round-trip travel to Jakarta will cost. Applications that will omit any of the questions will not be reviewed. Last Day for Applications 25 November 2006 -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org "Vijay Kiran" IInd Floor, 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mob: (91) 9342201521 UK: (44) 02000000259 From sadan at sarai.net Thu Nov 2 15:52:21 2006 From: sadan at sarai.net (Sadan) Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2006 15:52:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] call for proposals: Sarai, CSDS Student Stipendship 2007 Message-ID: <4549C6DD.5010104@sarai.net> Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi Student Stipends For Research on The City 2007. Sarai, an interdisciplinary research and practice programme on the city and media, at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, invites applications for short term studentships to conduct research on Urban Life in South Asia. The Studentship will provide candidates with Rs.20,000 for the preparation of a research paper to be presented at a workshop in November 2007. Selected scholars will also get an opportunity to participate in and discuss their ongoing research at two initial workshops to be held in March 2007 and August 2007. Sarai will take care of travel, boarding and lodging for attending the workshops. The Candidates may be from any discipline and should be enrolled in Master, M.Phil or Ph.D programme in India. List of suggested 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. Send your application along with one page abstract indicating scope, nature and approach of proposed research, one writing sample ( published or unpublished) and C.V. to: Sadan Jha Sarai, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29,Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054. ph: 23830065, 23983352 and 23928391. For more visit: http://www.sarai.net/community/student_stipend.htm Inquiries: sadan at sarai.net Deadline for Applications: 15th January 2007. _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From mohaiemen at yahoo.com Fri Nov 3 21:17:09 2006 From: mohaiemen at yahoo.com (NAEEM MOHAIEMEN) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 07:47:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] To The Polls, Unless Your Name Be Das, Tripura, or Roy Message-ID: <20061103154709.13704.qmail@web50302.mail.yahoo.com> I hate the word "minority", so incomplete and somehow always patronizing. But for lack of alternative, have used it in activist projects related to Bangladesh. Growing up, the "Hindu question" angered and saddened me -- to watch my classmates, friends and colleagues become dissected into haves/have nothings based on religion and class (and a deadly co-joining). I wrote about it for a long time, and then gradually became exhausted. Even worse, I became what Bangalis call "used to." We all became "used to." This is the way things are. I was stirred from slumber by an e-mail I got from Dhaka last week. With the most volatile elections of Bangladesh history approaching in two months, the minority vote (Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Paharis, Adivasis) is a target as they are expected to vote for the left-of center AL (Awami League) en masse, vs. the rightist-islamist ruling coalition of BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party). In the e-mail, my friend wrote: "I have already received 3 independent e-mails from contacts in Bangladesh (2 Hindu, 1 Christian) who are terrified after threats their families have received in the last few days ("don't vote, or we'll kill you", basically). As the rumor-mongering kicks in and accusations are traded, the minorities will again become a pawn between the two main factions." I wrote the text below in response. An abbreviated version of this was published in the main Dhaka newspaper yesterday. You can also go to the URL to read it. ############################ http://shobakorg.blogspot.com/2006/11/das-tripura.html To The Polls, Unless Your Name Be Das, Tripura, or Roy by Naeem Mohaiemen DAILY STAR (Bangladesh), November 3, 2006 "Why can small numbers excite rage? They represent a tiny obstacle between majority and totality or total purity. The smaller the number and the weaker the minority, the deeper the rage about its capacity to make a majority feel like a mere majority." [Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers] "Hey Ghosh, don't do so much Ghosh-Ghoshani!" Another day in school, another round of mutual teasing. Young boys specialize in quiet brutality. Schoolyard taunts can be cruel, but nicknames are nothing to be upset about. Everyone at St. Joseph had one. Even the son of the Police IG had been renamed "fangface" (from the cartoon) and "kaula" (lovely reference to his hue). In that context, teasing Ranjan Ghosh by his last name seemed very mild. Who cares, right? Just another tiffin break. Everyone run to Peter's canteen to ask for an oily burger. But something about this particular dig stuck, even though my class 6 brain couldn't navigate the cause of unease. Much later, many years on, I realized that it was the first time I was forced into awareness of a "minority" surname. Ghosh, Das, Sankar, Goldar, Adhikary, Purification, Lal, Trivedi, Larma, Gomes, Bhattacharjee[i]. They were all part of me once, before we started taking on names from elsewhere. Ahmed, Ali, Mahmud, Hossain, Jahangir, Rahman. Our elders started saying, "You see, we came from the mountains or beyond, perhaps Persia." Yes, right. Relative to all things we have seen in this epoch of Bangla life, St Joseph now seems to be(retroactively) a model of communal balance. Propelled by an affirmative action policy in admission, enforced by the Jesuit brothers, almost half the students were Hindu and Christian. Besides the Ghosh incident, life was fairly uneventful. Even my hyper-active brain can't locate other examples of communal tension (but perhaps I'm not looking hard enough). At that age, the only difference we saw was that the Hindu students studied Geeta in a separate room during Islamiat. Who cares, to each his own... The mind soaks up many fragments and saves it for future processing. Even at that age some part of me vaguely registered that the wealthy students all had last names like Rahman, Ahmed and Hossain. One day a teacher asked for a collection of money to help Gomes, poorest student in the class, buy the required Geography Atlas. Scattered chuckles in the room. But perhaps at his plight, not his name. Still, a strange unease, but nothing I could pin down. In 1985, we anxiously crowded around a notice board to find the SSC results. Star Marks, Letters, First Division, Ranking. Magic symbols of future success and prosperity. Two decades on, many in my graduating class (sometimes referred to as Generation 71) have become industrialists, bankers, television directors, ad firm creatives –– executives of every stripe. When I sit with my old Dhaka crew, there's a palpable air of "masters of the universe." But when I take a closer look, not a single non-Muslim among my classmates has made it into this magic circle. 1985 was perhaps the last moment of parity between us. The in-between time has been rough for those who don't fit the national identity project. When I ask my classmates about this, they shrug. Not my problem. One of these bright souls even said to me, during a BUET strike, "Hindu students protesting again! They are always making trouble. lai dithe dithe mathai thule rekhechi." Yes, really, we have spoilt them so! Amena Mohsin talks about the flaws of Bengali nationalism –– a structure that sings of Ek Shagoro Roktho, yet remains blind to the invisible second class of Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Paharis, Adivasis and all other communities that don't fit within a Bengali Muslim ethos. The concept of a singular nation, needing to be produced or naturalized at any cost, is not unique to us. Hannah Arendt argued in 1968 that the idea of a national peoplehood was a fatal flaw in developed societies. Philip Gourevitz, surveying the brutality of Rwanda, observed that "genocide, after all, is an exercise in community-building." But what is remarkable for Bangladesh is a national memory project devoted to the 1971 Pakistan army genocide (against "us") that fails to recognize how we are replaying that scenario on a smaller level against non-Bengali and non-Muslim identities. "Non" is the key modifier, everything is about what you are not. When these small groups assert their presence and refuse to be crushed under a "Bengali Muslim" identity, spectacular and extreme violence is our tool for producing a homogenized national map. The strange, so very strange, thing is that even hyper-minority status in other spaces (North America, Europe, India) have not given the Muslim ummah an extra sensitivity, or sense of responsibility, or even historical prerogative (think of the Caliphate's decent track record vis-a-vis conquered non-converts) on how it treats its own minorities (can someone please come up with a better phrase) with respect and equality. Friends and allies say to me "This is not the time to bring up these issues. Muslims are under attack everywhere, we should talk about ourselves first." I usually respond with an expletive and a pronoun. A gentleman sent me yet another e-mail about "Quran desecration." I wrote back that this was not a priority. Waste of time, I said. Enough already with our offensensitivity. Our hysteria about the slightest offense to the Prophet, the Book, the People. Are we so very weak? A terse reply: "Maybe not a priority to you, but to us it is." Who is the us? People who value a book more than a human life? Gamal al-Banna (who parted ways with his brother Hassan, founder of Muslim Brotherhood) says: "Man is the aim of religion, and religion only a means. What is prevalent today is the opposite." My St. Joseph memory trip came while considering the crucible of the approaching Bangladesh elections. In keeping with the overall pattern of convulsive violence, minority communities are already under threats to stay away from the polls. Unlike 2001, when the orgy of anti-Hindu violence was enacted after the elections, the idea is to block these communities from even daring to vote. As documented by Daily Star, Prothom Alo and others, a signficant proportion of minority voters have already been taken off the controversial voter list.[ii] When even Muslim voters find themselves missing in large numbers from the list, what chance for Bahadur, Kumar, or Larma? The 1991 and 2001 Bangladesh election results could have been different given the razor-thin margins by which many seats were won, and the huge number of minority voters that were prevented from voting in those very seats. Out of 300 constituencies, there are 71 where minority voters are significant (ranging from 11% to 61%)[iii] and 50 where they are visible (5-10%). The current election sets every incentive for the 4-party rightist-islamist alliance to aggressively choke off the minority vote. The opposition Awami League's embrace of secularism has always been shaky (is there anybody with the guts to hold their feet to the fire and force them to eject Nejame Islam from the 14-party coalition?). But even this weak commitment has produced many potential Pahari candidates for Hill Tracts, as compared to the exclusively Bengali Muslim candidates from the 4-party. For Bengali candidates to win in Pahari-majority areas, a massive blocking of the Pahari vote is needed. A similar pattern is expected in all areas with a significant minority population. This is not to say that minority voters should vote en masse for AL –– but simply that they to be allowed to vote. I invoke St Joseph because anecdotes sometimes carry more emotive power than statistics. When the silent majority continually ignores the pain of others, we end up at the embryo stages of ethnicide. These days it is hard to sit still for a song ashor during 1971 commemorations without choking on the failure of the nation project. Yes, yes, we liberated ourselves from Pakistan. Yes, they were destroying our adored Bangla language. Yes, yes, but and again but. What of the state that we created since 1971. 22 wealthiest Pakistani families have been replaced by 22 wealthiest Bangla Muslim families. Was that what the revolution was about. Pity Shiraj Sikder, Colonel Taher and all the other revolutionaries. Actually the bullet in Sikder's back, and the noose around Taher's neck saved them -- who wants to live to see this end? Today, our numerical majority has chosen methods of predatory nationalism that include racist tactics that directly echo the Pakistan regime, reify Bengali Muslims, and render all other identities invisible[iv]. My uncle used to tell the story of the maulana who stood in front of a temple in 1940s Noakhali, using his body to defy those who wanted to burn alive the Hindus who had been their former neighbors. This is in Noakhali of all places, a blight in 1940s partition narratives for so many examples of brutality, including the apocryphal story of Muslims who slaughtered Gandhi's goat (is it true? I have never been able to find any evidence). If that village elder found an interpretation of religion that taught compassion, how are we in this backwards trap fifty years on? I shout at all of you with rage, because I refuse to accept a haven for me that is a nightmare for others. There is still time to stop this with our words, our actions and our bodies. Amra ki ei Bangladesh cheyechilam? ############################ Naeem Mohaiemen is a filmmaker and media artist based in Dhaka and New York. He is author of the chapter on in the 2004 Annual Human Rights Report. ############################ http://shobakorg.blogspot.com http://disappearedinamerica.org ############################ Footnotes: [i] A researcher friend recently explored the etymology of the names in Bangladesh and wrote in an e-mail: "Of course not all surnames are created equal. Chattopadhyay/Chatterjee, Bandopadhyay/Banerjee, Mukhopadhyay, Gangopadhyay, Bhattacharya/jee, Chakrabarty, Mahalanobis, Adhikari etc are Brahmin. Some names are titles that are usually held by higher caste including Brahmins, but can also be Muslim names (as they were handed out by either the Nawabs or the British to loyal retainers) - Thakur (Tagore), Majumdar, Talukdar, Dastidar, Ghatak, Chowdhury, Biswas, Sarkar. Most of these people will still know their original "gotra" (ie, "apni ghotok? asholey ki?" - answer: chattopadhyay, sen etc so you can still signal caste when prompted). Next rung includes Sen, Das, Ghosh, Bose, Sarkar, Nath, Saha, Dev, Mandal, Pandey (Parey), etc The rung that you won't hear much of in academia, business, politics or probashi communities include Basak, Gain, Bain (as in Goopy & Bagha), Tisku, Barui, Majhi, Gop (Gope), Dop (Daup), Soren, Marandi. Many of these names are also found among Adivasis through intermarriage or loss of language some time back. Some purely sub-ethnic names as well. Rajbongshi, Tripuri, Puruli, Pradhan, Bahadur (indicates Gurkha lineage) etc. In terms of people left in Bangladesh, hardly any from the Brahmins, and most are probably at the bottom of the caste hierarchy - as they are pretty screwed whether in Bangladesh or in India." [ii] Daily Star, May 6, 2006: "Religious Minorities Under Pressure"; Daily Star, May 10, 2006: "Minority Voters Intimidated"; Prothom Alo, January 6, 2006: "Voter List Compilers Say They Didn't Go to 4 Minority-heavy Villages By 'Mistake'"; bcdjc.org/mreport-1.html [iii] According to the 1991 census, the following 71 constituencies have a minority ratio ranging from 11% to 61%: Rangamati, Khulna-1, Bandarban, Khagrachari, Gopalganj-3, Moulavibazar-4, Khulna-5, Sunamganj-2, Dinajpur-1, Gopalganj-2, Dinajpur-2, Barisal-1, Khulna-6, Satkhira-3, Bagerhat-1, Gopalganj-1, Chittagong-6, Thakurgaon-1, Dinajpur-4, Pirojpur-1, Bagerhat-3, Satkhira-5, Moulavibazar-2, Magura-1, Madaripur-2, Narail-1, Bagerhat-2, Hobiganj-4, Chittagong-7, Nilphamari-2, Nilphamari-3, Magura-1, Satkhira-4, Rajbari-2, Lalmonirhat-1, Jessore-6, Narail-2, Khulna-4, Barisal-2, Satkhira-1, Netrokona-4, Natore-1, Sunamganj-1, Brahmanbaria-5, Hobiganj-1, Thakurgaon-2, Satkhira-2, Netrokona-1, Manikganj-2, Sunamganj-4, Chittagong-1, Kishoregonj-5, Rangpur-1, Kurigram-2, Pirojpur-2, Dinajpur-6, Rangpur-2, Jhalokathi-2, Manikganj-1, Faridpur-1, Natore-3, Bagerhat-4, Netrokona-2, Dhaka-7, Faridpur-3, Madaripur-3, Khulna-2, Barguna-2, Mymensingh-1, Dhaka-3, Sunamganj-3. All portions of the 2001 census were released, with the exception of the religious figures. [iv] This can be seen in the drastic drop in minority populations: 1961 (18.5%), 1974 (13.5%), 1981 (12.2%) and 1991 (10.5%). Analysts expect the 2001 census to reveal even further drop, but the government has not released those numbers. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail (http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/) From mail at shivamvij.com Sat Nov 4 02:34:05 2006 From: mail at shivamvij.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 02:34:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Kherlanji Message-ID: <9c06aab30611031304l2bb451bcn10c4b9f3a149287e@mail.gmail.com> 120 kms from Nagpur, district Bhandara, a Dalit Buddhist family lynched to death a month ago. Delhi journalists ignore emails from the Vidarbha Jan Andola Samiti. The news is getting out only now. Updates at http://atrocitynews.wordpress.com/ Speak, for your lips are free... From info at karmayog.org Sat Nov 4 00:41:55 2006 From: info at karmayog.org (Karmayog.org) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 13:11:55 -0600 Subject: [Reader-list] Grants from World Bank -- Health, Nutrition & Population -- by Nov 17 Message-ID: <2988701c6ff7b$ed808140$9a16344a@C274034117> 1. It seems that the Echoing Green Fellowship email got truncated for some recipients. One has to apply online by December 1, 2006, for the $90,000 in seed funding and support to launch a new organization Watch the video: http://www.echoinggreen.org/video Find out whether you qualify: http://www.echoinggreen.org/shouldyouapply Questions? Contact Jeremy at jeremy at echoinggreen.org . 2. The World Bank also gives grants e.g. via The Development Marketplace (DM) which funds innovative, small-scale development projects. The DM's primary objective is to identify and support creative ideas that deliver results and have the potential to be expanded or replicated. In addition to supporting hundreds of grassroots initiatives, the program allows the Bank to learn and gain insight from local practitioners who have important contributions to make in the fight against poverty. DM competitions are designed to attract ideas from a range of innovators: civil society groups, social entrepreneurs, local governments, universities, and private companies. Development Market Place announces grants for NGOs every year. This year the topic for Development Market place is Health, Population and Nutrition. The last date for submission of the proposal is 17 November, 2006. The proposal should be submitted on-line. Sample of winning proposal for last year and guidelines to submit the proposal is available at website www.developmentmarketplace.org Some past projects in India that have received grants: Same Language Sub-titling on TV for Mass Literacy Rs. 1.2 crores to raise the literacy skills of all early literates on a large scale, through a low-cost, already entrenched, popular entertainment method-television programming with subtitles Low-Cost Reading Glasses Rs. 56 lakhs to give the gift of sight to near-sighted poor by getting low-cost reading glasses into their hands, and also to provide jobs to sellers of reading glasses Affordable Hearing Aids Rs. 47 lakhs to design, manufacture, and distribute an affordable, high-quality hearing aid for developing country markets, and to empower the disabled Well Being of the Disabled Rs. 37 lakhs to provide all services for disabled persons of all age groups in Delhi Rat Catcher Tribals Rs. 45 lakhs to remove the health hazards associated with ridding farms of rats and improve the rate of extermination, by introducing an improved prototype of a traditional rat catching device at an affordable price in Tamil Nadu Empowerment of Rural Communities to Export Rs. 1.20 crores to raise incomes and create job opportunities by testing the use of Export Production Villages as a way to organize small-holder spice producers and access higher value export markets. Mentoring At-risk Children Rs. 28 lakhs to impart critical life skills to at-risk youth in Mumbai, helping them reintegrate into mainstream society. BioDiesel Fueled Energy System Rs. 1.1 crores to deliver energy and safe water supplies to remote tribal villages in Orissa using a renewable, carbon-neutral, bio-diesel energy system. Village Employment & Power Partnerships Rs. 95 lakhs to provide rural villages in India with affordable access to electricity by constructing a decentralized supply mechanism integrated with an enterprise promotion initiative and service delivery system. LED Lighting for Tribal Homes Rs. 84 lakhs to provide clean and reliable lighting to 10,000 tribal households in Orissa using LED light units and a community-based maintenance plan Alternative Fuel Sources Rs. 50 lakhs to provide an alternative fuel source and generate environmental benefits for Rajasthan villagers by implementing a comprehensive plan to utilize the Jatropha plant Livelihoods by Conserving Biodiversity Rs. 29 lakhs to enhance the incomes of forest dwelling communities and reverse destruction of wild bamboo stocks by promoting the use of the Lantana weed as a substitute for bamboo in weaving baskets and other products. Ground-Source Systems for Hot Arid Regions Rs. 66 lakhs to introduce more productive and stable agriculture in areas with harsh climatic conditions by introducing Earth Tube Heat Exchanger technology in Kutch Eco-Friendly Farm Pest Management Rs. 70 lakhs to provide farmers with a cheaper and eco-friendly pest management alternative to costly pesticides Silk Production to Save Oak Trees Rs. 80 lakhs to provide alternatives to subsistence agriculture through oak-based silk production, or sericulture, a unique enterprise that allows forest resources to be used without chopping down trees Computers on Wheels Rs. 12 lakhs to close the information gap by providing villagers in rural Mahboobnagar with expanded access to information and exposure to technology Connecting India Village by Village Rs. 32 lakhs to tap the power of the digital economy by using electronic kiosks to develop market-based solutions that benefit India's poor Rooftop Rainwater Harvesting Rs. 93 lakhs to increase rural water access in drought-prone desert Rajasthan by introducing rooftop rainwater harvesting and encouraging the government to expand the program. For other info, please contact Ms. Sunita Malhotra -- smalhotra at worldbank.org [ www.karmayog.org has a list of Indian Donors (foundations and corporates) as well as International Donor organisations . Do help us to make it a comprehensive list. ] _____ To unsubscribe or change your preferences goto the Mailing List Management Centre at the following address:- http://www.karmayog.org/mailing/default.asp?email=reader%2Dlist%40sarai% 2Enet -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061103/3ba1f618/attachment.html From jalvaer at gmail.com Sat Nov 4 07:13:43 2006 From: jalvaer at gmail.com (jesper alvaer) Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 02:43:43 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] =?windows-1252?q?FILMS_FROM_CONTEMPORARY_IRAN_6=96_?= =?windows-1252?q?7_NOVEMBER_=28SORIA_MORIA_KINO_OSLO=29?= Message-ID: <5330bdde0611031743h5ea1b27bgf2e04ae62000e737@mail.gmail.com> FILMS FROM CONTEMPORARY IRAN 6 – 7 NOVEMBER Screening of Iranian films 6 – 7 November at Soria Moria Cinema Presentation of the magazine Pages 7 November at Torpedo Bokhandel The screenings in Soria Moria (Torshov) follow the exhibition project „Sunset Cinema_edition 2" which was realized in Display gallery in Prague, May 2006. The two Iranian artists living in the Netherlands, Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi, created a framework and a stage for the screening of several films, out of which three are going to be screened within this program. Films from Contemporary Iran, is an initiative from Display (www.display.cz) in Prague and Pages in Rotterdam (www.pagesmagazine,net), organized in Oslo by UKS, Soria Moria, and Torpedo Bokhandel. The project is supported by OCA- Office for Contemporary Art, Norway. PROGRAM DETAILS: Tuesday 6 November Time: 18:45 - 20:45 at Soria Moria Introduction by Director Alireza Rasoulinezhad Exteriors Director: Alireza Rasoulinezhad Iran, 2004 83 minutes, video Exteriors is a film in three parts about a discouraged intellectual uncle who disappears from Tehran to lead a different life elsewhere. He leaves his apartment to his nephew and niece. The two discover some notes on various social and cultural topics and an unfinished film by their uncle. Inspired by their uncle's ideas and the film footage, they decide to make a film together. The involvement of the two in pursuing the film becomes a pretext for the director of this trilogy to address contemporary social and cultural issues of Iran. Wednesday 7 November Time: 17.00 at Torpedo Bokhandel (Hausmannsgate 42, Oslo) Short presentation by Babak Afrassiabi of the magazine Pages Pages is a bilingual, Farsi and English, magazine with the aim to function as a platform for exchange, dialogs and projects, a place for collaboration between artists and writers from Iran and elsewhere. The magazine's interest lies in the socio-political flows within spaces of urban and everyday life. Time: 18:45 - 20:45 at Soria Moria, Introduction by Director Bahman Kiarostami Pilgrimage Director: Bahman Kiarostami Iran, 2004 52 minutes, video Shot in and around a small prosecutor's office on the Iran-Iraq border, this documentary is about illegal pilgrims who are persistent in crossing the Iran's border with Iraq for the holly city of Karbala. Being deprived of this pilgrimage for years during and after the Iran-Iraq war, now with the fall of Saddam many attempt to travel with forged documents or risk their lives while being smuggled across the harsh border. "Criminal pilgrims or pilgrim criminals" this is the dilemma the film is uncovering. Shabih Khani (Re-enactment) Director: Bahman Kiarostami Iran, 2006 52 minutes, Video Shabih-Khani is a documentary about men who, in the yearly held religious ceremony called the Ashura, re-enact the scenes of the battle Karbala (that took place in 680 ac in the desert of Karbala in current Iraq, commemorating the death of Imam Hossein, the grandson of the prophet Mohammad, and his entire family). Shabih (likeness) is a term which refers to an actor who plays the role of the holy companions of Imam Hossein or his enemies. The title Shabih-Khani underlines the separation between the actors and the roles they play. As the men are asked to play their roles in front of the camera, they inevitably indulge in a double re-enactment of their roles, causing moments of confusion, bordering on farce or slapstick. ============================================================================== Jesper Alvaer Tel: +47 48050535 Tel: +420 608302910 skype: jespercall -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061104/529ba965/attachment.html From ravis at sarai.net Sat Nov 4 17:28:44 2006 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2006 17:28:44 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Coming to terms with India's missing Muslims(fwd) Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20061104172730.03621980@mail.sarai.net> 4 November 2006 The Hindu Link: http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/ Coming to terms with India's missing Muslims The reality of exclusion and discrimination can no longer be denied. But the remedy requires political courage on the part of the Manmohan Singh Government and wisdom on the part of those claiming to speak for Muslims. Siddharth Varadarajan WHEN THE Justice Rajinder Sachar committee submits its report on the socio-economic status of Muslims, the full extent of the community's exclusion will be obvious to all. Especially those who have made political careers out of the canard that Muslims in India enjoy special privileges and have been "appeased." Based on the data leaked so far, it is evident there are entry barriers Muslims ­ who account for 17 per cent of India's population ­ are unable to cross in virtually all walks of life. From the administration and the police to the judiciary and the private sector, the invisible hands of prejudice, economic and educational inequality seem to have frozen the `quota' for Muslims at three to five per cent. Thanks to a hysterical campaign run by the Bharatiya Janata Party and some media houses, the Sachar committee was denied data on the presence of Muslims in the armed forces. But even there it is apparent that the three per cent formula applies. This gross under-presence of Muslims in virtually every sector is presaged by substantial inequalities in education. Muslim enrolment and retention rates at the primary and secondary levels are lower than the national average and this further magnifies existing inequalities at the college level as well as in the labour market. For virtually every socio-economic marker of well being, the Muslim is well below the national norm ­ not to speak of the level commensurate with her or his share of the national population ­ and the evidence suggests these inequalities are not decreasing over time. This bleak statistical picture is rendered drearier still by new trends visible in many cities. Muslims, for example, find it extremely difficult to rent and buy property outside of "Muslim areas" in some metros. Apart from several journalists, I even know of one former Muslim Union Minister in Delhi whose Hindu colleagues had to intercede to find him a flat. In Mumbai, the situation is perhaps worse. Many Muslim businessmen have problems accessing credit, besides having to run the gamut of uncooperative officials who look upon them with suspicion at every turn. Even in politics, as Iqbal A. Ansari's recent book, Political Representation of Muslims in India, 1952-2004, has shown, Muslims have consistently been under-represented in the Lok Sabha and all State Assemblies since Independence except Kerala. Only half as many Muslim MPs and MLAs get elected as one might expect based on their population share. In the absence of our political parties throwing up a large enough number of Muslim elected representatives, clerics and obscurantists are only too willing to step into the breach. The `war on terrorism' has added a new layer to this already intolerable situation as policemen across the country give free vent to their ignorance and religious prejudice. The tendency of law enforcement agencies to target Muslims during incidents of communal violence is well known. The complicity of the police in the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 was reprehensible but not so different from what the country witnessed at other times in other places. As for legal redress, neither government nor judiciary shows any sense of urgency. Terrorist crimes such as the Mumbai blasts are prosecuted energetically and this is a good thing. But no one is able to explain what happened to the cases stemming from the killing of Muslims in Mumbai in 1992 and 1993 nor why the Srikrishna Commission recommendations against erring policemen remain unimplemented. The media are a corrective but only to a limited extent. If one section has sought to highlight the plight of Indian Muslims, another section is constantly ready to inflame prejudice by staging debates on irrelevant issues, giving undue prominence to ridiculous statements by unrepresentative `Muslim leaders' or broadcasting marital disputes within Muslim families (as one channel did last week) as proof of `Muslim backwardness.' In the U.S., the old journalistic adage was `Jews is News'. In India, it seems, anything that shows Muslims as ignorant or fanatical helps propel TRP ratings, while rational comment is frowned upon as unhelpful. A Muslim MP was asked recently to take part in a TV debate on whether there should be reservation for Muslims. He agreed, but added that he would argue against it. The channel's reporter then tried convincing him that "surely your community needs reservation." When he didn't agree, the channel lost interest in putting him on air. One studio guest recently advised Muslims to shed their `persecution complex' and to not forget that theirs were the "hands that built the Taj Mahal." Though no one would dare accuse Dalits of "doing nothing" to uplift themselves, Muslims are blamed for their poverty and poor education. They are gratuitously advised to study hard, as if the problem of lack of schools, delinquent teachers, inadequate books, and poverty can be remedied by will power alone. The reservation trap It is against the backdrop of this highly vitiated atmosphere that the Manmohan Singh Government must formulate a response to the Sachar committee's findings. The reality of systemic inequality cannot be wished away and the Government must find the political courage to confront this situation head on. So serious are the implications of Muslim marginalisation that the Congress must open a channel of communication with other parties, including the BJP, to evolve a consensus on the necessity for urgent corrective measures. Among the remedial measures to be considered, the least helpful in substantive as well as political terms will be reservation. Whatever they do, Muslim leaders and those who claim to speak in favour of Muslims, must avoid the trap that the demand for reservation is. Sixty years of affirmative action have led to some improvements for Dalits and Tribals but it is clear that the country and its rulers have used the sop of reservation as an excuse to do nothing about the persistent, underlying causes of caste-based inequality. It is now universally recognised that the pursuit of "equality of outcomes" and "equality of opportunity" must go hand in hand. Even equality of opportunity has a formal and a substantive aspect. `Formal' equality means ending discrimination on the basis of caste, religion or gender. `Substantive' equality means overcoming the barriers (or benefits) children of equal native talent inherit from their parents so that none is advantaged or disadvantaged by birth. The India state pays lip service to the idea of equality of outcomes (through quotas) but completely ignores the necessity of crafting expenditure policies that can provide equality of opportunity. Nowhere is this more glaring than in the field of education where the increased notional access of Dalits and Tribals to university is undercut by high dropout rates and underperformance at the school level. In a 2000 paper, Julian Betts and John Roemer model the amount of differential expenditure the United States government would have to make to provide equality of opportunity to its citizens. In a typology where they define four categories of males based on whether they are White or Black and whether their parents have `High' or `Low' education levels, Betts and Roemer conclude that the `equality of opportunity' expenditure on education must be nine times higher for members of the `Low Black' group than the `High Whites'. They also found that the `High Black,' `Low Black,' and `Low White' groups must all receive more than their per capita share of educational resources if equality of opportunity were to be guaranteed. Both in the U.S. and in India today, the actual allocation of educational resources is regressive in that those who are affluent and socially privileged corner a greater share of social allocations for education than their relative size in the population. In reality, then, existing affirmative action ­ or reservation ­ is for the privileged and the goal of public policy has to be to reverse that by using the target of public expenditure. An important finding in Betts and Roemer's work is that economic targeting alone won't alter the relative distribution of income across cohorts. The targeting has to be aimed at the discriminated or excluded cohort. In India, the first task of the government must be to guarantee formal equality of opportunity by dealing firmly with discrimination in the labour, housing and credit markets as well as educational system. Without instituting a system of reservation ­ which would generate more political heat than tangible benefit for Muslims ­ the Government must send out a clear and unambiguous message that the social cohesiveness and future growth prospects of the country require government departments and private firms to encourage the recruitment of Muslims. But in order to generate substantive equality of opportunity and uproot inequality and exclusion from their roots, the government has to guarantee better access to education at every level for Muslims, Dalits, Tribals, and OBCs. All of this is only a first approximation and much more will need to be done. What is important, however, is that we recognise both the reality of Muslim exclusion and the urgent need to do something about it. From mail at shivamvij.com Sat Nov 4 19:06:33 2006 From: mail at shivamvij.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 19:06:33 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] =?utf-8?q?Community_radio_doesn=E2=80=99t_cause_war?= =?utf-8?q?s?= Message-ID: <9c06aab30611040536l7769f3b4u80a32c7e1ceb4312@mail.gmail.com> Free the airwaves, for India's sake Community radio doesn't cause wars, it brings positive change By Frederick Noronha http://www.tehelka.com/story_main22.asp?filename=op111106Free_the.asp We have about 30 here," said my Ugandan friend, when asked about fm radio stations in and around Uganda's capital Kampala. Nepal has shamed the "world's largest democracy" many years ago. And we're not talking of just multi-million rupee licences for commercial fm. Apart from the sarkari airwaves, and the commercial ones, India has just forgotten to open up its airwaves to its own citizens, volunteer networks and the not-for- profit sector (not just ngos alone). Paranoid politicians, overcautious officials, and ad-obsessed broadcasters, have worked to make this happen. Campus radio is no substitute for genuine community radio. Conflict-prone Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia too have outdone us. In 1995, the Supreme Court was clear in telling the authorities that the "airwaves are public property". Yet, every stalling trick has been deployed to delay. Will the government be different now? Now, though, we have talk of new community radio-friendly policies from the gom, Cabinet approval and what-have-you. But till we hear the broadcasts, let's just keep our fingers crossed, shall we? Half a decade ago, a disparate group that saw potential in community radio joined a unesco workshop held at Hyderabad. To build some continuity, an electronic mailing list called cr-India was set up. Since then, over 300-plus citizens have tried every trick to convince the authorities why this is a good idea. So, whose interest does it serve to keep Indian talent on a tight leash, even while blocking the huge potential for communication? Academics agree with it. There is clear evidence that community radio works elsewhere. We have more than sufficient skills across India. Just take a look at radiophony.com that tells you how to build a low-powered transmitter for a few hundred rupees. We've seen groups in Bhuj and Bihar struggle with leasing time on the air network. We've seen youngsters from Haryana create transmitters for Rs 11,000. And we've seen an innovative Raghav Mahto run an unlicenced fm radio station in a way that makes it relevant to the locality and enables him to earn a few rupees for a cancer-stricken dad. So what are we waiting for? But then, India's irrational fears about unleashing the power of communication, in a way that could really make a difference to the information-starved, is keeping our potential blocked. Thanks to technology, and today's unprecedented pace for the spread of ideas, you don't need an army of bureaucrats or a few million rupees to communicate via the airwaves anymore. What's more, the radio could be the most appropriate in a country with poor power in vast rural stretches. But irrational fears are just that. Irrational, and hard to get rid of. We have a (relatively) free press; and the country hasn't fallen apart. Radio doesn't cause wars or the breakdown of law and order. Rather than war-war, it allows for jaw-jaw. We need discussions that could resolve conflict and act as an early warning system. Those not in line with the law will do so, whether you offer them licences or not. So, whom are we penalising? We need radio to warn the citizen of disaster, to inform them of how to bring positive change in their lives, and even to keep alive the varied cultures which get trampled upon by our centralised models. Tomas Koshy — discussing via the communityradio at writeshop.org network — tells a recent story of what happened when he spoke to 150 women in Champaran. Three read newspapers. Four watched TV. And almost everyone listened to radio. So should they be force-fed the official version, when technology allows for thousands of community-run radios, reflecting the needs of India? Rather than fearing what happens when the poor get access to information, we owe it to them to just unshackle the medium. This is not middle-class burden; even "illiterate" millions are educated enough to make use of this medium. Are we enlightened enough to stop fighting possibilities with paranoia and artificial blocks in the law? Action can always be taken against those violating the law; should we presume malafides by default? Time lost, as a decision gets delayed, is something the country could never ever recoup. So why not just free the airwaves for the citizen too? Till then, India will just have to wait for its real communications revolution. Noronha is a Goa-based journalist From geert at desk.nl Sun Nov 5 02:27:39 2006 From: geert at desk.nl (geert lovink) Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 21:57:39 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Global Voices Delhi Summit: December 16, 2006 Message-ID: Global Voices Delhi Summit: December 2006 http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/global-voices-delhi-summit-december -2006/ Please join us for the Global Voices 2006 Summit, December 16th in New Delhi, India! WHAT: Global Voices Online is an award-winning online portal and guide to international blogs beyond North America and Western Europe. It has also become the hub of a growing community of international bloggers who want to build a better global conversation. The Global Voices Summit, on December 16th, will be our annual opportunity to take stock, come together and explore our central question: How can we use the Internet to build a more democratic, participatory global discourse? How can we create a more inclusive conversation about what is happening on our planet, and how human beings in different parts of the world are impacting each other in countless ways we don’t realize every day? This year we also hope to address two further questions: - How do we bring more unheard, ignored, or disadvantaged voices into the global online conversation? - How do we help people speak and be heard - even when powerful people try to stop them from doing so? WHO: Global Voices editors, contributors, community members, interested bloggers and journalists. Basically, anybody who is interested in what it means for media, geopolitics, and global society when the whole world starts talking online. Click here to see who is already committed to attend. WHEN: 9am-5:30pm IST, Saturday December 16th, 2006 (A smaller private planning meeting will be held for GV editors and authors only on Sunday the 17th.) HOW: If you’d like to join us, please add your name to the sign-up wiki here. WHERE: At the Indian Habitat Centre (Please note that space is very limited, so you’ll want to sign up well in advance if you wish to attend - first come, first served.) ONLINE: If you can’t make it in person, please join us online via webcast and live chat. We will be posting more information on this page about how to do so as the time approaches FOR MORE INFO ABOUT PAST GLOBAL VOICES SUMMITS: Global Voices 2005 London Summit: Here is our summary of last year’s meeting in London. Read articles about it in the Guardian and openDemocracy, an academic paper about us by the Center for Social Media, and a video titled “Many to Many” which includes footage from our London Summit. Global Voices 2004 Harvard Meeting: where Global Voices was born! Click here for an MP3 audio report about the 2004 meeting. Or read this report at Personal Democracy Forum: International Bloggers Start Connecting the Dots Show Off! With our cool badges. Available in general and “I’m Attending” flavors! From lokesh at sarai.net Sun Nov 5 13:33:52 2006 From: lokesh at sarai.net (lokesh at sarai.net) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2006 09:03:52 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] =?utf-8?q?=28no_subject=29?= Message-ID: Youth forum Dear friends, The Youth Forum @ India Social Forum invites you to an amazing concert, where lou majaw, with his friends Sam Shullai, Lew Hilt, Arjun will be playing at ramjas Grounds on the 6th November from 2.30 onwards. this band is famous for their mind blowing rendering of dylan numbers and is internationally acclaimed for bringing progressive western music to the east.every year they celebrate Dylan's birthday. the other bands which will be also playing are Kangla Sha and Manchale. there will also be a book fair.please come and make it a wonderful experience for all. NB: Free Entry for all. In solidarity Amrapali, ANirban, meghna, rachna,Nitya, PArnisha, Sanober,Saurav, Awnish,Nayanjyoti, Karishma, Faisal, Bonojit, Bhagwati,Naveen, Lokesh, Alberuni and friends for Youth forum 9-13 November, 2006, Delhi @ India Social Forum From lokesh at sarai.net Sun Nov 5 13:37:25 2006 From: lokesh at sarai.net (lokesh at sarai.net) Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2006 09:07:25 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] invitation for concert in ramjas college Message-ID: Youth forum Dear friends, The Youth Forum @ India Social Forum invites you to an amazing concert, where lou majaw, with his friends Sam Shullai, Lew Hilt, Arjun will be playing at ramjas Grounds on the 6th November from 2.30 onwards. this band is famous for their mind blowing rendering of dylan numbers and is internationally acclaimed for bringing progressive western music to the east.every year they celebrate Dylan's birthday. the other bands which will be also playing are Kangla Sha and Manchale. there will also be a book fair.please come and make it a wonderful experience for all. NB: Free Entry for all. In solidarity Amrapali, ANirban, meghna, rachna,Nitya, PArnisha, Sanober,Saurav, Awnish,Nayanjyoti, Karishma, Faisal, Bonojit, Bhagwati,Naveen, Lokesh, Alberuni and friends for Youth forum 9-13 November, 2006, Delhi @ India Social Forum From aarti at sarai.net Sun Nov 5 14:58:39 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti Sethi) Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2006 14:58:39 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Seminar @ Sarai: S.V. Srinivas- "Rajnikanth doesn't only speak Tamil" Message-ID: <5BE2DAC2-355F-4F2B-B1A3-5466279071D8@sarai.net> ============== Seminar @ Sarai ============== "Ranjikanth doesnt only speak Tamil: Towards a theory of South Indian Stardom." A talk by S.V Srinivas 3:30 P.M., Monday, 6 November 2006, Seminar Room Sarai-CSDS Film Screening: Baba (Suresh Krissna, Tamil, 2002), Seminar Room S.V. Srinivas is a Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Hyderabad. He is currently working on a post-doctoral project titled “Democracy and Spectatorship in India: Telugu Popular Cinema and Hong Kong Action Film” funded by SEPHIS. He has written articles on Telugu cinema and its audiences in Deep Focus, Economic and Political Weekly, Framework and Journal of Arts and Ideas. From vivek at sarai.net Mon Nov 6 19:55:00 2006 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:55:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] VN, poems, bangalore Message-ID: <454F45BC.30608@sarai.net> PLEASE COME: ...and duly inform any sympathetic souls I may have missed in this mailing... *************************************************************************** Toto Funds the Arts is delighted to invite you to the Bangalore launch of Vivek Narayanan’s first collection of poems, Universal Beach The book will be released by eminent film, theatre and television director and writer Prakash Belawadi at the Crossword Bookstore (ACR Towers, Ground Floor, 32 Residency Road, Bangalore 1) on Thursday, November 9, 2006 at 6.30 pm Vivek Narayanan will read and perform from the book, as well as from a selection of poems from a new work in progress, Lectures in Indian History. *************************************************************************** Thanks, Vivek From cziellah at yahoo.co.in Tue Nov 7 01:18:32 2006 From: cziellah at yahoo.co.in (Yengkhom Jilangamba) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 19:48:32 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Free Hebal Abel Koloy! Message-ID: <20061106194832.25901.qmail@web8401.mail.in.yahoo.com> An Urgent Appeal for Action Free Hebal Abel Koloy! On October 26, 2006 at around 9.30am Mr. Hebal Abel Koloy, Chairman of Borok People's Human Rights Organisation – BPHRO – (an organisation fighting for the rights of indigenous peoples of Tripura against all forms of state terror), Tripura, India, was asked by the police of Jirania police station of West Tripura district, to accompany them to the Jirania police station and later was taken to Manu police station, Dhalai district. He accompanied them and was detained there till 8 a.m. (27 October, 2006) without any reasons. By 8.30 a.m. of October 27, 2006 he was declared arrested. The Manu police registered a case against him [Case no.37/06, U/S 396/353/307/IPC and 27 of the Arms Act and 120(B)] under the Indian Penal Code. On October 27, 2006 Hebal Koloy was produced in the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Kailashar and the Manu police station appealed to the court for 10 days remand in the police custody. However, the court granted allowed custody for 3 days – i.e. October 27-30, 2006. On October 30, 2006 he was produced in the Court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Kailashar and the court found no evidence of charges brought against him by the police but in spite of his being proved innocent was not given bail and was sent to the Kailashar Jail, Kailashar district for 3 more days. It is pertinent to mention here that Mr. Koloy is the principal of Khumpui Academy which is run by the Tripura Tribal Areas District Council. His official residence was ransacked in search operations that were carried out on October 28, 2006 from 3.00 -3.50 p.m. but no incriminating documents were found there. On October 29, 2006 a search operation was carried out from 11.15 a.m. to 12 noon in the office premises of the BPHRO, located in the Place Compound, Agartala, Tripura and in the search operation nothing illegal was recovered according to the police's own version. They seized identity card forms (which are issued to all the members of the BPHRO), donors' registrar book, membership fee book and other organisational document. They also took the computer CPU belonging to Mohan Debbarma (General Secretary of BPHRO) which was being used for the office of the organization as they do not have any computer of their own. Hebal Koloy has been an active member of the human rights fraternity in Northeast India . He has presented cases of human rights violations against the indigenous peoples of Tripura at the 22nd session of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations in 2003 and has also ceaselessly appealed for justice and transparency in Northeast India. We are convinced that his detention is meant to silence the voice of oppressed indigenous people of Tripura and is part of a larger campaign waged by the state to malign and obstruct people's movements working for justice and dignity of indigenous peoples. We are also convinced that as long as he is police custody he is danger of losing his life. Such events are not uncommon in Northeast India's gloomy world of human rights violations and complicity of the organs of the state in these violations. FREE HEBAL ABEL KOLOY Yours truly, Arup Jyoti Das On behalf of North East Peoples' Initiative (NEPI) 4, Dwaraka Path, Oil Pipe Line Hatigaon Road, Dispur Guwahati-781006 Ph: 0361-2222019 (o), 098641-39312 (m) E-mail: nepinitiatives at gmail.com __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ From peerzadaarshad at gmail.com Mon Nov 6 15:39:04 2006 From: peerzadaarshad at gmail.com (arshad hamid) Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 15:39:04 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] How Kashmir CM ensures a good press Message-ID: <83db55e00611060209o452e55bcpa057734d10123609@mail.gmail.com> Hi Sarai readers, *Coverage which any head of state would envy. No criticism worth mentioning, load full of praise, glamorous photos and all. The CM of Jammu and Kashmir is being projected as the ruler of that illusive utopian state. * ** *Read Full story about him on and have your say: How Kashmir CM ensures a good press Kashmir Newz, India - Nov 4, 2006 by Haroon Mirani. In his one year in office Chief Minister of Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir Ghulam Nabi * *http://www.kashmirnewz.com/n00053.html* -- Peerzada Arshad Hamid +91-9419027486 +91-1932-234488 Address Baba mohalla, Bijbehara-192124 C/o Tak Trading Company, Bijbehara. Anantnag (Jammu & Kashmir) INDIA www.kashmirnewz.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061106/4ea2d93e/attachment.html From mail at shivamvij.com Wed Nov 8 20:58:00 2006 From: mail at shivamvij.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 20:58:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 1000 lights of Dignity and protest for Khairlanji issue in New Delhi In-Reply-To: <20061108110036.19259.qmail@web8607.mail.in.yahoo.com> References: <20061108110036.19259.qmail@web8607.mail.in.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <9c06aab30611080728p563fc4dx2b544df763d0b953@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Nitin Lata Waman Dear friends, National Association For Social Action (NASAindia) in collaboration with National Conference of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR) is organising a protest programme and will pay tribute by lighiting 1000 lights of Dignity to demand justice for the Bhotmange Family and for entire dalit community. i am inviting you in the said programme. please be there to raise the voice of justice and light a candle in favor of justice. there will be more than 5000 activists from all over india will be there. 10th Nov 2006 at 7:00 pm in Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, New Delhi. For more details on Khairlanji issue please go through following web site. http://www.tehelka.com/story_main22.asp?filename=Ne111106Dalits_like.asp regards Nitin Lata Waman From sidharth.srinivasan at gmail.com Thu Nov 9 11:10:16 2006 From: sidharth.srinivasan at gmail.com (sidharth srinivasan) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 21:40:16 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcement:JDCA film festival Message-ID: <83e991100611082140l2ab429eq5af6cad3f026f27a@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, the JDCA is organizing a film festival on Art and the Artists in Bhubaneshwar in December and inviting shorts and docs for the same. I mention the necessary details below. JDCA FILM FORUM Short and documentary First Film Festival Art And Artist Bhubaneswar, Orissa '06 November 6, 2006 Request for support and participation in the First Short Film Festival on Art and Artists Dear JD Center of Art, a noncommercial, nonprofit art center at Bhubaneswar, Orissa, is holding a Short and Documentary Film Festival on Art and Artists from 15th - 17th December, 2006 in Bhubaneswar. This will be an annual event under the JDCA Film Forum and is the first short film festival on Art and Artists in the country. This is a non commercial, non competitive event. JDCA is creating a national archive of films on Art & Artists under the Film Forum. We would highly appreciate if you would donate your films on the subject to JDCA. The format is as follows: § 3 day festival: 18 hours of showing. § One day seminar by visiting artists, filmmakers, critics, art historians followed by interactions. The purpose is to highlight short films and documentaries made by filmmakers on artists and their art - traditional and contemporary. We would like to invite you: § To participate in the festival § Donate documentary films in CD / DVD / VHS format for our film archive § Write an article on documentary film-making for publication in the brochure Please send your films on the subject by the 20th of November for inclusion in the festival. We would be much beholden if you accept our invitation to participate in the festival or contribute to any of the above mentioned points and would greatly appreciate a note of consent from you as soon as possible. A brief introduction of JDCA and the concept of Film Forum are enclosed for your information. Please do inform your friends about this Film Festival. Waiting for a positive response. With kind regards, Yours sincerely Jatin Das Chairman, JDCA P.S. 1. Please direct all correspondence to the Delhi Office. 2. Proper credit line will appear in all relevant publications. 3. Please send your detailed correspondence information including postal address and e-mail. Email : jdcafilmforum at gmail.com Jatin Das, Chairman, JDCA 93,Bakhtawar Singh Block,Asiad Village,New Delhi-110 049, Telefax : 011-2649 2449 / 2649 7504 Email : jdcamuseum at hotmail.com JD Centre of Art A-20, VIP Colony, Nayapalli, Bhubneswar-751015,Orissa,India, Telefax : (0674) 2554195 / 2555077 Email : jdca at vsnl.net website : www.jdcentreofart.org -- MR. SIDHARTH SRINIVASAN Reel Illusion Films New Delhi/Mumbai India From zainab at xtdnet.nl Thu Nov 9 18:52:09 2006 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2006 17:22:09 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] [Urbanstudy] traders protest in Delhi and where sociolgical definations fail In-Reply-To: <20061108143117.18221.qmail@web8909.mail.in.yahoo.com> References: <6.2.3.4.2.20061108175839.03805b00@mail.sarai.net> <20061108143117.18221.qmail@web8909.mail.in.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <47547.125.22.4.100.1163078529.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> Dear Anant, Dr. Benjamin, Ravi and others, A question which I am interested in is this: the attempt is to bring liquid, floating cash into institutionalized structures. So you have the SC saying no more commercial shops running in houses - shut shop! Now what is this attempt at bringing in cash/moeny from 'informal sector' doing to subjectivity? Secondly, what role is the court playing in this age of urban politics? Are courts now beyond classic rights? > Dear Anant, Ravi, and friends > One of the ways in which the classic sociologogical > definations fails, is that it assumes that property > (and hense 'traders')are on a trajectory towards > greater homogenizing and 'consolidation'. Both the > 'right' and the 'left' meet up in land, as someone > noted -- one from the point of capital and the other > on to common conciousness. These binaries shifting the > political to the esoteric rather than the day to day, > miss out on the actual material basis of how property > gets 'encroached' via multiple land tenures. In doing > so, breaks these clean trajectories, and the binary > between capital and labour, or then as the current > thinking on "entrepreneurship" vs those who cannot be > (some Charles Booth from Victorian times here!). > > In the Delhi case, as well as elsewhere, rather than a > definate trajectory, there is a perhaps a turbelent > transformation at play that implicates a variety of > groups: 14 and 16 year olds working in a factory, who > invest in 'chit funds-committees' (drawing surpluses > from local real estate markets), rather than being > 'docile labour' on their way to class conciousness. > and some 2300 km away in Bangalore's central Shivaji > nager, experiences the St Mary's feast -- the month > long celebratory event of Christians hindus and > Muslims. One of the last times, I also saw the Infant > Jesus perched up on a replica of the Delhi Bahai > temple! oops is this 'culture' or then?? A closer > look shows the parallel occoupation of space that is > systemized into conventions over the decades -- the > 'rath' yatras by all three religions, and the funding > of hawkers across religious groups, and the floating > street vendors selling the latest made in china toys > sourced from a factory perhaps in East Delhi. The > messiness, and the complexity of propeorty shifting > into non-property, of culture and economy and into > politics of claiming space over that month is > something no die hard police commissioner intending > to clean Bangalore of its cyclist, or the BATF with > their Singaporean agendas could do much aganist. and > this is certainly not traditional. look at the more > contemporary occoupations and encroachments of > categories in other parts of Bangalore -- Austin towns > wonderful streetlit festivities or then another 2000 > km away, the particular puja celebrations in > Chandonenagore in the Kolkata metro area with their > snazzy electrified lighting floats -- where complex > bamboo and strip metal contacts shape lighting > sequencing to pick up the latest theme that imagines > their future. Ooops,, is there IPR here... and what > about designating celebratory zones as some urban > designers might like to 'Theme' these into. > > I think for sure, if you see the real estate websites, > the current evictions and re-zoning do benefit as > Anant points out, the malls and multiplexes, just as > Micro credit funders and promoters view that 14 year > old 'investing / gambeling' in the 'evil money > leder's' chit fund/ committee. I suspect that one of > the reasons why the progressive left have missed this > 'constituency' untill after the fact, is an > attatchment to older categories of social structure > and one that hardly captures power on the ground. > There is of course another and perhaps deeper > question: did these categories ever have any > reflection? Francis Baudel's The Wheels of Commerse', > Steadman Jones' Outcast London', and Mayhews' london > might be useful to come back to.. but thats a > 'research' question, or is it??? > cheers > Solly > > > --- Ravi Sundaram wrote: > >> Dear Anant, >> >> my sense is that the 'trader lobby' is a shorthand >> for a large number >> of social groups in the city: small and large shop >> owners, workers >> etc etc. Perhaps a new social form not explainable >> by classic urban sociology? >> >> We have to see about that....Sure the mall owners >> will be happy, but >> most of the smaller traders cannot afford the retail >> rentals in the malls. >> >> Ravi >> >> At 21:42 07/11/2006, you wrote: >> >> >Folks, >> > >> >The traders protests in Delhi is an important >> >development. (see >> >>http://www.hindu.com/2006/11/07/stories/2006110718860300.htm >> >I am familiar with Delhi but can someone tell me in >> >some detail what is the composition of this trading >> >community. Jat ? Marwari? This particular decision >> by >> >the Supreme Court is just another nail in the >> coffin. >> >But it also has serious consequences for urban >> >politics in India - imagine small traders becoming >> >militant ? (true traders in Delhi have always been >> >much more visible in urban politics than elsewhere >> but >> >still...) >> > >> >It makes room for mega malls which are necessary >> for >> >both subsidizing huge projects like metro rails and >> >also for mopping up the loose cash from household >> >consumption for big investors like reliance etc., >> who >> >are going in for big time retailing. >> >anyways here is the story in Hindu >> >>http://www.hindu.com/2006/11/07/stories/2006110718860300.htm >> > >> >anant >> > >> >Send instant messages to your online friends >> http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com >> >_______________________________________________ >> >Urbanstudygroup mailing list >> >Urban Study Group: Reading the South Asian City >> > >> >To subscribe or browse the Urban Study Group >> archives, please visit >> >>https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Urbanstudygroup mailing list >> Urban Study Group: Reading the South Asian City >> >> To subscribe or browse the Urban Study Group >> archives, please visit >> > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup >> > > > > > __________________________________________________________ > Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new > http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ > _______________________________________________ > Urbanstudygroup mailing list > Urban Study Group: Reading the South Asian City > > To subscribe or browse the Urban Study Group archives, please visit > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup > Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From ravis at sarai.net Thu Nov 9 19:41:01 2006 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2006 19:41:01 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Urbanstudy] traders protest in Delhi and where sociolgical definations fail In-Reply-To: <47547.125.22.4.100.1163078529.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> References: <6.2.3.4.2.20061108175839.03805b00@mail.sarai.net> <20061108143117.18221.qmail@web8909.mail.in.yahoo.com> <47547.125.22.4.100.1163078529.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20061109191853.034ba180@mail.sarai.net> Dear Zainab, I wish I had easy answers to these questions. The subaltern wisdom in Delhi is that the current demolitions have been instigated by mall owners, the strength of this belief testifies to a change in the way people are beginning to see mall development in urban areas. I am not sure the current demolitions mark the beginning of the decline of small shops in Delhi (or any city), the reasons for their existence are too deeply embedded to be wished away by courts or violence. Nor will informal ways of changing money go away to develop small spaces in the city. Nor will malls necessarily decline, they are too tied in to the heady economy of desire and speculation that we see before us. I suspect many will crash, reinvent themselves as office spaces - who knows? What the current developments signify is a hostility to forms of life in the city that have emerged in the last 30 years in Delhi : working class settlements on the riverbank, small shops, household workshops etc, all of which do not fall within the language of liberal rights based languages of understanding the city. The riverbank settlements were the first to go, and now the 'traders'. The latter is much more that just traders, it includes workers in shops, the supply economy etc etc. And the roots of commerce in Delhi go back to the Moghul empire. In this sense the court decisions express this hostility to urban forms that have emerged in the last few decades, but as always, the decisions have disrupted the lives of all,.Even some of the first middle-class supporters of the court decisions are now squirming. I am more amazed by the relative paralysis of politicians in understanding the implications of what the court decisions mean for the future of the city; I can forsee some turbulent months/years ahead for the city. The local councillors may have more guts than the central leadership, see this story: http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/218200611091532.htm Ravi At 06:52 PM 09-11-06, you wrote: >Dear Anant, Dr. Benjamin, Ravi and others, > >A question which I am interested in is this: the attempt is to bring >liquid, floating cash into institutionalized structures. So you have the >SC saying no more commercial shops running in houses - shut shop! Now what >is this attempt at bringing in cash/moeny from 'informal sector' doing to >subjectivity? > >Secondly, what role is the court playing in this age of urban politics? >Are courts now beyond classic rights? > > > > > Dear Anant, Ravi, and friends > > One of the ways in which the classic sociologogical > > definations fails, is that it assumes that property > > (and hense 'traders')are on a trajectory towards > > greater homogenizing and 'consolidation'. Both the > > 'right' and the 'left' meet up in land, as someone > > noted -- one from the point of capital and the other > > on to common conciousness. These binaries shifting the > > political to the esoteric rather than the day to day, > > miss out on the actual material basis of how property > > gets 'encroached' via multiple land tenures. In doing > > so, breaks these clean trajectories, and the binary > > between capital and labour, or then as the current > > thinking on "entrepreneurship" vs those who cannot be > > (some Charles Booth from Victorian times here!). > > > In the Delhi case, as well as elsewhere, rather than a > > definate trajectory, there is a perhaps a turbelent > > transformation at play that implicates a variety of > > groups: 14 and 16 year olds working in a factory, who > > invest in 'chit funds-committees' (drawing surpluses > > from local real estate markets), rather than being > > 'docile labour' on their way to class conciousness. > > and some 2300 km away in Bangalore's central Shivaji > > nager, experiences the St Mary's feast -- the month > > long celebratory event of Christians hindus and > > Muslims. One of the last times, I also saw the Infant > > Jesus perched up on a replica of the Delhi Bahai > > temple! oops is this 'culture' or then?? A closer > > look shows the parallel occoupation of space that is > > systemized into conventions over the decades -- the > > 'rath' yatras by all three religions, and the funding > > of hawkers across religious groups, and the floating > > street vendors selling the latest made in china toys > > sourced from a factory perhaps in East Delhi. The > > messiness, and the complexity of propeorty shifting > > into non-property, of culture and economy and into > > politics of claiming space over that month is > > something no die hard police commissioner intending > > to clean Bangalore of its cyclist, or the BATF with > > their Singaporean agendas could do much aganist. and > > this is certainly not traditional. look at the more > > contemporary occoupations and encroachments of > > categories in other parts of Bangalore -- Austin towns > > wonderful streetlit festivities or then another 2000 > > km away, the particular puja celebrations in > > Chandonenagore in the Kolkata metro area with their > > snazzy electrified lighting floats -- where complex > > bamboo and strip metal contacts shape lighting > > sequencing to pick up the latest theme that imagines > > their future. Ooops,, is there IPR here... and what > > about designating celebratory zones as some urban > > designers might like to 'Theme' these into. > > > I think for sure, if you see the real estate websites, > > the current evictions and re-zoning do benefit as > > Anant points out, the malls and multiplexes, just as > > Micro credit funders and promoters view that 14 year > > old 'investing / gambeling' in the 'evil money > > leder's' chit fund/ committee. I suspect that one of > > the reasons why the progressive left have missed this > > 'constituency' untill after the fact, is an > > attatchment to older categories of social structure > > and one that hardly captures power on the ground. > > There is of course another and perhaps deeper > > question: did these categories ever have any > > reflection? Francis Baudel's The Wheels of Commerse', > > Steadman Jones' Outcast London', and Mayhews' london > > might be useful to come back to.. but thats a > > 'research' question, or is it??? > > cheers > > Solly > > > > --- Ravi Sundaram wrote: > > >> Dear Anant, > >> > >> my sense is that the 'trader lobby' is a shorthand > >> for a large number > >> of social groups in the city: small and large shop > >> owners, workers > >> etc etc. Perhaps a new social form not explainable > >> by classic urban sociology? > >> > >> We have to see about that....Sure the mall owners > >> will be happy, but > >> most of the smaller traders cannot afford the retail > >> rentals in the malls. > >> > >> Ravi > >> > >> At 21:42 07/11/2006, you wrote: > >> > >> >Folks, > >> > > >> >The traders protests in Delhi is an important > >> >development. (see > >> > >>http://www.hindu.com/2006/11/07/stories/2006110718860300.htm > >> >I am familiar with Delhi but can someone tell me in > >> >some detail what is the composition of this trading > >> >community. Jat ? Marwari? This particular decision > >> by > >> >the Supreme Court is just another nail in the > >> coffin. > >> >But it also has serious consequences for urban > >> >politics in India - imagine small traders becoming > >> >militant ? (true traders in Delhi have always been > >> >much more visible in urban politics than elsewhere > >> but > >> >still...) > >> > > >> >It makes room for mega malls which are necessary > >> for > >> >both subsidizing huge projects like metro rails and > >> >also for mopping up the loose cash from household > >> >consumption for big investors like reliance etc., > >> who > >> >are going in for big time retailing. > >> >anyways here is the story in Hindu > >> > >>http://www.hindu.com/2006/11/07/stories/2006110718860300.htm > >> > > >> >anant > >> > > >> >Send instant messages to your online friends > >> http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com > >> >_______________________________________________ > >> >Urbanstudygroup mailing list > >> >Urban Study Group: Reading the South Asian City > >> > > >> >To subscribe or browse the Urban Study Group > >> archives, please visit > >> > >>https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup > >> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Urbanstudygroup mailing list > >> Urban Study Group: Reading the South Asian City > >> > >> To subscribe or browse the Urban Study Group > >> archives, please visit > >> > > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup > >> > > > > > > __________________________________________________________ > > Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new > > http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ > > _______________________________________________ > > Urbanstudygroup mailing list > > Urban Study Group: Reading the South Asian City > > > To subscribe or browse the Urban Study Group archives, please visit > > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup > > > >Zainab Bawa >Bombay >www.xanga.com/CityBytes >http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html > >_________________________________________ >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. >To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list >List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> From aditya at sarai.net Thu Nov 9 21:48:26 2006 From: aditya at sarai.net (Aditya Nigam) Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2006 17:18:26 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Reader-list] Kafila launch at ISF Message-ID: <1267.203.153.41.141.1163089106.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> Dear friends, This is to invite you to the public launch of our collaborative weblog www.kafila.org at the India Social Forum in Delhi. Kafila is a radical team blog that focuses on media critique and politics. The details of the programme are as follows: Public Launch of www.kafila.org Date: 10 November Time: 4 pm Venue: S4 PLEASE NOTE that the venue S4 has for some reason been left out of the site map (both the printed versions and the boards displayed at both the sites (namely the North Bajri and the South Bajri grounds) at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. We have been assured that things will be sorted out by 9 am tomorrow morning. In any case, please check both venues (both can be accessed from the south side as well - so you have to walk less). We look forward to your presence in the programme. In solidarity, - Forum for Radical Democracy - Kafila team members Aditya Nigam Fellow, CSDS Delhi 110054 Tel: 2223 1855 (R) 91 11 2394 2199 (O) From nicheant at yahoo.co.uk Fri Nov 10 14:27:40 2006 From: nicheant at yahoo.co.uk (Nishant) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 08:57:40 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Launch of Forum Radio@ISF 2006 Message-ID: <20061110085740.99344.qmail@web27908.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Dear Friends On behalf on the Indian Institute for Critical Action: Centre in Movement (CACIM) and PANOS South Asia we are proud to announce the launch of Forum Radio. CACIM and PANOS South Asia have managed to create this radio successfully with the active collaboration of OneWorld South Asia (http://southasia.oneworld.net/), Sarai ( www.sarai.net) and Youth Forum. With the webcasting of its first programme, Forum Radio has begun providing journalistic coverage of the Indian Social Forum (ISF) 2006. the Radio is currently available at OneWorld South Asia at http://southasia.oneworld.net/section/isf and will soon be available at www.sarai.net and http://www.panossouthasia.org/. The Radio will also be broadcast on the Indian Institute of Mass Communication campus radio at FM 96.9 Hz. Its radio, called Apna Radio, can be heard within a radius of 10 kilometres from their campus in Delhi. The visitors at the ISF venue at Jawaharlal Nehru grounds can access this frequency. (Please visit www.forumradio.cacim.net for a list web sites where you can listen to Forum Radio broadcasts.) The past experience of the social forum movement in India suggests that journalistic coverage of the event is restricted only to some small quarters of the independent and grassroots media. To plug this gap and to challenge the elitist mainstream media some people who engage with the WSF process have decided to journalistically cover it through Forum Radio. This coverage will continue throughout the ISF, during which it will cover the events organised, the bigger issues concerning the social forum movement and, among other things, interviews with visiting speakers and participants. We plan to continue with our coverage even after the ISF formally gets over, so that there is some space for evaluation of and reflection on the events held during the forum and the forum itself. You can write to Forum Radio at ForumRadio at cacim.net. With warm regards. The Team @ Forum Radio. Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com From avinashcold at gmail.com Thu Nov 9 10:19:03 2006 From: avinashcold at gmail.com (Avinash Kumar) Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2006 10:19:03 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Gujarat Carnage: Is Their Hope? India Social Forum Message-ID: *GUJARAT CARNAGE: IS THERE HOPE?* * * *Date: 11/1106 4:00-7:00 evening* *Venue: Hall M2, India Social Forum * * * *Speakers: Teesta Setalvad, Swami Agnivesh, Fr Cedric Prakash, Farah Naqvi, Kamalmitra Chenoy, Siddhartha Varadrajan, Sophia Khan, Hiren Gandhi, Lallubhai Desai* * * Gujarat 2002 witnessed an estimated killing of 2000 people, rape of approximately 400 women, property damage worth Rs 3800 crores, around 1100 restaurants destroyed, 563 religious places destroyed or damaged. About 2.5lakh people were directly displaced. * * *Where do we stand today almost five years down the line? * The percentage of compensation compared to the official damage comes to a meager 7 %. To top it all, the state govt. recently decided to return Rs 19 crores saying that there was no further need! While a maximum ceiling to property damage was pegged at Rs 50,000 (well below compared to other similar cases like Anti-Sikh riots package), less than 10% people have received over Rs 30,000! There are on the other hand, numerous cases where people have been paid as low as Rs 60 to 500! Most of it remains within the range of 1200-2500! Recent surveys reveal the shocking facts that there are between 5000 to 10,000 families still living in relief camps (ranging between 50 to 80)! They are not recognized by the state government and remain without any basic civic amenities! Out of a total of 4252 FIRs lodged (very minuscule compared to unofficial figures), 2208 cases were summarily closed and police has shown unprecedented alacrity in releasing those accused within one year of the carnage. According to latest figures 214 people are still languishing in jails under POTA, all Muslims! Severe economic and social boycott continues not only against the victims but the minorities in general. In a recent case, 70 people were denied their BPL cards by the state officials over the charges that they were Bangladeshis. An extreme sense of exclusion, marginalisation and hopelessness remains palpable among the minorities. The state government on the other hand continues to accuse those raising these issues for trying to divide five crore Gujaratis. Despite all this, there seems to be a larger amnesia about the continuing plight of the Muslims in Gujarat. This panel discussion is another attempt to bring Gujarat back into focus into the collective memory of the people. This is crucial as Gujarat remains just one of the instance while the rest of the country is on its way to becoming the larger lab of the Hindutva. If you believe in notions like secular democracy, liberty, freedom, equality, diversity, pluralism, be part of this process. For this, Gujarat remains the test case. Shake the conscience of the civil society and the state. * * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061109/135c0ff1/attachment.html From sollybenj at yahoo.co.in Thu Nov 9 20:53:33 2006 From: sollybenj at yahoo.co.in (solomon benjamin) Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2006 15:23:33 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] [Urbanstudy] traders protest in Delhi and where sociolgical definations fail In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20061109191853.034ba180@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20061109152334.79176.qmail@web8912.mail.in.yahoo.com> Dear Ravi, Zainab, and all I think we are in to seeing more explictly forms of turbalence, and violent at times -- where contest shifts into violent conflict. Here, in a central way what is being encroached is property in its material sense, but also in a conceptual way, the notion of a homogenized property. and here, perhaps the conceptual inaction amoung progressive academics, activists, and elsewhere, is the perpuation of a sort of de-politisizing binary(ies) that marks the discussions. And while it dis-empowers more complex locality based discussions, it certainly empowers the planners who feel like God, and allows the architect to play golf with the new globally connected elite. It might be useful to look at the forms of turbulence not just as it violently uproots the poor, but are their forms of occupation of physical and conceptual territory. About the politicians, well, I suspect the party system of politics is at a crises -- but not in the way that Appadurai points to in Deep democracy, but in far more hydraish ways. Look at the intent of the Vote India campanign for instance. solly --- Ravi Sundaram wrote: > Dear Zainab, > > I wish I had easy answers to these questions. The > subaltern wisdom in > Delhi is that the current demolitions have been > instigated by mall > owners, the strength of this belief testifies to a > change in the way > people are beginning to see mall development in > urban areas. > > I am not sure the current demolitions mark the > beginning of the > decline of small shops in Delhi (or any city), the > reasons for their > existence are too deeply embedded to be wished away > by courts or > violence. Nor will informal ways of changing money > go away to develop > small spaces in the city. Nor will malls necessarily > decline, they > are too tied in to the heady economy of desire and > speculation that > we see before us. I suspect many will crash, > reinvent themselves as > office spaces - who knows? > > What the current developments signify is a hostility > to forms of life > in the city that have emerged in the last 30 years > in Delhi : working > class settlements on the riverbank, small shops, > household workshops > etc, all of which do not fall within the language of > liberal rights > based languages of understanding the city. The > riverbank settlements > were the first to go, and now the 'traders'. The > latter is much more > that just traders, it includes workers in shops, the > supply economy > etc etc. And the roots of commerce in Delhi go back > to the Moghul > empire. In this sense the court decisions express > this hostility to > urban forms that have emerged in the last few > decades, but as always, > the decisions have disrupted the lives of all,.Even > some of the first > middle-class supporters of the court decisions are > now squirming. > > I am more amazed by the relative paralysis of > politicians in > understanding the implications of what the court > decisions mean for > the future of the city; I can forsee some turbulent > months/years > ahead for the city. > > The local councillors may have more guts than the > central > leadership, see this story: > > http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/218200611091532.htm > > > Ravi > > > > At 06:52 PM 09-11-06, you wrote: > > >Dear Anant, Dr. Benjamin, Ravi and others, > > > >A question which I am interested in is this: the > attempt is to bring > >liquid, floating cash into institutionalized > structures. So you have the > >SC saying no more commercial shops running in > houses - shut shop! Now what > >is this attempt at bringing in cash/moeny from > 'informal sector' doing to > >subjectivity? > > > >Secondly, what role is the court playing in this > age of urban politics? > >Are courts now beyond classic rights? > > > > > > > > > Dear Anant, Ravi, and friends > > > One of the ways in which the classic > sociologogical > > > definations fails, is that it assumes that > property > > > (and hense 'traders')are on a trajectory towards > > > greater homogenizing and 'consolidation'. Both > the > > > 'right' and the 'left' meet up in land, as > someone > > > noted -- one from the point of capital and the > other > > > on to common conciousness. These binaries > shifting the > > > political to the esoteric rather than the day to > day, > > > miss out on the actual material basis of how > property > > > gets 'encroached' via multiple land tenures. In > doing > > > so, breaks these clean trajectories, and the > binary > > > between capital and labour, or then as the > current > > > thinking on "entrepreneurship" vs those who > cannot be > > > (some Charles Booth from Victorian times here!). > > > > > In the Delhi case, as well as elsewhere, rather > than a > > > definate trajectory, there is a perhaps a > turbelent > > > transformation at play that implicates a variety > of > > > groups: 14 and 16 year olds working in a > factory, who > > > invest in 'chit funds-committees' (drawing > surpluses > > > from local real estate markets), rather than > being > > > 'docile labour' on their way to class > conciousness. > > > and some 2300 km away in Bangalore's central > Shivaji > > > nager, experiences the St Mary's feast -- the > month > > > long celebratory event of Christians hindus and > > > Muslims. One of the last times, I also saw the > Infant > > > Jesus perched up on a replica of the Delhi Bahai > > > temple! oops is this 'culture' or then?? A > closer > > > look shows the parallel occoupation of space > that is > > > systemized into conventions over the decades -- > the > > > 'rath' yatras by all three religions, and the > funding > > > of hawkers across religious groups, and the > floating > > > street vendors selling the latest made in china > toys > > > sourced from a factory perhaps in East Delhi. > The > > > messiness, and the complexity of propeorty > shifting > > > into non-property, of culture and economy and > into > > > politics of claiming space over that month is > > > something no die hard police commissioner > intending > > > to clean Bangalore of its cyclist, or the BATF > with > > > their Singaporean agendas could do much aganist. > and > > > this is certainly not traditional. look at the > more > > > contemporary occoupations and encroachments of > > > categories in other parts of Bangalore -- Austin > towns > > > wonderful streetlit festivities or then another > 2000 > > > km away, the particular puja celebrations in > > > Chandonenagore in the Kolkata metro area with > their > > > snazzy electrified lighting floats -- where > complex > > > bamboo and strip metal contacts shape lighting > > > sequencing to pick up the latest theme that > imagines > > > their future. Ooops,, is there IPR here... and > what > > > about designating celebratory zones as some > urban > > > designers might like to 'Theme' these into. > > > > > I think for sure, if you see the real estate > websites, > > > the current evictions and re-zoning do benefit > as > > > Anant points out, the malls and multiplexes, > just as > > > Micro credit funders and promoters view that 14 > year > > > old 'investing / gambeling' in the 'evil money > > > leder's' chit fund/ committee. I suspect that > one of > > > the reasons why the progressive left have missed > this > > > 'constituency' untill after the fact, is an > === message truncated === __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ From safar.delhi at gmail.com Thu Nov 9 12:18:11 2006 From: safar.delhi at gmail.com (Safar Delhi) Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2006 12:18:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Kafila: an interesting blog to see Message-ID: Dear All Our warm greetings to you all. Very recently we came to know about a web blog named www.kafila.org, run by some intellectuals and social activists. It is a collaborative practice of radical political and media critique, and an engagement with the present. Nivedita Menon, Apoorvanand, Mukul Sharma, Aditya Nigam, Abhay kumar Dube, Ravi Sundaram, Mahmood Farooqui, Ravikant, Lawrence Liang, Zainab Bawa, Subhash Gatade, Shivam Vij, Suddhabrata Sengupta are some of the members and frequent contributiors to the blog. It is really an alternative space where you can exchange your ideas and thoughts on various issues. One can find interesting articles under catergories like Debates, Excavation, Government, Identities, Language, Law, Media Politics, Politics, Violence/Conflict, etc on it. We feel that this blog could be a good resource bank and the readers can get news and views even of those kinds, which is otherwise very difficult to get. Congratulations to the initiators, members and the readers on the beginning of this KAFILA. www.kafila.org is must to visit. Warm regards Ek Humsafar (A Co-traveler) -- SAFAR a collective journey of researchers, journalists, students, lawyers, activists, cultural practitioners and performing artists with a deep commitment to the ideals of social and gender equality. This an open space for the dialogue, betterment and empowerment of the marginalized. http://www.safarindia.zoomshare.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061109/916672ae/attachment.html From cahen.x at levels9.com Fri Nov 10 01:46:21 2006 From: cahen.x at levels9.com (xavier cahen) Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2006 21:16:21 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] pourinfos Newsletter / 11-08 to 11-15-2006 Message-ID: <45538C95.2020704@levels9.com> pourinfos.org l'actualité du monde de l'art / daily Art news ----------------------------------------------------------------------- From Wenesday November 8, 2006 to Wenesday November 15 2006 (included) ------------------------------------------------------------------- (mostly in french) @ 001 (08/11/2006) Meetings: Art and new technologies, From mental image to the present image, Conference, Wednesday November 8, 2006, Museum of Contemporary art of Lyon, Lyon, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33702-tit--Art-et-nouvelles-technologies-de-l-image -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 002 (08/11/2006) Exhibition : All that is solid melts into air, XXe international Workshop of Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33836-tit--All-that-is-solid-melts-into-air-XXe -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 003 (08/11/2006) Exhibition : "TRACES : Paris, la Havane, Tchernobyl" Alain-Gilles Bastid, FIAP Jean Monnet, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33849-tit--TRACES-Paris-la-Havane-Tchernobyl- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 004 (08/11/2006) Formation : To publish and diffuse catalogues and art books, Cipac, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33859-tit-Formation-Editer-et-diffuser-des -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 005 (08/11/2006) Rencontres : Diversité et indépendance des médias, Mercredi 8 novembre 2006, librairie Tekhnê, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33874-tit--Diversite-et-independance-des-medias- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 006 (08/11/2006) Meetings: Science with the service of art: when works are revealed, the Bar of Paris sciences, Wednesday November 8, 2006, Dôme St Paul, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33878-tit--La-science-au-service-de-l-art-quand -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 007 (08/11/2006) Meetings : Matthieu Laurette, Observatory of the new media, Wednesday November 8, 2006, Ensad, Paris, http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33880-tit--Matthieu-Laurette-Observatoire-des -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 008 (08/11/2006) Call : A.I.R. International Artists Workshop, Seminar, FilmFest-Balatonfured, Csopak, Hungary. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33899-tit--A-I-R-International-Artists-Workshop- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 009 (08/11/2006) Call : Arco/Beep new media awards, Madrid, Spain. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33900-tit--Arco-Beep-new-media-awards-Madrid- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 010 (08/11/2006) Call : And experimentation research grants in art+science+technology, Langlois Foundation, Montreal, Canada. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33901-tit--Bourses-de-recherche-et-d-experimentation -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 011 (08/11/2006) Call : Call for entries X-Cape 2007, Cape Town and South Africa. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33902-tit--Call-for-entries-X-Cape-2007-Cape-Town -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 012 (08/11/2006) Call : call for women artists, A.I.R. Gallery, New York, Usa. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33903-tit--call-for-women-artists-A-I-R-Gallery- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 013 (08/11/2006) Call : INTERFERENCIA 2006, association Marato de l'espectacle, Barcelone, Spain. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33907-tit-Appel-a-Candidature-INTERFERENCIA-2006- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 014 (08/11/2006) Call : Call for Papers: Forum On Contemporary Art & Society, Singapore, République de Singapour. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33908-tit--Call-for-Papers-Forum-On-Contemporary -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 015 (08/11/2006) Call : DOMINIQUE, Master 2 Edition de la Sorbonne, Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33909-tit--DOMINIQUE-Master-2-Edition-de-la -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 016 (08/11/2006) Various : Avant-gardes, Saturday December 9, 2006, in Claire Dehove, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33910-tit-Divers-Les-Avants-Gardes-Samedi-9 -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 017 (08/11/2006) Various : program Claude Ber, November 2006, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33911-tit-Divers-programme-Claude-Ber-novembre -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 018 (08/11/2006) Various : Vincent Lamouroux, Prize of the foundation of company Ricard 2006, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33912-tit-Divers-Vincent-Lamouroux-Prix-de-la -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 019 (08/11/2006) Publication : Albane Gelle, Inventaire/Invention, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33913-tit--Albane-Gelle-Inventaire-Invention- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 020 (08/11/2006) Publication : DVD “Less noise”, Helene Bouquin, KAZO, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33914-tit--DVD-Moins-de-bruit-Helene-Bouquin- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 021 (08/11/2006) Publication : Frog n° 4, Automne-Hiver 2006, contemporary art review, Les presses du réel, Dijon, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33915-tit--Frog-n-4-Automne-Hiver-2006-revue -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 022 (08/11/2006) Publication : LIVRAISON #7, editions rhinoceros, r-diffusion, Strasbourg, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33916-tit--LIVRAISON-7-editions-rhinoceros- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 023 (08/11/2006) Publication : New DVD Shades, Label Ombres BlackLight, Lowave edition, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33917-tit--Nouveau-DVD-Ombres-Label-Ombres -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 024 (08/11/2006) Publication : Poetic of Cinema 2, Raoul Ruiz, Editions Dis Voir, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33918-tit--Poetique-du-Cinema-2-Raoul-Ruiz- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 025 (08/11/2006) Publication : ri B osome, editions l'Indice Pensable, Aniane, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33919-tit--ri-B-osome-editions-l-Indice-Pensable- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 026 (08/11/2006) Residency : Artist-in-Residence program at IAMAS, Ogaki city, Japan. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33921-tit-Residence-Artist-in-Residence-program-at -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 027 (08/11/2006) Residency : At home in Europe, European identity, International residencies, SIS Arts, BEK, InterSpace , RIXC, Europe. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33922-tit-Residence-At-home-in-Europe-European -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 028 (08/11/2006) Job : artist teacher of teaching video prevalence, E.S.A.C - École Supérieure d'Art et Céramique, Tarbes, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33923-tit--un-professeur-d-enseignement-artistique -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 029 (08/11/2006) Job : Vacant position in the Design Faculty, Institute of Time-Based Media, at Berlin University of the Arts, Allemagne. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33924-tit-Offre-demploi-Vacant-position-in-the -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 030 (08/11/2006) Screening : "Autofiction / Self-portrait”", ERSEP Ecole Regionale Superieure d'Expression Plastique, Tourcoing, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33934-tit--Autoportrait-Autofiction-ERSEP-Ecole -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 031 (08/11/2006) Exhibition : Storylines, art center passerelle, Brest, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33937-tit--Storylines-centre-d-art-passerelle- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 032 (09/11/2006) Meetings : Meetings: international conference of Brussels, “Radios and Research: Ways/Future Voices of the Radio”, on November 9, 2006, Brussels, Belgium. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33631-tit--colloque-international-de-Bruxelles- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 033 (09/11/2006) Exhibition : Roland Sabatier, Le Bon Accueil /SEPA, Rennes, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33656-tit--Roland-Sabatier-Le-Bon-Accueil-SEPA- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 034 (09/11/2006) Program : November at MK2 Editions, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33793-tit--En-novembre-chez-MK2-Editions-Paris- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 035 (09/11/2006) Meetings : International conference Radio operator Research Network, IREN, IREN, le 9-10 novembre 2006, Louvain-la-Neuve / Brussels, Belgium. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33876-tit--Colloque-International-Radio-Research -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 036 (09/11/2006) Meetings : Poetic evening, Thursday November 9, 2006, gallery etc, Montpellier, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33882-tit--Soiree-Poetique-Jeudi-9-novembre-2006- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 038 (09/11/2006) Meetings: project of art COPYRIGHT, Huber/Lindner, on Friday November 24, 2006, Immanence, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33930-tit--projet-d-art-COPYRIGHT-Huber-Lindner-le -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 039 (10/11/2006) Rencontres : SEMINAR NO.2 - Art and Documentary, SOCIALEAST, Friday 10 November 2006, Ludwig Museum Budapest, Hongrie. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33779-tit--SEMINAR-NO-2-Art-and-Documentary- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 040 (10/11/2006) Meetings: Ghassan Zaqtan, cipM - centre international de poesie Marseille, Marseille, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33877-tit--Ghassan-Zaqtan-cipM-centre -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 041 (10/11/2006) Exhibition : “Invested White Space”, L'Espace Blanc, Biennale d'Art Contemporain à Bourges, Bourges, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33938-tit--L-Espace-Blanc-Investi-L-Espace -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 042 (10/11/2006) Exhibition : Chapter 1- Talking with phantoms, The House of Dr R, New York, Usa. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33940-tit--Chapter-1-Talking-with-phantoms-The -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 043 (10/11/2006) Exhibition : Lucien Pelen, photo & videos, galerie ESCA et Artelinea, Milhaud, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33943-tit--Lucien-Pelen-photographies-videos- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 044 (10/11/2006) Exhibition : neuroTransmitter, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Usa. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33945-tit--neuroTransmitter-Henry-Art-Gallery- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 045 (10/11/2006) Exhibition : Simultane 1, Alexandre Berthier et Stéfane Perraud, gallery 77, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33946-tit--Simultane-1-Alexandre-Berthier-et -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 046 (11/11/2006) Exhibition : Optica 2006: the Gijon International Festival of Video Art, November 11th-17th, 2006, Gijón, Spain. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33690-tit--Optica-2006-the-Gijon-International -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 047 (11/11/2006) Meetings : Salon Light#3, Cneai= à Point Ephemere, 11-12 novembre 2006, Paris, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33932-tit--Salon-Light-3-Cneai-a-Point-Ephemere- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 048 (11/11/2006) Exhibition : Vincent Victor Jouffe, Pascal Moreul, Insolites Mondes d'Artistes, Ville es Brets, Saint Meloir des bois, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33939-tit--Vincent-Victor-Jouffe-Pascal-Moreul- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 049 (12/11/2006) Performance : Taste of Art, November 12, 2006, Mac/Val , Vitry sur Seine, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33936-tit--Le-gout-de-l-Art-12-novembre-2006- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 050 (13/11/2006) Various : Festival MIA, Musiques Inventives d’Annecy, en novembre à Annecy, Annecy, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33886-tit-Divers-Festival-MIA-Musiques-Inventives -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 051 (14/11/2006) Screenig : documentary Festival , Les Ecrans Documentaires, Arcueil, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33798-tit--Festival-de-documentaires-Les-Ecrans -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 052 (14/11/2006) Exhibition : m+m & friends, Maison d'art Bernard Anthonioz, Nogent -sur-Marne, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33856-tit--m-m-friends-Maison-d-art-Bernard -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 053 (14/11/2006) Meetings : “Here and there”, forms of the conscience at the time of the reproduction, Pierre-Damien Huyghe, ce qui force à penser, Tuesday November 14, 2006, Maison populaire de Montreuil, Montreuil, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33928-tit--Ici-et-la-les-formes-de-la -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 054 (14/11/2006) Screening: Work in Progress, François Rabelais University , Tours, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33935-tit--Work-in-Progress-Universite-Francois -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 055 (15/11/2006) Call: re:place 2007, Berlin, Germany. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33893-tit--re-place-2007-Berlin- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 056 (15/11/2006) Exhibition : Window on street, with the small Gallery, Ecole Régionale des beaux arts de Rouen, Rouen, France. http://www.pourinfos.org/art-33941-tit--Fenetre-sur-rue-a-la-petite-Galerie- -------------------------------------------------------------------- @ 057 (Apostils) Displaying works of art. Some remarks about exhibition design. Jérôme Glicensteinhttp://pourinfos.org/art-33648-tit-Displaying-works-of-art-Some-remarks-about-exhibition-design- From ysaeed7 at yahoo.com Thu Nov 9 17:06:03 2006 From: ysaeed7 at yahoo.com (Yousuf) Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2006 03:36:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Amir Khusrau at India Social Forum Message-ID: <816989.28424.qm@web51407.mail.yahoo.com> In an interesting coincidence, the India Social Forum (2006) is being held around the time of (and not very far from) the annual Urs of Delhi’s favourite poet Amir Khusrau. While you may take out time to enjoy some traditional qawwalis at the shrine, we bring you an exclusive installation of Amir Khusrau’s poetry at the venue of the India Social Forum. Utter a word of truth against the king And behead yourself with the sword of your own tongue Amir Khusrau: Between the Kings and the People A Contemporary Visual Interpretation of Khusrau’s Persian Poetry about Justice, Disarmament, Egalitarianism, Cultural Dialogue, and Human Dignity Conceptualized by Yousuf Saeed, Designed by Sanjog Sharan and Mrinalini Location: Visual Arts Gallery, LNDO Ground (south west of Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium), New Delhi Dates: 10th-13th November 2006 All are cordially invited www.ektara.org --------------------------------- Want to start your own business? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061109/ead5ee92/attachment.html From aakashvishwakarma at yahoo.co.in Thu Nov 9 19:47:13 2006 From: aakashvishwakarma at yahoo.co.in (aakash vishwakarma) Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2006 14:17:13 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] urgent information required Message-ID: <958865.85547.qm@web8314.mail.in.yahoo.com> hi, i am aakash vishwakarma an architecture student from delhi,,,am doing a report on evolution of nizamuddin basti,,,from the starting till now ,,,,,,,, please help me out ,,its urgent. i would be greatful to you thanking you Aakash Vishwakarma --------------------------------- Find out what India is talking about on - Yahoo! Answers India Send FREE SMS to your friend's mobile from Yahoo! Messenger Version 8. Get it NOW -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061109/b7634316/attachment.html From billy0602 at yahoo.com Wed Nov 8 18:58:26 2006 From: billy0602 at yahoo.com (kj) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 05:28:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] invitation: 3 Screens film Festival, Delhi Message-ID: <20061108132831.64750.qmail@web55605.mail.re4.yahoo.com> You are invited to the 3 SCREENS FILM FESTIVAL at the Public Ka Multiplex India Social Forum WHAT: 3 Screens. 3 Days. 99 Films WHERE: at the India Social Forum, Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium Grounds, New Delhi WHEN: 10-11-12 November 2006 10am - 10pm (approx,. depending on date) The film festival is OPEN TO ALL (entry is through a one-time registration at the ISF entrance) ----------------------------------------------- Download the SCHEDULE (pdf, 113kb) http://www.ektaramusic.com/dfa/schedule.pdf and the CATALOG (pdf, 995kb) at http://www.ektaramusic.com/dfa/3%20Screens%20Catalogue%20Sm.pdf ALL the ABOVE documents are also available at http://groups-beta.google.com/group/delhifilmarchive/files/ Join Our Mailing List: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/delhifilmarchive/ Contact Us: delhifilmarchive (at) gmail.com ----------------------------------------------- SHORT SYNOPSIS: The 3 Screens Film Festival put together by the Delhi Film Archive at the Public Ka Multiplex features four sections: New Images – 35 recent films by Indian filmmakers (and a few International films that are about Indians). Other Worlds Are Breathing – 22 films shown at World Social Forum, Brazil 2005. Working Lives – 22 films in an international package of films on Labour in the time of globalisation Directors Cut – 10 films by invited Indian documentary filmmakers, who also show a film each of their choice Additionally, each day, in each auditorium Open Space has been kept aside for ISF participants to register films directly. ----------------------------------------------- SECTION 1: New Images In early 2004, Films For Freedom put together its first package of 64 new documentaries during the Vikalp film festival in Mumbai. These films have since then travelled across many cities in India and to Europe and the USA. These films were reflective of the richness of the Indian documentary and the wide range of subjects that were being tackled by the filmmakers. They were also evidence of the diverse forms that were being used to narrate stories. The 3 Screens festival provides us with an opportunity to map the developments that have taken place in the last three years in the Indian documentary practice. This section will also showcase filmmakers from other countries whose films deal with an Indian subject 3 MEN AND A BULB Dir: Pankaj Rishi Kumar The hopes and anxieties of three men who earn a livelihood from their watermill in the foothills of the Himalayas. 74 min / 2006 / Hindi (English subtitles) / kumartalkies (at) yahoo.com 1000 DAYS AND A DREAM Dir: P Baburaj and C Saratchandran Tracing the journey of the nearly 5 year old anti Coca-Cola struggle in Plachimada in Kerala. 77 min / 2006 / Malayalam and English / sarat (at) satyam.net.in AFSPA, 1958 Dir: Haobam Paban Kumar A diary of events in 2004 as the people of Manipur rose up in protest against the Armed Forces Special Power Act. 77 min / 2006 / English and Manipuri / haobampaban (at) gmail.com AMERIKA AMERIKA Dir: K P Sasi A satirical but severe indictment of America’s role in escalating world conflict. 5 min / English and Tamil / films4peace (at) gmail.com BARE Dir: Santana Issar A daughter’s search to find meaning, if any, in her relationship with her alcoholic father. 11 min / 2006 / English / santanaissar (at) gmail.com BHAL KHABAR (GOOD NEWS) Dir: Altaf Mazid A writer looks for a bit of good news in the days of the Assam Movement (1979-85). 18 min / 2005 / Assamese (English subtitles) / tayaba (at) sancharnet.in BHANGON (EROSION) Dir: Sourav Sarangi 600,000 people have become homeless as river banks in West Bengal in India are getting eroded at an unprecedented pace. 60 min / 2006 / Bengali (English subtitled) / souravsarangi (at) gmail.com BULLSHIT Dir: Peå Holmquist and Suzanne Khardalian Vandana Shiva, Indian activist and physicist, campaigns against globalization, patenting and bio-piracy. 73 min / 2005 / English / pea.holmquist (at) chello.se / www.peaholmquist.com CALCUTTA PRIDE MARCH 2004 Dir: Tejal Shah Transsexuals and gay men walk down the streets of Calcutta to assert the rights of sexual and gender minorities. 12 min / 2004 / Hindi and Bengali (English subtitles) / ts (at) vsnl.net CONTINUOUS JOURNEY Dir: Ali Kazimi In 1914, a ship carrying immigrants from British India was wrongfully turned away by Canada. An investigation into the past and its reverberations in the present. 87 min / 2004 / English, Punjabi (English subtitles) / ali.kazimi (at) sympatico.ca DELHI-MUMBAI-DELHI Dir: Saba Dewan An intimate look into the lives of dance-bar girls, shot against the backdrop of the Maharashtra government’s controversial move to ban them from dancing. 63 min / 2006 / Hindi (English subtitles) / sabadewan (at) gmail.com; khel (at) vsnl.com FISTFUL OF STEEL Dir: Leena Rani Narzary, Nidhi Bal Singh, Sabir Haque Yet more concrete structures are being planned along the Yamuna river bed that will displace peasants. 26 mins / 2006 / Hindi (English subtitles) / sabir.haque (at) gmail.com GAON KE NAON THEATRE, MOR NOAN HABIB (MY VILLAGE IS THEATRE, MY NAME IS HABIB) Dir: Sanjay Maharishi & Sudhanva Deshpande A journey into the creative work and politics of the legendary theatre director Habib Tanvir, and his troupe, Naya Theatre. 73 min / 2005 / Hindi and Chattisgarhi (English subtitled) / sanjay.maharishi (at) gmail.com HEALTH MATTERS Dir: Shikha Jhingan A panoramic look at health care in India through the everyday experiences of patients. 60 min / 2005 / English / shikhaj (at) vsnl.com KAYA POOCHHE MAYA SE (JOURNEYINGS AND CONVERSATIONS) Dir: Arvind Sinha The many faces of Howrah Station, one of the world’s busiest ‘happenings’ on rails; and the varied creatures that exist on the banks of the Ganga flowing nearby. 88 min / 2003 / Hindi (English subtitles) / arvindsnh (at) yahoo.com KINJAL Dir: Vaani Arora A film that raises questions of gender through the story of a young, school going but ‘employed’ girl in a working class family. 13 min / 2005 / Hindi (English subtitles) / vaaniarora (at) gmail.com KITTE MIL VE MAHI (WHERE THE TWAIN SHALL MEET) Dir: Ajay Bhardwaj A window onto Dalit aspirations to carve out their own cultural and religious space. Filmed in Punjab. 72 min / 2005 / Punjabi (English subtitles) / ajayunmukt (at) yahoo.com MANY PEOPLE MANY DESIRES Dir: T Jayashree The place of a gay, lesbian or transgendered person in Indian civil society, explored through personal narratives. 45 mins / 2005 / English (with subtitles) / jsree.t (at) gmail.com MINDLESS MINING – THE TRAGEDY OF KUDREMUKH Dir: Shekar Dattatri People campaign against continued mining in the Kudremukh National Park in southern India. 12 min / 2003 / English and Kannada (with subtitles) / www.shekardattatri.com NALINI BY DAY, NANCY BY NIGHT Dir: Sonali Gulati On the outsourcing of American jobs to India through call centres; and the complexities of globalisation, capitalism, and identity. 26 min / 2006 / English / sonalifilm (at) yahoo.com NATAK JARI HAI (THE PLAY GOES ON) Dir: Lalit Vachani About the JANAM theatre group, and what it means to perform socialist ‘agit-prop’ theatre in an India of increasing intolerance and inequality. 84 min / 2005 / Hindi, English (with subtitles) / lvachani (at) del6.vsnl.net.in NOTES FROM THE CREMATORIUM Dir: Amudhan R P About undertakers, a community remembered only in the event of death and held as one of the lowest in the caste hierarchy. 36 min / 2005 / Tamil (English subtitled) / marupakkam (at) rediffmail.com ONE DAY FROM A HANGMAN’S LIFE Dir: Joshy Joseph After many years, an execution took place in India in 2004. The media whipped up a frenzy that turned hangman into hero. 83 mins / 2005 / Bengali, Hindi (English subtitled) / jjoshy (at) gmail.com ONE SHOW LESS Dir: Nayantara C Kotian Usha Talkies is a low-priced one-screen cinema hall with a raucous, seat breaking, working class public. What will happen if the hall closes down? 19 min / 2005 / Hindi / nayantara.kotian (at) gmail.com PRINTED RAINBOW Dir: Gitanjali Rao An old woman and her cat rummage through match-boxes whose labels transport them into myriad magical wonderful worlds. 13 min / 2006 / English / gitanjalirao (at) gmail.com RIVER TAMING MANTRAS Dir: Sanjay Barnela, Vasant Sabherwal The politics of flood management in India and the corruption that lies behind it. 35 min / 2004 / Hindi, English (with subtitles) / moving (at) vsnl.com SHE WRITE Dir: Anjali Monteiro & K.P. Jayasankar Four Tamil women poets write on sexuality and desire in the face of severe threats of violence by male peers and “custodians” of culture. 55 min / 2005 / Tamil (English subtitled) / monteiro (at) tiss.edu; umctiss (at) vsnl.com SMARANA – REMEMBERING LOST CHILDREN (SMARANA – THRIGIRANI BIDDALA KOSAM) Dir: C Vanaja On the agony of mothers who have lost their children in the naxalite movement in Andhra Pradesh. 31 min / 2004 / Telugu and English (English subtitled) / vanajac (at) yahoo.com / http://vanajac.blogspot.com TALES FROM THE MARGINS Dir: Kavita Joshi About the anguish, rage and resolve of Manipur’s women as they wage an extraordinary protest against the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act. 23 min / 2006 / Manipuri with English subtitles / kj.impulse (at) gmail.com / http://kavitajoshi.blogspot.com TEMPORARY LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS Dir: Monica Bhasin A poetic essay that explores the ideas of borders, boundaries, limits and forbidden spaces. 35 min / 2005 / English (with subtitles) / monicabhasin (at) yahoo.com THE GREAT INDIAN SCHOOL SHOW Dir: Avinash Deshpande About a school that monitors every action of its students across every inch of its premises using 185 closed circuit cameras. 53 min / 2005 / Marathi (English subtitled) / avinashdesh (at) gmail.com; avinashd (at) indiamail.com THE HOUSE ON GULMOHAR AVENUE Dir: Samina Mishra What does it mean to be a Muslim in today’s India? A personal journey into the ideas of identity and belonging. 30 min / 2005 / Hindustani and English (with English subtitles) / samina (at) vsnl.com THE STORY OF A GOLDEN RIVER Dir: Soumitra Dastidar The river-water rich North-East region of India will have 163 dams in the coming years. But why? And what price will the riverine people pay? 40 min / 2006 / with English subtitles / soumitra_dastidar (at) rediffmail.com VANDE MATARAM (THE SHIT VERSION) Dir: Amudhan R P The popular version of Vande Mataram is used as a soundtrack for images of manual scavengers at work. 5 min / 2005 / Hindi / marupakkam (at) rediffmail.com WAITING Dir: Atul Gupta & Shabnam Ara As men go ‘missing’ in Kashmir, their wives live out endless years as ‘half widows’. 30 mins / 2005 / Kashmiri (English subtitles) / arashabnam (at) hotmail.com Signature Film: 3 Screens Film Festival BAAT EK BAT KI Dir: Nandita Jain A curious bat goes on a spree gathering random everyday objects… Only to come up with a “whole” that is more than just “the sum of its parts”. SECTION 2: Other Worlds Are Breathing: Other Worlds Are Breathing 2005 is an attempt to explore alternatives to neoliberal, capitalistic globalisation through the medium of films, and put together for the World Social Forum at Porto Allegre, Brazil in 2005. In order to curate a package of this kind we had to first define for ourselves the term ‘alternatives,’ one that is really quite broad. After all, the WSF process itself is a search for alternatives. Hence, we have sifted through the different meanings and nuances of the term ‘alternatives’ to focus on that precise subsection that resonates our concern. And our concern is with the politics of change. Thus, this package is a search for those actual lived experiences that have attempted to delineate a different world. The Package was curated by the Magic Lantern Foundation for the World Social Forum, Brazil, 2005 A NIGHT OF PROPHECY Dir: Amar Kanwar The poetry of resistance, as it is imagined, written, voiced and sung across the breadth of India. 77 mins / 2002 / India / amarvg (at) vsnl.com AN EVERGREEN ISLAND Dir: Amanda King, Fabio Cavadini For 9 years, a people in Papua New Guinea survive a military blockade. Their ‘crime’ – closing a vast mine that was devastating their lands. 45 min / 2000 / Australia / cavadini (at) tpgi.com.au CARDBOARD DAYS Dir: Verónica Souto About the lives of waste collectors who scavenge the streets of Buenos Aires; also about the biggest economic and social crisis in Argentina's history. 51 min / 2003 / Argentina / diasdecarton (at) yahoo.co.uk EL MUNDO DEL MALEK Dir: Natalie Muntermann, Andrea Schultens The Paladine puppeteers of Ecuador and their struggle to survive. 11 min / 2004 / Germany / natalie.muntermann (at) gmx.de http://www.ladoc.de JUCHITÁN QUEER PARADISE Dir: Patricio Henriquez How is it that the Zapotec Indians of Juchitán (Mexico) are remarkable tolerant towards homosexuals.... 65 min / 2002 / Canada / macumba (at) macumbainternational.com, www.macumbainternational.com KAREN EDUCATION SURVIVING Dir: Scott O' Brien, Saw Eh Do Wah The Karen people of Burma organise schools for their children in an effort to survive the military junta's genocidal activities. 30 min / 2003 / sobrien1988 (at) hotmail.com MONEY Dir: Isaac Isitan, Why is it that people in Turkey and Argentina lost their entire savings overnight? And what did they do to overcome this crisis? 65 min / 2003 / Canada / isca (at) lesproductionsisca.ca, www.lesproductionsisca.ca NAZRAH: A MUSLIM WOMAN'S PERSPECTIVE Dir: Farah Nousheen Muslim women living in the Pacific Northwest in the USA discuss their views on Islam and the challenges in seeking equality. 55 min / 2003 / USA / alex (at) arabfilm.com / www.arabfilm.com PEACE ONE DAY Dir: Jeremy Gilley For 5 years, one man attempts to persuade the world via the United Nations to sanction a global ceasefire day. 80 min / 2004 / UK / info (at) peaceoneday.org / www.peaceoneday.org PRETTY DYANA Dir: Boris Mitic Gypsy refugees in Belgrade make a living by transforming ordinary Citroen cars into Mad Max-like recycling vehicles. 45 min / 2003 / Serbia / borismitic (at) hotmail.com / www.dribblingpictures.com RED BUTTERFLIES WHERE TWO SPRINGS MERGE Dir: Gaukhar Sydykova and Dilia Ruzieva A portrait of 64 year old Janyl, a village woman who became famous across Europe for her traditional felt carpets. 14 min / 2002 / Kyrgistan / ordo (at) elcat.kg; p.schreiner (at) soros.org RUMBLE IN MUMBAI Dir: Jawad Metni The film documents the 2004 World Social Forum that was held in Mumbai, India, and was attended by over 100,000 people. 58 min / 2004 / USA / jawad (at) pinholepictures.com, www.pinhole.com THE ART OF VIYE DIBA – THE INTELLIGENT HAND Dir: Claudine Pommier A Senegalese artist uses his work to raises environmental and socio-political consciousness. A film on the relationship between the artist and society. 52 min / 2003 / Canada / steinpom (at) shaw.ca http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/4808/ THE LEGENDS OF MADIBA Dir: Helen Henshaw Set in South Africa, this film focuses on the vital role that music plays in the face of racism and oppression. 45 min / 2003 / Canada / hhenshaw (at) videotron.ca THE LIJJAT SISTERHOOD Dir: Kadambari Chintamani / Ajit Oomen Seen through the eyes of four women, this film is about the Shri Mahila Griha Udyog that helps thousands of poor women achieve self reliance. 30 min / 2003 / India / psbt (at) vsnl.com, www.psbt.org THE ROCKSTAR AND THE MULLAHS Dir: Ruhi Hamid / Angus Macqueen. Rock group Junoon and its lead singer Salman Ahmad fight to keep music alive in the face of growing religious intolerance in Pakistan. 50 min / 2003 / UK / rebecca.morris (at) octoberfilms.co.uk , www.octoberfilms.co.uk THE TAKE Director: Avi Lewis In Argentina, thirty unemployed workers refuse to leave their idle factory, in a “take-over” that turns the globalization debate on its head. 87 min / 2004 / Canada / klp1 (at) sympatico.ca; www.nfb.ca/thetake THIRST Dir: Alan Snitow / Deborah Kaufman Is water a basic human right or is it a commodity up for global trade? People in Bolivia, India and USA ask this fundamental question. 62 min / 2004 / USA / amsnitow (at) igc.org TRAJE: WOMEN AND WEAVING IN GUATEMALA Dir: Phoebe Hart Changing values, global economies and racial discrimination are all threatening the weaving and the wearing of the ‘traje’ in Guatemala. 10 min / 2004 / Australia / phoebehart (at) hotmail.com; www.hartflicker.com VENEZUELA BOLIVARIANA: PEOPLE AND STRUGGLE OF THE FOURTH WORLD WAR Dir: Marcelo Andrade Arreaza. On how the ‘Bolivarian revolution’ transcends the national frontiers of Venezuela and contributes to the fight against neo-liberal capitalism… 76 min / 2004 / Venezuela / marcelo (at) calleymedia.org; lino (at) calleymedia.org , www.calleymedia.org WATERWORKS INDIA: FOUR ENGINEERS AND A MANAGER Dir: Pradip Saha Five unsung people keep the intricate traditional science of water management alive against modern onslaught. 22 min / 1998 / India / psaha (at) cseindia.org; www.cseindia.org WORK IN PROGRESS: AT THE WSF 2004 Dir: Paromita Vohra A document of the World Social Forum 2004, Mumbai. Created from video material gathered by student crews across this 5-day event. 59 min / 2004 / India / parodevi (at) mtnl.net.in SECTION 3: Working Lives: For some time now it has become evident that the situation of Indian labour has, in some sense, been resistant to ‘normal’ representation. The Indian State, triumphant Capital, the mainstream media and even the trade unions – all seem to be playing out a well rehearsed, and now tired, script of an imaginary battle, a battle whose results have been already foretold. These are a selection of films that enter the inner spaces of people’s struggles, their triumphs and setbacks. They use various narrative approaches to reveal the lies of the propaganda machines of governments and industrial empires, they document strikes, they expose the murder of labour activists, they take a close look at production processes, and they examine the intersection of gender and labour. The films, question, disturb and inspire. Together they unfurl a vibrant panorama of alternative ways of seeing, thinking and acting. 5 FACTORIES - WORKERS CONTROL IN VENEZUELA Dir: Oliver Ressler, Dario Azzellini An insight into workers struggle for co or self-management in companies across Venezuela. 83 min / 2006 / Austria / http://www.ressler.at/ A DAY'S WORK, A DAY'S PAY Dir: Jonathan Skurnik, Kathy Leichter The fight of three American for programs to help them move off ‘welfare’ and into paid jobs. 57 min / 2002 / USA / kathy (at) mintleafproductions.com BLOSSOMS OF FIRE Dir: Maureen Gosling, Ellen Osborne A look at the fiercely independent women of Juchitán (Mexico): their lives, work culture and politics. 72 min / 2000 / Mexico Canada / http://www.maureengosling.com/ BREAKING WALLS Dir: Nir Nader, Video 48 In an Arab village in Israel, an American agit-prop artist paints a mural on worker issues. Why? 47 min / 2004 / Israel / nirnader (at) yahoo.com / www.hanitzotz.com/video48/breaking-walls.htm CLASS DISMISSED Dir: Loretta Alper, Pepi Leistyna On the narrow representation of the working class in American television from its early days to the present. 62 min / USA / 2005 / maggie (at) mediaed.org, pleistyna (at) hotmail.com CSR PROMISES RESPONSIBILITY Dir: Emanuel Danesch Two big Austrian companies promise corporate responsibility. But who does their lack of responsibility affect? 68 min / 2006 / Austria / http://www.danesch.at/ DANCE WITH FARM WORKERS Dir: Wu Wenguang A dance performance empowers 30 poor farm workers by placing them centre stage – a space they’ve never occupied. 90 min / 2001 / China / wu-wenguang (at) 263.net FRIEND OR FOE Dir: Labour News Production, Seoul The struggle and betrayal of 7000 workers fired by one Korean company in the wake of globalization propelled downsizing. 24 min (excerpt) / 2003 / Korea / www.euromayday.org/ HAMMER AND FLAME Dir: Vaughan Pilikan A look at the ship breaking yards of Gujarat, where titans are broken using the simplest of tools. 10 mins/ 2004 / UK / info (at) greyfilms.com MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINA Dir: David Redmon Behind the New Orleans Mardi Gras, the grimy reality of the lives of sweatshop workers in China who make products for it. 71 min / 2005 / USA / ashley (at) mardigrasmadeinchina.com MEXICAN HOLIDAY INN-WORKERS Dir: Michael Moore Mexican Holiday Inn workers risk being deported from the U.S.A. for creating a union. 12 min (excerpt from “The Awful Truth”) / 2004-05 / USA / www.euromayday.org MURDERED COCA-COLA UNIONISTS IN COLOMBIA Dir: Baerbel Schoenafinger The nexus between MNCs, the government and the paramilitary in the murder of hundreds of unionist workers in Colombia. 59 min / 2004 / Germany / www.kanalb.de/ NEW PENELOPE Dir: Georgii Dzalaev Tajik men become migrant labour; the women try to keep their families alive. A look at their hardships and living conditions. 25 min 48 sec / 2006 / Tajikistan / vitenberg (at) lfond.spb.ru, mmgp (at) genderpolicy.ru PLAN OF REGENERATION Dir: Wang Hsiu-ling, Lo Shin-chieh Tiawanese employees fight – and win – against dismissal orders, turning a new page in the history of their labour movement. 109 min / 2004 / Taiwan / akai8128 (at) ms32.hinet.net RAILROAD OF HOPE Dir: Ning Ying Thousands of impoverished Chinese peasants make long journeys on ‘labour trains’ with the hope of a better life. 56 min / 2001 / China / eurasia (at) public3.bta.net.cn SANTA’S WORKSHOP Dir: Lotta Ekelund, Kristina Bjurling A journey into the real world of China's toy factories: long hours, low wages and dangerous workplaces. 33 min / 2004 / Sweden / info at fairtradecenter.se TALE OF AN IMMIGRANT Dir: Bernadette Felber An intimate look at the lives of people migrating into Mexico City in the hope of a better future. 8 min / 2001 / Mexico Austria / www.ifoi.at/felber THE BIG AVENUES Dir: Colectivo Presente The social consequences of Chile’s military dictatorship and the neo-liberal economic system imposed by it. 76 min / 2004 / Chile Germany / steenotor (at) riseup.net WE ARE WORKERS, OR NOT? Dir: Mirye Kim The long struggle waged by truck drivers in the Korean construction industry against the industry’s refusal to legally recognise them as workers. 60 min / 2003 / Korea / docu (at) mi-re.com / WHO WILL SING A LULLABY… Dir: Nina Rudik Two men from Kiev dare to use their right to take parental leave. A film challenging traditional gender roles. 28 min 32 sec / 2006 / Ukraine / vitenberg (at) lfond.spb.ru / WORKING MAN’S DEATH Dir: Michael Glawogger Is heavy manual labour disappearing or is it just becoming invisible? A journey into workers’ lives across the world. 122 min / 2005 / Austria / www.workingmansdeath.com ZAPATISTAS COMPILACIÓN IX: COLLECTIVE WORK IN RESISTANCE Dir: Promedios de Comunicación Comunitaria A.C. The communities of Zona Norte experience autonomy through collective work; in the process fighting marginalisation. 18 min / 2000 / Chiapas/Mexico / Kdemigue (at) gmx.de SECTION 4 : Director’s Cut: Other worlds are breathing, and as documentary filmmakers, we have been privileged to witness those breaths – the long thoughtful intake, the quickened compulsive ones, the slow exhaling of ideas that disperse into a seemingly amorphous audience. Images and sounds drawn from many worlds have come together as documentary films that inform, reflect and challenge. There is a landscape of documentary films in India and it is a landscape that abounds in diversity. Director’s Cut is a first attempt to explore this diversity, reflect on the journeys that made this diversity possible, and contemplate a future. The Delhi Film Archive set upon the difficult task of selecting documentary filmmakers from across India, because we see this is as a way of initiating a dialogue about our work. Documentary films are about dialogue – about issues, people, every day life. They are also about ways of looking and ways of creating art. And so, what better way is there to talk about them than to talk around them. The set of filmmakers selected to present their film along with another film of their choice, represent the diversity of documentary filmmaking in India. These filmmakers have engaged rigorously with the documentary form over a period of time and their work has been closely connected to the development of documentary filmmaking in India. AMAR KANWAR A SEASON OUTSIDE 30 Minutes / 1998 / English Shot at the Wagah border between India and Pakistan, this film is a personal journey through the shadows of past generations, conflicting positions, borders and time zones... Director’s Choice UNEDITED FOOTAGE FROM MANIPUR shot by various persons 30 Minutes / 2004 Raw footage of the mass protests that erupted in Manipur in 2004 against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. ANAND PATWARDHAN IN THE NAME OF GOD (RAM KE NAAM) 75 minutes / 1991 / English & Hindi In The Name Of God focuses on the campaign waged by Hindu militants to destroy a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya; and the challenge that this fundamentalism poses to India's extremely strained social fabric. Director’s Choice AUTUMN'S FINAL COUNTRY by Sonia Jabbar 66 min / 2003 / English & Hindi with English subtitles Four women from disparate backgrounds who all live in the state of Jammu and Kashmir are cruelly impacted by religious or political conflict. DEEPA DHANRAJ SOMETHING LIKE A WAR 53 Minutes / 1991 / Hindi, Marwari with English subtitles The film traces the history of India’s family planning programme from the perspective of women; and exposes the cynicism, corruption and brutality which characterize it. Director’s Choice A CERTAIN LIBERATION by Yasmine Kabir 37 Minutes / 2003 / Bangla with English subtitles A film on Gurudasi Mondol who gave herself up to madness in 1971 as she saw her entire family being slaughtered during the Liberation War of Bangladesh. K P SASI THE SOURCE OF LIFE FOR SALE 2004 / 58 Minutes / Malayalam and Hindi with English subtitles A documentary on the impact of privatisation of water bodies in India and the subsequent struggles of the local people against the sale of their rivers. Director’s Choice VOICES FROM BALIAPAL by Ranjan Palit and Vasudha Joshi 1988 / 43 Minutes / Oriya with English subtitles Voices from Baliapal protests about a missile testing range in Orissa, India; and the non-violent struggle of 70,000 people to save their ancestral land. MADHUSHREE DUTTA SEVEN ISLANDS AND A METRO 100 Minutes / 2006 / English, Hindi, Urdu, Marathi and Bombayia A tale of the cities of Bom Bahia / Bombay / Mumbai - the El Dorado; structured around imaginary debates between Ismat Chugtai and Sadat Hasan Manto, the two legendary writers who lived in this metropolis. Director’s Choice THE BOY IN THE BRANCH by Lalit Vachani 26 Minutes / 1993 / English subtitles About the indoctrination of young Hindu boys by a branch of the RSS, the foremost Hindu fundamentalist organisation in India. MANJIRA DATTA SACRIFICE OF BABULAL BHUIYA 63 Minutes / 1988 / Oriya with English subtitles A portrait of the community of the undead and an investigation into the murder of Babulal Bhuiya, a casual worker who was killed in 1981 by the industrial security guards of a coal washery. Director’s Choice THE FARM by Jonathan Stack and Liz Garbus 96 Minutes / 1995 / English The Farm has been shot in a penitentiary in Louisana where ‘lifers’ are housed. It’s a gaol where a very high percentage of inmates are black, and only 15% of them will ever come out alive. MEGHNATH and BIJU TOPPO DEVELOPMENT FLOWS FROM THE BARREL OF THE GUN 54 Minutes / 2004 / with English subtitles The film documents acts of violence by the Indian state upon indigenous people affected by development projects in India. It explores the relationship between violence, the new economic policy and globalisation. Director’s Choice NAATA by Anjali Monteiro and K.P.Jayasankar 45 Minutes / 2004 / with English subtitles Bhau Korde and Waqar Khan, two activists and friends, have been organizing neighbourhood peace committees in the gigantic slum of Dharavi, in Mumbai. PAROMITA VOHRA Q2P 54 Minutes / 2006 / English and Hindi Q2P peers through the dream of Mumbai as a future Shanghai and finds…public toilets… not enough of them. It’s an absence that raises many questions – about gender, about class, about caste and most of all about urban development and the myth of the global metropolis. Director’s Choice AND I MAKE SHORT FILMS by S. N. S. Sastry 16 Minutes /1968 / English An impressionistic portrayal of short film making by a short filmmaker. With wry humour and irony, the film explores the process, ideas and the context of documentary filmmaking in India at that time – art or documentation of reality. R V RAMANI BRAHMA VISHNU SHIVA 19 Minutes / 1998 / No Dialogues A Japanese sculptor tries working with sand as the medium on a beach. A film happens, revealing the process of creation, sustenance and destruction, all happening at the same time. Director’s Choice PORTRAITS OF BELONGING: BHAI MIAN by Sameera Jain 30 Minutes / 1998 / Hindi with English subtitles A kite maker lives in the last historic sub-city of Delhi – Shahjahanabad. A portrait of the man in his context, a man whose ordinariness barely conceals his imagination and resilience. VIPIN VIJAY VIDEO GAME 30 minutes / English / 2005 A complex video journey on a MOTORCAR, that incorporates mythic themes of searching, the need for being, for love, for a home and for a promise of a different future. Director’s Choice F for FAKE by Orson Welles 1972 / 88 Minutes / English Welles the legendary filmmaker (and self-described character) gleefully engages with the central preoccupation of his career – the tenuous line between truth and illusion, art and lies. The Delhi Film Archive: Amar Kanwar / Anupama Srinivasan / Atul Gupta / Gargi Sen / Gurvinder Singh / Kavita Joshi / Manak Matiyani / Nakul Sood / Nitin K / Rahul Roy / Ranjan De / Raj Baruah / Ranjani Mazumdar / Saba Dewan / Sabeena Gadihoke / Sabina Kidwai / Sameera Jain / Samina Mishra / Sanjay Kak / Sanjay Maharishi / Sanjay Mohan / Santana Issar / Sherna Dastur / Shikha Jhingan / Shohini Ghosh / Shubhradeep Chakravorty / Shuddhabrata Sengupta / Uma Devi / Yousuf Saeed * * * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061108/ee9ebedb/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From turbulence at turbulence.org Wed Nov 8 21:19:35 2006 From: turbulence at turbulence.org (Turbulence) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 10:49:35 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR): Call for Proposals Message-ID: <006a01c7034d$81a3f6c0$6601a8c0@t5x1c0> Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR): Call for Proposals Deadline November 21, 2006 Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center in Second Life is soliciting proposals for its artist-in-residence program. The deadline for submissions is November 21, 2006. Established and emerging artists will work within the 3d rendered environment of Second Life. Each 11-week residency will culminate in an exhibition and a community-based event. Residents will also receive a $400 stipend, training and mentorship. Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR) is an extended performance that examines what it means to reside in a place that has no physical location. Ars Virtua presents artists with a radical alternative to "real life" galleries: 1) Since it does not physically exist artists are not limited by physics, material budgets, building codes or landlords. Their only constraints are social conventions and (malleable-extensible) software. 2) The gallery is accessible 24 hours a day to a potentially infinite number of people in every part of the world simultaneously. 3) Because of the ever evolving, flexible nature of Second Life the "audience" is a far less predictable variable than one might find in a Real Life gallery. Residents will be encouraged to explore, experiment with and challenge traditional conventions of art making and distribution, value and the art market, artist and audience, space and place. Application Process: Artists are encouraged to log in to Second Life and create an avatar BEFORE applying. Download the application requirements here: http://arsvirtua.com/residence. Finalists will be contacted for an interview. Interviews will take place from November 28-30. About Ars Virtua: Ars Virtua is a new media center and gallery located entirely in the synthetic world of Second Life. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. Ars Virtua is a venue for new genres; it is also a platform for showcasing traditional artists creating still and moving images, for instance, who apply scripts to extend these into the synthetic game environment. Ars Virtua maintains a close relationship with the underlying animation engine that enables Second Life architecture and 3D rendered "sculpture." Ars Virtua brings the art audience into "new media" rather than new media to the museum or gallery, and calls upon its audience to interact with the art and one another via their avatars within the space. About Second Life: Second Life is a 3D online persistent space totally created and evolved by its users. Within this vast and rapidly expanding place, you can do, create or become just about anything you can imagine. Built-in content creation tools let you make almost anything you can imagine, in real time and in collaboration with others. An incredibly detailed digital body ('Avatar') allows a rich and customizable identity. URLS: http://arsvirtua.com/ http://arsvirtua.com/residence/ http://slurl.com/secondlife/dowden/42/59/52/?title=Ars%20Virtua http://secondlife.com "AVAIR" is a 2006 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation. Jo-Anne Green, Co-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: http://turbulence.org/blog Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From miki at iamas.ac.jp Tue Nov 7 19:12:12 2006 From: miki at iamas.ac.jp (miki fukuda) Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2006 22:42:12 +0900 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Call: Artist-in-Residence program at IAMAS Message-ID: Dear friends, IAMAS started to call next residency artist. I'd appreciate your forwarding this to interested networks. Call for artists ------------------------------------------- Artist-in-Residence program at IAMAS, Japan ------------------------------------------- The Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences and the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS) conducts an Artists-in-Residence invitational program. We call for applications once a year. Now we are calling for the next term. Term: 6 month period between 1st April 2007 and 31st March 2008 Person: 1 Application deadline : 31st Dec 2006 See the detail: http://www.iamas.ac.jp/SC/E/index-air2.html Inquiry: info at iamas.ac.jp Please apply with the prescribed application forms which can be obtained on the above website. Best regards. miki //////////////////// miki fukuda center for media culture iamas, institute of advanced media arts and sciences 3-95 ryoke-cho, ogaki city, gifu 503-0014 japan tel: +81-(0)584-75-6606 miki at iamas.ac.jp http://www.iamas.ac.jp _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From cziellah at yahoo.co.in Fri Nov 10 15:14:48 2006 From: cziellah at yahoo.co.in (Yengkhom Jilangamba) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 09:44:48 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] seminar notice Message-ID: <692998.33255.qm@web8408.mail.in.yahoo.com> Manipur Research Forum, Delhi invites you for a discussion on Politics of Development in the North-East Date: 11/11/2006 Venue: Hall No. W1, ISF, Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium Time: 12:30 - 15:30 Chair: Th. Tarunkumar, Editor-in-Chief, Eastern Quarterly Speakers: Rohan D'Souza, CSSP/JNU W. Ramanand, Activist, Intercultural Resources Y. Jilangamba, CHS/JNU __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ From cziellah at yahoo.co.in Fri Nov 10 15:16:29 2006 From: cziellah at yahoo.co.in (Yengkhom Jilangamba) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 09:46:29 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] mrfd programme Message-ID: <20061110094629.2435.qmail@web8413.mail.in.yahoo.com> MANIPUR RESEARCH FORUM, DELHI invites you for a discussion on Political Movements and Nationality Questions in the North-East Date: 12/11/2006 Venue: Hall No. W1, ISF, Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium Time: 4 - 7 pm Chair: Satya P. Gautam, CP/JNU Speakers: Gautam Navlakha, Activist Joyson Mazamo, NPMHR Noni Meetei, Activist __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ From patrice at xs4all.nl Fri Nov 10 17:07:57 2006 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 12:37:57 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Reader-list] [Urbanstudy] traders protest in Delhi and where sociolgical definations fail In-Reply-To: <20061109152334.79176.qmail@web8912.mail.in.yahoo.com> References: <20061109152334.79176.qmail@web8912.mail.in.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <18116.83.116.55.155.1163158677.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> Sorry if I am widely of the mark/of topic, but this (very interesting) discussion about the, in Delhi partially violent, disparition of small shops made me think about the somewhat different evolution I have been observing in Amsterdam (and by extension in quite a many European cities) - in a very superficial and unprofessional way as 'permanent tourist' of course... For years now, supermarkets, hypermarkets and malls (there aren't many in Europe yet, outside the UK) have been accused of killing the small ('pop and mom') shop - rightly so. I have seen disapear almost all 'neighbourhood shopes' I used to know 30 years ago (but never patronised very much). Yet these seem to have been replaced over the years by an almost equal number of 'ethnic' shops (in Amsterdam, Turkish, Morrocan and Surinamese ('Hindoestani') + a smattering of other 'exotic' nationalities - which I do patronise), some of them really small businesses. Although the attrition rate is high, quite a lot seem to survive, and some have expanded quite a bit. I quite wonder what kind of business model they have (beyond the usual 'they work longer hours and enslave their own kin' - which in a sense was also the case with the 'autochtonous' small shopkeepers, now almost extinct) I also wonder what their relationship is with the big firms supplying them - and eying their clientele (Supermaketer Albert Heijn just launched a 'Halal' line of meat products, and their ads are explicit: "now you now no longer need to go the extra mile to the Islamic butcher") This is very apparent for instance in the cellular phone and associate gizmos branch (mostly 'ethnic', save for a few big brands outlets). In general I think the relationship between big commercial, corporation owned trade outlets and small, more informal one is quite fluid, and so is the custom. Excepted, of course, when marketing strategies and urban planning are being enacted by way of the law and (dis)order machinary of the State. cheers from cold Amsterdam, p+3D! From ish at sarai.net Fri Nov 10 17:29:24 2006 From: ish at sarai.net (ish at sarai.net) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 12:59:24 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Launch of Forum Radio@ISF 2006 In-Reply-To: <20061110085740.99344.qmail@web27908.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20061110085740.99344.qmail@web27908.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5976c1dd21edfc9c6707c44dae1597d9@sarai.net> Hi, just adding a few more points for streaming the ISF on you computer. You can stream using various media players like VLC, XMMS, WinAmp, Wim Media player, this can be done simply by using the 'open link or URL' in file menu and putting the following address http://radio.dyne.org:8000/isf.mp3 in the box and pressing start/play, and the ISF Radio will automatically start streaming when you do this. Otherwise you can visit http://cacim.net and there are two links for 'one World radio' and 'sarai.net' radio on the top right hand corner of the page, and if you click these links the Forum radio will start streaming in/off the relavant player/page. Best ISh On 9:57:40 am 11/10/06 Nishant wrote: > > Dear Friends > > On behalf on the Indian Institute for Critical Action: Centre in > Movement (CACIM) and PANOS South Asia we are proud to announce the > launch of Forum Radio. CACIM and PANOS South Asia have managed to > create this radio successfully with the active collaboration of > OneWorld South Asia (http://southasia.oneworld.net/), Sarai ( > www.sarai.net) and Youth Forum. With the webcasting of its first > programme, Forum Radio has begun providing journalistic coverage of the > Indian Social Forum (ISF) 2006. the Radio is currently available at > OneWorld South Asia at http://southasia.oneworld.net/section/isf and will soon be available at www.sarai.net and http://www.panossouthasia.or > g/. > > The Radio will also be broadcast on the Indian Institute of Mass > Communication campus radio at FM 96.9 Hz. Its radio, called Apna Radio, > can be heard within a radius of 10 kilometres from their campus in > Delhi. The visitors at the ISF venue at Jawaharlal Nehru grounds can > access this frequency. (Please visit www.forumradio.cacim.net for a > list web sites where you can listen to Forum Radio broadcasts.) > > The past experience of the social forum movement in India suggests > that journalistic coverage of the event is restricted only to some > small quarters of the independent and grassroots media. To plug this > gap and to challenge the elitist mainstream media some people who > engage with the WSF process have decided to journalistically cover it > through Forum Radio. > > This coverage will continue throughout the ISF, during which it will > cover the events organised, the bigger issues concerning the social > forum movement and, among other things, interviews with visiting > speakers and participants. We plan to continue with our coverage even > after the ISF formally gets over, so that there is some space for > evaluation of and reflection on the events held during the forum and > the forum itself. > > You can write to Forum Radio at ForumRadio at cacim.net. > > With warm regards. > > The Team > > @ > > Forum Radio. > > > > > Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo > .com > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.ne > t/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> From abhayraj.naik at hotmail.com Fri Nov 10 18:01:02 2006 From: abhayraj.naik at hotmail.com (Abhayraj Naik) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 18:01:02 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Field Study Etiquette and Ethics Message-ID: Hello, I was wondering whether those with field experience would be able to share gyan (knowledge) on the question of how a researcher or a student should grapple with various issues of (potentially invasive) field visits: I'm interested in the question of how one would/should engage with the physical space of a slum (or say a refugee camp or a temporary shelter for internally displaced persons) before and while carrying out field visits. Is there any manner to sensibly and sensitively converge academic interests and personal emptions? Is it advisable or preferable to enlist the support of a resident from the area being visited before actually entering that physical space? What does one do with emotions such as sympathy, empathy, anger, disgust, fear, etc. that may arise during and after field visits? Do camera/audio-video recording equipment represent tools for academic research or inappropriate symbols of disparities and possible infringers of privacy? Do the residents of such areas visited have any ownership or sense of belonging to academic output generated? Is there some way that persons who are visiting such areas can sensitise and prepare themselves to behave in a humane, fair and appropriate manner? Anyone who can throw some light on such issues, please do. Thanks, Abhayraj _________________________________________________________________ Sexy, sultry, sensuous. - see why Bipasha Basu is all that and more. Try MSN Search http://server1.msn.co.in/Profile/bipashabasu.asp From nr03 at fsu.edu Fri Nov 10 19:55:54 2006 From: nr03 at fsu.edu (Nicholas Ruiz III) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 09:25:54 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Kritikos V.3 November 2006 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20061110142553.UYCD6420.aa10.charter.net@LAPTOP> Kritikos V.3 November 2006 Destinies of the Critical...(d.v.rao) http://intertheory.org/rao.htm Dr. Nicholas Ruiz III Editor, Kritikos http://intertheory.org From kj.impulse at gmail.com Sat Nov 11 12:33:34 2006 From: kj.impulse at gmail.com (Kavita Joshi [Impulse]) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 12:33:34 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] [DFA:3] REMINDER: 3 Screens Film Festival Delhi IS ON! Message-ID: <006b01c7055f$87ebad70$0201a8c0@hpdab99e23044a> REMINDER MAIL: 3 SCREENS FILM FESTIVAL IS ON! and you are invited. Organised by the Delhi Film Archive for the India Social Forum WHAT: 3 Screens. 3 Days. 99 Films WHERE: at the Public Ka Multiplex, (North Bajri Grounds, Near Scope Complex & Near CGO Complex) India Social Forum, Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium Grounds, New Delhi WHEN: 10-11-12 November 2006 10am - 10pm (approx,. depending on date) The film festival is OPEN TO ALL *** The festival films' SYNOPSIS, SCHEDULE & CATALOGUE are available ONLINE at OUR WEBSITE: http://www.delhifilmarchive.org/whatsnew.html and our blog: http://delhifilmarchive.blogspot.com/ and on our e-group http://groups-beta.google.com/group/delhifilmarchive/files/ Join the DELHI FILM ARCHIVE Mailing List: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/delhifilmarchive/ Contact DELHI FILM ARCHIVE: delhifilmarchive (at) gmail.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the "Delhi Film Archive" mailing list of events. To unsubscribe, send email to delhifilmarchive-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com To contact the moderator, write to delhifilmarchive [at] gmail.com For more options, visit this group on the web at http://groups-beta.google.com/group/delhifilmarchive/ To view a list of films with the Archive visit http://www.delhifilmarchive.org/archive.html -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061111/936d44bd/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From ish at sarai.net Sun Nov 12 00:00:49 2006 From: ish at sarai.net (ish at sarai.net) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 19:30:49 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] frEeMuZik.net presents Live Music @ Forum Radio, ISF Delhi 12 Nov 2006 Message-ID: <0252128a10a32a0b7acf52c2191cf7d8@sarai.net> frEeMuZik.net presents The Revolution a live act from TaTva Kundalini, Dale, Electronic Fakir and ISh on the Forum Radio(India Social Forum) on 12 Nov from 4.30pm - 7 pm IST. Read about it at http://users.sarai.net/ish/live.htm TaTva Kundalini is an Electro-enthnic outfit from Delhi and have performed around India. ISh is a guitarist/composer also based in Delhi. You can download some of his music at http://users.sarai.net/ish/audio1.htm and more of his compositions can be found at myspace.com/freakopus Download more music and video by Various Artists from the frEeMuZik.net website at http://freemuzik.net For streaming the radio you can open the following link/URL http://radio.dyne.org:8000/isf.mp3 in your media player like WinAmp/ Win Media Player/ Quicktime/ Itunes/ XMMS etc and press play Best ISh From mail at shivamvij.com Mon Nov 13 01:04:17 2006 From: mail at shivamvij.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 01:04:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Blogbharti ~ Voices from the Indian blogosphere Message-ID: <9c06aab30611121134n4194bea9yd27a09a9a48f9f28@mail.gmail.com> Keep in touch with the Indian blogosphere. Daily. http://www.blogbharti.com Best, Shivam From hpp at vsnl.com Mon Nov 13 10:01:22 2006 From: hpp at vsnl.com (hpp at vsnl.com) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 04:31:22 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Singur Update Message-ID: SINGUR UPDATE No.1: November 12, 2006 Sumit Chowdhury sumit_chowdhury at yahoo.com Mobile: 98302 49430 Singur under siege Nov. 9, 2006: Singur has turned into a battlefront since November 7. Battalion after armed police battalion and the Rapid Action Force are pouring in from the districts and setting up camp at the Bajemelia Hospital ground. Two other camps are being set up at Bajemelia and Khaser Bheri. Plainclothes police informers are openly moving around in the villages gathering information about resistance plans. Policepersons, rifles in hand, are posted in the village squares and the markets to keep watch on the villagers’ movements. Village life has been disrupted as women are unable to bathe in the ponds, children frightened of playing in the open and men fearing to venture out alone or after dark. The presence of such a huge police force in the otherwise peaceful villages have raised the heat in Singur. An atmosphere of terror prevails. CPI(M) ‘cadres’ are also being mobilised from across Hooghly district for the ‘final’ assault. Ordinary villagers, unwilling to part with their land and activists are being harassed, beaten up and threatened with dire consequences. All this when their learned leaders at the Indian Social Forum in New Delhi are renting the air with fiery speeches against the countrywide acquisition of agricultural land for SEZs and industrial projects. The government is clearly heading for a showdown with the farmers. There is widespread apprehension that section 144 or an undeclared curfew will be imposed any day now, restricting free movement. It is also feared that police will be posted at each and every door to prevent the villagers from coming out, all the camps set up by the agitating farmers and political groups to keep vigil will be demolished and all roads and railway stations will be sealed to stop the activists and sympathisers from entering the villages. ‘Industrial resurgence’ is being ushered in in the so-called ‘red bastion’ with brute force. It is presumed that the imminent visit of the Tata officials is why such a massive police contingent has been deployed. On their first visit on May 25, they had to face a demonstration by a huge crowd of farmers. Men, women and children blocked their convoy and the officials had to be rescued by the police. So, to show the Tatas how welcoming the farmers are, the roads through the villages to the project site will be encircled with rifle-wielding forces and the villagers stopped from venturing out in their own villages. The government, pathologically obsessed over ‘industrialisation’, is indulging in provocative action and will have to bear the onus of any untoward incident. The police deployment, it is understood, will be intensified even more in the coming days. The farmers will be allowed to harvest their last paddy under strict police watch but not the laying of potato seeds which the farmers have already stocked in their homes. The entire project site will then be sealed with barbed wire. The land-losing farmers will obviously resist such a move and bloodletting will be inevitable. An intransigent government is pushing West Bengal towards a violent civil strife. Nov. 11: Village women in Bajemelia and Khaser Bheri got together, protested and foiled the setting up of police posts in their backyards. The villagers of all the six moujas then, under the banner of Krishijibi Raksha Committee, gathered in Chuchura, the district headquarters, and submitted a memorandum to the District Magistrate demanding immediate withdrawal of police from the villages. The District Magistrate assured the demonstrators that the deployment of police forces at the Bajemelia hospital ground would be put off for now. The Singur farmers consider this to be a moral victory. The massive structure for accommodating the forces, however, remain and a new camp is coming up on the bund running through the land acquired for the Tatas. Police sources have also revealed that the deployment of forces will intensify in the coming weeks. The struggle intensifies Nov. 10: The Singur farmers have remained strong and united in spite of the deployment of armed police force in the villages. The thrashing they received on the night of September 25-26 has steeled their fighting spirit. No amount of intimidation or provocation can make them waver from their determination to resist the forcible and illegal taking over of their farmland by the state government. Each and every member of the households is now getting ready for the battle. Oct. 27: A ‘People’s Hearing,’ organised jointly by Krishijami Raksha Committee and Sanhati Udyog, a conglomeration of several mass organisations formed to extend support to the Singur movement, at Madhyapara, Gopalnagar. Medha Patkar of Narmada Bachao Andolan, writer Mahasweta Devi, Malay Sengupta, former Chief Justice of Sikkim High Court and Dipankar Chakrabarty, editor of Aneek, were in the panel of judges. Hundreds of farmers’ families, representatives of political parties, mass organisations and activists of all shades attended. Ministers and government officials were invited but none turned up. Farmers – men women, children and the aged – testified before the panel on the horror of police atrocities on Sept.25-26 and the misery befalling on them on account of the acquisition of their multi-crop farmland. Later, a mass gathering was held at the Bajemelia hospital ground where the panellists and other speakers slammed the government for forcibly taking over land for the Tatas and perpetrating a gigantic fraud on the people in the name of industrialisation. Mahasweta Devi declared that the state government is indulging in ‘white lies’. Oct. 31, on behalf of Sanhati Udyog, a People’s Survey was launched in the Singur villages to determine the estimated number of landholders and acreage that have been acquired by the government for the Tata project. The survey had become essential in view of the Chief Minister and his government’s repeated claims that 80-90percent of the land have been voluntarily given up in lieu of compensatory cheques. Nov. 7: Central camp of the Krishijami Rakhsha Committee inaugurated at Kona Aswathtala tri-junction of Gopalnagar, Bajemelia and Khaser Bheri to keep vigil over land. 12-hour Bhumi-Yagna held and Namaz offered simultaneously by farmers at the campsite the next day. Hundreds of villagers gathering and staying the night at the camp. Two other camps being set up at Sahanapara, Gopalnagar and Khaser Bheri. CPI(ML) Liberation opened a camp at Paschimpara, Gopalnagar manned by student activists. Belur Sramajibi Hospital is planning a health camp opposite the police camp at the hospital ground within a few days. Three other camps opened around the project site by INTUC. Nov. 2: Revolutionary Youth Association took out a 1000-strong rally in the Singur villages. Before the rally started, a registered bargadar took possession of the land he worked on by planting the red flag. The land has been sold to the government for the Tata project by the absentee landlord. Nov. 3: SUCI held a huge rally of 20,000 people at the Bajemelia hospital ground. The party’s supporters vowed to paralyse the whole of West Bengal if the government forcibly takes over the Singur land. On the same day, Nagarik Mancha organised a civil society meet at Paschimbanga Yuva Kendra in Kolkata in which representatives of mass organisations, scientists, academics, journalists, cultural activists and others lambasted the state government for its Singur and development policies. Nov. 5: Trinamool Congress leaders told a gathering of 20,000 people at Paschimpara, Gopalnagar that Singur will not be handed over to the Tatas, whatever the cost. The party announced a non-cooperation movement and a Dandi Yatra from Kolkata to Singur starting November 17. Nov. 8: CPI(ML) New Democracy asked a gathering of 3000 villagers at Beraberi market to stand up and be prepared for an uprising. The party also pleaded for united resistance. Nov. 10: Sanhati Udyog, held a street corner demonstration in Kolkata demanding immediate withdrawal of the police force from Singur. On the same day, workers of Kanoria Jute Mill visited the Singur villages extending their support to and solidarity with the farmers’ struggle. Pages from the Singur struggle May 25: Men, women and children blocked the Tata officials’ convoy when they first came to inspect the project site. The officials returned without seeing the site after the police rescued them. June 1: A huge demonstration of farmers was held at the BDO office in Singur town under the banner of Krishijami Raksha Committee. July 1-2: Thousands of farmers rallied at the DM’s office in Chuchura and submitted their objection to the farmland acquisition. July 24: Farmers blocked the Durgapur Expressway for several hours. Aug. 22: Farmer rallied in a daylong sit-in demonstration at the temporary camp set up next to the BDO office and boycotted the land acquisition hearing. Sept. 1-2: Women of Beraberi village, brooms in hand, drove away the district officials who came to distribute notices for land acquisition. The officials returned without distributing the notices. Sept. 16: Farmers staged a black flag demonstration when the Minister for Land and Land Revenue visited the project site to speak at a meeting arranged by the ruling party. Sept. 25-26: Thousands of farmers demonstrated from early morning to late night at the BDO office on the first day of the doling out of compensatory cheques. After midnight, in a pre-planned move, CPI(M) cadres and the police, under the influence of alcohol, started a merciless assault on the peaceful demonstrators. Hundreds were injured and arrested. Sept. 27-30: Durga puja was not held in all the six moujas in protest against the land acquisition and the police assault. Oct. 1: Daylong arnadhan (no cooking) was observed in the farmers’ families. Oct. 2: Shahid Divas (Martyrs’ Day) was observed in memory of Rajkumar Bhul, killed by police lathicharge on September 25-26. The farmers vowed to carry on with their struggle. Oct. 5: Nishpradip (No lights) was observed in the farmers’ homes. Oct. 16: Farmers from Singur demonstrated in front of the Tata Centre in Kolkata. It was organised by Trinamool Congress. Struggle everywhere Meanwhile, farmers’ movements are building up wherever the state government is acquiring farmland for the so-called industrial projects: A Krishijami Raksha Committee has been formed in Kharagpur, West Medinipur district, where vast tracts of multi-crop farmland is being taken over for the Tata’s construction vehicle factory. Interestingly, the movement is being led by the local CPI(M) activists. In Nandigram, East Medinipur district, CPI’s Krishak Sabha has launched a strong farmers’ movement against landgrabbing for the proposed 10,000-acre chemical industries hub to be set up by the Salim group. Several political parties and groups have come together to launch an extensive movement against farmland acquisition in north Bengal for the proposed Videocon SEZ and other real estate projects. A yatra from Kumargram in Uttar Dinajpur district to Jalpaiguri has been announced. The Left Front partners – CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc – are getting increasingly vocal in opposing the government’s land acquisition policy and pandering to the corporate capitalists. They have warned the government of facing the wrath of the people if Singur farmland is forcibly taken away from the farmers. Strong sections within the government and the ruling party have also opposed the government on the Singur issue. The Karmachari Samiti of the government’s Land and Land Revenue department has supported the Singur farmers. The mouthpiece of the state government employees union has carried very strong words against forcible land acquisition in Singur and elsewhere. The district conference of CITU’s North 24-Parganas district has passed a resolution opposing forcible occupation of farmland. A clear polarisation is taking place between the CPI(M)’s ruling clique and the people of West Bengal, whatever political configuration they are mobilised under. Aj mukhomukhi dariechhe duto dal Ar majhamajhi nei to kichhui Hoy Tatar dalal ar noy to Ek laruku manush hobi tui Face to face stand two groups There’s nothing in between Either Tata’s tout or A fighting human you will be. From aliak77 at gmail.com Sun Nov 12 12:25:09 2006 From: aliak77 at gmail.com (Kath O'Donnell) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2006 12:25:09 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] To add tuppence to the micro credit debate In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <383607190611112255s3791e66ek80db7c82e916e2cd@mail.gmail.com> hi, further to the micro credit thread a couple of weeks ago, today a friend sent me a link to the KIVA http://www.kiva.org site after seeing a program featuring them on tv in US. it's a peer-to-peer funding site using the internet's social networks to help fund loans similar to what Grameen does for Bangladesh. so I was wondering if anyone knows where I can get more info on orgs in India that might be using similar funding systems. I can't see any indian orgs on the kiva site. thanks Kath -- http://www.aliak.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061112/b2347cea/attachment.html From jeebesh at sarai.net Mon Nov 13 15:45:21 2006 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:45:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Post- ISF questions Message-ID: <3AF7B4A8-02F8-4D84-81EA-0C1AFA2242DA@sarai.net> Dear All, Walked around ISF (9th - 13th Nov, Delhi) for some time and it was amazing how deep the "Rights" based language has seeped into the social body and imagination. If you take away that word, there will be nothing left to hold on to. The "masters" thunder facts of displacement and terrors by "LPG" (liberalization, privatization, globalization), rhetorically induce powerlessness and guilt and then move towards a carving of a "rights" based petitioning. The ghost in the ISF machine was the State, its social welfare mystique and its robin hood mythologies!! From the conceptual debris of the last century, this one word has gathered many adherents. There was no "issue" that was not under this "rights" scanner. Am totally foxed - how this pervasive spread of this discourse? Why is it such a popular discourse? The abstraction that a "rights" based discourse would produce will land up erasing so much of the diversity that all these groups are claiming to be representing. Or is this the only form by which "leaders" can talk to each other? Or is this the beginning of new govermentality, that incorporates everyone as a "implementor" of emerging state policies and designs over space, labour, and resource... Maybe it is just that the present production of speed and terror of capitalist accumulation has everyone bewildered and only a naive recourse to State seems a way to hold on to some ground. Rest all looks lost, long and evaporating. So comrades the task of critical and creative thinking is going to be fun!! best jeebesh From mail at tilmanbaumgaertel.net Mon Nov 13 22:48:57 2006 From: mail at tilmanbaumgaertel.net (mail at tilmanbaumgaertel.net) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 18:18:57 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Asian edition. A conference on Media Piracy and Intellectual Property in South East Asia Message-ID: <7254808.490451163438337444.JavaMail.servlet@kundenserver> ASIAN EDITION A Conference on Media Piracy and Intellectual Property in South East Asia Sponsored by the Goethe Institute, Manila, and the UP Film Institute Date: November 24, 2006, 9:00 am ­ 5:00 pm, UP Film Institute, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Metro Manila, CMC Auditorium Many Filipinos still remember the "Asian Edition" - a scheme during the Marcos years, when American textbooks were reprinted locally and without paying royalties to the original publishers. Now, “Asian Edition” serves as title for a conference that will look at the phenomenon of media piracy in South East Asia today. Music, movie and software piracy is one of the most prominent media issues of the digital millennium. In the Philippines it has started a whole underground economy and currently seems to change the way movies and other media products are distributed and consumed products here and in other South East Asian countries. The goal of the workshop is to contribute to an informed discussion of media piracy and issues of Intellectual Property in the age of digital reproduction. Instead of portraying piracy exclusively as a crime against artists and distributors, the proposed workshop will look at piracy as a social, cultural and economic phenomenon. And it will discuss new concepts of addressing ownership of Intellectual Property, such as Creative Commons and Open Source. Dr. Tilman Baumgärtel, Visiting Professor at the University of the Philippines, organizes the conference. Confirmed participants include: Raymond Red, film director, Manila Cornelia Sollfrank, artist, Hamburg Raul Pertierra, sociologist, Manila Rolando Tolentino, National University Singapore Volker Grassmuck, writer, Berlin Khavn de la Cruz, film director, Manila More information at: www.asian-edition.org The conference is free and open to the public. From ravig1 at vsnl.com Mon Nov 13 14:41:38 2006 From: ravig1 at vsnl.com (Ravi Agarwal) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 14:41:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Indian Environment tribunals to check "arbitrary" policies Message-ID: <6F7A0178B74F47D58ADA00E7965FEB0D@ToxicsLink.local> Please see the report in today's ET below - it seems that the govt is proposing to create these tribunals to override 'arbitrary' environmental decisions under all existing environmental laws including the FCA, WLPA and EPA. Clearly nothing is to be permitted to come in the way of the high GDP growth rate. ================================================ Environment tribunals to check arbitrary policies SWEEPING POWERS FOR NATIONAL & REGIONAL TRIBUNALS Rajeev Jayaswal & MK Venu NEW DELHI Economic Times, 9.11.06 INDIA Inc will soon have a dedicated redress mechanism against arbitrary government orders in the garb of protecting environment. The government is constituting fullyempowered National Environmental Tribunals (NET) with sweeping powers. They can review orders passed under the environment protection laws covering wide-ranging subjects such as water, air, wildlife and prevention of cruelty to animals. Importantly, no other court or authority may enter into the jurisdiction of the tribunals. "No other court or authority will have jurisdiction to entertain any application, any claim or action which can be entertained, tried or dealt with by the tribunals, the draft legislation said. The draft is expected to approved by the Cabinet soon. Non-compliance with any direction of the tribunal shall be treated as an offence, punishable with a fine of up to Rs 10 crore. It is understood that the draft has been modified on the basis of Law Commission's recommendation and incorporating comments from various ministries. The tribunals will be empowered to regulate their own procedures. "The tribunals will not be bound by the code of civil procedure laid down by the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, but shall be guided by principles of natural justice and subject to the other provisions," the proposed legislation said. The tribunals can take cognisance of any order passed by the Centre, states and public authorities; evoking the Water (P&CP) Act of 1974, the Water (P&CP) Cess Act of 1977, the Air (P&CP) Act of 1981, the Forest (Conservation) Act of 1980, Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960 and any other existing law related "to environment protection and improvement of environment". Appeals against orders of environment tribunals could be made in the Supreme Court within 30 days, which can be extended by another 30 days, the Bill said. With the implementation of the new legislation, the National Environment Tribunal Act, 1995, and the National Environment Appellate Authority (NEAA) Act, 1997, would be repealed. The National Environment Appellate Authority established under the NEAA Act would also be abolished. The Bill has proposed to establish a two-tier structure, a NET at the Centre and Regional Environment Tribunals (RET) for groups of states. The number of tribunals could be increased or decreased. The NET will have a chairperson and nine members. Besides the chairperson and one member, who are judicial members, eight experts from the fields of physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, engineering, environmental economics and social sciences (either sociology or cultural anthropology) and forestry would form the NET. __._,_.___ . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061113/4d4d86de/attachment.html From amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in Mon Nov 13 23:30:20 2006 From: amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in (Amit Basu) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 18:00:20 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Post- ISF questions In-Reply-To: <3AF7B4A8-02F8-4D84-81EA-0C1AFA2242DA@sarai.net> Message-ID: <220730.62649.qm@web8506.mail.in.yahoo.com> jeebesh, thanks for raising such crucial questions to ponder on. such kind of cultural hegemony of rights discourse would emerge in the golbalised model of the state was hinted by some. your refection from the isf is indeed timely and pushes me to think critically. amit Jeebesh Bagchi wrote: Dear All, Walked around ISF (9th - 13th Nov, Delhi) for some time and it was amazing how deep the "Rights" based language has seeped into the social body and imagination. If you take away that word, there will be nothing left to hold on to. The "masters" thunder facts of displacement and terrors by "LPG" (liberalization, privatization, globalization), rhetorically induce powerlessness and guilt and then move towards a carving of a "rights" based petitioning. The ghost in the ISF machine was the State, its social welfare mystique and its robin hood mythologies!! >From the conceptual debris of the last century, this one word has gathered many adherents. There was no "issue" that was not under this "rights" scanner. Am totally foxed - how this pervasive spread of this discourse? Why is it such a popular discourse? The abstraction that a "rights" based discourse would produce will land up erasing so much of the diversity that all these groups are claiming to be representing. Or is this the only form by which "leaders" can talk to each other? Or is this the beginning of new govermentality, that incorporates everyone as a "implementor" of emerging state policies and designs over space, labour, and resource... Maybe it is just that the present production of speed and terror of capitalist accumulation has everyone bewildered and only a naive recourse to State seems a way to hold on to some ground. Rest all looks lost, long and evaporating. So comrades the task of critical and creative thinking is going to be fun!! 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. To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list List archive: --------------------------------- Find out what India is talking about on - Yahoo! Answers India Send FREE SMS to your friend's mobile from Yahoo! Messenger Version 8. Get it NOW -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061113/e40b75e3/attachment.html From cippitel at gmail.com Tue Nov 14 03:55:22 2006 From: cippitel at gmail.com (l. c.) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 23:25:22 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] 'COMPASSIONATE SLAVERY' MARKET FOR AFRICA: WTO In-Reply-To: <200611131658.kADGwpnx014934@firn.dox.org> References: <200611131658.kADGwpnx014934@firn.dox.org> Message-ID: <640508e90611131425t4c37b0d5w416a59402cd000c5@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: World Trade Organization Date: 13-nov-2006 17.58 Subject: 'COMPASSIONATE SLAVERY' MARKET FOR AFRICA: WTO November 13, 2006 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE WTO ANNOUNCES FORMALIZED SLAVERY MARKET FOR AFRICA US Trade Representative to Africa, Governor of Nigeria Central Bank weigh in at Wharton Text, photos, video: http://www.gatt.org/wharton.html WTO Contact: Hanniford Schmidt (mailto:schmidt at gatt.org ) Conference website: http://www.whartonglobal.com/africa/panels.asp#Trade Conference contacts: http://www.whartonglobal.com/africa/contact.asp Philadelphia - At a Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa, World Trade Organization representative Hanniford Schmidt announced the creation of a WTO initiative for "full private stewardry of labor" for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa's free trade with the West. The initiative will require Western companies doing business in some parts of Africa to own their workers outright. Schmidt recounted how private stewardship has been successfully applied to transport, power, water, traditional knowledge, and even the human genome. The WTO's "full private stewardry" program will extend these successes to (re)privatize humans themselves. "Full, untrammelled stewardry is the best available solution to African poverty, and the inevitable result of free-market theory," Schmidt told more than 150 attendees. Schmidt acknowledged that the stewardry program was similar in many ways to slavery, but explained that just as "compassionate conservatism" has polished the rough edges on labor relations in industrialized countries, full stewardry, or "compassionate slavery," could be a similar boon to developing ones. The audience included Prof. Charles Soludo (Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria), Dr. Laurie Ann Agama (Director for African Affairs at the Office of the US Trade Representative), and other notables. Agama prefaced her remarks by thanking Scmidt for his macroscopic perspective, saying that the USTR view adds details to the WTO's general approach. Nigerian Central Bank Governor Soludo also acknowledged the WTO proposal, though he did not seem to appreciate it as much as did Agama. A system in which corporations own workers is the only free-market solution to African poverty, Schmidt said. "Today, in African factories, the only concern a company has for the worker is for his or her productive hours, and within his or her productive years," he said. "As soon as AIDS or pregnancy hits--out the door. Get sick, get fired. If you extend the employer's obligation to a 24/7, lifelong concern, you have an entirely different situation: get sick, get care. With each life valuable from start to finish, the AIDS scourge will be quickly contained via accords with drug manufacturers as a profitable investment in human stewardees. And educating a child for later might make more sense than working it to the bone right now." To prove that human stewardry can work, Schmidt cited a proposal by a free-market think tank to save whales by selling them. "Those who don't like whaling can purchase rights to specific whales or groups of whales in order to stop those particular whales from getting whaled as much," he explained. Similarly, the market in Third-World humans will "empower" caring First Worlders to help them, Schmidt said. (http://www.policynetwork.net/main/article.php?article_id=505 ) One conference attendee asked what incentive employers had to remain as stewards once their employees are too old to work or reproduce. Schmidt responded that a large new biotech market would answer that worry. He then reminded the audience that this was the only possible solution under free-market theory. There were no other questions from the audience that took issue with Schmidt's proposal. During his talk, Schmidt outlined the three phases of Africa's 500- year history of free trade with the West: slavery, colonialism, and post-colonial markets. Each time, he noted, the trade has brought tremendous wealth to the West but catastrophe to Africa, with poverty steadily deepening and ever more millions of dead. "So far there's a pattern: Good for business, bad for people. Good for business, bad for people. Good for business, bad for people. That's why we're so happy to announce this fourth phase for business between Africa and the West: good for business--GOOD for people." The conference took place on Saturday, November 11. The panel on which Schmidt spoke was entitled "Trade in Africa: Enhancing Relationships to Improve Net Worth." Some of the other panels in the conference were entitled "Re-Branding Africa" and "Growing Africa's Appetite." Throughout the comments by Schmidt and his three co-panelists, which lasted 75 minutes, Schmidt's stewardee, Thomas Bongani-Nkemdilim, remained standing at respectful attention off to the side. "This is what free trade's all about," said Schmidt. "It's about the freedom to buy and sell anything--even people." # 30 # -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061113/7892174c/attachment.html From jace at pobox.com Tue Nov 14 14:26:34 2006 From: jace at pobox.com (Kiran Jonnalagadda) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 14:26:34 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 'COMPASSIONATE SLAVERY' MARKET FOR AFRICA: WTO In-Reply-To: <640508e90611131425t4c37b0d5w416a59402cd000c5@mail.gmail.com> References: <200611131658.kADGwpnx014934@firn.dox.org> <640508e90611131425t4c37b0d5w416a59402cd000c5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3042EA31-016C-49C2-89C4-CE9AE78952F0@pobox.com> The gullible are advised to consult the domain's registrar. ~j On 14/Nov/2006, at 3:55 AM, l. c. wrote: > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: World Trade Organization < africa at gatt.org> > Date: 13-nov-2006 17.58 > Subject: 'COMPASSIONATE SLAVERY' MARKET FOR AFRICA: WTO > > November 13, 2006 > FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE > > WTO ANNOUNCES FORMALIZED SLAVERY MARKET FOR AFRICA > US Trade Representative to Africa, Governor of Nigeria Central Bank > weigh in at Wharton From tapio at translocal.net Tue Nov 14 14:29:29 2006 From: tapio at translocal.net (Tapio) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 14:29:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 'COMPASSIONATE SLAVERY' MARKET FOR AFRICA: WTO (fwd) Message-ID: Hi... The Yes Men are at it again. :) /Tapio ------------ Forwarded Message ------------ Date: 13. marraskuuta 2006 22.45.36 +0100 From: World Trade Organization To: "tapio-mbar.fi" Subject: 'COMPASSIONATE SLAVERY' MARKET FOR AFRICA: WTO November 13, 2006 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE WTO ANNOUNCES FORMALIZED SLAVERY MARKET FOR AFRICA US Trade Representative to Africa, Governor of Nigeria Central Bank weigh in at Wharton Text, photos, video: http://www.gatt.org/wharton.html WTO Contact: Hanniford Schmidt (mailto:schmidt at gatt.org) Conference website: http://www.whartonglobal.com/africa/ panels.asp#Trade Conference contacts: http://www.whartonglobal.com/africa/contact.asp Philadelphia - At a Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa, World Trade Organization representative Hanniford Schmidt announced the creation of a WTO initiative for "full private stewardry of labor" for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa's free trade with the West. The initiative will require Western companies doing business in some parts of Africa to own their workers outright. Schmidt recounted how private stewardship has been successfully applied to transport, power, water, traditional knowledge, and even the human genome. The WTO's "full private stewardry" program will extend these successes to (re)privatize humans themselves. "Full, untrammelled stewardry is the best available solution to African poverty, and the inevitable result of free-market theory," Schmidt told more than 150 attendees. Schmidt acknowledged that the stewardry program was similar in many ways to slavery, but explained that just as "compassionate conservatism" has polished the rough edges on labor relations in industrialized countries, full stewardry, or "compassionate slavery," could be a similar boon to developing ones. The audience included Prof. Charles Soludo (Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria), Dr. Laurie Ann Agama (Director for African Affairs at the Office of the US Trade Representative), and other notables. Agama prefaced her remarks by thanking Scmidt for his macroscopic perspective, saying that the USTR view adds details to the WTO's general approach. Nigerian Central Bank Governor Soludo also acknowledged the WTO proposal, though he did not seem to appreciate it as much as did Agama. A system in which corporations own workers is the only free-market solution to African poverty, Schmidt said. "Today, in African factories, the only concern a company has for the worker is for his or her productive hours, and within his or her productive years," he said. "As soon as AIDS or pregnancy hits--out the door. Get sick, get fired. If you extend the employer's obligation to a 24/7, lifelong concern, you have an entirely different situation: get sick, get care. With each life valuable from start to finish, the AIDS scourge will be quickly contained via accords with drug manufacturers as a profitable investment in human stewardees. And educating a child for later might make more sense than working it to the bone right now." To prove that human stewardry can work, Schmidt cited a proposal by a free-market think tank to save whales by selling them. "Those who don't like whaling can purchase rights to specific whales or groups of whales in order to stop those particular whales from getting whaled as much," he explained. Similarly, the market in Third-World humans will "empower" caring First Worlders to help them, Schmidt said. (http://www.policynetwork.net/main/article.php?article_id=505) One conference attendee asked what incentive employers had to remain as stewards once their employees are too old to work or reproduce. Schmidt responded that a large new biotech market would answer that worry. He then reminded the audience that this was the only possible solution under free-market theory. There were no other questions from the audience that took issue with Schmidt's proposal. During his talk, Schmidt outlined the three phases of Africa's 500- year history of free trade with the West: slavery, colonialism, and post-colonial markets. Each time, he noted, the trade has brought tremendous wealth to the West but catastrophe to Africa, with poverty steadily deepening and ever more millions of dead. "So far there's a pattern: Good for business, bad for people. Good for business, bad for people. Good for business, bad for people. That's why we're so happy to announce this fourth phase for business between Africa and the West: good for business--GOOD for people." The conference took place on Saturday, November 11. The panel on which Schmidt spoke was entitled "Trade in Africa: Enhancing Relationships to Improve Net Worth." Some of the other panels in the conference were entitled "Re-Branding Africa" and "Growing Africa's Appetite." Throughout the comments by Schmidt and his three co-panelists, which lasted 75 minutes, Schmidt's stewardee, Thomas Bongani-Nkemdilim, remained standing at respectful attention off to the side. "This is what free trade's all about," said Schmidt. "It's about the freedom to buy and sell anything--even people." # 30 # - ---------- End Forwarded Message ---------- - -- Tapio Mäkelä Researcher and media artist +358 40 722 3949 tapio at translocal.net AIM: tapmak at mac.com Skype: tapio.makela From yasir.media at gmail.com Wed Nov 15 14:48:58 2006 From: yasir.media at gmail.com (yasir ~) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 01:18:58 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] al jazeera launches in english today Message-ID: <5af37bb0611150118k627d589ew7906066c2a4617dd@mail.gmail.com> Al Jazeera English all set to launch in 3.5 hrs http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6BB60A7B-C169-4762-87ED-415752862B5E.htm From machine at zerosofzeta.com Wed Nov 15 20:45:14 2006 From: machine at zerosofzeta.com (Yogesh Girdhar) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:45:14 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 'COMPASSIONATE SLAVERY' MARKET FOR AFRICA: WTO In-Reply-To: <3042EA31-016C-49C2-89C4-CE9AE78952F0@pobox.com> References: <200611131658.kADGwpnx014934@firn.dox.org> <640508e90611131425t4c37b0d5w416a59402cd000c5@mail.gmail.com> <3042EA31-016C-49C2-89C4-CE9AE78952F0@pobox.com> Message-ID: <1d804b40611150715q9a388fboc9600580975663d0@mail.gmail.com> oh hahah i know these people its the yesmenn (http://www.theyesmen.org) One of them was my professor at RPI (Troy, NY) There whole point is to play pranks to bring world attention to specific sensitive issues which are otherwise being ignored. -yogi On 11/14/06, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: > The gullible are advised to consult the domain's registrar. > > ~j > > > On 14/Nov/2006, at 3:55 AM, l. c. wrote: > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > > From: World Trade Organization < africa at gatt.org> > > Date: 13-nov-2006 17.58 > > Subject: 'COMPASSIONATE SLAVERY' MARKET FOR AFRICA: WTO > > > > November 13, 2006 > > FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE > > > > WTO ANNOUNCES FORMALIZED SLAVERY MARKET FOR AFRICA > > US Trade Representative to Africa, Governor of Nigeria Central Bank > > weigh in at Wharton > > _________________________________________ > 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. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> From kalpagam25 at rediffmail.com Tue Nov 14 14:46:39 2006 From: kalpagam25 at rediffmail.com (kalpagam - umamaheswaran) Date: 14 Nov 2006 09:16:39 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Post- ISF questions Message-ID: <20061114091639.15328.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com>   Hi Jeebesh, The issues you raise are important. I think we need to understand the proliferating rights-discourse in the context of an emergent global sovereignty alongside the decline of national sovereignty and how these reconstitute the policy and rights domains. I have attempted to do something of this in the paper which I hope to present at the Sarai colloqium later this month. Best, U.Kalpagam -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061114/57965ae0/attachment.html From tarana at cal2.vsnl.net.in Tue Nov 14 17:00:48 2006 From: tarana at cal2.vsnl.net.in (From Vector) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 17:00:48 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] first attempt- interested in feedback Message-ID: <001201c707e0$56f64f80$0201a8c0@TARANA> http://trustfortherevivalofindianplay.blogspot.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061114/5f9eb0ce/attachment.html From oishiksircar at hotmail.com Tue Nov 14 23:53:35 2006 From: oishiksircar at hotmail.com (Oishik Sircar) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:23:35 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Post- ISF questions Message-ID: It's interesting how Jeebesh's position perfectly reflects what Upendra Baxi has called human rights 'wariness' of the Global South -- while it is important to be critical of the cruelly liberal project of the UN authored rights discourse -- from which has also emerged the powerful rhetoric of the 'rights-based' approach -- it will be counterproductive to undermine its potential as a tool for enganing in 'justice seeking' processes. I agree so far as we are willing to put the UN authored rights discourse under constant interrogation to check its hegemonic and essentialist tendencies -- while at the same time learning the strategies for its intelligent use -- there's a 'small voice of history', in the 'political society' of the disadvantaged which also articulates 'human rights' concerns -- the strategy is it put the meta-narrative of 'human rights' under the scanner of this 'small of voice of history' -- not to discard and trivialise its potential. OISHIK SIRCAR oishiksircar at hotmail.comoishiksircar@justice.com Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 18:00:20 +0000From: amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.inTo: jeebesh at sarai.net; reader-list at sarai.netSubject: Re: [Reader-list] Post- ISF questionsjeebesh, thanks for raising such crucial questions to ponder on. such kind of cultural hegemony of rights discourse would emerge in the golbalised model of the state was hinted by some. your refection from the isf is indeed timely and pushes me to think critically. amitJeebesh Bagchi wrote: Dear All,Walked around ISF (9th - 13th Nov, Delhi) for some time and it was amazing how deep the "Rights" based language has seeped into the social body and imagination. If you take away that word, there will be nothing left to hold on to. The "masters" thunder facts of displacement and terrors by "LPG" (liberalization, privatization, globalization), rhetorically induce powerlessness and guilt and then move towards a carving of a "rights" based petitioning. The ghost in the ISF machine was the State, its social welfare mystique and its robin hood mythologies!!From the conceptual debris of the last century, this one word has gathered many adherents. There was no "issue" that was not under this "rights" scanner. Am totally foxed - how this pervasive spread of this discourse? Why is it such a popular discourse? The abstraction that a "rights" based discourse would produce will land up erasing so much of the diversity that all these groups are claiming to be representing. Or is this the only form by which "leaders" can talk to each other? Or is this the beginning of new govermentality, that incorporates everyone as a "implementor" of emerging state policies and designs over space, labour, and resource...Maybe it is just that the present production of speed and terror of capitalist accumulation has everyone bewildered and only a naive recourse to State seems a way to hold on to some ground. Rest all looks lost, long and evaporating.So comrades the task of critical and creative thinking is going to be fun!!bestjeebesh_________________________________________reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.Critiques & CollaborationsTo subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list List archive: Find out what India is talking about on - Yahoo! Answers India Send FREE SMS to your friend's mobile from Yahoo! Messenger Version 8. Get it NOW _________________________________________________________________ Search from any Web page with powerful protection. Get the FREE Windows Live Toolbar Today! http://toolbar.live.com/?mkt=en-in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061114/788956dd/attachment.html From sudhesh.unniraman at gmail.com Wed Nov 15 10:34:04 2006 From: sudhesh.unniraman at gmail.com (sudhesh) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 10:34:04 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Post- ISF questions In-Reply-To: <3AF7B4A8-02F8-4D84-81EA-0C1AFA2242DA@sarai.net> References: <3AF7B4A8-02F8-4D84-81EA-0C1AFA2242DA@sarai.net> Message-ID: <73cd0cce0611142104i4acfda6aj4d8537718c071c73@mail.gmail.com> jeebesh yaar thoda simple likh na !!!! sudhesh -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061115/d18d8552/attachment.html From avinashcold at gmail.com Wed Nov 15 17:26:49 2006 From: avinashcold at gmail.com (Avinash Kumar) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:26:49 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] A Muslim's Choice: Turn U.S. Informant Or Risk Losing Visa Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal A Muslim's Choice: Turn U.S. Informant Or Risk Losing Visa By Peter Waldman July 11, 2006 Tuesday Last November, when Yassine Ouassif crossed into Champlain, N.Y., from Canada, border agents questioned him for several hours. Then they took away his green card and sent him home to San Francisco by bus, with strict instructions: As soon as he got there, he was to call a man named Dan. Dan, it turned out, was Daniel Fliflet, a counterterrorism agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Ouassif met the agent at an Oakland subway station on Nov. 30, and the two men walked the streets together for 90 minutes. Mr. Fliflet told the 24-year-old Moroccan that he'd been monitoring his friends and him for many months, Mr. Ouassif recalls. Mr. Fliflet made him an offer: Become an informant and regularly report to the FBI on what his Muslim friends in San Francisco were saying and doing. In exchange, he would get back his green card. He could resume his education, bring his Moroccan wife to America, and pursue his dream of buying a car, moving to Sacramento and becoming an engineer. If he refused? asked Mr. Ouassif. "I will work hard to deport you to Morocco as soon as possible," Mr. Fliflet responded, according to an account written by Mr. Ouassif soon after the meeting. "I want you to know something important," the FBI agent added, according to Mr. Ouassif. "America is just like a bus, and you have a choice to make: Either you board the bus or you leave." Mr. Ouassif's encounters with federal officials -- and with intelligence agencies on two other continents -- came to a head in April. His story provides a window into a largely covert front of the war on terror: the FBI's aggressive pursuit of Muslim informants. Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, the bureau has had the difficult task of penetrating a culture that few agents know anything about. It has responded with a forceful effort to conscript eyes and ears within Muslim communities. Some of the recruitment is public. FBI agents plead for community assistance in meetings at mosques and other Muslim conclaves. Agents are also under pressure to develop confidential sources. According to FBI rules, supervisors review case files every 90 days to scrutinize the nature and credibility of agents' contacts. "If an agent is sitting there with nothing," one FBI official says, "their supervisor will come down and ask, 'What are you doing?'" Over the years, informants have been vital in developing criminal cases against drug gangs, the Mafia and other organized crime. But when agents resort to coercive tactics, it sometimes backfires, some FBI agents say. In intelligence gathering, the so-called hammer -- the threat of legal retaliation -- can alienate the "human assets" needed most, experts say, and can raise legal and ethical questions. "The best FBI man is really just a good salesman," says Patrick Webb, a retired FBI supervisor who set up San Francisco's terrorism task force in the 1990s. "Blackmail of any type is blackmail. That never works." Mr. Fliflet didn't respond to questions emailed to him about his dealings with Mr. Ouassif. An FBI spokeswoman in San Francisco, LaRae Quy, confirms Mr. Ouassif's account of his dealings with Mr. Fliflet. "This was a serious investigation, though not necessarily of Mr. Ouassif," she says. "We had really good reason to believe he could give us good information about a lot of things." After his meeting with Mr. Fliflet, Mr. Ouassif faced a dilemma increasingly familiar to Muslims in America in recent years: whether to inform on friends and relatives or risk alienating U.S. authorities. Walid Mustafa, a 53-year-old Palestinian American who teaches kung fu, first encountered the FBI when a young agent knocked on his door in Sacramento to ask about fund-raising at the local mosque. The FBI had been questioning donors to Muslim charities nationwide. Several weeks later, Mr. Mustafa contacted the agent for help: His brother's ex-wife had sold their duplex and absconded with the proceeds to Malaysia, Mr. Mustafa told the agent. They agreed to meet at Starbucks. Mr. Mustafa says the FBI agent offered to pay him for providing information about local Muslims. "What about helping my brother?" he recalls asking. "You help us. We'll help you," he says the agent responded. "It was so insulting," says Mr. Mustafa. "As Muslims, we're obligated to protect this country. We don't need to get paid. I told him, 'You're not going to solve the problem by hiring snitches in mosques. Get involved. Get to know people. Become part of the community.'" Karen Ernst, an FBI spokeswoman in Sacramento, says that Mr. Mustafa "got very upset" when he was asked to become an informant. But she says the agents who dealt with him never suggested trading favors in any way. Mr. Ouassif, the young Moroccan whose green card was taken at the border, immigrated to the U.S. in 2001 at the age of 18, after winning the green card in a State Department lottery. He says he immediately began to look for a wife. He asked other U.S. Muslims to fix him up, "but the only thing people cared about was how much money I had," says Mr. Ouassif, who works as a laborer and security guard. The solution, he says, came to him in a dream: He would marry Khadija El Fahri, a first cousin whom he hadn't seen since 2001, when she was 14. His mother and aunt arranged it, and in 2003, the couple married in Casablanca. After a brief honeymoon, Mr. Ouassif returned alone to San Francisco, enrolled in community college and hunkered down for what he expected would be a long, agonizing wait for a visa for his 16-year-old bride. Mr. Ouassif's troubles began last September after he visited his wife in Morocco. He took off from Paris on a flight back to San Francisco. Three hours later, the pilot announced the flight was returning to Paris. Two French policemen escorted Mr. Ouassif off the plane. French authorities told him that the U.S. would not permit the plane to land with him onboard, he says. They told him they didn't know why, he says. They put him on the next flight to Casablanca. Moroccan security officials met Mr. Ouassif at the airport and grilled him all night and for much of the next day, he says. At one point they told him he'd "never see the sun again" if he didn't tell them why the U.S. would turn back a French jet just because he was aboard, he says. Through tears, he pleaded innocence. Moroccan authorities allowed him to stay with his family while they investigated. Paul Bresson, a spokesman for the FBI in Washington, declined to discuss any aspect of the so-called no-fly list maintained by the government. A spokeswoman for the Moroccan embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment. One month later, a Moroccan agent informed Mr. Ouassif that he'd been cleared of suspicion by Moroccan intelligence, Mr. Ouassif says. The agent warned him not to return to the U.S., but didn't elaborate. Nearly broke from the extended stay, Mr. Ouassif bought a plane ticket to Montreal. His plan was to return to the U.S. by bus and to resolve his problem with U.S. authorities at the border. When he arrived there, an inspector wondered why he had flown through Montreal. Concerned about arousing further suspicion, Mr. Ouassif said nothing about the incident in Paris. He told the inspector he'd heard the road from Canada was beautiful, he recalls. He was handcuffed and placed in a holding cell for several hours, he says. An immigration officer interviewed him at length about his life and religious views. Then, he says, he was introduced to Special Agent Michael Lonergan of the FBI's office in Plattsburgh, N.Y. They were left alone to talk, he says. Immigration officers had taken his green card. Under normal circumstances, Mr. Lonergan told him, he would have been sent to a Buffalo detention center to await deportation proceedings, according to Mr. Ouassif. He'd been spared, Mr. Lonergan told him, by a call from Dan, his FBI colleague in San Francisco. Special Agent Dan Fliflet wanted Mr. Ouassif to come to San Francisco, but not by plane, and to call him as soon as he arrived. According to Mr. Ouassif, Mr. Lonergan told him that Mr. Fliflet would decide whether he would get back his green card or be deported. Mr. Ouassif was ordered to report to an immigration interview in San Francisco three weeks later, on Dec. 14. Mr. Lonergan referred questions about the matter to the FBI's spokesman in Albany, N.Y., who declined to comment. One week later, as Mr. Ouassif and Mr. Fliflet walked the streets of Oakland, the FBI agent accused him and his friends of having "jihadi" beliefs, according to Mr. Ouassif's written account. Mr. Ouassif responded that they were observant Muslims interested in peace and personal betterment, not jihad and politics. Mr. Fliflet said he didn't believe that, and asked Mr. Ouassif if he had any information to share, according to Mr. Ouassif. Mr. Ouassif says he told the agent about the only suspicious character he knew, an Afghani man who prayed on Fridays at a San Francisco mosque and claimed to have fought with the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviets. The man supported Muslim insurgents in Iraq, Mr. Ouassif said, and once asked Mr. Ouassif to wire $5,000 for him from Morocco to Iraq. Mr. Ouassif told the agent he had refused, and had told the Afghani that he didn't believe the Iraq conflict was a true jihad. Mr. Fliflet gave Mr. Ouassif one week to consider the FBI's offer to become an informant in exchange for his green card, according to Mr. Ouassif. If he didn't hear from him, the FBI agent said, he'd assume Mr. Ouassif "prefers to help extremists" instead of America, according to Mr. Ouassif. Mr. Fliflet warned him the FBI had ample evidence to prove he was an extremist, Mr. Ouassif says. Mr. Fliflet told him not to tell anyone about their meeting, including any lawyer. Accepting the offer, says Mr. Ouassif, would have fulfilled his dream to bring his wife to America. But he feared that doing so would be sinful. According to the Quran, he says, the lowest depths of hell are reserved for munafiqun -- hypocrites who act as Muslims while plotting against them. Mr. Ouassif says he also worried that working with the FBI was a lifelong commitment -- easy to start, impossible to stop. Mr. Ouassif immediately told his roommate, Noureddin Moussawi, what had happened. Mr. Moussawi, a Moroccan-American cabdriver who had worked for 10 years as a United Airlines flight attendant, says he told Mr. Ouassif that the FBI wouldn't hurt him because he'd done nothing wrong. "Tell the truth. You have nothing to hide," Mr. Moussawi recalls telling him. Two weeks later, Mr. Ouassif reported for his scheduled immigration interview. Ignoring Mr. Fliflet's instruction, he brought a lawyer, Banafsheh Aklaghi, founder of a San Francisco nonprofit group, National Legal Sanctuary for Community Advancement. Mr. Fliflet was there. An immigration agent peppered Mr. Ouassif with questions. Clues emerged as to why the authorities had taken such an interest in him. Much of the interview focused on one of his former roommates, a San Francisco cabdriver who had returned home to Baghdad shortly after Mr. Ouassif moved in with him in 2003. Mr. Ouassif says he inferred from the questions that his ex-roommate had been arrested or killed in Iraq. Mr. Ouassif's cellphone number had been on the man's phone, the immigration agent said. Mr. Ouassif told the agent they hadn't been close friends, and that he hadn't thought the man was dangerous or he wouldn't have lived with him. The agents told Mr. Ouassif they intended to detain him for deportation. His lawyer asked why. Mr. Ouassif says the agents didn't answer. He was handcuffed and put in a holding cell. Through a cell window, his lawyer told him he was slated for detention in Eloy, Ariz., one of the highest-security facilities in the federal system. Mr. Ouassif cried. About three hours later, he says, the immigration agent took him aside without his attorney and asked if he still wanted to fight deportation. He said he did. Within minutes, he says, another immigration officer gave him surprising news: he was free to go. The Homeland Security lawyer on duty had refused to sign his detention order, citing a lack of evidence, his attorney, Ms. Aklaghi, was told. (FBI and immigration agents can recommend detention and deportation, but it is up to Homeland Security lawyers to review the legality of the decisions.) Mr. Ouassif was given another immigration appointment. On April 6, Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch gave Mr. Ouassif his green card back. Ms. Aklaghi says she learned more at that point about why federal authorities were so interested in him. Mr. Ouassif had been secretly recorded by an FBI informant talking to friends in a San Francisco mosque. A Homeland Security lawyer, she says, did not specify what Mr. Ouassif had said, but told her that his statements did not indicate criminal intent and were fully protected by the First Amendment. Nevertheless, his statements had landed him on the no-fly list, Ms. Aklaghi says, and led to all his subsequent travails. Mr. Bresson, the FBI spokesman in Washington, said the bureau won't discuss "any specific individuals who are purportedly on the list or the mechanics involved with how they allegedly got there." Another federal official familiar with Mr. Ouassif's case says government lawyers have become much more discerning about the treatment of Muslim immigrants since the years immediately following 9/11. "We know the FBI is desperate for human assets, for feet on the ground, but the worst thing we could possibly do is threaten and blackmail people and treat them with disrespect," this official says. Ms. Quy, the FBI spokeswoman in San Francisco, says that Mr. Fliflet thought he could help Mr. Ouassif with a visa problem and did not set out to threaten him. "We're learning, too," she says. "We need to understand where the boundaries are for them, as well as us." She says the suspicions about Mr. Ouassif and his acquaintances are "diminishing all the time, because our questions are getting answered." Mr. Ouassif says he plans to resume his studies, which he had dropped in January due to stress. He's desperate to visit his wife in Morocco, he says, but worries he's still on the no-fly list. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Terrorism Screening Center, which keeps the list, declined to comment. Mr. Ouassif says his next goal is to save $25,000 to buy his mother an apartment in Casablanca. After the requisite FBI background check, California recently renewed his security-guard registration. He's now working double shifts guarding electric-power plants. "It's OK to ask me or anyone else, 'If you see a dangerous person, an extremist, will you call us?'" he says. "Of course I will. But I don't want to live a secret life." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061115/542cd655/attachment.html From amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in Wed Nov 15 19:30:20 2006 From: amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in (Amit Basu) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 14:00:20 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: e-NASS CALL FOR PAPERS: Journal of Urban Research Message-ID: <355004.69814.qm@web8504.mail.in.yahoo.com> Note: forwarded message attached. --------------------------------- Find out what India is talking about on - Yahoo! Answers India Send FREE SMS to your friend's mobile from Yahoo! Messenger Version 8. Get it NOW -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061115/0575ee3f/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: =?windows-1254?Q?l=FCtfisunar?= Subject: e-NASS CALL FOR PAPERS: Journal of Urban Research Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 12:47:02 +0200 Size: 8752 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061115/0575ee3f/attachment.mht From z at zerosofzeta.com Wed Nov 15 20:39:31 2006 From: z at zerosofzeta.com (Yogesh Girdhar) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:39:31 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 'COMPASSIONATE SLAVERY' MARKET FOR AFRICA: WTO In-Reply-To: <3042EA31-016C-49C2-89C4-CE9AE78952F0@pobox.com> References: <200611131658.kADGwpnx014934@firn.dox.org> <640508e90611131425t4c37b0d5w416a59402cd000c5@mail.gmail.com> <3042EA31-016C-49C2-89C4-CE9AE78952F0@pobox.com> Message-ID: <1d804b40611150709i2c5df581obf6ce94fb19a0ba6@mail.gmail.com> oh hahah i know these people its the yesmenn (http://www.theyesmen.org) One of them was my professor at RPI (Troy, NY) -yogi On 11/14/06, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: > The gullible are advised to consult the domain's registrar. > > ~j > > > On 14/Nov/2006, at 3:55 AM, l. c. wrote: > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > > From: World Trade Organization < africa at gatt.org> > > Date: 13-nov-2006 17.58 > > Subject: 'COMPASSIONATE SLAVERY' MARKET FOR AFRICA: WTO > > > > November 13, 2006 > > FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE > > > > WTO ANNOUNCES FORMALIZED SLAVERY MARKET FOR AFRICA > > US Trade Representative to Africa, Governor of Nigeria Central Bank > > weigh in at Wharton > > _________________________________________ > 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. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> From michelle_h at onetel.com Tue Nov 14 17:02:34 2006 From: michelle_h at onetel.com (Michelle Hirschhorn) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 11:32:34 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Call for media artists in UK, Latvia, Bulgaria and Norway Message-ID: <7C6843AE-6540-4734-AA4B-938696A2C52A@onetel.com> Please forward as appropriate Call for Applications for 4 International Residencies European Culture2000 funding has enabled ISIS Arts (UK) and international project partners BEK (Norway), InterSpace (Bulgaria ) and RIXC (Latvia) to have one international artist in residence in each of the four countries around the theme of European identity. The overall programme is entitled ‘at Home in Europe’ and facilitates the movement and exchange of artists and media art in four countries with a very different take on Europe. This one-year project questions whether there is such a thing as European identity and how it relates to national identity. Residencies Professional artists from Latvia, Norway, Bulgaria and the UK are invited to apply for a three-month residency at one of the international media arts organisations listed below. Artists working in a variety of media including video, film, animation, interactive art, streaming media, digital photography, web-based art, sound art or (interactive) installation are invited to apply. The outcomes will be made available through a website documenting work in progress. All residencies are for three months between February 2007 and June 2007. Each host organisation offers a studio space and living accommodation for these three months. The successful artists will receive a fee of 5000 euro and there will be a small production budget which is administered by each host organisation. The artists will work creatively and innovatively with technology to produce work related to the theme. As a small part of each residency, the artists spend 5 days to deliver and prepare workshops with young people which will be set up by the partner organisations in collaboration with the artist. Please indicate first, second and third choice of the organisation where you want to do the residency. To apply please send: A project proposal, maximum 2 sheets of A4, clearly indicating technical requirements, including equipment/technical support provided by the artist. Documentation of previous work (Audio, Video (DVD), max 10 minutes) A filled in application form A current CV A stamped addressed envelope for the return of materials Applications to be sent to: RIXC, 11 Novembra Krastmala 35 -201 LV 1050 Riga, Latvia Application deadline is the 7th of December 2006 for receipt of applications Interviews will take place at the host organizations on the 15th of January 2007 (Short-listed artists will receive travel and overnight expenses) Artists applying must demonstrate the following: The ability to research, interpret and present ideas An interest in working with the project theme Experience of using digital media in the creation of art works Experience of producing own work for public dissemination Experience of working on fixed term residencies with deadlines Information on host organizations: ISIS Arts http://www.isisarts.org.uk ISIS Arts is a not-for-profit arts organization in Newcastle upon Tyne (UK) which was founded in 1991. ISIS promotes the making, presentation and exchange of experimental media art through residency, commissioning and training opportunities for artists. ISIS programme seeks to address themes of identity and cultural understanding and we engage with artists to produce work that challenges and presents social issues within new contexts. ISIS works creatively with digital media providing a city-centre studio space for regional and international artists. For this residency ISIS can offer some access to video and sound editing equipment, and multimedia and web based software (on Mac platform). For a full list of available software please check the website. The residency at ISIS is open to any artist who creatively addresses the project theme. For more information contact: Adinda van ‘t Klooster, ISIS Arts, Phone number: + 44 - (0)191-2614407 Email: isis at isisarts.org.uk or adinda at isisarts.org.uk RIXC http://rixc.lv RIXC, Center for new media culture, was founded in 2000 in Riga, Latvia (on the base of E-LAB, since 1996). RIXC's specific expertise & fields of interest include: Acoustic Space Lab (for streaming media, sound art, networked radio experiments and art/science collaboration), Media Architecture (for exploring intersection of post-modern architectonics and information networks), Locative Media (for collaborative mapping, location based art and mobile networking). RIXC would be like to receive residency proposals related to their fields of interest, but not necessarily limited to them. In terms of resources RIXC can provide access to: RIXC's Mediatheca (for research), Media Lab (for audio/video productions on Mac platform, internet radio / streaming on Linux/Win/PC), Media Space (for public presentations), and visiting/co-working opportunities in RIXC's partner places - i.e. at the K at 2 center in Liepaja Karosta (http://karosta.lv) For more information contact: rixc at rixc.lv / Rasa Smite (rasa at rixc.lv) Tel. +371-7228478, Fax: +371-7228477 BEK http://www.bek.no BEK, Bergen Center for Electronic Arts, is a non-profit organization situated in Bergen, Norway, providing resources and knowledge for artists and others working in the field of arts and new technology. BEK specialises in the development and distribution of open source software and has a transdisciplinary approach to artistic practice, including live art, sound art, theatre productions, electronic and electro- acoustic music, installation work and performance. We can offer access to editing and recording equipment for sound and video, a small electronics worklab, and support in the use of open source software. Phone number: +47 - 55233080 or email bek at bek.no InterSpace http://www.i-space.org/ InterSpace is an artistic association based in Sofia, Bulgaria, which was founded in 1998 to foster creativity in the field of arts, new media and technologies. InterSpace works on the development of all areas where creativity in new media is concerned: education and research, production and distribution, building capacity and community. InterSpace offers facilities for audio and video production, support in the use of free and open source software, web based and multimedia applications. InterSpace is interested in hosting an artist working in the field of audio-visual productions, films, interactive works, or artistic projects using free and open source software. For more information contact: Galia Dimitrova, InterSpace Phone number: + 359 – 2 9834843 or email home at i-space.org --------------- apologies for any cross posting ---------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061114/50169a76/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com Thu Nov 16 08:23:26 2006 From: mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com (mahmood farooqui) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:23:26 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Post- ISF questions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: the point is well taken oishik but what comrade jeebs was concerned about, i think, was that at a moment like the india social forum where momentous and farreaching reflections are supposed to happen, by a whole gamut of organisations, peoples, beings, movements, this kind of hegemonic discourse is alarming, as indeed it is! On 14/11/06, Oishik Sircar wrote: > It's interesting how Jeebesh's position perfectly reflects what Upendra Baxi > has called human rights 'wariness' of the Global South -- while it is > important to be critical of the cruelly liberal project of the UN authored > rights discourse -- from which has also emerged the powerful rhetoric of the > 'rights-based' approach -- it will be counterproductive to undermine its > potential as a tool for enganing in 'justice seeking' processes. I agree so > far as we are willing to put the UN authored rights discourse under constant > interrogation to check its hegemonic and essentialist tendencies -- while at > the same time learning the strategies for its intelligent use -- there's a > 'small voice of history', in the 'political society' of the disadvantaged > which also articulates 'human rights' concerns -- the strategy is it put the > meta-narrative of 'human rights' under the scanner of this 'small of voice > of history' -- not to discard and trivialise its potential. > > > > > > > > OISHIK SIRCAR > > oishiksircar at hotmail.com > oishiksircar at justice.com > > > > ________________________________ > Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 18:00:20 +0000 > From: amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in > To: jeebesh at sarai.net; reader-list at sarai.net > Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Post- ISF questions > > jeebesh, thanks for raising such crucial questions to ponder on. such kind > of cultural hegemony of rights discourse would emerge in the golbalised > model of the state was hinted by some. your refection from the isf is indeed > timely and pushes me to think critically. amit > > Jeebesh Bagchi wrote: > Dear All, > > Walked around ISF (9th - 13th Nov, Delhi) for some time and it was > amazing how deep the "Rights" based language has seeped into the > social body and imagination. If you take away that word, there will > be nothing left to hold on to. The "masters" thunder facts of > displacement and terrors by "LPG" (liberalization, privatization, > globalization), rhetorically induce powerlessness and guilt and then > move towards a carving of a "rights" based petitioning. The ghost in > the ISF machine was the State, its social welfare mystique and its > robin hood mythologies!! > > From the conceptual debris of the last century, this one word has > gathered many adherents. There was no "issue" that was not under this > "rights" scanner. Am totally foxed - how this pervasive spread of > this discourse? Why is it such a popular discourse? The abstraction > that a "rights" based discourse would produce will land up erasing so > much of the diversity that all these groups are claiming to be > representing. Or is this the only form by which "leaders" can talk to > each other? Or is this the beginning of new govermentality, that > incorporates everyone as a "implementor" of emerging state policies > and designs over space, labour, and resource... > > Maybe it is just that the present production of speed and terror of > capitalist accumulation has everyone bewildered and only a naive > recourse to State seems a way to hold on to some ground. Rest all > looks lost, long and evaporating. > > So comrades the task of critical and creative thinking is going to be > fun!! > > 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. > To unsubscribe: > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: > > > ________________________________ > Find out what India is talking about on - Yahoo! Answers India > Send FREE SMS to your friend's mobile from Yahoo! Messenger Version 8. Get > it NOW > ________________________________ > Search from any Web page with powerful protection. Get the FREE Windows Live > Toolbar Today! Try it now! > _________________________________________ > 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. > To unsubscribe: > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: > > From machine at zerosofzeta.com Thu Nov 16 13:35:52 2006 From: machine at zerosofzeta.com (Yogesh Girdhar) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 13:35:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Great FAQ on RTI Message-ID: <1d804b40611160005j32b5c4edq3ede46e6c27aa7b8@mail.gmail.com> Fond this great FAQ on RTI. http://www.ndtv.com/rti/faqs.asp -yogi -------------------------------------------------------- What is Right to Information What is RTI? RTI stands for Right to Information. Right to Information is a part of fundamental rights under Article 19(1) of the Constitution. Article 19 (1) says that every citizen has freedom of speech and expression. As early as in 1976, the Supreme Court said in the case of Raj Narain vs State of UP, that people cannot speak or express themselves unless they know. Therefore, right to information is embedded in article 19. In the same case, Supreme Court further said that India is a democracy. People are the masters. Therefore, the masters have a right to know how the governments, meant to serve them, are functioning. Further, every citizen pays taxes. Even a beggar on the street pays tax (in the form of sales tax, excise duty etc) when he buys a piece of soap from the market. The citizens therefore, have a right to know how their money was being spent. These three principles were laid down by the Supreme Court while saying that RTI is a part of our fundamental rights. If RTI is a fundamental right, then why do we need an Act to give us this right? This is because if you went to any Government Department and told the officer there, "RTI is my fundamental right, and that I am the master of this country. Therefore, please show me all your files", he would not do that. In all probability, he would throw you out of his room. Therefore, we need a machinery or a process through which we can exercise this fundamental right. Right to Information Act 2005, which became effective on 13th October 2005, provides that machinery. Therefore, Right to Information Act does not give us any new right. It simply lays down the process on how to apply for information, where to apply, how much fees etc. When did RTI Act come into force? The Central Right to Information Act came into force on the 12th October, 2005. However, before that 9 state Governments had passed state Acts. These were J & K, Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Assam & Goa. What rights are available under RTI Act 2005? Right to Information Act 2005 empowers every citizen to q Ask any questions from the Government or seek any information q Take copies of any government documents q Inspect any government documents. q Inspect any Government works q Take samples of materials of any Government work. Who is covered under RTI? The Central RTI Act extends to the whole of India except the State of Jammu and Kashmir. All bodies, which are constituted under the Constitution or under any law or under any Government notification or all bodies, including NGOs, which are owned, controlled or substantially financed by the Government are covered. What is "substantially financed"? This is neither defined under RTI Act nor under any other Act. So, this issue will evolve with time, maybe through some court orders etc. Are Private bodies covered under the RTI Act? All private bodies, which are owned, controlled or substantially financed by the Government are directly covered. Others are indirectly covered. That is, if a government department can access information from any private body under any other Act, the same can be accessed by the citizen under the RTI Act through that government department. Isn't Official Secrets Act 1923 an obstacle to the implementation of RTI Act? No. Sec 22 of the RTI Act 2005 clearly says that RTI Act would over ride all existing Acts including Officials Secrets Act. Can the PIO refuse to give me information? A PIO can refuse information on 11 subjects that are listed in section 8 of the RTI Act. These include information received in confidence from foreign governments, information prejudicial to security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the country, breach of privilege of legislatures, etc. There is a list of 18 agencies given in second schedule of the Act to which RTI Act does not apply. However, they also have to give information if it relates to matters pertaining to allegations of corruption or human rights violations. Does the Act provide for partial disclosure? Yes. Under Section 10 of the RTI Act, access may be provided to that part of the record which does not contain information which is exempt from disclosure under this Act. Can access be denied to file notings? No. File notings are an integral part of the government file and are subject to disclosure under the Act. This has been clarified by the Central Information Commission in one of its orders on 31st Jan 2006. How to use Right to Information How do I locate the full Act? The full Act in Hindi and English is available on the website of Department of Personnel and Training www.persmin.nic.in. It is also available on this website. Who will give me information? One or more existing officers in every Government Department have been designated as Public Information Officers (PIO). These PIOs act like nodal officers. You have to file your applications with them. They are responsible for collecting information sought by you from various wings of that Department and providing that information to you. In addition, several officers have been appointed as Assistant Public Information Officers (APIOs). Their job is only to accept applications from the public and forward it to the right PIO. Where do I submit application? You can do that with the PIO or with APIO. In the case of all Central Government Departments, 629 post offices have been designated as APIOs. This means that you can go to any of these post offices and submit your fee and application at the RTI counter in these post offices. They will issue you a receipt and acknowledgement and it is the responsibility of that post office to deliver it to the right PIO. The list of these post offices is given at http://www.indiapost.gov.in/rtimanual16a.html Is there any fee? How do I deposit that? Yes, there is an application fee. For Central Government Departments, it is Rs 10. However, different states have prescribed different fee. For details see rules framed by the states on this website. For getting information, you have to pay Rs 2 per page of information provided for Central Government Departments. It is different for different states. Similarly, there is a fee for inspection of documents. There is no fee for first hour of inspection, but after that, you have to pay Rs. 5 for every subsequent hour or fraction thereof. This is according to Central Rules. For each state, see respective state rules. You can deposit fee wither in cash or through a DD or bankers cheque or postal order drawn in favor of that public authority. In some states, you can buy court fee stamps and affix it on your application. This would be treated as if you have deposited the fee. You can then deposit your application either by post or by hand. What should I do if the PIO or the concerned Department does not accept my application? You can send it by post. You should also make a formal complaint to the respective Information Commission under section 18. The Information Commissioner has the power to impose a penalty of Rs 25000 on the concerned officer who refused to accept your application. Is there an application form for seeking information? For Central Government Departments, there is no form. You should apply on a plain sheet of paper like an ordinary application. However, many states and some ministries and departments have prescribed formats. You should apply in these formats. Please read rules of respective states to know How can I apply for information? Draft your application on a normal sheet of paper and submit it by post or in person to the Public Information Officer (PIO). [Remember to keep a copy of the application for your personal reference] How can I deposit my application fee? Every state has a different mode of payment for application fee. Generally, you can deposit your application fee via: * In person by paying cash [remember to take your receipt] * By Post through: * Demand Draft * Indian Postal Order * Money orders (only in some states) * Affixing Court fee Stamp (only in some states) * Banker's cheque * Some state governments have prescribed some head of account. You are required to deposit fee in that account. For that, you can either go to any branch of SBI and despoist cash in that account and attach deposit receipt with your RTI application. Or you can also send a postal order or a DD drawn in favour of that account alongwith your RTI application. Please see respective state rules for complete details. Can I submit my application only with the PIO? No, in case the PIO is not available you can submit your application with the Assistant PIO or any other officer designated to accept the RTI applications. Where can I locate the concerned PIO? A list of PIOs/APIOs and Appellate Authorities for all Central and State departments/Ministries is available online at www.rti.gov.in What if I can not locate my PIO or APIO? In case you have problems locating your PIO/APIO you can address your RTI application to the PIO C/o Head of Department and send it to the concerned public authority with the requisite application fee. The Head of Department will have to forward your application to the concerned PIO. Do I have to personally go to deposit my application? Depending on your state rules for mode of payment you can deposit your application for information from the concerned departments of your state government via post by attaching a DD, Money Order, Postal Order or affixing Court fee Stamp For all Central government departments the Department of Posts has designated 629 postal offices at the national level. The designated officers in these post offices work as Assistant PIOs and collect the application to forward to the concerned PIO. A list is available on http://www.indiapost.gov.in/rticontents.html Is there a time limit to receiving information? Yes. If you file your application with the PIO, you must receive information within 30 days. In case you have filed your application with Assistant PIO then information has to be made available within 35 days. In case the matter to which the information pertains affects the life and liberty of an individual, information has to be made available in 48 hours. Do I have to give reasons why I want a particular information? Absolutely not! You are not required to give any reasons or additional information other than your contact details (i.e., Name, Address, and Phone No.). Sec 6(2) clearly says that no information other than contact details of the applicant shall be asked. Can the PIO refuse to accept my RTI application? No. The PIO can not refuse to accept your application for information under any circumstances. Even if the information does not pertain to his/her department/jurisdiction, s/he has to accept it. If the application does not pertain to that PIO, he would have to transfer it to the right PIO within 5 days under sec 6(2). Why is it that RTI works when no other law has worked There have been many good laws in this country but none of those laws worked. Why do you think this law would work? This law is already working. This is because for the first time in the history of independent India, there is a law which casts a direct accountability on the officer for non-performance. If concerned officer does not provide information in time, a penalty of Rs 250 per day of delay can be imposed by the Information Commissioner. If the information provided is false, a penalty of a maximum of Rs 25000 can be imposed. A penalty can also be imposed for providing incomplete or for rejecting your application for malafide reasons. This fine is deducted from the officer's personal salary. Has any penalty been imposed so far? Yes, some officers have been penalized by the Central as well as State Information Commissioners. Does the Applicant get the amount fined to the PIO? No. The amount fined is deposited in the government treasury. However, under sec 19, the applicant can seek compensation. What should I do if I do not receive satisfactory information What can I do if I do not receive information? If you do not receive information or are dissatisfied with the information received, you can file an appeal with the first appellate authority under section 19 (1) of the right to Information Act. Who is a First Appellate authority? Every public authority must designate a First Appellate Authority. This officer designated is the officer senior in rank to your PIO. Is there a form for the first appeal? No there is no form for filing a first appeal (but some state governments have prescribed a form). Draft your appeal application on a blank sheet of paper addressed to the First Appellate Authority. Remember to attach a copy of your original application and a copy of the reply in whatever form (if received) from the PIO. Do I have to pay a fee for the first appeal? No. You are not required to pay any fee for the first appeal. However, some state governments have prescribed a fee. In how many days can I file my first appeal? You can file your first appeal within 30 days of receipt of information or within 60 days of filing RTI application (if no information received). What if I do not receive the information after the first appeal process? If you do not receive information even after the first appeal then you can take the matter forward to the second appeal stage. What is a second appeal? A second appeal is the last option under the RTI Act to get the information requested. You can file second appeal with the Information Commission. For appeals against Central Government Departments, you have Central Information Commission (CIC). For every state Government, there is a State Information Commission. Is there a form for the second appeal? No there is no form for filing a second appeal (but some state governments have prescribed a form for second appeal too). Draft your appeal application on a normal sheet of paper addressed to the Central or State Information Commission. Carefully read the appeal rules before drafting your second appeal. Your second appeal application can be rejected if it does not comply with the appeal rules. Do I have to pay a fee for the second appeal? No. You are not required to pay any fee for the second appeal. However, some states have prescribed a fee for that. In how many days can I file my second appeal? You can file your second appeal within 90 days of disposal of first appeal or within 90 days of the date, by when first appeal was to be decided. How does this law help me in getting my work done How does this law work so effectively for pending works i.e. why is it that the government officials end up doing your work which they were not doing earlier? Let us take the case of Nannu. He was not being given his ration card. But when he applied under RTI, he was given a card within a week. What did Nannu ask? He asked the following questions: 1. I filed an application for a duplicate ration card on 27th January 2004. Please tell me the daily progress made on my application so far. i.e. when did my application reach which officer, for how long did it stay with that officer and what did he/she do during that period? 2. According to the rules, my card should have been made in 10 days. However, it is more than three months now. Please give the names and designations of the officials who were supposed to take action on my application and who have not done so? 3. What action would be taken against these officials for not doing their work and for causing harassment to the public? By when would that action be taken? 4. By when would I get my card now? In normal circumstances, such an application would be thrown in a dustbin. But this law says that the Government has to reply in 30 days. If they don't do that, their salary could be deducted. Now, it is not easy to answer these questions. The first question is – please provide the daily progress made on my application. There is no progress made. But the government officials cannot write in these many words that they have not acted for so many months. Else that would be admission of guilt on paper. The next question is – please provide the names and designations of the officers who were supposed to take action on my application and who had not done so If the government provides names and designations of the officials, their responsibility gets fixed. Any officer is most scared of fixing of responsibility against him in this manner. So, the moment one files such an application, his/her pending work is done. What should I do after getting information? There cannot be one answer for that. It depends on why you asked for that information and what type of information is it. Often a lot of things start falling in place just by asking for information. For instance, you would get your passport or a ration card just by your asking for the status of your application. In many cases, roads got repaired as soon as the money spent on its repairs in the last few repairs was asked. So, seeking information and questioning the government is an important step, which in itself is complete in many cases. But suppose you expose some corruption or wrongdoing using RTI. Then, you can complain to vigilance agencies, CBI or even file an FIR. But it is seen that the Government does not take any action against the guilty even after repeated complaints. Though one can keep up the pressure on vigilance agencies by seeking to know the status of complaints under RTI, however, the wrongdoings can also be exposed through media. However, experience has not been very encouraging at getting guilty punished. But one thing is certain. Seeking information like this and exposing wrongdoings does improve the future. The officials get a clear message that the people of that area have become alert and any wrongdoings in future would not remain hidden as they were in the past. So, their risks of getting caught increase. Won't I be victimized if I used RTI Have people been victimized who used RTI and exposed corruption? Yes, there have been some instances where people were physically harmed when they sought information which exposed large scale corruption. But this does not mean that ever applicant faces such a threat. Filing application to seek status of your grievance or for knowing other similar routine matters does not invite any retaliation. It is only when information is likely to expose bureaucratic-contractor nexus or any kind of mafia that there could be a possibility of retaliation. Then why should I use RTI? The entire system has become so rotten that if all of us individually and together do not do our bit, it will never improve. If we don't do it, who will? Therefore, we have to act. But we should do that with a strategy and minimize risks. And with experience, there are some safeguards and strategies available. What are these strategies? Please go ahead and file RTI application for any issue in the first instance. Normally, anyone would not attack you immediately. They would first try to cajole you or win you over. So, the moment you file any inconvenient application, someone would approach you very politely to request you to withdraw that application. You should gauge the seriousness or the potential of the person approaching you. If you consider it to be serious enough, ask 15 of your friends to immediately apply to the same public authority asking for same information. It would be better if these 15 friends were from different part of India. Now, it would be most difficult for anyone to target all of your 15 friends all across the country. And if they threaten anyone from amongst the 15, let more people file similar applications. Your friends from other parts of India can file their applications by post. Try and give it wide media publicity. This will ensure that you will get the requisite information, and you would have sufficiently minimized risks. Bureaucracy's fears Can't people blackmail government servants by obtaining information? Let us ask ourselves – what does RTI do? It just brings truth in public domain. It does not create any information. It just removes curtains and brings truth in public domain. Is that bad? When can it be misused? Only if an officer has done something wrong and if that information comes out in public. Is it bad that wrongdoings within the Government should become public and be exposed rather than keeping it under wraps. Yes, once such information is obtained by someone, he could go and blackmail that officer. But why do we wish to protect wrong officers. If any officer is blackmailed, he/she has options available under Indian Penal Code to go register an FIR against a blackmailer. Let that officer do that. However, we can even avoid the possibility of any individual officer from being blackmailed by any individual complainant by putting all information, sought by any applicant, on the website. An applicant is able to blackmail an officer only when that applicant is the only person who obtained that information and threatens to make that public. But if all information sought by him were to be put on website, the possibility of blackmail would be substantially reduced. Won't Government get flooded with RTI applications and won't it jam government machinery? These fears are hypothetical. There are more than 65 countries in the world, which have RTI laws. There are nine states in India, who had RTI laws, before this law was passed by the Parliament. None of these Governments were flooded with applications. Such fear emanates from an assumption that the people do not have anything to do and are totally free. Filing an RTI application and pursuing it takes time, energies and resources. Unless a person really wants any information, he/she does not file it. Let us consider some statistics. In Delhi, 14000 applications have been filed in 120 departments in more than 60 months. This means less than 2 applications per Department per month. Can we say that Delhi Government got flooded with RTI applications? In sharp contrast, US Government received 3.2 million applications under their RTI Act during 2003-04. This is despite the fact that unlike India, most of the Government information is already available on the net and there should be much less need for the people to file applications. But US Government is not contemplating scrapping the RTI Ac. On the contrary they are setting aside more and more resources to implement it. During the same year, they spent $ 32 million to implement it. Won't it require huge amount of resources to implement RTI Act? Any amount of resources required to implement RTI Act would be well spent. Most countries like the US have realized it and are already spending huge resources to make their governments transparent. Firstly, all the cost spent on RTI gets more than recovered the same year by the amounts of money that the Government saves due to reduction in corruption and malpractices. For instance, there is strong evidence to show how leakages in drought relief program in Rajasthan and Public Distribution System in Delhi substantially reduced due to extensive use of RTI. Secondly, RTI is very essential for democracy. It is a part of our fundamental right. For people to participate in governance, the pre-requisite is that they first know what is going on. So, just the way we treat all expenses made on the running of our Parliament as essential, we have to treat all expenses made in the implementation of RTI as essential. But often people file applications to settle personal scores etc? As written above, RTI simply brings truth in public domain. It does not create information. Any attempt at hiding truth or putting a cover over it is not in the best interests of society. Rather than serving any useful purpose, any attempt at promoting secrecy would only increase the scope for corruption and wrongdoing. Therefore, our entire efforts should be to make governance completely transparent. However, if anyone blackmails someone subsequently, there are ample provisions under law to address that. Secondly, there are sufficient safeguards under sec 8 of RTI Act. It states that any information, which relates to private affairs of any individual and has no public interest would not be disclosed. Therefore, the existing laws have sufficient provisions available to address genuine concerns of the people. How to avoid people from filing frivolous applications? THERE IS NO FRIVOLOUS APPLICATION. What is frivolous? My pending water connection could be the most critical issue for me, but it could be treated as frivolous by a bureaucrat. Some vested interests within the bureaucracy have raised this bogey of frivolous applications. Right now, RTI Act does not permit any application to be rejected on the ground that it was frivolous. But some section of bureaucracy want the PIO to be empowered to reject any application if he feels that it was frivolous. If that happens, every PIO will declare every other application to be frivolous and reject it. It would mean a death knell to RTI. File notings should not be made public as that would prevent honest officers from rendering honest advice? This is wrong. On the contrary, every officer would now know that whatever he writes on the file would be subject to public scrutiny. This would force him to write things which are in best public interest. Some honest bureaucrats have admitted in private that RTI has helped them immensely in warding off political and other undue influences. Now, the officers simply say that if they did the wrong thing, they might get exposed if someone asked for that information. Therefore, officers have started insisting that the seniors gave directions in writing. The Government is learnt to be contemplating removing file notings from the purview of RTI Act. For the above reasons, it is absolutely essential that file notings should be allowed to be covered under RTI Act. Civil servant has to make decisions under many pressures and the public will not understand this? As discussed above, on the contrary, possibility of exposures to illegitimate pressures would reduce. Government records are not in proper shape. How could RTI be implemented? RTI would force the system to start maintaining records properly now. Else the officials would face a penalty under the Act Applications seeking voluminous information should be rejected? If I seek for some information, which runs into a lakh of pages, I would do that only if I need it because I will have to pay Rs 2 lakhs for that.This is an automatic deterrent. If application were rejected only on this account, the applicant could break his application and file 1000 applications seeking 100 pages through each application, which would not benefit anyone. Therefore, applications should not be rejected only on this pretext. People should be allowed to seek information only about themselves. They should not be allowed to ask questions about other spheres of governance, totally unrelated to the. Sec 6(2) of RTI Act clearly says an applicant cannot be questioned why he/she were asking for any information. In any case, RTI flows from the fact that people pay taxes, This money belongs to them and therefore, they have a right to know how their money were being spent and how they were being governed. So, people have a right to know everything about every sphere of governance. They may or may not be directly related to the matter. So, even a person living in Delhi can ask for any information from say, Tamil Nadu. From aarti at sarai.net Thu Nov 16 10:49:34 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti Sethi) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 10:49:34 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Film @ Sarai: Khayal Darpan: A Documentary Film about Classical Music in Pakistan: Yousuf Saeed Message-ID: <951D5090-A872-470D-99FA-762C90165D60@sarai.net> ===================================== Film @ Sarai: November – December 2006 ===================================== KHAYAL DARPAN:A Mirror of Imagination A Documentary Film about Classical Music in Pakistan by Yousuf Saeed,105 mins, Hindustani/English, Delhi, 2006 5:30 P.M., Friday, 17 November 2006 Seminar room, Sarai-CSDS In 2005, the Delhi-based filmmaker, Yousuf Saeed, spent more than 6 months in Pakistan as part of a research fellowship where he surveyed the development of khayal and other forms of classical traditions in Pakistan after 1947. After traveling in the 3 main cities of Pakistan – Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad - interviewing musicians and scholars, attending musicconcerts, and observing the teaching of music in various institutions,Yousuf not only managed to document some of the surviving practitioners andmpatrons of art music, but also raised many vital questions about cultural identity, nationalism, legitimacy of music in Islam, Pakistan's popular culture and its affairs with India, and the survival of classical music itself in South Asia. The film features some well-known as well as many lesser known but talentedmusicians of Pakistan, breaking many stereotypes about the country. For more information about the film and to see a video clip from it, please visit: http://www.ektara.org http://www.khayaldarpan.info Yousuf will be present for a discussion after the screening. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061116/cf23ce21/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From aarti at sarai.net Thu Nov 16 12:13:51 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (aarti at sarai.net) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 07:43:51 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Call for Papers: Creolising Europe Message-ID: <49512.59.176.16.46.1163659431.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> Call for Papers 'Creolising Europe' A conference of the Migration and Diaspora Cultural Studies Network University of Manchester, UK 6-8 September 2007 The international conference 'Creolising Europe' invites contributions which seek critical understandings of postcolonial, creolised and multicultural Europe. The term creolisation, derived from linguistics, now also refers to the intermingling and mixing of two or several formerly discrete traditions or cultures. Although often criticised for essentialising cultures, (as if the merging traditions were "pure" at the outset), the concept helps make sense of a great number of contemporary cultural processes, characterised by movement, change and shifting boundaries. We would welcome papers dealing with the following aspects and topics of migration and diaspora: (a) critical readings of notions like 'refugee', 'minor' literature, 'postcoloniality', 'globalisation', 'race, 'mestizaje', 'lusotropicalism', 'transculturation' and 'creolisation'; (b) the interfaces between cultural, economic and political dimensions of mobile spaces focusing on culture and transnational migrations in Europe, local diasporic communities, border zones and language contact; (c) the migration and diaspora of ideas, sounds and images, including film, photography, music, and belief; (d) 'queer diasporas' focusing on textuality, representation, and the translation of desires. (e) how have experiences of migration and diaspora shaped Europe in its history and how have these historical experiences been represented? Keynote Speakers: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Columbia University, USA. Zygmunt Bauman, University of Leeds, UK. Françoise Vergès, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK. Tina Campt, Duke University, USA. The Manchester Migration and Diaspora Cultural Studies Network (MDCSN) is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. It is a collaborative framework for academic research into the cultural transformations brought about by the global movement of peoples, languages, objects, images, sounds, beliefs and ideas. The network embraces a wide range of disciplines, with a strong core in language-based disciplines, which gives the network a distinctive, internationally comparative dimension, and illuminates the interpenetration of cultures from within. This conference aims to make a theoretical and conceptual contribution to understanding the impact of transnationalism on culture, focusing on productive and creative encounters which challenge 'national narratives' through the formation of interstitial spaces. Abstracts are invited, from any discipline, on topics including: · Europe and Postcoloniality · Transculturation: The new Multiculturalism? · From Hybridity to Creolisation · Lusotropicalism and Mestizaje · Minor literatures · Language Contact · Transnational Cinema · Queer Diasporas · Romani Migrations, Romani Diasporas · Migration Policies and Cultural Articulations in Border Zones · Black Europe · Migration Regimes, Culture and Resistance First deadline for receipt of abstracts: 15 January 2007 Abstracts of up to 250 words should provide: Title Name Institutional Affiliation, Abstracts to be sent electronically to: e.gutierrez at manchester.ac.uk and margaret.littler at manchester.ac.uk www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/research/projects/MDCSN/ _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From aarti at sarai.net Thu Nov 16 12:15:26 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti Sethi) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 12:15:26 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Call for Proposals: re:place 2007 Message-ID: <218AB26F-CA33-4B01-9E83-14466D9E7EB8@sarai.net> re:place 2007 The Second International Conference on the Histories of Media, Art, Science and Technology Berlin, 15 - 18 November 2007 CALL FOR PROPOSALS Introduction re:place 2007, the Second International Conference on the Histories of Media, Art, Science and Technology, will take place in Berlin from 15 - 18 November 2007 as a project of Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH in cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt. This conference is a sequel to 'Refresh!', the first in this series, chaired by Oliver Grau and produced by the Database of Virtual Art, Leonardo, and Banff New Media Institute, and held at the Banff Center in Canada in September 2005, which brought together several hundred artists, scientists, researchers, curators and theoreticians of different disciplines. re:place 2007 will be an international forum for the presentation and the discussion of exemplary approaches to the rapport between art, media, science and technology. With the title, 're:place', we propose a thematic focus on locatedness and the migration of knowledge and knowledge production in the interdisciplinary contexts of art, historiography, science and technology. The re:place 2007 conference will be devoted to examining the manifold connections between art, science and technology, connections which have come into view more sharply through the growing attention to media art and its histories over the past years. It will address historical contexts and artistic explorations of new technologies as well as the historical and contemporary research into the mutual influences between artistic work, scientific research and technological developments. This research concerns such diverse fields as cybernetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, nano-technology, and bio-technology, as well as investigations in the humanities including art history, visual culture, musicology, comparative literature, media archaeology, media theory, science studies, and sociology. Conference Programme The conference programme will include competitively selected, peer- reviewed individual papers, panel presentations, poster sessions, as well as a small number of invited speakers. Several Keynote Lectures, by internationally renowned, outstanding theoreticians and artists, will deliberate on the central themes of the conference. The conference will also include dedicated forum sessions for participants to engage in more open-ended discussion and debate on relevant issues and questions. CALL FOR PROPOSALS re:place 2007 welcomes contributions from established as well as from emerging researchers in diverse fields. The conference will be of interest to those working in, but not limited to, the following areas: art history and theory, literary studies, cultural studies, film and media studies, theatre, dance and performance studies, philosophy, history, gender studies, human-computer interaction, contemporary art, musicology, sound studies, anthropology, sociology, geography, science, technology and society studies, history of science, and history of technology. We are especially keen on empirical, conceptual, and historical contributions that exemplify and expand the diverse methodological and thematic concerns of this extended interdisciplinary area. These might include contributions to: - institutional histories of centers, sites, or events that have helped to concretize and engender the intersections between media, art, science and technology. Some broad areas could be: experimental arts spaces, collaborative research labs, significant exhibitions, etc. - 'place studies' that highlight significant locations or situations where such interdisciplinary intersections or significant historical episodes have occurred. A few examples might be: 'Tesla in Budapest', 'Flusser in Brazil', USSR in the 1920s, 'Japan between 1950s-1970s,' etc. - historiographical issues, methods, and debates that pose critical questions in the formulation of the histories of the 'media arts'. These might include: archaeology, genealogy or variantology as methodological tools, bridging the divide between art and media history, sociologies of interactivity, etc. - theoretical frameworks from various philosophical and disciplinary positions. Topics might include the exemplary role of film studies or musicology for the study of media arts, or the significance of cultural specificities and location in media and technologies, etc. - the migration of knowledges and practices from different contexts, whether disciplinary, institutional, geographical or cultural. Topics might include: the role of migrant artists in the development of new discourses and practices; the movement and adoption of disciplinary ideas from science into art contexts or vice versa, etc. SUBMISSIONS A dedicated website and online paper submission system will be ready for submissions from 1st December 2006. Abstracts of proposals, panel presentations and posters will have to be submitted in either Text, RTF, Word or PDF formats. The DEADLINE for submissions will be 15 January 2007. INFORMATION about the submission process and general information can be found at: http://tamtam.mi2.hr/replace replace 2007 is a project of Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH in cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Berlin. Conference partners include Leonardo, Database of Virtual Art at Danube University Krems' Center for Image Science, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research, Forum Goethe Institut, and others. Conference chairs: Andreas Broeckmann (D), Gunalan Nadarajan (SG/USA) _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From aarti at sarai.net Thu Nov 16 12:18:09 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti Sethi) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 12:18:09 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Call for Papers: Feminist Economics Message-ID: When | June 29 * July 1, 2007 Where | Ramkhamhaeng University, Bangkok, Thailand Themes | Panel proposals and individual paper submissions are invited on any aspect of feminist inquiry into economic issues. As this is the first IAFFE conference to be held in Southeast Asia, we particularly encourage participation of researchers, policy makers and activists from this region. Important themes include migration and migrant workers, trade and its impact on women, sex work and the sex trade, informal work, women and politics in Asia, and aging. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome. Submissions | Proposals must be submitted on-line via the IAFFE website (www.iaffe.org) unless you do not have internet access (mail to Martha MacDonald, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, NS Canada B3H 3C3). Submissions can be made for panels or individual papers. Titles and abstracts for all papers (including those that are part of panels) are required. Check the IAFFE website, http://www.iaffe.org/conferences/annual/index.php, for detailed submission guidelines. Deadline | The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2007. Acceptances will be announced by early March. If you need a decision earlier for funding purposes please e-mail bangkok at iaffe.org. Travel Funds | IAFFE works to raise funds to provide some financial assistance with travel and other expenses associated with attending our Annual Conferences for people from developing and transition economies, including Eastern Europe and the former U.S.S.R. Our goal is to foster the diversity of the geographical representation and perspectives at IAFFE conferences. People who plan to present a paper at the conference, and who come from countries with developing and transition economies, are eligible to apply for this funding. The deadline is January 31, 2007. You must also submit a paper proposal by the January 31st deadline. Please check the IAFFE website for Travel Grant application information or write to iaffe at iaffe.org. _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From dak at sarai.net Thu Nov 16 10:56:03 2006 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 10:56:03 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Invitation for Submissions: Birds Eye View Film Festival Message-ID: <8F3A0DE4-46A5-410A-AD43-0D7B6B554B51@sarai.net> Dear Sir/ Madam I’m writing from the Birds Eye View Film Festival in London www.birds-eye-view.co.uk. We’re a women’s film festival screening international features, documentaries and short films at London’s leading film venues – the National Film Theatre and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. We are interested in any films made by women and would be delighted if you would distribute this email to your members so they could consider submitting to us. Past contributors have included internationally award-winning documentary maker Kim Longinotto, Martha Fiennes (UK), Jocelyne Saab (Lebanon), Xiao Jiang (China), Oscar-winning Andrea Arnold, oscar-shortlisted Shelley Saywell, Sundance winning Heather Lyn MacDonald, British artist Tracey Emin, and some of the most exciting emerging women filmmakers from around the world. “World cinema straight from the hearts and souls of women. Cutting Edge, Urgent, Now!” Bonnie Greer (Playwright and Critic) “An Important Celebration of Women Filmmakers” The Independent “Good exposure in a well publicised Festival… As BEV’s reputation is growing so fast, this is a great event to be part of.” – Magali Charrier, director “The Space Between Us” (short film) “If this is what being a bird is, I’m proud to be one” – Joanna Lumley The 2007 Birds Eye View Film Festival will launch with a Gala screening on International Women’s Day (March 8th) at the National Film Theatre (www.bfi.org.uk), presented by a leading UK celebrity (past presenters have included Juliet Stevenson, Meera Syal, Jerry Hall, Fiona Shaw..). We will continue in the prestigious Institute of Contemporary Arts (www.ica.org.uk), closing with an Awards Party on Tuesday March 14th. CompetitionAwards will be presented to Best Short Drama, Best Short Animation, Award for Innovation and Best Film. Further awards tbc. I’d be delighted if you could send us a screening copy of your film (preferably DVD but VHS is also acceptable), with press pack and stills (on CD/DVD) to: Birds Eye ViewUnit 310a, Aberdeen Centre,22-24 Highbury GroveLondonN5 2EA Our deadline is December 3rd, so it would be great to receive a screening copy as soon as possible. If you have any queries you may find the answers here www.birds-eye-view.co.uk/contact_2.htm otherwise please feel free to email me. Kind regards, Leila Jordan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061116/e2b8ac46/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in Thu Nov 16 11:29:01 2006 From: amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in (Amit Basu) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 05:59:01 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Post- ISF questions In-Reply-To: <20061114091639.15328.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <167557.67764.qm@web8514.mail.in.yahoo.com> that's a good thing to hear Kalpagam! i wish you intervention provokes further discussion at Sarai. if possible make your presentation available in the Sarai archives. amit basu kalpagam - umamaheswaran wrote: Hi Jeebesh, The issues you raise are important. I think we need to understand the proliferating rights-discourse in the context of an emergent global sovereignty alongside the decline of national sovereignty and how these reconstitute the policy and rights domains. I have attempted to do something of this in the paper which I hope to present at the Sarai colloqium later this month. Best, U.Kalpagam _________________________________________ 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. To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list List archive: --------------------------------- Find out what India is talking about on - Yahoo! Answers India Send FREE SMS to your friend's mobile from Yahoo! Messenger Version 8. Get it NOW -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061116/d57a4450/attachment.html From safar.delhi at gmail.com Thu Nov 16 14:05:48 2006 From: safar.delhi at gmail.com (Safar Delhi) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 14:05:48 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] invitation for children's day celeberation Message-ID: Dear Friend SAFAR is inviting you for BAGIYA - The Children's Festival on Sunday, 19 November 2006. This is a children's festival on the eve of 14 NOv. Children's Day. Since 14th is the working day, the celeberation will be on 19, ie sunday. This is in continuation of our effort to create space for the kids to show their talent and creativity, to provide an atmosphere where they can earn and learn leadership quality in the field of their interest. This is also a way to provide a chance of interface between children and their parent or community as well. This will be a program fully meant for and organised by children (between 7-14 years of age). They have their own perspective about the society, neighbourhood, burning problems of everyday life and so on, which is evolved after a series of interaction with them for the past few months. They have every reason to celebrate this day in their own way. In one of meetings with the kids they spoke about different forms of pollution, gender discrimination, parent-kids relationship, socialisation, problem of water and electricity, lack of creative space for them, etc. That is why they have decided to present their understanding in various ways. They are going to stage plays (scripted, directed and acted by themselves), write letters, essays, stories, poems, slogans etc. They will also be making posters and playcard, and perfoming dance and songs. Besides, the groups named 'We for Yamuna' and 'Jigri' will be holding a workshop on environment and peforming some beautiful songs. It would be great if you suggest and arrange some more interesting workshops for the children. We don't have money to hire professionals but hope lack of money will not be hinderance anymore. The programme venue is: *Main Park, Delhi Administration Colony Timparpur, Delhi 110054 * (The landmark is SAFAL & Mother dairy booth) Note: T*he nearest metro station is Vishwidyalya (Delhi University)* For any query make a call at 9811972872 Your presence will encourage the children. Hope you will be joining hands with the kids on that day. warm regards safar team -- SAFAR a collective journey of researchers, journalists, students, lawyers, activists, cultural practitioners and performing artists with a deep commitment to the ideals of social and gender equality. This an open space for the dialogue, betterment and empowerment of the marginalized. http://www.safarindia.zoomshare.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061116/f61f1e0a/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From yasir.media at gmail.com Fri Nov 17 00:52:54 2006 From: yasir.media at gmail.com (yasir ~) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 11:22:54 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] Weather in Arabia, crisis in Gaza ,,, Message-ID: <5af37bb0611161122k52097473yad5d8e765eb93245@mail.gmail.com> Weather in Arabia, crisis in Gaza ,,, >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1948811,00.html It's the weather that hits you first. The blonde meteorologist is a fairly standard post-Ulrika Jonsson model, but her survey begins with "cloud in the Arabian peninsula" and then works through Asia and Europe before a quick pay-off mentioning "a lot of rain in America". This approach was, however, emblematic of al-Jazeera English's general attempt to change the climate of television journalism. The emphasis is quite deliberate: to show American and European viewers how it has felt to be an Arab or Asian viewer of the BBC or CNN in recent decades. And so the London viewer tuning in to the sports news heard not about Marcus Trescothick's depression or Steve McLaren's temper but, first up: "The Iraq football team's search for somewhere to play." ,,,,,, From aasim27 at yahoo.co.in Fri Nov 17 17:04:53 2006 From: aasim27 at yahoo.co.in (aasim khan) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:34:53 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] The Original Friedman Message-ID: <20061117113453.76264.qmail@web8701.mail.in.yahoo.com> Hi all. The man who advised Pinochet and campaigned for legalisation of marijuana is dead. Many believe he was the man who turned Chicago School into the power capital of the new world. A small obit from The Independent: ------------------------------------------------------ Milton Friedman, free-market economist who inspired Reagan and Thatcher, dies aged 94 Milton Friedman, the Nobel-winning monetarist economist who was an intellectual architect of the free-market policies of Republican US presidents, and an adviser to Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister, died yesterday in San Francisco. He was 94. Over half a century, Mr Friedman, the son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants, established himself as arguably the most influential economic thinker of his time. Over that post-war period, "Friedmanism" - the belief that changes in money supply dictate fluctuations in the economy - supplanted Keynesianism as the dominant economic philosophy of the industrial world. Inflation, he believed, was caused by too much money chasing two few goods. Conversely, deflation was the result of too little money in the economy. He argued that the Depression was not a failure of capitalism, but of government, as the monetary authorities in the US and Europe reduced liquidity in the system, thus making a bad situation worse. As Mr Friedman celebrated his 90th birthday in 2002, Ben Bernanke - then a Federal Reserve governor, now chairman of the US central bank - sought belated forgiveness for the error: "Regarding the Great Depression, you're right," Mr Bernanke acknowledged. "We did it. We're very sorry." Those monetary beliefs underpinned the 30-plus books that appeared under his name, most notably perhaps A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, as well as a host of other writing including a regular column in Newsweek magazine. He urged deregulation and individual initiative as the keys to economic success - a view embraced by the US presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, and by Mrs Thatcher in Britain. Mrs Thatcher said: "Milton Friedman revived the economics of liberty when it had been all but forgotten. He was an intellectual freedom fighter. Never was there a less dismal practitioner of a dismal science. I shall greatly miss my old friend's lucid wisdom and mordant humour." Friedman, and the "Chicago School" of economics he led, helped to bring down the post-war Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, as the dollar was devalued twice in the early 1970s. In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. In subsequent years, the Fed and other central banks adopted his prescription of rigorous control of the money supply to stamp out the inflation left by the 1970s oil-shocks. His laissez-faire philosophy extended beyond economics. Mr Friedman was a fierce opponent of the military draft, and called for the decriminalisation of prostitution and drug use. He courted controversy, not least when he and other Chicago School economists advised Augusto Pinochet in Chile, after the overthrow in 1973 of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president. Mr Friedman defended himself by pointing to the ultimate fall of General Pinochet. "Freer markets lead to free people," he said. "It's hard to think of anyone who's had more of a direct influence on social and economic policy in this generation," Professor Allan H Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University, who is preparing a two-volume history of the Fed, said yesterday. Milton Friedman, the Nobel-winning monetarist economist who was an intellectual architect of the free-market policies of Republican US presidents, and an adviser to Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister, died yesterday in San Francisco. He was 94. Over half a century, Mr Friedman, the son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants, established himself as arguably the most influential economic thinker of his time. Over that post-war period, "Friedmanism" - the belief that changes in money supply dictate fluctuations in the economy - supplanted Keynesianism as the dominant economic philosophy of the industrial world. Inflation, he believed, was caused by too much money chasing two few goods. Conversely, deflation was the result of too little money in the economy. He argued that the Depression was not a failure of capitalism, but of government, as the monetary authorities in the US and Europe reduced liquidity in the system, thus making a bad situation worse. As Mr Friedman celebrated his 90th birthday in 2002, Ben Bernanke - then a Federal Reserve governor, now chairman of the US central bank - sought belated forgiveness for the error: "Regarding the Great Depression, you're right," Mr Bernanke acknowledged. "We did it. We're very sorry." Those monetary beliefs underpinned the 30-plus books that appeared under his name, most notably perhaps A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, as well as a host of other writing including a regular column in Newsweek magazine. He urged deregulation and individual initiative as the keys to economic success - a view embraced by the US presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, and by Mrs Thatcher in Britain. Mrs Thatcher said: "Milton Friedman revived the economics of liberty when it had been all but forgotten. He was an intellectual freedom fighter. Never was there a less dismal practitioner of a dismal science. I shall greatly miss my old friend's lucid wisdom and mordant humour." Friedman, and the "Chicago School" of economics he led, helped to bring down the post-war Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, as the dollar was devalued twice in the early 1970s. In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. In subsequent years, the Fed and other central banks adopted his prescription of rigorous control of the money supply to stamp out the inflation left by the 1970s oil-shocks. His laissez-faire philosophy extended beyond economics. Mr Friedman was a fierce opponent of the military draft, and called for the decriminalisation of prostitution and drug use. He courted controversy, not least when he and other Chicago School economists advised Augusto Pinochet in Chile, after the overthrow in 1973 of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president. Mr Friedman defended himself by pointing to the ultimate fall of General Pinochet. "Freer markets lead to free people," he said. "It's hard to think of anyone who's had more of a direct influence on social and economic policy in this generation," Professor Allan H Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University, who is preparing a two-volume history of the Fed, said yesterday. __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ From aarti at sarai.net Fri Nov 17 16:23:03 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti Sethi) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:23:03 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] PSBT Films Screening: "Seeing Freedom" and "Lin and Ralph: A Love Story" Message-ID: <16CC349B-7D86-40A7-95F0-5DFEFC53C9E7@sarai.net> The Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) and British Council invite you to the screening of Seeing Freedom Director: A. Ravi Shankar Producer: PSBT The filmmaker will be present for an interactive session. & Lin and Ralph: A Love Story Director/ Producer: Marilyn Gaunt Shortlisted for Best Documentary on a Contemporary Issue, Grierson Awards 2005 Grierson Awards recognise the best documentary films from Britain and abroad. on Saturday, November 25th, 2006 at 6:30pm Venue: Gulmohar Hall, India Habitat Centre. Lodhi Road, New Delhi Seeing Freedom (30 mins) The profile of Ranchod Soni a visually challenged person who has overcome the limitations of blindness through his efforts and is also helping others to try and achieve the same. Lin and Ralph: A Love Story (48 mins) A very personal film, about two very close friends, shot and directed by film-maker Marilyn Gaunt over 17 years. For Lin and Ralph life has always been a battle against deteriorating health and disability, but sustained by an extraordinary love, it’s been a fight they have always managed to win. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061117/c016b150/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From arpita.chatterjee at itcsra.org.in Sat Nov 18 12:09:30 2006 From: arpita.chatterjee at itcsra.org.in (Arpita Chatterjee) Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 12:09:30 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Aaj ke Naam - In Today's Name Message-ID: <000501c70adc$62579ba0$6400a8c0@itcsraar> Dear Sir/Madam, I am trying to get in touch with Yousof Sayyeed who I believe has made a film on classical music in Pakistan - is there a possibility of a showing in Kolkata? Could you please put me in touch? Regards Arpita Chatterjee In Charge, Academic Research Department ITC Sangeet Research Academy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061118/a084e383/attachment.html From preetunair at yahoo.com Sat Nov 18 12:47:58 2006 From: preetunair at yahoo.com (PREETU NAIR) Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 23:17:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: HIV+ marriage hits the block at Registrar's office Message-ID: <20061118071759.89729.qmail@web31704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Note: forwarded message attached. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Preetu Nair Senior Reporter Gomantak Times St.Inez, Panaji Goa-403 001 India http://goadourada.blogspot.com/ "Freedom of mind is the real freedom. A person whose mind is not free though is not in chains is a slave, not a free man. One whose mind is not free though he may not be in prison is a prisoner and not a free man. One whose mind is not free though alive is better than dead. Freedom of mind is the truth of one's existence." Babasaheb Ambedkar ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ____________________________________________________________________________________ The all-new Yahoo! Mail beta Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster. http://new.mail.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: PREETU NAIR Subject: HIV+ marriage hits the block at Registrar's office Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 20:56:14 -0800 (PST) Size: 4588 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061117/b2df00ae/attachment.mht From mail at shivamvij.com Sat Nov 18 16:13:59 2006 From: mail at shivamvij.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 16:13:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The Original Friedman In-Reply-To: <20061117113453.76264.qmail@web8701.mail.in.yahoo.com> References: <20061117113453.76264.qmail@web8701.mail.in.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <9c06aab30611180243v4be874e7md1394e328fdd2e6b@mail.gmail.com> I like this one in the Guardian: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_adams/2006/11/post_650.html best s On 11/17/06, aasim khan wrote: > Hi all. > > The man who advised Pinochet and campaigned for > legalisation of marijuana is dead. > > Many believe he was the man who turned Chicago School > into the power capital of the new world. > > A small obit from The Independent: > > > ------------------------------------------------------ > Milton Friedman, free-market economist who inspired > Reagan and Thatcher, dies aged 94 > > Milton Friedman, the Nobel-winning monetarist > economist who was an intellectual architect of the > free-market policies of Republican US presidents, and > an adviser to Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime > Minister, died yesterday in San Francisco. He was 94. > > Over half a century, Mr Friedman, the son of Hungarian > Jewish immigrants, established himself as arguably the > most influential economic thinker of his time. Over > that post-war period, "Friedmanism" - the belief that > changes in money supply dictate fluctuations in the > economy - supplanted Keynesianism as the dominant > economic philosophy of the industrial world. > > Inflation, he believed, was caused by too much money > chasing two few goods. Conversely, deflation was the > result of too little money in the economy. He argued > that the Depression was not a failure of capitalism, > but of government, as the monetary authorities in the > US and Europe reduced liquidity in the system, thus > making a bad situation worse. > > As Mr Friedman celebrated his 90th birthday in 2002, > Ben Bernanke - then a Federal Reserve governor, now > chairman of the US central bank - sought belated > forgiveness for the error: "Regarding the Great > Depression, you're right," Mr Bernanke acknowledged. > "We did it. We're very sorry." Those monetary beliefs > underpinned the 30-plus books that appeared under his > name, most notably perhaps A Monetary History of the > United States, 1867-1960, as well as a host of other > writing including a regular column in Newsweek > magazine. He urged deregulation and individual > initiative as the keys to economic success - a view > embraced by the US presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, > and by Mrs Thatcher in Britain. > > Mrs Thatcher said: "Milton Friedman revived the > economics of liberty when it had been all but > forgotten. He was an intellectual freedom fighter. > Never was there a less dismal practitioner of a dismal > science. I shall greatly miss my old friend's lucid > wisdom and mordant humour." > > Friedman, and the "Chicago School" of economics he > led, helped to bring down the post-war Bretton Woods > system of fixed exchange rates, as the dollar was > devalued twice in the early 1970s. > > In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. > In subsequent years, the Fed and other central banks > adopted his prescription of rigorous control of the > money supply to stamp out the inflation left by the > 1970s oil-shocks. > > His laissez-faire philosophy extended beyond > economics. Mr Friedman was a fierce opponent of the > military draft, and called for the decriminalisation > of prostitution and drug use. He courted controversy, > not least when he and other Chicago School economists > advised Augusto Pinochet in Chile, after the overthrow > in 1973 of Salvador Allende, the democratically > elected president. Mr Friedman defended himself by > pointing to the ultimate fall of General Pinochet. > "Freer markets lead to free people," he said. > > "It's hard to think of anyone who's had more of a > direct influence on social and economic policy in this > generation," Professor Allan H Meltzer of Carnegie > Mellon University, who is preparing a two-volume > history of the Fed, said yesterday. > > Milton Friedman, the Nobel-winning monetarist > economist who was an intellectual architect of the > free-market policies of Republican US presidents, and > an adviser to Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime > Minister, died yesterday in San Francisco. He was 94. > > Over half a century, Mr Friedman, the son of Hungarian > Jewish immigrants, established himself as arguably the > most influential economic thinker of his time. Over > that post-war period, "Friedmanism" - the belief that > changes in money supply dictate fluctuations in the > economy - supplanted Keynesianism as the dominant > economic philosophy of the industrial world. > > Inflation, he believed, was caused by too much money > chasing two few goods. Conversely, deflation was the > result of too little money in the economy. He argued > that the Depression was not a failure of capitalism, > but of government, as the monetary authorities in the > US and Europe reduced liquidity in the system, thus > making a bad situation worse. > > As Mr Friedman celebrated his 90th birthday in 2002, > Ben Bernanke - then a Federal Reserve governor, now > chairman of the US central bank - sought belated > forgiveness for the error: "Regarding the Great > Depression, you're right," Mr Bernanke acknowledged. > "We did it. We're very sorry." Those monetary beliefs > underpinned the 30-plus books that appeared under his > name, most notably perhaps A Monetary History of the > United States, 1867-1960, as well as a host of other > writing including a regular column in Newsweek > magazine. He urged deregulation and individual > initiative as the keys to economic success - a view > embraced by the US presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, > and by Mrs Thatcher in Britain. > Mrs Thatcher said: "Milton Friedman revived the > economics of liberty when it had been all but > forgotten. He was an intellectual freedom fighter. > Never was there a less dismal practitioner of a dismal > science. I shall greatly miss my old friend's lucid > wisdom and mordant humour." > > Friedman, and the "Chicago School" of economics he > led, helped to bring down the post-war Bretton Woods > system of fixed exchange rates, as the dollar was > devalued twice in the early 1970s. > > In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. > In subsequent years, the Fed and other central banks > adopted his prescription of rigorous control of the > money supply to stamp out the inflation left by the > 1970s oil-shocks. > > His laissez-faire philosophy extended beyond > economics. Mr Friedman was a fierce opponent of the > military draft, and called for the decriminalisation > of prostitution and drug use. He courted controversy, > not least when he and other Chicago School economists > advised Augusto Pinochet in Chile, after the overthrow > in 1973 of Salvador Allende, the democratically > elected president. Mr Friedman defended himself by > pointing to the ultimate fall of General Pinochet. > "Freer markets lead to free people," he said. > > "It's hard to think of anyone who's had more of a > direct influence on social and economic policy in this > generation," Professor Allan H Meltzer of Carnegie > Mellon University, who is preparing a two-volume > history of the Fed, said yesterday. > > > > > __________________________________________________________ > Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new > http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: -- http://www.shivamvij.com From aarti at sarai.net Sat Nov 18 15:47:59 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti Sethi) Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 15:47:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Call for Applications: Magmart International Festival of Video Art Message-ID: <74A60733-6F2E-4BFA-9F47-72A25D8DE14A@sarai.net> Magmart | International Festival of VideoArt | 2nd edition Is now starting, till February 2007, the 2nd edition of Magmart | video under volcano, international festival of video art. The festival is a production of studio tad, with partnership of Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, GenomART and Computer Arts magazine (italian edition). In the first issue of Computer Arts, subsequent festival's end, the authors consider more interesting by editorial staff, will be interviewed, and their videos reviewed. The show, start in early days of October 2006, with publication of call to participation, and culminate with final event, scheduled for February 10/11, 2007, at Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, on two days. February 10, at Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, will be screened the selected 30 videos, and other artists will do some performances. February 11, the selected videos - that become part of Museum's permanent collection - will be screened looping for Museum's visitors. February 8, will take place a meeting, with envolvement of art's experts and critics, on theme: "Videoart in digital age"; this meeting will be at Sociology College of University Federico II of Naples. RULES Festival is open to all international video artists; no entry fee. Festival is exclusively devoted to videoart, and there isn't any particular theme. Between all videos submitted, will be execute a final selection by a Jury. The 30 selected videos will become part of Casoria Contemporary Art Museum's permanent collection. All submitted materials will be not rendered, and will be stored in festival's archive like documentation. Submitting entry form, artist agree to this rules. The Jury's verdict is undisputable. The artist agree to show his video(s) on-line on website www.magmart.it, like in Museum's permanent collection (if selected by Jury), and in any other event or place related to festival, on-line or off-line, with exclusion of any commercial use. All right on video are of author. The author declare, under his responsability, to be the owner of any right on used material (images, sounds, videos) and that are part of the artwork; the author thake charge of any violation of copyright's laws. Will be accepted only videos received whitin the deadline, December 31, 2006. Technical features of artworks * Video must be realized enterely with digital tech. * Must be in .mpeg or .mov (PAL) format; any other format will be rejected. * The video's time must be 15 minuts max. Must be accompanied by entry form duly compiled. * Must be accompanied by a video still/frame by video, in .jpg format, with size 400px for 300px. * The video must have quality features (resolution) to make possible the public show, without any subsequent sending of high quality copy. * In case the video is a shooting of a performance, this must be enterely visible within the video's time. How to send Is possible to submit the artworks and other materials (video, entry form, image) in two ways: On-line: the entry form, enterely filled, must be send within December 31, 2006. Inside the entry form, must be indicated an http or ftp URL from who download the video (i.e.: http://www.mydomain.com/myvideo.mov) and the still image (i.e.: http://www.mydomain.com/myimage.jpg); in case, should be use an online service for large files transmission. The video and the image must be really available at signaled URL within the deadline date. Off-line: After send entry form, enterely filled, the image and the video files must be sent by mail to the address that will be communicate via e-mail after form submission. The two files must be on one device (CD-Rom or DVD); the device must be Mac/Win or Windows compatible. The mail stamp date attest. For info: info at magmart.it For submission: www.magmart.it Enrico Tomaselli Festival Art Director info at magmart.it http://www.magmart.it Skype: MetaArt _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in Sun Nov 19 12:26:58 2006 From: zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in (khalid jamal) Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 06:56:58 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Mr.Mark Tully. Message-ID: <20061119065658.88814.qmail@web8611.mail.in.yahoo.com> Hi! I am looking for Mr.Mark Tully's email. Can anyone help plz? Its both, important and urgent. thx best khalid ONE LIFE. ONE SHOT. Happiness, Health & Peace, Syed Khalid Jamal --------------------------------- Find out what India is talking about on - Yahoo! Answers India Send FREE SMS to your friend's mobile from Yahoo! Messenger Version 8. Get it NOW -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061119/906e3236/attachment.html From aman.malik at gmail.com Sun Nov 19 21:43:51 2006 From: aman.malik at gmail.com (Aman Malik) Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 21:43:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The Original Friedman In-Reply-To: <9c06aab30611180243v4be874e7md1394e328fdd2e6b@mail.gmail.com> References: <20061117113453.76264.qmail@web8701.mail.in.yahoo.com> <9c06aab30611180243v4be874e7md1394e328fdd2e6b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <95be63560611190813y985e65dic5c1c6810bef5455@mail.gmail.com> http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8190872&top_story=1 Take your pick! On 11/18/06, Shivam Vij wrote: > > I like this one in the Guardian: > http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_adams/2006/11/post_650.html > best > s > > On 11/17/06, aasim khan wrote: > > Hi all. > > > > The man who advised Pinochet and campaigned for > > legalisation of marijuana is dead. > > > > Many believe he was the man who turned Chicago School > > into the power capital of the new world. > > > > A small obit from The Independent: > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------ > > Milton Friedman, free-market economist who inspired > > Reagan and Thatcher, dies aged 94 > > > > Milton Friedman, the Nobel-winning monetarist > > economist who was an intellectual architect of the > > free-market policies of Republican US presidents, and > > an adviser to Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime > > Minister, died yesterday in San Francisco. He was 94. > > > > Over half a century, Mr Friedman, the son of Hungarian > > Jewish immigrants, established himself as arguably the > > most influential economic thinker of his time. Over > > that post-war period, "Friedmanism" - the belief that > > changes in money supply dictate fluctuations in the > > economy - supplanted Keynesianism as the dominant > > economic philosophy of the industrial world. > > > > Inflation, he believed, was caused by too much money > > chasing two few goods. Conversely, deflation was the > > result of too little money in the economy. He argued > > that the Depression was not a failure of capitalism, > > but of government, as the monetary authorities in the > > US and Europe reduced liquidity in the system, thus > > making a bad situation worse. > > > > As Mr Friedman celebrated his 90th birthday in 2002, > > Ben Bernanke - then a Federal Reserve governor, now > > chairman of the US central bank - sought belated > > forgiveness for the error: "Regarding the Great > > Depression, you're right," Mr Bernanke acknowledged. > > "We did it. We're very sorry." Those monetary beliefs > > underpinned the 30-plus books that appeared under his > > name, most notably perhaps A Monetary History of the > > United States, 1867-1960, as well as a host of other > > writing including a regular column in Newsweek > > magazine. He urged deregulation and individual > > initiative as the keys to economic success - a view > > embraced by the US presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, > > and by Mrs Thatcher in Britain. > > > > Mrs Thatcher said: "Milton Friedman revived the > > economics of liberty when it had been all but > > forgotten. He was an intellectual freedom fighter. > > Never was there a less dismal practitioner of a dismal > > science. I shall greatly miss my old friend's lucid > > wisdom and mordant humour." > > > > Friedman, and the "Chicago School" of economics he > > led, helped to bring down the post-war Bretton Woods > > system of fixed exchange rates, as the dollar was > > devalued twice in the early 1970s. > > > > In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. > > In subsequent years, the Fed and other central banks > > adopted his prescription of rigorous control of the > > money supply to stamp out the inflation left by the > > 1970s oil-shocks. > > > > His laissez-faire philosophy extended beyond > > economics. Mr Friedman was a fierce opponent of the > > military draft, and called for the decriminalisation > > of prostitution and drug use. He courted controversy, > > not least when he and other Chicago School economists > > advised Augusto Pinochet in Chile, after the overthrow > > in 1973 of Salvador Allende, the democratically > > elected president. Mr Friedman defended himself by > > pointing to the ultimate fall of General Pinochet. > > "Freer markets lead to free people," he said. > > > > "It's hard to think of anyone who's had more of a > > direct influence on social and economic policy in this > > generation," Professor Allan H Meltzer of Carnegie > > Mellon University, who is preparing a two-volume > > history of the Fed, said yesterday. > > > > Milton Friedman, the Nobel-winning monetarist > > economist who was an intellectual architect of the > > free-market policies of Republican US presidents, and > > an adviser to Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime > > Minister, died yesterday in San Francisco. He was 94. > > > > Over half a century, Mr Friedman, the son of Hungarian > > Jewish immigrants, established himself as arguably the > > most influential economic thinker of his time. Over > > that post-war period, "Friedmanism" - the belief that > > changes in money supply dictate fluctuations in the > > economy - supplanted Keynesianism as the dominant > > economic philosophy of the industrial world. > > > > Inflation, he believed, was caused by too much money > > chasing two few goods. Conversely, deflation was the > > result of too little money in the economy. He argued > > that the Depression was not a failure of capitalism, > > but of government, as the monetary authorities in the > > US and Europe reduced liquidity in the system, thus > > making a bad situation worse. > > > > As Mr Friedman celebrated his 90th birthday in 2002, > > Ben Bernanke - then a Federal Reserve governor, now > > chairman of the US central bank - sought belated > > forgiveness for the error: "Regarding the Great > > Depression, you're right," Mr Bernanke acknowledged. > > "We did it. We're very sorry." Those monetary beliefs > > underpinned the 30-plus books that appeared under his > > name, most notably perhaps A Monetary History of the > > United States, 1867-1960, as well as a host of other > > writing including a regular column in Newsweek > > magazine. He urged deregulation and individual > > initiative as the keys to economic success - a view > > embraced by the US presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, > > and by Mrs Thatcher in Britain. > > Mrs Thatcher said: "Milton Friedman revived the > > economics of liberty when it had been all but > > forgotten. He was an intellectual freedom fighter. > > Never was there a less dismal practitioner of a dismal > > science. I shall greatly miss my old friend's lucid > > wisdom and mordant humour." > > > > Friedman, and the "Chicago School" of economics he > > led, helped to bring down the post-war Bretton Woods > > system of fixed exchange rates, as the dollar was > > devalued twice in the early 1970s. > > > > In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. > > In subsequent years, the Fed and other central banks > > adopted his prescription of rigorous control of the > > money supply to stamp out the inflation left by the > > 1970s oil-shocks. > > > > His laissez-faire philosophy extended beyond > > economics. Mr Friedman was a fierce opponent of the > > military draft, and called for the decriminalisation > > of prostitution and drug use. He courted controversy, > > not least when he and other Chicago School economists > > advised Augusto Pinochet in Chile, after the overthrow > > in 1973 of Salvador Allende, the democratically > > elected president. Mr Friedman defended himself by > > pointing to the ultimate fall of General Pinochet. > > "Freer markets lead to free people," he said. > > > > "It's hard to think of anyone who's had more of a > > direct influence on social and economic policy in this > > generation," Professor Allan H Meltzer of Carnegie > > Mellon University, who is preparing a two-volume > > history of the Fed, said yesterday. > > > > > > > > > > __________________________________________________________ > > Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new > > http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ > > _________________________________________ > > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > > Critiques & Collaborations > > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > > List archive: > > > -- > http://www.shivamvij.com > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> -- "There is nothing more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things - because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new." "The Prince" Nicolo Machiavelli -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061119/1fdcf81f/attachment.html From rajeshmehar at yahoo.com Mon Nov 20 06:58:26 2006 From: rajeshmehar at yahoo.com (rajesh mehar) Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 17:28:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Save Indian Wiki Message-ID: <519830.82778.qm@web30401.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I'm sure we've all come across the extremely creative people of the Save Indian Family 'organization' (http://www.saveindianfamily.org/), whose main agenda seems to be the fabrication and proliferation of a very narrow and somewhat obnoxious point of view about certain gender-related issues like dowry-related lawsuits, IPC Sec 498 A (http://www.498a.org/), and more recently the [Protection of Women from] Domestic Violence Act. However, I was quite surprised to find that the latest forum of propaganda used by them is our trusted online friend, Wikipedia. The Wikipedia 'article' on the Save Indian Family organization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_Indian_Family) reads like an advertisement or some sort of a propaganda document. Originally submitted as part of a PR blitz by a sock-puppet user, the article was nominated for deletion after I initially flagged it as having a non-neutral point of view (see the discussion page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Save_Indian_Family). Since the nomination for deletion, supporters of the article have emerged to ask that the article be retained. The very well-organised and patient bunch have issued several rebuttals justifying their non-neutral POV. I have intervened twice in the last month, essentially adding non-neutral POV and cite-check flags to the article. The article is currently renominated for deletion, based on the cite-check and POV flags. But my knowledge of the subject is somewhat basic, and my patience is running out. I thought it would make sense to point this out to more people, so that if anyone was interested in presenting a more 'balanced perspective' about Save Indian Family and their claims, they could go over to the 'article' on Wikipedia and make their presence felt. If anyone requires help (beyond the Wiki editing help pages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents/Editing_Wikipedia) editing Wikipedia articles, I'm sure I and other members on this list will be able to provide the required assistance. Regards, Rajesh. Gonna make a lot o'money, gonna quit this crazy scene. --------------------------------- Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $310,000 Mortgage for $999/mo - Calculate new house payment -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061119/68a506a3/attachment.html From tapio at translocal.net Mon Nov 20 14:16:14 2006 From: tapio at translocal.net (Tapio Makela) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 10:46:14 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] CFP M/C - Media and Culture Journal 2007 Message-ID: <20061120104614.c4re7n1c4qo000@mail.mbar.fi> M/C - Media and Culture http://www.media-culture.org.au/ is calling for contributors to the 2007 issues of M/C Journal http://journal.media-culture.org.au/ M/C Journal is looking for new contributors. M/C is a crossover journal between the popular and the academic, and a blind- and peer-reviewed journal. In 2007, M/C Journal celebrates its tenth year in publication. To see what M/C Journal is all about, check out our Website, which contains all the issues released so far, at . To find out how and in what format to contribute your work, visit . Call for Papers M/C Journal is now calling for contributions to its six issues scheduled for 2007. Articles should be up to 3000 words in length. 'mobile': article deadline 17 January 2007, release date 14 March 2007 edited by Larissa Hjorth and Olivia Khoo contact mobile at journal.media-culture.org.au 'adapt': article deadline 9 March 2007, release date 2 May 2007 edited by Patrick West and Jeanette Delamoir contact adapt at journal.media-culture.org.au 'complex': article deadline 4 May 2007, release date 27 June 2007 edited by Jayde Cahir and Sarah James contact complex at journal.media-culture.org.au 'home': article deadline 29 June 2007, release date 22 August 2007 edited by Andrew Gorman-Murray and Robyn Dowling contact home at journal.media-culture.org.au 'error': article deadline 24 August 2007, release date 17 October 2007 edited by Mark Nunes contact error at journal.media-culture.org.au 'vote': article deadline 19 October 2007, release date 12 December 2007 edited by Graham Meikle contact vote at journal.media-culture.org.au For more information on these issues, please contact the editors, and see . --------------------------------------------------------------------------- M/C - Media and Culture is located at . Tapio Makela Researcher, media artist tapio at translocal.net From P.Hatzopoulos at lse.ac.uk Mon Nov 20 15:13:50 2006 From: P.Hatzopoulos at lse.ac.uk (P.Hatzopoulos at lse.ac.uk) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 09:43:50 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] New publication: Migration unbound (2) References: <11B2DD187658F34EA8FBCA304D6309B53ADA47@EXCHF2.lse.ac.uk> <11B2DD187658F34EA8FBCA304D6309B53ADA48@EXCHF2.lse.ac.uk> <11B2DD187658F34EA8FBCA304D6309B53ADA4F@EXCHF2.lse.ac.uk> <11B2DD187658F34EA8FBCA304D6309B53ADA55@EXCHF2.lse.ac.uk> <11B2DD187658F34EA8FBCA304D6309B53ADA56@EXCHF2.lse.ac.uk> Message-ID: <11B2DD187658F34EA8FBCA304D6309B53ADB15@EXCHF2.lse.ac.uk> Hello, a special issue which might be of interest. Best, PH New publication: Migration unbound (2 New online journal Re-Public has just published the second part of its special issue "Migration unbound". The issue explores the potential challenges that international migrations represent for the development of new forms of democratic theory and practice. Articles include: Didier Bigo - At the limits of the liberal state: The answers to the terrorist threat Didier Bigo analyses the growing suspicion suspicion towards foreigners or citizens of Muslim origin after September 11. ________________________________ Misha Glenny - The geographies of transnational organised crime Misha Glenny talks on his forthcoming book on transnational organised crime. ________________________________ Mark LeVine - Who forms the "new we"? A response to Ramadan Responding to Tariq Ramadan's manifesto for a new "we", Mark Levine opens up the question of who this "we" is today. ________________________________ Helen Kambouri - Hospitality and the reception of the stranger Helen Kambouri argues that hospitality is a "democratic relation" among non-citizens. ________________________________ Claudia Aradau - Trafficking in women: Security and democratic subjects Aradau explores the possibilities of the claim of prostitution-as-work. ________________________________ All articles are published with a Creative Commons license and can be re-printed freely, by acknowledging their original source. From pukar at pukar.org.in Mon Nov 20 18:17:11 2006 From: pukar at pukar.org.in (PUKAR) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:17:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] [announcements] ICI Residency Programme - India Message-ID: <002101c70ca2$00d087d0$1066c2cb@freeda> PUKAR, Mumbai the local partner of India China Institute, The New School, New York presents The ICI Residency Programme - India New Delhi, November 24 - November 27, 2006 Mumbai, November 28 - December 3, 2006 (By invitation only) The India China Institute, based in the New School, New York, fosters study, research and connections between India, China, and the United States, countries that share interests but have not yet fully engaged in three-way conversations. Established in 2004, ICI is becoming a hub of an international network of institutions and activities that nurture these conversations and deepen our understanding of global processes. The ICI Fellowship programme is designed for professionals from fields beyond academia, including policymakers, entrepreneurs, urban planners, architects, journalists and artists. This innovative two-year fellowship brings together five fellows each from China and India who are working on the cutting edge of global issues and building broader conversations that can influence policymakers in the key areas of trade and development, urbanisation, and globalisation. The 2006-08 ICI fellows from China: · Yukuan Guo Investigative Reporter and News Commentator, CCTV's "News Probing", and Chief Journalist, Nanfengchuang magazine · Zongyong Wen Director,Detailed Plan Division, Beijing Municipal Urban Planning · Xiaobo Wu Director,School of Management at Zhejiang University · Zuojun Yang Director General, Hangzhou Urban Planning Bureau · Yang Yao Deputy Director,China Center for Economic Research, Beijing University The 2006-08 ICI fellows from India: · Amita Bhide Associate Professor, Department of Urban and Rural Community Development, Tata Institute of Social Sciences · Hiren Doshi Business Development Manager, Infosys Technologies Limited, China · Chakrapani Ghanta Associate Professor, Sociology and Coordinator of the Human Rights Education Program, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University · Partha Mukhopadhyay Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Policy Research · Aromar Revi Founding Director, TARU The ICI residency programme will essentially focus on globalisation and urbanisation issues in a trilateral conversation (India-China-US) through the lenses of these ten fellows who are working on six transnational, cross-disciplinary, collaborative projects. The Fellows will have opportunities to interact with academics, policy makers, urban planners, and activists in a series of seminars, working lunches, and site visits focusing on development issues at the local and global levels. The sessions will be held in New Delhi and Mumbai, and will be interspersed with visits to urban locations which have played a significant role in the urbanization debates of both cities historically as well as in contemporary times. (The New Delhi programme is in collaboration with TARU and Centre for Policy Research. The Mumbai programme is in collaboration with University of Pune and Tata Institute of Social Sciences.) More details are available here. PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) Address:: 1-4, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Sir P. M. Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001 Telephone:: +91 (22) 6574 8152 Fax:: +91 (22) 6664 0561 Email:: pukar at pukar.org.in Website:: www.pukar.org.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061120/a9edf772/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From mbutcher at els.mq.edu.au Mon Nov 20 12:30:36 2006 From: mbutcher at els.mq.edu.au (Melissa Butcher) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:00:36 +1100 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] CFP: Dissent and Cultural Resistance in Asian Cities Message-ID: <3F2CDBBE-900E-44FD-9691-FD0F8FA71C2B@els.mq.edu.au> Dissent and Cultural Resistance in Asian Cities Melissa Butcher & Selvaraj Velayutham (editors) CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS Since Asia’s economic boom in the 1990s, major cities in the region have undergone unprecedented transformation. From Beijing to Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur to Jakarta and Singapore to Chennai, Asian cities are bustling with movement and activity, vying for global city status. The growth of these cities, their role and interconnectedness with the rest of the world and distinctive characteristics, have been well documented from an historical and empirical standpoint by many theorists in the field. These works inform us of processes of urban change arising as a consequence of converging global capital, technology and labour flows, and their impact on the built environment. However, the ways in which people living in Asian cities respond to this changing milieu in their daily lives has received little scholarly attention. What counter narratives can be told about these emerging world cities? That is, what kinds of strategies or practices have people developed to demonstrate their dissent or to resist the transformative dynamics of the city. This book seeks to critically engage with the urban experiences of dissent and emergent resistance against the disjunctive global and local flows that converge and intersect in Asia’s fastest growing cities. Rather than constructing occupants of the city as victims of globalisation or urbanisation, the book will present ways in which people are using everyday strategies that are embedded in cultural practice, to challenge dominant socio-economic and political forces impacting on these urban spaces. Taking the city as a site of contestation and a stage where social conflicts are played out, essays will highlight the connections between power and resistance; how the spatiality and the built environment of the city generates conflict; how protagonists use the cityscape to stage their everyday and public dissent; and the nature and impact of resistance. Contributing essays are invited that explore the conditions, strategies, and outcomes of such dissent and forms of cultural resistance, grounded in an event or project in a particular Asian city. Essays will deal with, but are not limited to, the following themes: Counter narratives and re-imagining the city; Urban planning, neighbourhoods and the creation of community; Urban development, ghetto-isation and gentrification; Power and politics in the urban arena; Grassroots activism and social movements; Gender, class and the politics of identity; Transgressive spaces and places. Research papers employing qualitative methods (ethnography, in-depth interviews, focus groups, narrative analysis) are preferred. Please send a proposed title and a 500-word abstract by 31 January 2007 to: Melissa Butcher: melissa.butcher at mq.edu.au Selvaraj Velayutham: selvaraj.velayutham at scmp.mq.edu.au Accepted contributions (7,000 words) will need to be completed by August 2007. We are in discussion with a number of potential publishers in the field. Please contact the editors for more information. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061120/71048230/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From cziellah at yahoo.co.in Wed Nov 22 16:25:16 2006 From: cziellah at yahoo.co.in (cziellah at yahoo.co.in) Date: 22 Nov 2006 05:55:16 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] jilangamba has sent you an Invite! Message-ID: <20061122105516.23910.qmail@deimos.dns-shield.com> Your friend (jilangamba) has sent you an link from our website . It's right here Your friend also wrote: http://www.combatlaw.org/information.php?issue_id=31&article_id=835 jilangamba From delhifilmarchive at gmail.com Wed Nov 22 16:04:47 2006 From: delhifilmarchive at gmail.com (Delhi Film Archive) Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:04:47 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [DFA:4] invitation: Festival of Theatre Films Message-ID: <003701c70e21$ddd657b0$0201a8c0@hpdab99e23044a> Dear friends Prithvi Theatre Festival in partnership with the Delhi Film Archives and Max Mueller Bhavan presents an array of Theatre films... at the: Max Mueller Bhavan, 3 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi On 25th & 26th November 2006 ENTRY FREE, NO PASSES NEEDED look to seeing you there for the Delhi Film Archive Rahul Roy / Kavita Joshi www.delhifilmarchive.org subscribe to the Delhi Film Archive Mailing-List send an email to: delhifilmarchive-subscribe at googlegroups.com ************ SCHEDULE & SYNOPSIS************** Day 1: Saturday 25thNovember '06 11:00 am - 12:35 pm My Name Is Bertolt Brecht - Exile In USA Director: Norbert Bunge, Germany, 95 min., 1989 After his escape from Nazi Germany Brecht tried to become established in the Hollywood film business. However, the years of exile from 1941 to 1947, were marked by a sense of failure and deep resignation. Brecht, like many other film directors and authors of the group "Hollywood 10", in October 1947 was interrogated by an investigation commission because of any possible anti-American activities. Following this he left the United States returning to Germany via Switzerland. The film is based on Brecht's diary and talks with his friends of those times as well as close fellow workers. It also provides an insight into the situation in the United States during the thirties and forties. 12:35 pm - 1:15 pm Pather Chujaeri (The Play Is On...) Director: Pankaj Rishi Kumar, India, 44 mins How does art survive in a regime of fear? I first encountered this question in 1999, while taking photographs of Kashmir during that mindless war with Pakistan. That summer, I established contact with the National Bhand Theatre, Wathora, and the Bhagat Theatre, Akingam, two groups that were still performing in the traditional pather form of satire. I returned twice in 2001, now armed with a camera. I was encouraged by what I found: an illiterate community has sustained a centuries-old tradition in the face of debilitating social and cultural changes. Although perenially intimidated by the corruption, violence and intolerance that prevail in Kashmir, the bhands are still affirming a commitment to their theatre, to the critical potential of its form and the liberating joys of performance. Faith in Sufism has tempered their enthusiam for satire and they identify with the collective voices of Kashmir's freedom. The Play is on.... follows the two groups as they prepare for public performances, a rare phenomenon today. For the bhands, who daily witness the erosion of their way of life, each performance represents both a change as well as a repetition of the same brutal fact: that they are not free to share their revolutionary spirit. enquiries: kumartalkies (at) yahoo.com 1:15 pm - 2:00 pm : LUNCH BREAK 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm Some Roots Grow Upwards Directors: Kavita Joshi and Malati Rao; 52 mins, India, 2002 [The film will be preceded by a 5 minute clip on the situation in Manipur.] What is the relevance of theatre (or all art, for that matter) to the crisis of our times? Some Roots Grow Upwards explores the work of theatre director Ratan Thiyam against the backdrop of the violence torn state of Manipur. For over 25 years now, Ratan Thiyam has been creating a theatre that is as visually compelling as it is intellectually stimulating. His theatre is steeped in the traditional performing arts of his home state, Manipur. But while his aesthetic influences are traditional, his concerns are intensely modern. His plays reflect upon the socio-political crisis gripping Manipur, the youth unrest, war and violence; at the same time, they also dwell on the larger human condition. The film examines the art of Ratan Thiyam, and seeks to delineate the imagination & the influences that give form to this theatre. enquiries: kj.impulse (at) gmail.com followed by a: Discussion with Kavita Joshi 3:15 pm - 3:30 pm Bertolt Brecht Director: Ines Jacob; 14 min., Germany, 1998 If he were still alive today, writer and theatre director Bertolt Brecht would turn 100 years old on February 10th, 1998. His best know play internationally is "The Threepenny Opera". It´s a crazy saga about prostitutes, scroungers, beggars, and gangsters. His style, and his use of language continue to have a great influence on modern theatre. Famous director Hansgünther Heyme analyses the features, and charm of Brecht´s scripts. Using excerpts from rehearsals for "The Threepenny Opera", this report documents the role and timeliness of the theatrical work of Bertolt Brecht. 3:30 pm - 4:00 pm : TEA BREAK 4:00 pm - 5:45 pm The Plaint of the Empress (Die Klage der Kaiserin) Director: Pina Bausch; 103 min., Germany, 1989 "Die Klage der Kaiserin" was produced between October 1987 and April 1989. It is the first film by choreographer Pina Bausch, who was born in Solingen in 1940. The general framework is set by the changing seasons - autumn, winter and spring.The film's inner structure reflects Pina Bausch's method of working as developed with the Wuppertal Theatre of Dance during the 1973/74 season. The film consequently does not tell a story, but is made up of various scenes put together as a collage reflecting certain moods and invoking different associations. A variety of themes which Pina Bausch has frequently dealt with in her stage productions are also loosely interwoven in the film. Unlike the stage productions, however, the film scenes, some of which are thoroughly absurd, are set in different locations, such as the woods and fields around Wuppertal, the city centre, the suspension railway, a carpet shop, a greenhouse and the rehearsal room in a former cinema (Wuppertal's "Lichtburg"). The film features the dancers and an actress from the Wuppertal Theatre of Dance whose text improvisations, dancing and scenic variations leave their usual distinctive mark on the overall production. The futility of human activity and the search for love make up the film's central theme set against the strains of a Silician funeral march. "The despair is tangible. After all, the film is a lament", according to Pina Bausch. Day 2: Sunday 26th November '06 10:30 am - 1:00 pm Nee Engey (Where Are You) Director: RV Ramani; 150 mins, 2003, India This film, with the Shadow Puppeteers, living in South India, is a celebration and dedication to the art of moving images and to its original practitioners and community. An impressionistic ethnography, reflecting on shadow puppet theatre, history, mythology, cinema and our lives. enquiries: ramanirv (at) hotmail.com followed by a: Discussion wth R V Ramani 1:00 pm - 1:45 pm : LUNCH BREAK 1:45 pm - 3:20 pm Love Me You Director: Sylvie Banuls and Sabina Engel; 92 mins, 2003, Germany Love Me You is a film about some very special actors in an extraordinary theater and about the unusual love between two of them: Moritz and Nele. They both have Down's syndrome and both act in productions of the Ramba ­Zamba Theater in Berlin - frequently playing to full houses. The film sheds light on a world which most "normal" people tend to regard as substandard. Despite the international trend of global assimilation and homogenous lifestyles, the film reveals life without the filters of society and its rules: one which is not only different, but also uniquely special and full of color. Against the backdrop of the bio-ethics debate, the film shows people who are assumed to be far removed from the norm, yet nonetheless manage to live a rich and whole-hearted life - wonderfully free from the constraints of social conventions. 3:20 - 3:30: Break 3:30 pm - 5:15 pm Naatak Jaari Hai Director: Lalit Vachani; 84 mins, 2005, India Natak Jari Hai is a documentary about JANAM (The People's Theatre Front), the little theatre group that never stopped performing in the face of dramatic political transformation and personal tragedy. The film explores the motivations and ideals of the JANAM actors and their vision of resistance and change as they perform their 'People's Theatre' in diverse parts of India. It brings to life the world of socialist theatre through the words of JANAM's members, and through a reflective portrayal of the group's greatest tragedy - the assassination of its convenor Safdar Hashmi in 1989. enquiries: lvachani (at) vsnl.com followed by a: Discussion with Sudhanva Deshpande of JANAM (to be confirmed) 5:15 pm - 7:00 pm Die Spielwütigen Director: Andres Veiel; 108 min., Germany, 2003 Four drama students are observed during their training at the reputed Ernst Busch school of drama in Berlin. They are very different as regards their vita, their mentality and their social conduct, but they share the same passion for drama. They conclude their training successfully and we also hear of their first professional experiences. ********END******** --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the "Delhi Film Archive" mailing list of events. To unsubscribe, send email to delhifilmarchive-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com To contact the moderator, write to delhifilmarchive [at] gmail.com For more options, visit this group on the web at http://groups-beta.google.com/group/delhifilmarchive/ To view a list of films with the Archive visit http://www.delhifilmarchive.org/archive.html -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061122/2245fc25/attachment.html From mail at shivamvij.com Thu Nov 23 03:15:28 2006 From: mail at shivamvij.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 03:15:28 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Press freedom goes for a toss in Chattisgarh Message-ID: <9c06aab30611221345w46cb9cfet57db2e7c60522b8e@mail.gmail.com> An older incident here: http://www.shivamvij.com/2006/11/kamlesh-paikra.html best s To: chhattisgarh-net at yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 9:52 PM Subject: [chhattisgarh-net] Appeal to NHRC against attack on Journalist in Dantewada To The Chairperson National Human Rights Commission,Faridkot House, Copernicus Marg, New Delhi Sub: Complaint against the illegal detention and torture of Afzal Khan, a correspondent of HindSat News paper based in Bhopalpatnam, District Dantewada on 15 November 2006 Dear Sir I am writing to seek immidate interntion of National Human Rights Commission against the illegal detention and torture of Afzal Khan, a correspondent of HindSat News paper based in Bhopalpatnam, District Dantewada on 15 November 2006. According to Afzal on the evening of 15th November Salwa Judum reached Bhopalpatnam. He with his brother Zahir Khan ( reporter Jansatta) and few more reporters were called by leaders of Salwa Judum including Budhram Rana and Hanif Khan. Salwa Judum leaders accused them of helping the Sarpanchs who went to Raipur few days back to request Govt to stop Salwa Judum entering their area.Afzal told the leaders that they should check with the Sarpanchs when they are back whether they helped them to go to Raipur or not. After that they were asked to go after threatening "not to repeat same acts".After sometime Afzal was called again. This time he was asked to witness the Putla Dahan ( effigy burning) of anti Salwa Judum leaders. During this function he was again asked similar questions by the SPOs and blamed for writing anti Salwa Judum news. Afzal told them that "today is the first day of Salwa Judum in Bhopalpatnam area, so how come I may be writing against Salwa Judum ?The reports about our representatives not wanting Salwa Judum was written by reporters from Raipur".But SPOs were not happy with the reply and Afzal was taken inside a room and was badly beaten up. In the process he has fractured two of his fingers.Afzal is frightened to go to file an FIR. " They have threatened to kill my entire family if I complain against them", Afzal told. Afzal also told that "Patel of Gullaguda was beaten up badly when he went to save a girl from his village being molested by Salwa Judum. He has got 11 stiches but police has refused to file his complaint". Afzal could not recount the Patel's name."Deputy Sarpanch of Tamlapalli Saddu and Hingaram of Gullapeta were also beaten up by Salwa Judum and police have refused to file their FIRs too". Afzal says "Kotwars from all the villages from this area were beaten up that day. The Salwa Judum members ate our chicken and goats and rampaged the whole area". While talking to FFDA, Afzal told that he has also injury on his head, and he has been threatened not to file any report with police and/or any where.In this context,I would like to request you to intervene and take following measures: * Direct the State government of Chhattisgarh to make an independent inquiry and report NHRC within four weeks time; * Direct the State government of Chhattisgarh to bring the perpetrators into the court of law; * Direct the State government of Chhattisgarh to prevent such attack on journalists and other fact-finders on Salw Judum; *Direct the Sate government of Chhattisgarh to pay interim compensation of INR 500000/- (five lakh) and immediate medical expenses; and * Take anyother measures that NHRC deems fit. With kind regards Sincerely Subash Mohapatra Forum for Fact-finding Documentation and Advocacy MIG-22, Sahayog Park (In Front of Back Gate of Prem Park), Mahaveer Nagar, P.O.:Ravigram, Raipur, Chhattisgarh 492 006, India Tel: 91 771 4022587/4022906 email:ffdanews at rediffmail.com web: www.ffdaindia.org From iram at sarai.net Thu Nov 23 11:49:19 2006 From: iram at sarai.net (Iram Ghufran) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 11:49:19 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd SOLIDARITY (from Yengkhom Jilangamba) Message-ID: <45653D67.4000207@sarai.net> Subject: Fwd: SOLIDARITY From:Yengkhom Jilangamba Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 11:17:12 +0000 (GMT) To: reader-list at sarai.net +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ SOLIDARITY FAST against AFSPA, MILITARIZATION AND IMPUNITY 23rd November at Jantar Mantar, 11.30 a.m. onwards The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) is one of the most draconian legislations that the Indian Parliament has passed in its history. The Act violates basic parametres of human rights law by giving the security forces wide-ranging powers including special impunity, and has ennabled grave human rights abuses, including enforced disappearances, rape, torture, and killing on mere suspicion, among many others, in the North East and Jammu and Kashmir. Based on a colonial ordinance this Act stands as an emblem of the 'security perspective' of the Indian State, wherein the multitude of struggles for autonomy and greater democratic and civil rights are viewed as 'law and order' and 'security' problems, which can be managed by an ever-increasing deployment of armed forces. The Act prevails as the most draconian face of militarisation in the North East and Kashmir. It has become a powerful tool of the security forces to suppress all kinds of democratic dissent in these regions. Not only AFSPA, but also other black laws have engendered a climate of impunity in the North East and Kashmir with security forces given the license to perpetuate the most barbaric acts without any fear of being held accountable for their actions. The people's movement against Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958, (AFSPA) has been continuing since the time of its very imposition in 1958. The protests have garnered some public attention since Irom Sharmila's ongoing hunger strike since 2000, and the brutal killing of Ms. Manorama Devi by the Assam Rifles in 2004 in Manipur, which sparked people to come out on the streets in the North East and other areas to demand the repeal of this repressive act. As an outcome of the people's uproar, the Government of India agreed to have a committee, headed by Justice Jeevan Reddy, to review the AFSPA. The Government of India has refused to disclose the contents of this committee's report for more than a year and half. Ironically, the leaked copy of the report has nothing substantial for public information except its recommendation for the 'Repeal of the Act'. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act and other black laws of its ilk are symbols of the Indian State's continued neglect of political solutions to the questions of self-determination and autonomy in the regions affected, desecration of democracy and systematic resort to increased militarisation to curb all such struggles. The time calls for people everywhere to voice, in unison, their opposition to AFSPA, impunity, militarization, and the pervasive and continued undermining of democracy in North East region and Jammu and Kashmir. We call on all concerned individuals and People's Movements, Students, Women's groups, Human Rights groups to join in support of Sharmila and those people in NE and Kashmir living under the most repressive and undemocratic conditions. Impunity occurs now not just in the margins of North East and JK, but also increasingly all over the country, from Chattisgarh to Orissa to Kerala, and we must collectively and strongly oppose it. Join us in demanding from the Indian State: The repeal of AFSPA and all black laws in North East and Kashmir. An end to the climate of impunity in North East, Kashmir and other regions. A stop to the recurrent violation of its citizens' democratic and human rights by means of military might. Expedite investigation into human rights abuses and book security personnel responsible for such acts. CAMPAIGN AGAINST AFSPA, MILITARISATION AND IMPUNITY [The Other Media, Forum for Democratic Initiative, NPMHR, North East Peoples' Initiative, Indian Social Institute, Vidyajyoti, National Alliance of Peoples Movement, Koch Rajbanshi Pancha,] * Kindly Endorse Your Organisational Participation: Contact: Ravi Hemadri (9871415186), Saurabh Bhattacharjee (9891022459), K. Onil (9818781767), From iram at sarai.net Thu Nov 23 13:20:13 2006 From: iram at sarai.net (Iram Ghufran) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 13:20:13 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Listening Lounge @ Sarai Message-ID: <456552B5.9010206@sarai.net> ============== Listening Lounge @ Sarai =============== Listening Lounge 'Sound art' has emerged as a media that challenges the defined categories of sound /art /visual art /music /science /engineering. Creative experiments with sound play on the fringes of our often-unconscious aural experience in spaces. Sonic practitioners of divergent sensibilities, and different takes on sound are being invited and through the month will explore their work and the different sonic possibilities in India. We hosted listening lounges with Sophea Lerner and Lex Bhagat last year, and this year they return with friends and an exciting series of sound projects. We hope many friends will make their way to Sarai and for an evening of listening and sharing :) Friday, 24 November 2006 5:30 P.M. Interface Zone, Sarai-CSDS 29 Rajpur Road (near old Transport Authority/ Civil Lines Metro Station) Delhi ========================================================= _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From mail at shivamvij.com Thu Nov 23 17:12:20 2006 From: mail at shivamvij.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 17:12:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] INDIA: Journalist threatened by militia death threats In-Reply-To: <00c801c70ef3$fe9296d0$0b01a8c0@smitashu> References: <00c801c70ef3$fe9296d0$0b01a8c0@smitashu> Message-ID: <9c06aab30611230342s6006a8b8u359fe234c196e44d@mail.gmail.com> Reporters Without Borders/Reporters sans fronti貥s Press release 23 November 2006 INDIA JOURNALIST THREATENED BY MILITIA DEATH THREATS A journalist who received death threats from a pro-government militia is in danger in the central-east Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Afzal Khan, correspondent in Bhopalpatnam for the daily Hind Sat based in Jagdalpur, central India, was badly beaten and received explicit threats he would be killed. "The fight against Maoist groups has been getting out of hand," Reporters Without Borders said. "The Chhattisgarh state government's use of armed militia, responsible for frequent abuses, has very harmful consequences for the work of local reporters." Khan and several other journalists were summoned to Bhopalpatnam on 15 November by, leaders of the Salwa Judum militia, Budhram Rana and Hanif Khan, and accused of helping the chiefs of some villages, who had suffered abuses at the hands of the pro-government militia. Khan was then ordered to attend a ceremony in which militiamen burned effigies of their enemies where he was set upon by police officers who accused him of writing reports critical of Salwa Judum. He was beaten and left with two broken fingers, but did not report the incident for fear of reprisals against his family. The journalist told Reporters Without Borders that he can be forced to flee the region with his family because the leaders of the militia had explicitly threatened to kill him. "The Union government should react to this situation and protect the freedom and safety of all journalists in this state", the worldwide press freedom organisation said. It has sent a letter to the state's chief minister, Raman Singh. In January 2006, Reporters Without Borders protested at the treatment of Kamlesh Paikra, correspondent in the Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh state of regional daily Hind Sat, who lost his job and was forced to flee the city after receiving threats linked to his reports critical to Salwa Judum.-- -- Vincent Brossel Asia - Pacific Desk Reporters Sans Fronti貥s 5 rue Geoffroy Marie 75009 Paris 33 1 44 83 84 70 33 1 45 23 11 51 (fax) asia at rsf.org www.rsf.org From aasim27 at yahoo.co.in Thu Nov 23 18:44:15 2006 From: aasim27 at yahoo.co.in (aasim khan) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 13:14:15 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Milton comes alive ( in the Obits) Message-ID: <20061123131415.55973.qmail@web8707.mail.in.yahoo.com> Hi Shivam, Aman, and all Got down to reading your fwds, these were definitely more insightful. Then I googled for more.Thing is that with Milton F. the more I read the more I want to. Still with the obits; found this(below) on the net, at The Nation. I have always found OBITS so full of life.They are such actively contested column spaces , so genuinely alive with critical debate around the 'being(+) and effects(-)'. An Excel Sheet of sorts of the deadman's deeds, with everyone summing up a different bottomline. In the one below, the promise of the opening lines is so tempting but to read beyond one needs subscription. If someone can put it up here, shall be great. best Aasim Obit in the Nation: "Friedman was the most influential economist of the second half of the twentieth century, as his admirers claim. What they do not say is that he was also the most destructive public intellectual of our time. Friedman actually failed as a scientific economist but succeeded as a moral philosopher..." __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ From jeebesh at sarai.net Thu Nov 23 19:14:57 2006 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 19:14:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] immersion emergence Message-ID: Dear All, It is always interesting to see how the diverse practices that all of us inhabit find a public form. Recently Ravi Agarwal has come out with a book that makes this attempt. Ravi has been walking along the banks of Jamuna river in the mornings for last 4 years. He does this with a camera. He takes photographs and enters into conversations with people he meets along the way. On returning from the river, he moves into his world of work - thinking about toxics and the environment. Here he gets into a realm of knowledge production and advocacy. In his work, questions around "doing science publicly", "questions of standards", "legal regimes around environment" preoccupy him and his colleagues. After work he returns home and makes notes on post-its and in a diary. These notes are from quotes (from conversations and his readings), questions, clippings from newspaper reports, thumbnails of photographs. Sometimes he sequences his notes using post-its, at other times, he reorganises earlier sequences or clusters. I meet him sometimes in the evenings for long conversations over dinner. Rhetorically he asked one day, "Do you know how to access the river that runs through your city?" Interesting question. Never really asked myself. His book, "immersion emergence", brings this question alive. In it he makes us think the river, but brings himself into the discussion in a very intriguing way. He has collated his post-its and diary entries, tried to write the sense of bewilderment and loss at the present violence along the river, brought into consideration images that capture a journey and a disruption, and produced a series of haunting self-portraits. This book opens up a space to think the "note-book" as an engaging form and has ability to weave in the diverse worlds that we all inhabit, with its contradictions, confusions and care. warmly jeebesh -------------------------------------- immersion emergence Size 9.5 x 9.5 ", 52 pages, 40 colour photographs. 4 colour offset Designed by Annirudh Sengupta and Salil Chaturvedi, Splash Communications Printed October 2006 ISBN No: 81- 7525 - 751 - 2 Published by Ravi Agarwal Priced: Indian Rs 300 plus postage International USD 25 plus postage for orders contact -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061123/182a5357/attachment.html From vivek at sarai.net Sat Nov 25 02:46:05 2006 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 02:46:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] VN Performance-launch, Delhi Message-ID: <45676115.5070206@sarai.net> Dear Friends, This Wednesday, 29 November, at 7 pm, I'm doing a reading/performance/whatchamacallit at the British Council Delhi to launch my first book of poems, Universal Beach. It will be a close collaboration with Sophea Lerner on sound, and is the first of a poetry season at the British Council featuring UK and local poets. We plan to make it enjoyable and it will be honest. There will be no fake British accents. After the performance, there will be a reception with things to cool and warm you. If you did get an invitation in the post from the British Council, please carry it with you-- it will admit two. If you didn't get a postal invite, and you think you might come, please do RSVP Kavita Puri Arora at the British Council, by calling or emailing her ( Kavita.PuriArora at in.britishcouncil.org / 41497261 ) *before 2pm on Wednesday* . She will put your name on the guest list. Security will likely be strict, so this once, please leave your home-made bombs at home. Guns may be fired in appreciation of the poetry at later, outdoor, venues, but sadly not here. Please note also that author photographs will not be allowed: they steal your soul. Blurbs &c follow below. Do forward this mail to anyone you think might be interested. Thanks Vivek Wednesday, November 29, 2006; British Council Delhi on Kasturba Gandhi Marg Vivek Narayanan will read and perform from his first collection, as well as new poems from his second collection in progress, Lectures in Indian History. Sound by Sophea Lerner. Lights by Shankar Arora. Narayanan’s first book of poems, Universal Beach, was published in 2006 from Harbour Line (Mumbai). His poems have appeared in Indian and international journals and anthologies since 1994. In addition to publication, he has been working on the performance of his work since 1995. He was born in Ranchi in 1972, grew up in Lusaka, Zambia, studied in the US, and is currently based in Delhi, where he works at Sarai-CSDS. Currently he is also a staff writer for the quirky British “non-literary literary magazine”, The Enthusiast ( www.theenthusiast.co.uk ) and Associate Editor at the Boston-based international poetry annual, Fulcrum ( www.fulcrumpoetry.org ). 'Soon the world will know of a daring, vigorous, sexy, humane, wise and traveled poet. It will find in Universal Beach a remarkable formal control, and an equally remarkable free-verse nonchalance. Narayanan has a noise all his own; a voice, happily, exceeding the limitations of voice.' --David Herd "What is more interesting is the way Narayanan performed... [He] doesn't just recite his poems, he acts them out, complete with strong vocal inflexions, chanting and hand gestures." --Jai Arjun Singh, in the Business Standard Weekend and the Jabberwock blog. “Vivek Narayanan’s poems remind me of a thriving port-city, where diverse tongues are spoken… And then there are moments of luminosity, when the word becomes the bearer of hope and redemption... by challenging us into insight with a jaggedness of phrase, a treacherously ambiguous grammar, and a demanding musicality." --Ranjit Hoskote, from the jacket blurb for Universal Beach -- Vivek Narayanan Sarai: The New Media Initiative Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110 054 From aasim27 at yahoo.co.in Sat Nov 25 15:25:36 2006 From: aasim27 at yahoo.co.in (aasim khan) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 09:55:36 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Post war Europe and Obituaries Message-ID: <20061125095536.61593.qmail@web8707.mail.in.yahoo.com> And now an Obituary that is LIVE NEWS .Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko comes alive in the Obits, each intricate detail of his last breathe is in the papers, with The TIMES pulling off the ultimate press coup. They claim they have got the last words of a poisoned man. Wont be wrong to call it the 'Rose-bud syndrome'. Actually was thinking : Whats with Post-war Europe and Obituaries ? >From The Independent : ------------------------------------------------------ Alexander Litvinenko KGB secret agent turned political dissident who lifted the lid on the Russian security services Published: 25 November 2006 Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko, intelligence agent: born Voronezh, Soviet Union 30 August 1962; married (one son); died London 23 November 2006. Alexander Litvinenko was a middle-ranking Russian security service agent who knew he was risking his life by stepping out of the shadows to go public with accusations against the master of the Kremlin. For President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent himself, Litvinenko committed the ultimate betrayal. Litvinenko, who has died in hospital in London after being poisoned, joined the KGB in 1988. He was a lieutenant-colonel in its successor organisation, the FSB, when he broke cover in October 1998 to accuse his superiors of ordering him to assassinate the businessman Boris Berezovsky. The immensely wealthy Russian oligarch, who successfully claimed political asylum in Britain after fleeing fraud charges in Russia in 2000, fell out with Putin after the President turned on the men who had helped him to power in the twilight years of the Yeltsin era. Berezovsky has been an implacable political foe of Putin ever since. Litvinenko went public in the most dramatic way possible, by calling a press conference in Moscow where he sat flanked by fellow agents clad in balaclavas. One can only imagine the reaction of the head of the FSB at the time, who happened to be Mr Putin. Born in the city of Voronezh in 1962, Litvinenko had switched to the KGB from the Soviet military, which he joined after school. After working for KGB counter-intelligence, he was promoted to the Organised Crime Control Directorate, the FSB top secret unit investigating terrorism and organised crime, where he worked until his spectacular downfall. In addition to implicating his bosses in the assassination bid against Berezovsky, he also accused them of using his unit to carry out contract killings, extortion and corruption. His allegations prompted the FSB to charge him with kidnapping businessmen and extortion. The case collapsed, but he was rearrested. He was facing a third court case when he fled to London in 2000, where a grateful Berezovsky rewarded him with a job in his security detail. Once in the West, the former spy continued to speak out, publishing a book - Vyzyvayu Sebya na Dopros ("Called In for Self-Interrogation") - which lifted the lid on the FSB. He alleged that the security services had been behind the 1995 killing of the head of the ORT television station, Vladislav Listev, who was murdered in one of the most high-profile unsolved murders of the 1990s. Litvinenko said that he gathered evidence about the killing and took it to the prosecutor-general's office. According to Litvinenko, he was arrested for his pains, while the evidence was destroyed. In 2002, Litvinenko co-authored Blowing up Russia: terror from within, in which he accused the Russian security services of responsibility in a series of deadly attacks on apartment buildings in Moscow. The attacks in September 1999, which killed 300 people, led to Putin declaring the second war on the rebellious Russian republic of Chechnya. The attacks were officially blamed on Chechen militants, and Litvinenko was certainly not alone in questioning the official version. The Independent reported the accusations against the FSB in January 2000. A friend of Litvinenko, Andrei Nekrasov, made a film, Disbelief (2004), detailing the allegations, which Putin has described as "delirious nonsense". But the most prominent person to accuse the Russian security services of responsibility for the apartment block attacks was Berezovsky, who financed Litvinenko's book. In May 2002, Litvinenko was convicted in absentia of abuse of office by a Moscow court and sentenced to three and a half years in jail. The small band of political dissidents in London was growing, causing a major irritant in UK-Russia relations. A former Chechen actor and rebel commander, Akhmed Zakayev, claimed asylum in Britain in December 2002, as the Russians were demanding his extradition to answer charges over the Moscow theatre siege carried out by Chechen rebels. It took a year and a much publicised extradition case, in which Zakayev had the support of the actress Vanessa Redgrave, for the case to be rejected and for Zakayev to obtain political asylum. The Chechen and the former FSB agent were neighbours on the same street in north London. Despite an assassination attempt in 2005, Litvinenko continued to write inflammatory articles criticising Putin in the Chechen press. The Chechen connection also brought Litvinenko into contact three years ago with Anna Politkovskaya, the fearless Russian journalist known for her investigative reports which exposed the Kremlin's role in atrocities being carried out on the civilian population in Chechnya. She survived an earlier poisoning attempt before being gunned down in the lift of her Moscow apartment block on 7 October - with the finger of blame, once again, pointing at the Russian security services. With the West still in shock over her death, Litvinenko attended a panel discussion on 19 October, "The killing of Anna Politkovskaya - Russia's dirty secrets", held in London at the Frontline club, a journalists' forum. Litvinenko, one of the many Russians in the audience, stood up towards the end of the discussion and said: I don't want to hide anything. Somebody asked who is guilty of Anna's death. I can directly answer you: it is Mr Putin, the President of the Russian Federation. Litvinenko did not say what evidence he had for levelling such a charge. But he did say: I am totally confident that only one person in Russia can kill someone of Politovskaya's standing in Russia, and that is Putin. A journalist of her level could not be touched without the sanction of the President himself. She was a political opponent and this is why she was killed. Exactly 13 days later, he was himself the victim of a mystery poisoning, which he was convinced was the work of the Russian secret services. Anne Penketh __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ From aasim27 at yahoo.co.in Sat Nov 25 15:25:49 2006 From: aasim27 at yahoo.co.in (aasim khan) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 09:55:49 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Post war Europe and Obituaries Message-ID: <20061125095550.280.qmail@web8712.mail.in.yahoo.com> And now an Obituary that is LIVE NEWS .Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko comes alive in the Obits, each intricate detail of his last breathe is in the papers, with The TIMES pulling off the ultimate press coup. They claim they have got the last words of a poisoned man. Wont be wrong to call it the 'Rose-bud syndrome'. Actually was thinking : Whats with Post-war Europe and Obituaries ? >From The Independent : ------------------------------------------------------ Alexander Litvinenko KGB secret agent turned political dissident who lifted the lid on the Russian security services Published: 25 November 2006 Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko, intelligence agent: born Voronezh, Soviet Union 30 August 1962; married (one son); died London 23 November 2006. Alexander Litvinenko was a middle-ranking Russian security service agent who knew he was risking his life by stepping out of the shadows to go public with accusations against the master of the Kremlin. For President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent himself, Litvinenko committed the ultimate betrayal. Litvinenko, who has died in hospital in London after being poisoned, joined the KGB in 1988. He was a lieutenant-colonel in its successor organisation, the FSB, when he broke cover in October 1998 to accuse his superiors of ordering him to assassinate the businessman Boris Berezovsky. The immensely wealthy Russian oligarch, who successfully claimed political asylum in Britain after fleeing fraud charges in Russia in 2000, fell out with Putin after the President turned on the men who had helped him to power in the twilight years of the Yeltsin era. Berezovsky has been an implacable political foe of Putin ever since. Litvinenko went public in the most dramatic way possible, by calling a press conference in Moscow where he sat flanked by fellow agents clad in balaclavas. One can only imagine the reaction of the head of the FSB at the time, who happened to be Mr Putin. Born in the city of Voronezh in 1962, Litvinenko had switched to the KGB from the Soviet military, which he joined after school. After working for KGB counter-intelligence, he was promoted to the Organised Crime Control Directorate, the FSB top secret unit investigating terrorism and organised crime, where he worked until his spectacular downfall. In addition to implicating his bosses in the assassination bid against Berezovsky, he also accused them of using his unit to carry out contract killings, extortion and corruption. His allegations prompted the FSB to charge him with kidnapping businessmen and extortion. The case collapsed, but he was rearrested. He was facing a third court case when he fled to London in 2000, where a grateful Berezovsky rewarded him with a job in his security detail. Once in the West, the former spy continued to speak out, publishing a book - Vyzyvayu Sebya na Dopros ("Called In for Self-Interrogation") - which lifted the lid on the FSB. He alleged that the security services had been behind the 1995 killing of the head of the ORT television station, Vladislav Listev, who was murdered in one of the most high-profile unsolved murders of the 1990s. Litvinenko said that he gathered evidence about the killing and took it to the prosecutor-general's office. According to Litvinenko, he was arrested for his pains, while the evidence was destroyed. In 2002, Litvinenko co-authored Blowing up Russia: terror from within, in which he accused the Russian security services of responsibility in a series of deadly attacks on apartment buildings in Moscow. The attacks in September 1999, which killed 300 people, led to Putin declaring the second war on the rebellious Russian republic of Chechnya. The attacks were officially blamed on Chechen militants, and Litvinenko was certainly not alone in questioning the official version. The Independent reported the accusations against the FSB in January 2000. A friend of Litvinenko, Andrei Nekrasov, made a film, Disbelief (2004), detailing the allegations, which Putin has described as "delirious nonsense". But the most prominent person to accuse the Russian security services of responsibility for the apartment block attacks was Berezovsky, who financed Litvinenko's book. In May 2002, Litvinenko was convicted in absentia of abuse of office by a Moscow court and sentenced to three and a half years in jail. The small band of political dissidents in London was growing, causing a major irritant in UK-Russia relations. A former Chechen actor and rebel commander, Akhmed Zakayev, claimed asylum in Britain in December 2002, as the Russians were demanding his extradition to answer charges over the Moscow theatre siege carried out by Chechen rebels. It took a year and a much publicised extradition case, in which Zakayev had the support of the actress Vanessa Redgrave, for the case to be rejected and for Zakayev to obtain political asylum. The Chechen and the former FSB agent were neighbours on the same street in north London. Despite an assassination attempt in 2005, Litvinenko continued to write inflammatory articles criticising Putin in the Chechen press. The Chechen connection also brought Litvinenko into contact three years ago with Anna Politkovskaya, the fearless Russian journalist known for her investigative reports which exposed the Kremlin's role in atrocities being carried out on the civilian population in Chechnya. She survived an earlier poisoning attempt before being gunned down in the lift of her Moscow apartment block on 7 October - with the finger of blame, once again, pointing at the Russian security services. With the West still in shock over her death, Litvinenko attended a panel discussion on 19 October, "The killing of Anna Politkovskaya - Russia's dirty secrets", held in London at the Frontline club, a journalists' forum. Litvinenko, one of the many Russians in the audience, stood up towards the end of the discussion and said: I don't want to hide anything. Somebody asked who is guilty of Anna's death. I can directly answer you: it is Mr Putin, the President of the Russian Federation. Litvinenko did not say what evidence he had for levelling such a charge. But he did say: I am totally confident that only one person in Russia can kill someone of Politovskaya's standing in Russia, and that is Putin. A journalist of her level could not be touched without the sanction of the President himself. She was a political opponent and this is why she was killed. Exactly 13 days later, he was himself the victim of a mystery poisoning, which he was convinced was the work of the Russian secret services. Anne Penketh __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ From aasim27 at yahoo.co.in Sat Nov 25 15:25:55 2006 From: aasim27 at yahoo.co.in (aasim khan) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 09:55:55 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Post war Europe and Obituaries Message-ID: <20061125095555.15449.qmail@web8702.mail.in.yahoo.com> And now an Obituary that is LIVE NEWS .Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko comes alive in the Obits, each intricate detail of his last breathe is in the papers, with The TIMES pulling off the ultimate press coup. They claim they have got the last words of a poisoned man. Wont be wrong to call it the 'Rose-bud syndrome'. Actually was thinking : Whats with Post-war Europe and Obituaries ? >From The Independent : ------------------------------------------------------ Alexander Litvinenko KGB secret agent turned political dissident who lifted the lid on the Russian security services Published: 25 November 2006 Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko, intelligence agent: born Voronezh, Soviet Union 30 August 1962; married (one son); died London 23 November 2006. Alexander Litvinenko was a middle-ranking Russian security service agent who knew he was risking his life by stepping out of the shadows to go public with accusations against the master of the Kremlin. For President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent himself, Litvinenko committed the ultimate betrayal. Litvinenko, who has died in hospital in London after being poisoned, joined the KGB in 1988. He was a lieutenant-colonel in its successor organisation, the FSB, when he broke cover in October 1998 to accuse his superiors of ordering him to assassinate the businessman Boris Berezovsky. The immensely wealthy Russian oligarch, who successfully claimed political asylum in Britain after fleeing fraud charges in Russia in 2000, fell out with Putin after the President turned on the men who had helped him to power in the twilight years of the Yeltsin era. Berezovsky has been an implacable political foe of Putin ever since. Litvinenko went public in the most dramatic way possible, by calling a press conference in Moscow where he sat flanked by fellow agents clad in balaclavas. One can only imagine the reaction of the head of the FSB at the time, who happened to be Mr Putin. Born in the city of Voronezh in 1962, Litvinenko had switched to the KGB from the Soviet military, which he joined after school. After working for KGB counter-intelligence, he was promoted to the Organised Crime Control Directorate, the FSB top secret unit investigating terrorism and organised crime, where he worked until his spectacular downfall. In addition to implicating his bosses in the assassination bid against Berezovsky, he also accused them of using his unit to carry out contract killings, extortion and corruption. His allegations prompted the FSB to charge him with kidnapping businessmen and extortion. The case collapsed, but he was rearrested. He was facing a third court case when he fled to London in 2000, where a grateful Berezovsky rewarded him with a job in his security detail. Once in the West, the former spy continued to speak out, publishing a book - Vyzyvayu Sebya na Dopros ("Called In for Self-Interrogation") - which lifted the lid on the FSB. He alleged that the security services had been behind the 1995 killing of the head of the ORT television station, Vladislav Listev, who was murdered in one of the most high-profile unsolved murders of the 1990s. Litvinenko said that he gathered evidence about the killing and took it to the prosecutor-general's office. According to Litvinenko, he was arrested for his pains, while the evidence was destroyed. In 2002, Litvinenko co-authored Blowing up Russia: terror from within, in which he accused the Russian security services of responsibility in a series of deadly attacks on apartment buildings in Moscow. The attacks in September 1999, which killed 300 people, led to Putin declaring the second war on the rebellious Russian republic of Chechnya. The attacks were officially blamed on Chechen militants, and Litvinenko was certainly not alone in questioning the official version. The Independent reported the accusations against the FSB in January 2000. A friend of Litvinenko, Andrei Nekrasov, made a film, Disbelief (2004), detailing the allegations, which Putin has described as "delirious nonsense". But the most prominent person to accuse the Russian security services of responsibility for the apartment block attacks was Berezovsky, who financed Litvinenko's book. In May 2002, Litvinenko was convicted in absentia of abuse of office by a Moscow court and sentenced to three and a half years in jail. The small band of political dissidents in London was growing, causing a major irritant in UK-Russia relations. A former Chechen actor and rebel commander, Akhmed Zakayev, claimed asylum in Britain in December 2002, as the Russians were demanding his extradition to answer charges over the Moscow theatre siege carried out by Chechen rebels. It took a year and a much publicised extradition case, in which Zakayev had the support of the actress Vanessa Redgrave, for the case to be rejected and for Zakayev to obtain political asylum. The Chechen and the former FSB agent were neighbours on the same street in north London. Despite an assassination attempt in 2005, Litvinenko continued to write inflammatory articles criticising Putin in the Chechen press. The Chechen connection also brought Litvinenko into contact three years ago with Anna Politkovskaya, the fearless Russian journalist known for her investigative reports which exposed the Kremlin's role in atrocities being carried out on the civilian population in Chechnya. She survived an earlier poisoning attempt before being gunned down in the lift of her Moscow apartment block on 7 October - with the finger of blame, once again, pointing at the Russian security services. With the West still in shock over her death, Litvinenko attended a panel discussion on 19 October, "The killing of Anna Politkovskaya - Russia's dirty secrets", held in London at the Frontline club, a journalists' forum. Litvinenko, one of the many Russians in the audience, stood up towards the end of the discussion and said: I don't want to hide anything. Somebody asked who is guilty of Anna's death. I can directly answer you: it is Mr Putin, the President of the Russian Federation. Litvinenko did not say what evidence he had for levelling such a charge. But he did say: I am totally confident that only one person in Russia can kill someone of Politovskaya's standing in Russia, and that is Putin. A journalist of her level could not be touched without the sanction of the President himself. She was a political opponent and this is why she was killed. Exactly 13 days later, he was himself the victim of a mystery poisoning, which he was convinced was the work of the Russian secret services. Anne Penketh __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ From aasim27 at yahoo.co.in Sat Nov 25 15:25:54 2006 From: aasim27 at yahoo.co.in (aasim khan) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 09:55:54 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Post war Europe and Obituaries Message-ID: <20061125095555.15437.qmail@web8702.mail.in.yahoo.com> And now an Obituary that is LIVE NEWS .Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko comes alive in the Obits, each intricate detail of his last breathe is in the papers, with The TIMES pulling off the ultimate press coup. They claim they have got the last words of a poisoned man. Wont be wrong to call it the 'Rose-bud syndrome'. Actually was thinking : Whats with Post-war Europe and Obituaries ? >From The Independent : ------------------------------------------------------ Alexander Litvinenko KGB secret agent turned political dissident who lifted the lid on the Russian security services Published: 25 November 2006 Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko, intelligence agent: born Voronezh, Soviet Union 30 August 1962; married (one son); died London 23 November 2006. Alexander Litvinenko was a middle-ranking Russian security service agent who knew he was risking his life by stepping out of the shadows to go public with accusations against the master of the Kremlin. For President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent himself, Litvinenko committed the ultimate betrayal. Litvinenko, who has died in hospital in London after being poisoned, joined the KGB in 1988. He was a lieutenant-colonel in its successor organisation, the FSB, when he broke cover in October 1998 to accuse his superiors of ordering him to assassinate the businessman Boris Berezovsky. The immensely wealthy Russian oligarch, who successfully claimed political asylum in Britain after fleeing fraud charges in Russia in 2000, fell out with Putin after the President turned on the men who had helped him to power in the twilight years of the Yeltsin era. Berezovsky has been an implacable political foe of Putin ever since. Litvinenko went public in the most dramatic way possible, by calling a press conference in Moscow where he sat flanked by fellow agents clad in balaclavas. One can only imagine the reaction of the head of the FSB at the time, who happened to be Mr Putin. Born in the city of Voronezh in 1962, Litvinenko had switched to the KGB from the Soviet military, which he joined after school. After working for KGB counter-intelligence, he was promoted to the Organised Crime Control Directorate, the FSB top secret unit investigating terrorism and organised crime, where he worked until his spectacular downfall. In addition to implicating his bosses in the assassination bid against Berezovsky, he also accused them of using his unit to carry out contract killings, extortion and corruption. His allegations prompted the FSB to charge him with kidnapping businessmen and extortion. The case collapsed, but he was rearrested. He was facing a third court case when he fled to London in 2000, where a grateful Berezovsky rewarded him with a job in his security detail. Once in the West, the former spy continued to speak out, publishing a book - Vyzyvayu Sebya na Dopros ("Called In for Self-Interrogation") - which lifted the lid on the FSB. He alleged that the security services had been behind the 1995 killing of the head of the ORT television station, Vladislav Listev, who was murdered in one of the most high-profile unsolved murders of the 1990s. Litvinenko said that he gathered evidence about the killing and took it to the prosecutor-general's office. According to Litvinenko, he was arrested for his pains, while the evidence was destroyed. In 2002, Litvinenko co-authored Blowing up Russia: terror from within, in which he accused the Russian security services of responsibility in a series of deadly attacks on apartment buildings in Moscow. The attacks in September 1999, which killed 300 people, led to Putin declaring the second war on the rebellious Russian republic of Chechnya. The attacks were officially blamed on Chechen militants, and Litvinenko was certainly not alone in questioning the official version. The Independent reported the accusations against the FSB in January 2000. A friend of Litvinenko, Andrei Nekrasov, made a film, Disbelief (2004), detailing the allegations, which Putin has described as "delirious nonsense". But the most prominent person to accuse the Russian security services of responsibility for the apartment block attacks was Berezovsky, who financed Litvinenko's book. In May 2002, Litvinenko was convicted in absentia of abuse of office by a Moscow court and sentenced to three and a half years in jail. The small band of political dissidents in London was growing, causing a major irritant in UK-Russia relations. A former Chechen actor and rebel commander, Akhmed Zakayev, claimed asylum in Britain in December 2002, as the Russians were demanding his extradition to answer charges over the Moscow theatre siege carried out by Chechen rebels. It took a year and a much publicised extradition case, in which Zakayev had the support of the actress Vanessa Redgrave, for the case to be rejected and for Zakayev to obtain political asylum. The Chechen and the former FSB agent were neighbours on the same street in north London. Despite an assassination attempt in 2005, Litvinenko continued to write inflammatory articles criticising Putin in the Chechen press. The Chechen connection also brought Litvinenko into contact three years ago with Anna Politkovskaya, the fearless Russian journalist known for her investigative reports which exposed the Kremlin's role in atrocities being carried out on the civilian population in Chechnya. She survived an earlier poisoning attempt before being gunned down in the lift of her Moscow apartment block on 7 October - with the finger of blame, once again, pointing at the Russian security services. With the West still in shock over her death, Litvinenko attended a panel discussion on 19 October, "The killing of Anna Politkovskaya - Russia's dirty secrets", held in London at the Frontline club, a journalists' forum. Litvinenko, one of the many Russians in the audience, stood up towards the end of the discussion and said: I don't want to hide anything. Somebody asked who is guilty of Anna's death. I can directly answer you: it is Mr Putin, the President of the Russian Federation. Litvinenko did not say what evidence he had for levelling such a charge. But he did say: I am totally confident that only one person in Russia can kill someone of Politovskaya's standing in Russia, and that is Putin. A journalist of her level could not be touched without the sanction of the President himself. She was a political opponent and this is why she was killed. Exactly 13 days later, he was himself the victim of a mystery poisoning, which he was convinced was the work of the Russian secret services. Anne Penketh __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ From ysaeed7 at yahoo.com Sat Nov 25 17:59:24 2006 From: ysaeed7 at yahoo.com (Yousuf) Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 04:29:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Marquez novel in Urdu Message-ID: <20061125122924.26847.qmail@web51409.mail.yahoo.com> BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT NEW MARQUEZ NOVEL PUBLISHED IN URDU The latest novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and one of the most widely read authors in the world today, makes its appearance in an Urdu version. The first novel in ten years to appear from the pen of this internationally acclaimed novelist, Memories of My Melancholy Whores was eagerly awaited by readers and critics alike. This novel has now been rendered into Urdu by Muhammad Umer Memon as Apni Sogwar Beswaoon Ki Yadein and just published by Scheherzade, Karachi, Pakistan. Writer and scholar, Professor Muhammad Umar Memon is associated with the University of Wisconsin, USA and is the editor of the prestigious journal, The Annual of Urdu Studies. With several books to his credit, is enowned for his translations of contemporary fiction from Urdu as well as his rendition of contemporary fiction into Urdu. His translations from writers like Milan Kundera, Borges, Edward Said, Orhan Pamuk, Simone de Beauvoir and others have led to the creation of a new idiom in Urdu prose fiction and have set the standard for translations of world literature. In rendering the new Marquez into Urdu, he has been particularly sensitive to the nuances of the novelist’s style, his lyrical sensuousness and the richness of physical details. This book launches the Classics Series from by Scheherzade, a non-profit organization devoted to publishing and the promotion of book culture, which also brings out the book series "Duniyazad". This series will comprise of new translations by some of the leading writers and translators including Professor Muhammad Umar Memon, Fahmida Riaz and others, and it is aimed at widening the horizons of the Urdu readership by making available the world classics, ancient as well as contemporary, through quality translations. The forthcoming titles in the series include the work of Maulana Jalal uddin Rumi, Milan Kundera, Naguib Mehfouz among others. FOR FURTHER DETAILS PLEASE CONTACT info at scheherzade.com asiffarrukhi at hotmail.com ____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. http://new.mail.yahoo.com From aarti at sarai.net Sun Nov 26 22:33:08 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (aarti at sarai.net) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2006 18:03:08 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Artist's Presentation @ Sarai: Marita Luilia Message-ID: <1744.203.101.16.116.1164560588.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> ============================== Artist's Presentations @ Sarai ============================== Lecture-demonstration by Marita Luilia 4:30 P.M., Monday, 27 November 2006, Interface Zone Sarai-CSDS Marita Liulia is a visual artist and pioneer of multimedia. Maire (1994) was one of the first artworks published in cd-rom format. Ambitious Bitch, a humorous cd-rom about femininity (1996, 2nd edition 1998) was her international breakthrough. SOB (Son of a Bitch), a cd-rom about men and masculinity, followed in 1999. Liulia also works on stage, performing both on her own and in collaboration with other artists. Recent collaborations include Hunt with choreographer/dancer Tero Saarinen and Animator with musician/composer Kimmo Pohjonen. Hunt has been shown already in 20 countries since the premiere at the Venice Biennale in 2002. Liulia has received numerous awards including Prix Möbius International, Prix Ars Electronica and the Finland Prize. She founded the production company Medeia in 1997 and Prix Möbius Nordica, a media culture competition, in 2000. Marita will present selections from her work and speak about her practice. _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From mohaiemen at yahoo.com Tue Nov 28 12:02:51 2006 From: mohaiemen at yahoo.com (NAEEM MOHAIEMEN) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 22:32:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Bangladesh & Death By Thousand Cuts In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <626130.44192.qm@web50302.mail.yahoo.com> Bangladesh's year-long debacle over coming elections continues. Today the interim government announced a flash date for elections (January 21st 2007) without resolving any of the issues the opposition had raised. Crooked election commissioners, even more crooked acting president, legal system politicized and in chaos, 15% bogus voters, total disenfranchisement of non-Muslim and non-Bengali minority votes, absolutely not one iota of reassurance of fair elections––every issue remains unresolved. The center-left 14-party opposition has refused to participate in the polls. Only the ruling rightist-islamist 4-party coalition wants to hold the elections. Why not, they hold all the cards and all the king's men. EU and UK to send a record number of election observers. If you are a EU citizen, please consider registering to become an Election Observer to Bangladesh (see bottom of this e-mail-- note UK citizens do it through ERIS, other EU citizens may need to do it @ different website). EU or no EU, The elections cannot happen on schedule and we may look at months of confrontation between the ruling rightist-islamist coalition (and the interim government, which is riddled with sympathizers to the rightists) and the center-left coalition of 14 parties. A coming meltdown or the men in khaki again? Or will the Islamists stop using all these proxies and finally make their move to grab direct power? -Naeem Mohaiemen ##### Some background reading... What's Really At Stake: Islamic or Secular State? http://www.drishtipat.org/blog/2006/11/16/cultural-radicalization/ To The Polls, Unless Your Name Be Das, Tripura, Roy http://shobakorg.blogspot.com/2006/11/das-tripura.html Military Coup Again? Generals In Labyrinth http://shobakorg.blogspot.com/2006/11/general-labyrinth.html The Magic 15%: What's The Big Deal With Voter List? http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/11/20/d611201501150.htm Dissent & Death: Rough Drive in Kawran Bazar http://www.drishtipat.org/blog/2006/11/13/rough-drive/ Secret Meetings: Like a Bad Noir Movie http://www.drishtipat.org/blog/2006/11/25/picture-of-the-day/ Rushed Meetings, Bogus Election Date http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/11/28/d6112801011p.htm Party Man Made New Election Commissioner http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/11/28/d6112801022.htm What Now? Death of a Thousand Cuts http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/11/24/d61124020331.htm Small World After All (w/ apologies to Disney) http://shobakorg.blogspot.com/2006/11/vote-dakathi.html Chaos in Court as Lawyers Move to Block Elections http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/11/28/d6112801149.htm Ongoing News Updates http://bdnews24.com/home.php http://thedailystar.net ##### EU BANGLADESH ELECTION OBSERVER DATABASE UK: Register EU Election Observer Team To Bangladesh http://www.eris.org.uk/missions/eu/eu.php Other EU: Register @ EU Election Observer Roster http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/observer/index_en.htm Please note that ERIS only recruits UK citizens, for those observers in other EU member states, please contact your respective Foreign Ministries. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited ____________________________________________________________________________________ Want to start your own business? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-index From tapio at translocal.net Tue Nov 28 15:31:59 2006 From: tapio at translocal.net (Tapio) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:31:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Anti-democracy: A letter from Russia Message-ID: <2E109E5DB202E911EA0F0B5B@tmg4.local> Hi, "Putin is to a large degree a creation of the media, which could be said of most leaders, except that the Russian is a creation of the media that are not free. The nature of the lack of media freedom in contemporary Russia is quite seriously misunderstood in the West." "the complete transcript of a letter sent to Helsingin Sanomat by Russian documentary film director Andrei Nekrasov from the bedside of his poisoned friend Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko, a former officer in the Russian FSB, died in hospital on Thursday evening, apparently the victim of poisoning, allegedly for his criticism of the Moscow government. In his letter, which was published in slightly abridged form in Finnish in the print newspaper, Nekrasov blames Russian President Vladimir Putin and the West for the fact that Russia has been left at the mercy of nationalist zealots. "There are corpses in the foundation of the new stability [in Russia], ghosts that speak to those who risk to venture into the night to heed them", writes Nekrasov." Posted by Tapio, at residency, Sarai Tapio Mäkelä Researcher and media artist tapio at translocal.net AIM: tapmak at mac.com Skype: tapio.makela From aesthete at mail.jnu.ac.in Tue Nov 28 15:42:54 2006 From: aesthete at mail.jnu.ac.in (Dean School of Arts and Aesthetics) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:42:54 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Illustrated talk by Dr.Charles Merewether . Message-ID: <1164708774.8dc4b040aesthete@mail.jnu.ac.in> Dear Friend , You are cordially invited to attend an illustrated talk by Dr.Charles Merewether . Taking Place: Acts of Survival for a Time to Come 2006 Biennale of Sydney" and its concept 'zones of contact Wednesday, November 29, 2006 at 5.30 pm The School of Art and Aesthetics Auditorium, JNU Organized by The Biennale Society in association with the School of Arts & Aesthetics, JNU , and supported by the Australia India Council. Dr. Charles Merewether was Artistic Director and Curator of the 2006 Biennale of Sydney and is currently Senior Research Fellow, at the Centre for Cross Cultural Research, Australian National University. A curator and art historian, he was Collections Curator at the Getty Center in Los Angeles (1994-2004). Born in Scotland and educated in Australia, he has taught at taught at the University of Sydney, Australia, Universidad Autonoma, Barcelona, Universidad Ibero-americana in Mexico City and University of Southern California. He received several research fellowships, including at Yale University and the Japan Foundation. His most recent publications are Zones of Contact (Biennale of Sydney 2006), The Archive, and Ai Weiwei: Beijng 1993-2003. His forthcoming projects include an exhibition and book, Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan 1950-1970, to be held at and published by the Getty Center , Los Angeles, in 2007. He is currently writing a book on the cultural history of looting (Melbourne University Press) and is the Editorial Director of a new magazine on contemporary Asian art, to be launched in 2007. _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From abshi at vsnl.com Thu Nov 23 11:43:26 2006 From: abshi at vsnl.com (Shilpa Phadke) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 11:43:26 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Deadline Approaching 1st Dec 2006"Films of Desire: Sexuality and the Cinematic Imagination" Message-ID: <000e01c70edb$b3bad0e0$b488050a@pentium4> Deadline Approaching: Last date to apply for the program is 1st December 2006. Please forward to others interested. Films of Desire: Sexuality & The Cinematic Imagination Neemrana Fort Palace, Rajasthan, India, March 7 - 10, 2007 Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action (CREA) Do you work on issues related to sexuality? Do images and representations challenge you? Would you like to be in a space where all of this comes together? The Event Films of Desire: Sexuality and the Cinematic Imagination is a four day event, featuring: a.. Screenings of features, short films, documentaries, animation, music videos and experimental films that engage with ideas of sexuality in South and Southeast Asia; b.. Panel discussions around the different ways in which desires get articulated, normative and non-normative representations of sexualities and how filmmakers' intentions may be displaced by multiple readings by the audience. The Aim a.. To foster a more complex understanding of representation, sexuality, gender and rights; b.. To strengthen advocacy strategies that might include visual representations; c.. To expand resource pool of people who work on issues of sexuality, rights and representation in South and Southeast Asia. Who Should Participate? a.. Activists, visual media creators (film, digital or animation), academics, students, advocates, journalists and media practitioners who are interested in sexuality and representation. b.. Preference will be given to participants at an early stage of their career who currently live and work in South and Southeast Asia. c.. The event will be conducted in English. Participants must be fluent in English. Submit Your Film If you have created visual media, send it to us! Ten (10) short films will be selected to be part of the screenings. Your film must be: a.. Sent to us as a DVD with subtitles in English; b.. Less than twenty (20) minutes in duration. Resources from the event, including submitted films, will be compiled into a DVD. If you have reservations about this, please let us know. All intellectual property rights will remain with you. Scholarships A limited number of full and partial scholarships for travel and accommodation are available for participants from South and Southeast Asia. Please refer to application form attached. Registration Fee To meet a small proportion of the costs, selected participants are expected to contribute a registration fee as below: a.. Individuals from South and Southeast Asia: Rs.4500 or USD100 b.. Institutions from South and Southeast Asia: Rs.6500 or USD150 c.. All others: Rs.11,000 or USD250 FOR MORE INFORMATION AND APPLICATION FORMS: filmsofdesire at creaworld.org Venue Films of Desire will be held from March 7 to 10, 2007 at the Neemrana Fort Palace in Rajasthan, India, which is a two hour drive from New Delhi. The Fort is an aesthetic location that includes an open-air amphitheatre. However, please be aware as a converted 15th century fort, it has steep staircases, complicated floor plans, and dim lighting. www.neemranahotels.com. Organisers & Supporters CREA, founded in 2000, is a not for profit organisation that aims at empowering women to articulate, demand and access their human rights by enhancing women's leadership and building networks at the local, regional and international levels through training, advocacy and research. CREA's efforts are dedicated to creating networks for social change, strengthening civil society organisations, building leadership capacities of a new generation of activists and empowering individuals to fight for their rights. CREA's work focuses on issues of sexuality, sexual and reproductive rights, violence against women, human rights and social justice. www.creaworld.org. Scholarships are provided by the South and Southeast Asia Resource Centre on Sexuality, which is hosted by Talking About Reproductive and Sexual Health Issues (TARSHI). www.asiasrc.org. Association of Progressive Communications, Women's Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP) is supporting digital communications needs of the event. www.apcwomen.org Neemrana Group of Hotels is offering rooms at discounted rates for the event. www.neemranahotels.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061123/72e91f9b/attachment.html From iram at sarai.net Tue Nov 28 16:36:16 2006 From: iram at sarai.net (Iram Ghufran) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 16:36:16 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Remember Bhopal; Fight for Cuddalore Message-ID: <456C1828.50808@sarai.net> +++++++++++++++ Subject: Remember Bhopal; Fight for Cuddalore From: "Karen Coelho" Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2006 11:20:39 +0530 To: ++++++++++++++ Remember Bhopal; Fight for Cuddalore Youth on Cycles for Cuddalore � 28 November to 2 December *Appeal for Support: *Those interested in supporting the campaign are requested to make contributions by cheque in the name of Samarthan Trust. Please write (For CEM) on the reverse. Only Indian Rupee contributions can be accepted. The cheque may be sent to: Nityanand Jayaraman, 42A, 1st Floor, Besant Nagar, Chennai 600 090. Tel: +91 44 24465461 Cuddalore is another Bhopal in the making. Youth from Chennai, Cuddalore and Mettur will cycle from Cuddalore to Chennai to raise awareness about the environmental issues confronting residents of SIPCOT, Cuddalore, and highlight the threats of pollution-intensive industrialization facing Cuddalore. The cycle tour will travel through the coastal areas of Cuddalore, Pondicherry and parts of Kanchipuram and Chennai districts, and through the inland areas along GST Road. Kindly extend your support to the cycle tour by organizing solidarity activities en route. Distance to be covered - 280 km Route and Schedule 28 November: Flag Off from Cuddalore Town. 29 November: Periyapattu to Sonnanchavadi, Semmankuppam, Sangolikuppam, Eachangadu, Kudikadu, Devanampattinam, Thazhanguda, Pondicherry. Film screening/Night Halt: Pondicherry 30 November: Pondy to Marakkanam, Tindivanam. Film screening/Night halt: Tindivanam 1 December: Tindivanam to Madurantakam, Chengalpattu. Film screening/Night halt: Chengalpattu 2 December: Chengalpattu to Kovalam, Besant Nagar. Film screening: Besant Nagar Background: December 3 is the 22nd anniversary of the 1984 Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal. In the lead-up to the anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster, the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (Chennai) and its supporters wish to highlight Cuddalore as a Bhopal in our own backyard. The Tamilnadu Government has earmarked coastal Cuddalore for locating the dirtiest, most hazardous industries in Tamilnadu. Already, an 8 km stretch of the district � the SIPCOT industrial estate -- is seriously affected by pollution from more than 19 chemical industries. The State Human Rights Commission and the Indian People's Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights have observed that SIPCOT residents are already overburdened with pollution. They have recommended against setting up any more chemical industries in the area. Despite massive public protest and the recommendations of various expert agencies, the Tamilnadu Government is planning to intensify pollution in and around SIPCOT. In the pipeline, are the following proposals: 1.Chemplast PVC factory and marine terminal, and desalination plant, Semmankuppam and Chitrapettai 2.4000MW coal-fired thermal power plant, Naduthittu 3.A mega textile park, Periyapattu 4.A 6 million tones per annum petrochemical refinery by Nagarjuna, Thyagavelli 5.Effluents pumped into sea from Tiruppur textile dyeing units 6.Effluents pumped into sea from Ambur-Vaniyambadi leather tanneries 7.A shipbuilding yard For more information on Bhopal and Cuddalore, Email: nopvcever at gmail.com OR Visit: www.sipcotcuddalore.com cuddaloreonline.blogspot.com www.bhopal.net From sanjaybhangar at gmail.com Fri Nov 24 04:19:55 2006 From: sanjaybhangar at gmail.com (Sanjay Bhangar) Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 04:19:55 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] India Buy Nothing Blog ... Message-ID: November 24th and 25th are celebrated globally as "Buy Nothing Day" Someone's done this: http://indiabuynothing.blogspot.com Take care, buy nothing -Sanjay -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061124/6c4611e5/attachment.html From billy0602 at yahoo.com Fri Nov 24 11:49:05 2006 From: billy0602 at yahoo.com (kj) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 22:19:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] [DFA:5] REMINDER: Invitation: Festival of Theatre Films Message-ID: <20061124061905.55859.qmail@web55602.mail.re4.yahoo.com> Prithvi Theatre Festival in partnership with the Delhi Film Archive and Max Mueller Bhavan presents an array of Theatre films... at the: Max Mueller Bhavan, 3 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi On 25th & 26th November 2006 ENTRY FREE, NO PASSES NEEDED for the Delhi Film Archive Rahul Roy / Kavita Joshi http://www.delhifilmarchive.org/ subscribe to the Delhi Film Archive MAILING-LIST send an email to: delhifilmarchive-subscribe at googlegroups.com ************ SCHEDULE & SYNOPSIS************** Day 1: Saturday 25thNovember ‘06 11:00 am – 12:35 pm My Name Is Bertolt Brecht – Exile In USA Director: Norbert Bunge, Germany, 95 min., 1989 After his escape from Nazi Germany Brecht tried to become established in the Hollywood film business. However, the years of exile from 1941 to 1947, were marked by a sense of failure and deep resignation. Brecht, like many other film directors and authors of the group "Hollywood 10", in October 1947 was interrogated by an investigation commission because of any possible anti-American activities. Following this he left the United States returning to Germany via Switzerland. The film is based on Brecht's diary and talks with his friends of those times as well as close fellow workers. It also provides an insight into the situation in the United States during the thirties and forties. 12:35 pm - 1:15 pm Pather Chujaeri (The Play Is On...) Director: Pankaj Rishi Kumar, India, 44 mins How does art survive in a regime of fear? I first encountered this question in 1999, while taking photographs of Kashmir during that mindless war with Pakistan. That summer, I established contact with the National Bhand Theatre, Wathora, and the Bhagat Theatre, Akingam, two groups that were still performing in the traditional pather form of satire. I returned twice in 2001, now armed with a camera. I was encouraged by what I found: an illiterate community has sustained a centuries-old tradition in the face of debilitating social and cultural changes. Although perenially intimidated by the corruption, violence and intolerance that prevail in Kashmir, the bhands are still affirming a commitment to their theatre, to the critical potential of its form and the liberating joys of performance. Faith in Sufism has tempered their enthusiam for satire and they identify with the collective voices of Kashmir's freedom. The Play is on.... follows the two groups as they prepare for public performances, a rare phenomenon today. For the bhands, who daily witness the erosion of their way of life, each performance represents both a change as well as a repetition of the same brutal fact: that they are not free to share their revolutionary spirit. enquiries: kumartalkies (at) yahoo.com 1:15 pm – 2:00 pm : LUNCH BREAK 2:00 pm – 3:15 pm Some Roots Grow Upwards Directors: Kavita Joshi and Malati Rao; 52 mins, India, 2002 [The film will be preceded by a 5 minute clip on the situation in Manipur.] What is the relevance of theatre (or all art, for that matter) to the crisis of our times? Some Roots Grow Upwards explores the work of theatre director Ratan Thiyam against the backdrop of the violence torn state of Manipur. For over 25 years now, Ratan Thiyam has been creating a theatre that is as visually compelling as it is intellectually stimulating. His theatre is steeped in the traditional performing arts of his home state, Manipur. But while his aesthetic influences are traditional, his concerns are intensely modern. His plays reflect upon the socio-political crisis gripping Manipur, the youth unrest, war and violence; at the same time, they also dwell on the larger human condition. The film examines the art of Ratan Thiyam, and seeks to delineate the imagination & the influences that give form to this theatre. enquiries: kj.impulse (at) gmail.com followed by a discussion with Kavita Joshi 3:15 pm – 3:30 pm Bertolt Brecht Director: Ines Jacob; 14 min., Germany, 1998 If he were still alive today, writer and theatre director Bertolt Brecht would turn 100 years old on February 10th, 1998. His best know play internationally is "The Threepenny Opera". It´s a crazy saga about prostitutes, scroungers, beggars, and gangsters. His style, and his use of language continue to have a great influence on modern theatre. Famous director Hansgünther Heyme analyses the features, and charm of Brecht´s scripts. Using excerpts from rehearsals for "The Threepenny Opera", this report documents the role and timeliness of the theatrical work of Bertolt Brecht. 3:30 pm - 4:00 pm : TEA BREAK 4:00 pm – 5:45 pm The Plaint of the Empress (Die Klage der Kaiserin) Director: Pina Bausch; 103 min., Germany, 1989 "Die Klage der Kaiserin" was produced between October 1987 and April 1989. It is the first film by choreographer Pina Bausch, who was born in Solingen in 1940. The general framework is set by the changing seasons - autumn, winter and spring.The film's inner structure reflects Pina Bausch's method of working as developed with the Wuppertal Theatre of Dance during the 1973/74 season. The film consequently does not tell a story, but is made up of various scenes put together as a collage reflecting certain moods and invoking different associations. A variety of themes which Pina Bausch has frequently dealt with in her stage productions are also loosely interwoven in the film. Unlike the stage productions, however, the film scenes, some of which are thoroughly absurd, are set in different locations, such as the woods and fields around Wuppertal, the city centre, the suspension railway, a carpet shop, a greenhouse and the rehearsal room in a former cinema (Wuppertal's "Lichtburg"). The film features the dancers and an actress from the Wuppertal Theatre of Dance whose text improvisations, dancing and scenic variations leave their usual distinctive mark on the overall production. The futility of human activity and the search for love make up the film's central theme set against the strains of a Silician funeral march. "The despair is tangible. After all, the film is a lament", according to Pina Bausch. Day 2: Sunday 26th November ‘06 10:30 am – 1:00 pm Nee Engey (Where Are You) Director: RV Ramani; 150 mins, 2003, India This film, with the Shadow Puppeteers, living in South India, is a celebration and dedication to the art of moving images and to its original practitioners and community. An impressionistic ethnography, reflecting on shadow puppet theatre, history, mythology, cinema and our lives. enquiries: ramanirv (at) hotmail.com followed by a: Discussion wth R V Ramani 1:00 pm – 1:45 pm : LUNCH BREAK 1:45 pm - 3:20 pm Love Me You Director: Sylvie Banuls and Sabina Engel; 92 mins, 2003, Germany Love Me You is a film about some very special actors in an extraordinary theater and about the unusual love between two of them: Moritz and Nele. They both have Down's syndrome and both act in productions of the Ramba ­Zamba Theater in Berlin – frequently playing to full houses. The film sheds light on a world which most "normal" people tend to regard as substandard. Despite the international trend of global assimilation and homogenous lifestyles, the film reveals life without the filters of society and its rules: one which is not only different, but also uniquely special and full of color. Against the backdrop of the bio-ethics debate, the film shows people who are assumed to be far removed from the norm, yet nonetheless manage to live a rich and whole-hearted life – wonderfully free from the constraints of social conventions. 3:20 – 3:30: Break 3:30 pm – 5:15 pm Naatak Jaari Hai Director: Lalit Vachani; 84 mins, 2005, India Natak Jari Hai is a documentary about JANAM (The People's Theatre Front), the little theatre group that never stopped performing in the face of dramatic political transformation and personal tragedy. The film explores the motivations and ideals of the JANAM actors and their vision of resistance and change as they perform their 'People's Theatre' in diverse parts of India. It brings to life the world of socialist theatre through the words of JANAM's members, and through a reflective portrayal of the group's greatest tragedy – the assassination of its convenor Safdar Hashmi in 1989. enquiries: lvachani (at) vsnl.com followed by a: Discussion with Sudhanva Deshpande of JANAM (to be confirmed) 5:15 pm – 7:00 pm Die Spielwütigen Director: Andres Veiel; 108 min., Germany, 2003 Four drama students are observed during their training at the reputed Ernst Busch school of drama in Berlin. They are very different as regards their vita, their mentality and their social conduct, but they share the same passion for drama. They conclude their training successfully and we also hear of their first professional experiences. ********END******** ____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. http://new.mail.yahoo.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed to the "Delhi Film Archive" events MAILING LIST To UNSUBSCRIBE: send an email to delhifilmarchive-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com More OPTIONS are on the web: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/delhifilmarchive/ Contact the MODERATOR: delhifilmarchive [at] gmail.com See the LIST OF FILMS in the Archive: http://www.delhifilmarchive.org/archive.html www.delhifilmarchive.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061123/c44f7868/attachment.html From cziellah at yahoo.co.in Mon Nov 27 18:40:06 2006 From: cziellah at yahoo.co.in (yengkhom jilangamba) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 18:40:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi to back Sharmila at UN Message-ID: <9178f5310611270510k61638cf2i7871df5e6e8461de@mail.gmail.com> Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi to back Sharmila at UN *The Imphal Free Press* http://kanglaonline.com/index.php?template=headline&newsid=35055&typeid=1&Idoc_Session=afa6a52e69d17fd5965522d2bdab004d IMPHAL, Nov 26: Irom Sharmila Chanu, whose six-year struggle for the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act has assumed larger-than-life proportions, has gained another potent backer, with Iranian Nobel Peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi pledging she would seek support at international fora like the UN for Sharmila`s struggle. The 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner visited Sharmila this morning at New Delhi`s AIIMS hospital where the latter is continuing her fast against the Draconian law, and extended support to her campaign, according to reports from New Delhi. Emerging from the meeting, Ebadi told mediapersons that she extended full solidarity to Sharmila`s struggle. Waving a poster that appealed to the government to revoke the AFSPA, she said, "I will report to the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights on how this country is violating human rights. A woman who has been arrested by the police two months back is not being produced in court. I will also talk to the Indian government about this," Ebadi told reporters. During the hour-long meeting, Ebadi recorded her conversation with Sharmila and said this will be produced before the UN Human Rights Council as evidence. "It is a matter of shame for the people and country. Sharmila has (said she will not) consume anything until she is produced in court. She is very weak and every sentence came out with great difficulty from her mouth," she said. Terming her meeting with Sharmila as one of the most painful experiences of her life, Ebadi said Sharmila had removed the food pipe used to force feed her for the past three days. Sharmila began her fast to demand the withdrawal of the AFSPA six years ago after some civilians were gunned down by security forces near Manipur`s capital Imphal. Ebadi called on people to launch a protest against the government for giving sweeping powers to the security forces through the AFSPA. "If a law allows the army to do whatever they want, we cannot sit in silence. I appeal to the Indian government to immediately revoke the AFPSA and release Sharmila on humanitarian grounds," she said. "The Indian government should know that if one Sharmila dies, there will be thousands of protestors around the world fighting for her cause," she said. Another report from Delhi added that with Sharmila having removed the food-pipe used to force-feed her, her condition has deteriorated in the past two or three days. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061127/861f7944/attachment.html From divyaz at yahoo.com Mon Nov 27 12:44:08 2006 From: divyaz at yahoo.com (divya sachar) Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2006 23:14:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] folk art Message-ID: <586328.10788.qm@web34815.mail.mud.yahoo.com> hi, i am looking for artists (delhi based) who are into indigenous visual art forms. i am especially looking for someone who might be able to paint in the way of mughal miniatures. other art forms would also do, i suppose. this is for a documenatry film i am making. and i would like one or two slides of the way women are/ have been pictorially represnted in such art forms. also, it would be great if someone could guide me to people who could help. i have heard of dastkar, the NGO, but am not sure if they do this kind of stuff... thanks divya sachar divyaz at yahoo.com 9811330714 --------------------------------- Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061126/f9470fd2/attachment.html From aarti at sarai.net Wed Nov 29 23:31:51 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti Sethi) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 23:31:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Sensor-Census-Censor: International Colloquium at Sarai-CSDS on Information, Society, History, Politics Message-ID: <47F7C200-70FC-40FB-A0E5-1774FBF0ECDB@sarai.net> Dear Friends, This is to announce a three day International Colloquium on Information, Society, History and Politics, titled - 'Sensor-Census- Censor : Investigating Regimes of Information, Registering Changes of State' at Sarai-CSDS (29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054) on 30th November, 1 & 2 December. A detailed programme of the three days is given below. Participation by registration at the venue. Limited seats available. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------- PROGRAMME Day 1: 30 November 2006 9:30 - 9:45 Introduction Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Sarai-CSDS, Paul Keller,Waag Society Kerstin Lindberg, Delegation of the European Commission to India, Bhutan and Nepal [Introduces the EU-India ECCP project] 9:45 - 11:15 Panel 1: Information, Mobility and Exclusion: Borders, Passports and Identification Documents Moderator: Shuddhabrata Sengupta Sarai-CSDS Passport, Ticket and Rubber Stamp: The “problem of the pauper Hajji”, c. 1882-1926 Radhika Singha Associate Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi Passports, Literacy, Phantasm: The States of Writing Nation Vazira Fazila Yacoobali Zamindar Assistant Professor of History, Brown University, Providence 11:15 - 11:30 Tea 11:30 - 2:00Panel 2: Monitoring Surveillance Moderator: Tapio Mäkelä Media Artist/Researcher, Helsinki Exposure: Surveillance and the Political Economy of Interiority Kirstie Ball Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies, Open University Business School, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes Machetes, Electrodes and Databases Sam De Silva Independent Media Maker and Facilitator, Colombo/Melbourne Security Culture and the Economy of Fear Konrad Becker Cultural Organiser/Artist/Activist, t0 Institute of Culture Technologies, Vienna 2:00 - 3:00 Lunch 3:00 - 4:45 Panel 3: The Artist As Information Practitioner Moderator: Rana Dasgupta Writer, Delhi Archival Malpractice and Counter-Strategies Charles Merewether Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Australian National University, Canberra Information versus Dissemination: Artistic and Activist Strategies of Information Practice Ewen Chardronnet Artist/Critic/Information Activist, Tours Across Borders and beyond Definitions: Creating Concepts and Syndicating Content Florian Schneider Artist/Activist, kein.org, Munich 4:45 - 5:00 Tea 5:00 - 6:00 Film Screening Temporary Loss of Consciousness, 2005 Directed by Monica Bhasin Independent Filmmaker, Delhi Colour, 35 min. 6:00 - 6:15 Tea 6.30 - 7.45: Keynote: Histories of Identification Introduction: Shuddhabrata Sengupta Sarai-CSDS Why Did Fingerprinting Emerge in Colonial India? Governmentality, Surveillance and the Fear of the “Native” Chandak Sengoopta Professor, Department of History, Birkbeck College, University of London Day 2: 1 December 2006 10:00 - 11:15Keynote: The Record of Power Introduction: Prabhu Mahapatra Department of History, Delhi University Seeing Like a State: State Controls in Europe Since 1500 Leo Lucassen Professor, Leiden University/University of Amsterdam 11:15 - 11:30 Tea 11:30 - 1:30Panel 2: The Daily Life of Information Moderator: Jeebesh Bagchi Sarai-CSDS From the Chowkeydari Act to Biometric Identification: Passages from the History of the Information State in India Taha Mehmood Sarai-CSDS Garib Aadmi ko Kaun Dekhta Hai (Who Looks at the Poor Person)?TheKhullam-Khulla (Transparency) Principle and Beyond on the Streets of Delhi Aman Sethi Journalist, Frontline Magazine Documents as Date-Lines: The Making and Unmaking of Urban Settlements Shveta Sarda, Priya Sen and Jaanu Nagar (presented by Shveta Sarda) Cybermohalla Project, Ankur/Sarai-CSDS 1:30 - 2:30 Lunch 2:30 - 3:30 Panel 3: Neo-Liberal Governmentality and Risk: Information and Surveillance in India Uma Maheshwari Kalpagam Professor, G.B. Pant Social Studies Institute, Allahabad Respondent: Awadhendra Sharan Sarai-CSDS 3:30 - 3:45 Tea 3:45 - 5:45 Panel 4: Truth, Transmission and Technology Moderator: Ravi Sundaram Sarai-CSDS The Technology of Telegraphy and the Telegraphy of Technology: Magic and Speculation in the First Half of the Last Century Deep Kanta Lahiri Chaudhuri Historian, Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi ... And Nothing But the Truth: So Help Me Science Lawrence Liang Legal Theorist/Researcher, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore Unofficial Secrets Act: The Administration of Certainty and Ambiguity Shuddhabrata Sengupta Sarai-CSDS 5:45 - 6:00 Artist Presentation KhirkeeYaan, 2006 Shaina Anand Independent Filmmaker, Chitra Karkhana, Mumbai 6:00 - 6.30 Tea 6.30 - 7.45 Keynote: Histories of Information Introduction: Radhika Singha Illegibility: Reading and Insecurity in 19th-Century Law and Government Jane Caplan Professor of Modern European History, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford 8:00 pm onwards: Conference Dinner, CSDS Lawns Day 3: 2 December 2006 10:00 - 12:15 Panel 1: Censorship and Memory Moderator: Nivedita Menon Department of Political Science, Delhi University Conversing the Cut: A Chronicle of Censorship in Egyptian Cinema 5 Channel Video (2005) Babak Afrassiabi Artist/Media Practitioner, Teheran/Rotterdam The Silence of the Arabs Mansour Jacoubi Activist/ Information Practitioner, Beirut Listening in the Archive, Listening for the Archive: History, Memory and the Archive Sadan Jha Sarai-CSDS 12:15 - 12:30 Tea 12:30 - 2:00 Panel 2: Network Effects Moderator: Monica Narula Sarai-CSDS Imagined Networks: Rhetoric, Poetics and Politics in Electronic Communities and Online Networks Wendy Chun Associate Professor, Brown University Resisting System Subjectification: Paranoia as a Culturally Specific Affect of Network Use Tapio Mäkelä Media Artist/Independent Researcher, Helsinki 2:00 - 3:00 Lunch 3:00 - 4:30 Panel 3: The Accession Register: Information Abundance, Scarcity and Libraries Moderator: Geert Lovink Institute for Network Cultures, Amsterdam The Class Library of Babel: Digital Librarianship and Copyright Circumvention Sebastian Lütgert Writer/Programmer/Artist, Berlin Memoirs of Information Work Avinash Jha Librarian, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi “Because It’s There! Because I Can!” Desire and Information Economies of Abundance Felix Stalder Media Scholar, Zurich; Researcher/Organiser, Vienna and New York 4:30 - 4:45 Tea 4:45 - 6:00 Holes, Erasures, Silences: Archives and Absences Shahid Amin, Professor, Department of History, Delhi University In conversation with Mahmood Farooqui, Sarai-CSDS Introduction: Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Sarai-CSDS 6:00 - 6:15 Tea 6:15 - 7:00 Conference Conclusion: Open Session Moderator: Ravi Vasudevan, Sarai-CSDS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------- The colloquium is a part of 'Towards a Culture of Open Networks' a collaborative initiative of Sarai- CSDS, (Delhi), Waag Society (Amsterdam) and t0 (Vienna). 'Towards a Culture of Open Networks' is supported by the EU-India Economic and Cultural Programme. The contents of the colloquium can under no circumstances however be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union. _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From m.prabha_kar at yahoo.co.in Thu Nov 30 04:25:04 2006 From: m.prabha_kar at yahoo.co.in (mprabhakar prabhakar) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 22:55:04 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Appointments completely stalled in Tamilnadu. Message-ID: <972955.35701.qm@web7813.mail.in.yahoo.com> NET qualified teachers and candidates association have questioned the selection procedure for lecturers appointments in Government colleges for about 1000 odd vacancies concerning distribution of marks, undermining NET qualified candidates. Madras High court have granted an injunction order on interview by Teachers Recruitment Board as contemplated by Govenment notification, there by stalling the recruitment. For about 600 odd vacancies in Government aided colleges too, appontment is stalled as many colleges are byepassing the UGC Regulations 2000 stipulated selection committee and making appointments. The concerned universities which has to approve the qualification of appointed candidates are not approving the same for want of Selection committee resolutions and minutes, which is not at all constituted. Madras university has already rejected the application for approval of qualification of appointed candidates of a city college asking the concerned college to restart the selection as per UGC norms. In yet another city college which made appointment infringing Selection committee norms, one highly qualified, experienced candidate working in the same evening college for more than a decade on being not selected, moved High Court and got injunction order restraining the University and Regonal Joint Director of Collegiate Education from approving the appointment. Already Private college management association have filed a writ appeal challenging UGC stipulated selection committee in making teacher appointments in their colleges.They seek for quashing of the same and favouring for appointments by their own management committee.The writ petition was earlier dismissed by single judge in Madras HC. All this have stalled appointments for around 1600 vacancies in the entire state excepting those very few aided colleges which are making appointments as per properly constituted UGC norms selection committee. The details on above subject will continue in next writing only after this being appeared in the readers list. --------------------------------- Find out what India is talking about on - Yahoo! Answers India Send FREE SMS to your friend's mobile from Yahoo! Messenger Version 8. Get it NOW -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061129/50c736ae/attachment.html From aarti at sarai.net Thu Nov 30 09:13:45 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti Sethi) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 09:13:45 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Call for Applications: Locative Media Workshop Message-ID: <142D0345-D16C-498D-949F-A1AEAED6A361@sarai.net> Call for Applications: Locative Media Workshop 4 and 5 December 2006 Facilitated by Ronald Lenz Sarai-CSDS Introduction Locative Media are digital media of communication bound to real physical locations, triggering real social interactions. Locative Media let's us interact differently with our surroundings. Overlaying everything is a whole new invisible layer of annotation. Textual, visual and audible information is available as you get close, as context dictates, or when you ask. Although Locative Media projects range over a broad spectrum many have a focus on social, critical, historical or personal aspects in common. Waag Society Waag Society started in the field of Locative Media in 2002 with the mapping project Amsterdam Realtime (www.waag.org/amsterdamrealtime) and followed up with the educational mobile game Frequentie1550 (www.waag.org/frequentie) and N8Spel (www.n8spel.nl). Currently we are working on different Locative Media projects within education (Mobile Learning Game Kit), tourism (Digital Dowsing Rod) and the public domain (ParQ). Focus Locative Media is applied in many different fields such as art, storytelling, gaming, mososo's, spatial annotion and geodrawing. Within the workshop we will discuss projects within these fields focussing on the use of psychogeography, social structures, gameplay and technology. The goal of the workshop is not only to discuss projects but also to brainstorm on new Locative Media concepts which have a good chance of being realised in Delhi. All participants will also use GPS devices to create media traces in the city, and gain a practical hands-on experience in the use and deployment of locative technologies. TimeLine The workshop will be held on december 4th and 5th: Day 1 * presentation of and discussion about locative media projects worldwide and at Waag Society * hands-on part where all go out and create media traces in the city Day 2 * discuss the hands-on part and brainstorm on Locative Media concepts for Delhi. Preparation All participants are asked to think about locations in Delhi, that are linked to personal or urban stories and/or have special social, historical, political or public value. To register, please write to dak at sarai.net Do note that registration is one a first cum first serve basis and there are extremely limited seats :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061130/e1c8d3ef/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From kcoelho at email.arizona.edu Thu Nov 30 11:18:10 2006 From: kcoelho at email.arizona.edu (Karen Coelho) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:18:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fw: Remember Bhopal; Fight for Cuddalore Message-ID: <016901c71443$22786b70$0d01a8c0@sysljpwjsdzwkj> Remember Bhopal; Fight for Cuddalore Youth on Cycles for Cuddalore – 28 November to 2 December Appeal for Support: Those interested in supporting the campaign are requested to make contributions by cheque in the name of Samarthan Trust. Please write (For CEM) on the reverse. Only Indian Rupee contributions can be accepted. The cheque may be sent to: Nityanand Jayaraman, 42A, 1st Floor, Besant Nagar, Chennai 600 090. Tel: +91 44 24465461 Cuddalore is another Bhopal in the making. Youth from Chennai, Cuddalore and Mettur will cycle from Cuddalore to Chennai to raise awareness about the environmental issues confronting residents of SIPCOT, Cuddalore, and highlight the threats of pollution-intensive industrialization facing Cuddalore. The cycle tour will travel through the coastal areas of Cuddalore, Pondicherry and parts of Kanchipuram and Chennai districts, and through the inland areas along GST Road. Kindly extend your support to the cycle tour by organizing solidarity activities en route. Distance to be covered - 280 km Route and Schedule 28 November: Flag Off from Cuddalore Town. 29 November: Periyapattu to Sonnanchavadi, Semmankuppam, Sangolikuppam, Eachangadu, Kudikadu, Devanampattinam, Thazhanguda, Pondicherry. Film screening/Night Halt: Pondicherry 30 November: Pondy to Marakkanam, Tindivanam. Film screening/Night halt: Tindivanam 1 December: Tindivanam to Madurantakam, Chengalpattu. Film screening/Night halt: Chengalpattu 2 December: Chengalpattu to Kovalam, Besant Nagar. Film screening: Besant Nagar Background: December 3 is the 22nd anniversary of the 1984 Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal. In the lead-up to the anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster, the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (Chennai) and its supporters wish to highlight Cuddalore as a Bhopal in our own backyard. The Tamilnadu Government has earmarked coastal Cuddalore for locating the dirtiest, most hazardous industries in Tamilnadu. Already, an 8 km stretch of the district – the SIPCOT industrial estate -- is seriously affected by pollution from more than 19 chemical industries. The State Human Rights Commission and the Indian People's Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights have observed that SIPCOT residents are already overburdened with pollution. They have recommended against setting up any more chemical industries in the area. Despite massive public protest and the recommendations of various expert agencies, the Tamilnadu Government is planning to intensify pollution in and around SIPCOT. In the pipeline, are the following proposals: 1.Chemplast PVC factory and marine terminal, and desalination plant, Semmankuppam and Chitrapettai 2.4000MW coal-fired thermal power plant, Naduthittu 3.A mega textile park, Periyapattu 4.A 6 million tones per annum petrochemical refinery by Nagarjuna, Thyagavelli 5.Effluents pumped into sea from Tiruppur textile dyeing units 6.Effluents pumped into sea from Ambur-Vaniyambadi leather tanneries 7.A shipbuilding yard For more information on Bhopal and Cuddalore, Email: nopvcever at gmail.com OR Visit: www.sipcotcuddalore.com cuddaloreonline.blogspot.com www.bhopal.net From kcoelho at email.arizona.edu Thu Nov 30 11:20:41 2006 From: kcoelho at email.arizona.edu (Karen Coelho) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:20:41 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fw:Cycle tour update Message-ID: <017a01c71443$79960e30$0d01a8c0@sysljpwjsdzwkj> ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Cc: Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2006 9:49 AM Subject: {Youth for Social Ch Cycle tour update Since the launch and their cycle tour in Cuddalore the participants have witnessed the beauty and the exploitation of this beautiful coastal land. Simultaneously there have been massive awareness activities launched in Chennai to inform the citizens about the “1000 Bhopals”, as we call it, in our own backyards. We bring to you the latest updates from the cycle tour and Chennai. Day 2 – First milestone, Pondycherry – As reported by Nityanand Jayaraman The day stated as usual, two cycles broke down and had to be loaded onto the car and sent to Semankuppam for repairs. The trip to Semankuppam was excellent we were in the right time for pamphleteering, it was morning time and people were either at bus stops leaving for work or having their morning tea. http://www.sipcotcuddalore.com/updates_291106c.html Renowned Tamil poetess Kanimozhi inaugurates 1000 Bhopals photo exhibition The inauguration of the 1000 Bhopals exhibition at Lalit Kala Akademy was a great success. We had Ms. K. Kanimozhi, renowned poetess and daughter of Tamilnadu Chief Minister Mr. K. Karunanidhi inaugurate the exhibition. http://www.sipcotcuddalore.com/updates_291106b.html Cyclist discover the beauty of Puduchatram, the proposed location for the SIMA textile park Update Day2: 29 November 2006, morning from Puduchatram >From Nity: We set off for our next destination to Cuddalore New Town at 7:30 am half hour past the scheduled time. Some of us were up at 4 am to fulfil the morning duties while others not so keen on attending the call woke up at 6. http://www.sipcotcuddalore.com/updates_291106.html Cycle tour flagged off successfully by local leader Kolathur Mani Report From Nity: DAY 1, 11:00 pm We set off on schedule at 11.00 am and the first cycle crisis occurred within 20 meters of the start. We got cycle fixed at Old Town, Cuddalore and carried on. Earlier the flag off was good with a decent media response. http://www.sipcotcuddalore.com/updates_281106.html For more details and photographs visit www.sipcotcuddalore.com Audio clips direct from the cycle tour will be soon uploaded on the website. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the "Youth for Social Change" mailing list. To post to this group, send email to youthforsocialchange at googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to youthforsocialchange-unsubscribe at googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/youthforsocialchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- From mohaiemen at yahoo.com Thu Nov 30 18:02:51 2006 From: mohaiemen at yahoo.com (NAEEM MOHAIEMEN) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 04:32:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Zagreb: Things With Data In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <627509.97654.qm@web50314.mail.yahoo.com> The panel discussion is tonight, but the show will be up until January 6th. - Naeem ########## http://www.whw.hr/ http://www.kulturnikapital.org/OrganisationsEn/WhatHowAndForWhom How to do things with data a dataesthetics discussion forum Nov 30 2006. 7 pm- 10 pm Cinema Mosor, Zvonimirova 63, Zagreb Participants: Léonore Bonaccini i Xavier Fourt/ Bureau d’études, Aaron Gach/ Center for Tactical Magic, Miran Mohar i Borut Vogelnik / IRWIN, Trevor Paglen, Naeem Mohaiemen ########## Dataesthetics A group show @ Gallery Nova Teslina 7, Zagreb, Croatia Dec 12 2006-Jan 6 2007 Opening Friday, 1.12.2006, 8 PM The Atlas Group, Jean - Pierre Aubé, Martha Rosler, Bureau d’études, Mark Lombardi, Center for Tactical Magic, IRWIN, Trevor Paglen, Marko Peljhan/I-TASC, Bálint Szombathy, Mladen Stilinovi, Visible Collective (Mohaiemen, Roy, Huq, Lin, Nimoy, et al) Curated by: Stephen Wright ######## Data has become the most pervasive – and intangibly invasive – feature of contemporary life; of life become data. Life systems have been the object of sustained data gathering since the time of the Enlightenment, and cartography, flow charts, graphs and statistica; databases have played a preponderant role in the shift from a society based on discipline to contemporary regimes of biopolitical control, where information is inseparable from the exercise of power. Though it is still commonly held that “the map is not the territory” – that is, that life can neither be confused with nor certainly reduced to its informational content – the vast expansion in data gathering facilitated by digital nano-technologies and integrated networks suggests that a qualitative transformation in governance may become possible through the sheer quantity of available data. Is the dream of total management on the verge of becoming a reality, whereby action on the map is at the same time action on the territory? “You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide” has become the chorus of real-information ideologues; yet to be an individual is to have something to hide Artists have only comparatively recently come to take a sustained interest in the phenomenon of information display, classification, compiling – in short, in what might be referred to as dataesthetics. This exhibition brings together twelve artists and artist collectives who use data as their artistic material. Working with cognitive mapping, discursive form, or envisaging knowledge production and research as a full-fledged artistic practice (rather than a prelude to producing artwork), these artists seek to foreground the heuristic and socially critical potential of data use. Plainly, such practices have precedents in the conceptual art producers of an earlier generation, sharing with them a broad critique of administered lives, bureaucratised minds and instrumental rationality. Of course, the aesthetics of data is not merely about ordering facts and figures; it is equally about disorganising and subverting the rational arrangement of information and our reliance on databases. Dataesthetics seeks to foreground some of the most cutting-edge practices in the field of research-based art while at the same time anchoring them in an art-historical framework. From this perspective, it can be argued that the data-based practices of many contemporary artists give conceptual art the opportunity to potentially reinvent itself, giving it an unforeseen use value, by injecting artistic competence into collaborative initiatives beyond the confines of the artworld. Dataesthetics is a three-phrase project, comprising an exhibition, a discussion forum with the artists and the publication of a bilingual reader, featuring critical writings by theorists and artists working in the field of dataesthetics. Stephen Wright *** 30.11.2006. 19 h cinema Mosor, Zvonimirova 63, Zagreb How to do things with data a dataesthetics discussion forum participants: Léonore Bonaccini i Xavier Fourt/ Bureau d’études, Aaron Gach/ Center for Tactical Magic, Miran Mohar i Borut Vogelnik / IRWIN, Trevor Paglen, Naeem Mohaiemen /Visible Collective moderated by : Stephen Wright Art production long sought to protect the relatively autonomous sphere it had eked out for itself from any incursion by the potentially deadening logic of knowledge production and data gathering and display. In the face of the sheer glut and facile allure of purpose-driven information and rationality, art’s self-assigned role was to affirm its radical uselessness. Yet as knowledge has become inseparable from power, many practitioners have come to see art and art-related activity as an extradisciplinary and even potentially subversive field of inquiry. Though such practices are often described as content-driven, it is perhaps more accurate to consider them in terms of their discursive form. Critical cartography, tactical magic and database use have become integral components of artistic competence, which refuses to leave social critique to the social sciences. Bringing together Aaron Gach of the Center for Tactical Magic, Naeem Mohaiemen of the Visible Collective, Trevor Paglen, Léonore Bonaccini and Xavier Fourt of Bureau d’études and Stephen Wright, the discussion forum will focus on the performative dimension of data-based research and its display – that is, on how to do things, socially critical things, with dataesthetics. discussion forum participants Bureau d’etudes Bureau d’études is a Paris-based media collective founded in 1998, comprised of the artist-duo Léonore Bonaccini and Xavier Fourt. Using complex graphic tables conceived for the Internet, they map various hidden global structures of finance and world governance, formalising patterns and connections through scientific and informational exactitude. Their work can be viewed online at bureaudetudes.free.fr or http://utangente.free.fr/ Aaron Gach is Visiting Faculty in the Design+Technology department at San Francisco Art Institute. He was inspired by studies with a private investigator, a magician, and a ninja to form the Center for Tactical Magic—an organization dedicated to the amalgamation of art, technology, magic, and activism. Working across disciplines—art, design, architecture, and community service—Gach’s collaborations have involved members of the Black Panthers, Earth First!, and the American Red Cross to name a few. www.tacticalmagic.org IRWIN IRWIN was founded in 1983 as the visual-arts component of the Slovenian art collective NSK, based in Ljubljana. Together with many collaborators they started a project East Art Map intended to serve as an orientation tool in the still-undefined field of the art of the East. The aim of the East Art Map is to show the art of the entire space of Eastern Europe, to take artists out of their national frameworks and present them in a unified scheme. www.eastartmap.org Naeem Mohaiemen is a filmmaker and media artist working in New York and Dhaka. His projects include Visible Collective (disappearedinamerica.org), "The Young Man Was No Longer A Terrorist" (Dictionary of War, Mufathalle), and "Muslims or Heretics: My Camera Can Lie?" (UK House of Lords). Essays include "Islamic Roots of Hip-Hop" (Sound Unbound, MIT Press, DJ Spooky ed.), "Terrorists or Guerillas in the Mist" (Sarai 06, part of Documenta 12 journal project) and "Why Mahmud Can't Be a Pilot") (Nobody Passes, Matt Bernstein ed.). disappearedinamerica.org Trevor Paglen is an artist, writer, and experimental geographer working out of the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. His work involves deliberately blurring the lines between social science, contemporary art, and a host of even more obscure disciplines in order to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to interpret the world around us. His most recent projects take up secret military bases, the California prison system, and the CIA’s practice of “extraordinary rendition.” www.paglen.com curator and moderator Stephen Wright is an art writer and programme director at the Collège international de philosophie (Paris). "Dataesthetics" follows “Rumour as Media” (Aksanat, Istanbul), following “In Absentia” (Passerelle, Brest) and “The Future of the Reciprocal Readymade” (Apexart, NYC), as part of a series of exhibitions examining art practices with low coefficients of artistic visibility, which raise the prospect of art without artworks, authorship or spectatorship. Dataesthetics is part of the project Zagreb – Cultural Kapital of Europe 3000 http://www.kulturnikapital.org ____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. http://new.mail.yahoo.com From yasir.media at gmail.com Thu Nov 30 22:07:53 2006 From: yasir.media at gmail.com (yasir ~) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 21:37:53 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] 6th KaraFilm Festival In-Reply-To: <5af37bb0611290145t2e96b4e9m3994aae2d01d9d75@mail.gmail.com> References: <5af37bb0611290145t2e96b4e9m3994aae2d01d9d75@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <5af37bb0611300837q15463659j67af83b575be7ffb@mail.gmail.com> 6th KaraFilm Festival Organized under the aegis of the KaraFilm Society, a grouping of committed young filmmakers, the KaraFilm Festival is a celebration of the moving image and of storytelling. Our goal is to promote an appreciation of the art and craft of filmmaking among a wide population as well as to encourage creativity and high standards among filmmakers. We hope that this will have a salutary effect on the development of the motion picture industry in Pakistan and elsewhere. Many years ago, international film festivals in Karachi attracted large audiences and some of the best filmmakers in the world. Satyajit Ray, for example, was one of a host of world renowned directors screening films in Karachi in the 1960s. With this festival we hope to create, once again, a space for alternative and independent cinema in Pakistan, where both experienced and new filmmakers can exhibit their creative endeavours and where work is recognized on the basis of merit. In addition, the festival also provides an excellent opportunity for filmmakers to meet and learn from each other. http://www.karafilmfest.com/currentkara_2006.htm http://www.karafilmfest.com/KaraFilm2006/schedules_01.htm From yasir.media at gmail.com Thu Nov 30 22:07:53 2006 From: yasir.media at gmail.com (yasir ~) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 21:37:53 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] 6th KaraFilm Festival In-Reply-To: <5af37bb0611290145t2e96b4e9m3994aae2d01d9d75@mail.gmail.com> References: <5af37bb0611290145t2e96b4e9m3994aae2d01d9d75@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <5af37bb0611300837q15463659j67af83b575be7ffb@mail.gmail.com> 6th KaraFilm Festival Organized under the aegis of the KaraFilm Society, a grouping of committed young filmmakers, the KaraFilm Festival is a celebration of the moving image and of storytelling. Our goal is to promote an appreciation of the art and craft of filmmaking among a wide population as well as to encourage creativity and high standards among filmmakers. We hope that this will have a salutary effect on the development of the motion picture industry in Pakistan and elsewhere. Many years ago, international film festivals in Karachi attracted large audiences and some of the best filmmakers in the world. Satyajit Ray, for example, was one of a host of world renowned directors screening films in Karachi in the 1960s. With this festival we hope to create, once again, a space for alternative and independent cinema in Pakistan, where both experienced and new filmmakers can exhibit their creative endeavours and where work is recognized on the basis of merit. In addition, the festival also provides an excellent opportunity for filmmakers to meet and learn from each other. http://www.karafilmfest.com/currentkara_2006.htm http://www.karafilmfest.com/KaraFilm2006/schedules_01.htm _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From williamavis at hotmail.com Thu Nov 30 16:06:06 2006 From: williamavis at hotmail.com (William Avis) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 10:36:06 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] phd research on assam Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20061130/04845d1d/attachment.html