From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Tue Nov 1 04:10:56 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:40:56 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] corporate privacy expressions Message-ID: That is apart from the usual back-doors and 'front doors' in closed source proprietary softwares (placed for protecting YOUR interests by the company or the US Govt ...) ____________________________________________________ From: https://www.privacyinternational.org/blog/real-meaning-behind-all-those-corporate-privacy-expressions _______________________________ The real meaning behind all those corporate privacy expressions October 30, 2011 by simon We’ve all read them a hundred times before. Broad statements of privacy good will by large organizations. But what do they mean? You can bet that the real intent is coded. Have a quick read of this one and see if you can fathom what the organization is on about: "Here at company XXX your privacy is our paramount concern. We believe we’ve got the customer experience just right and we’ve consulted widely on our new technology. That’s why we’ve reached out to you to help us build strong user controls in an environment of Privacy by Design. However we know how important it is to achieve the right privacy balance and so we actively support Data Protection reform and modernization. We believe in informed consent, that all organizations should be fully compliant and that that processing should be Fair and Lawful." Yes indeed. A masterful exercise in saying nothing. Privacy International believes we all need some clarity, so here’s our handy alternative glossary of all those privacy and data protection expressions you’ve stomached for so long: Modernize = to remove protections; to substantially weaken. Example: “the Data Protection principles must be modernized or they may become relevant to the Internet”. Policy Review = formal justification for modernization. Harmonization = pushing for the Lowest Common Denominator of protection. Data Protection Reform = Minimization of protections “Fair and Lawful processing” = “It’s covered in the legislation, so sod off!” “At XXX company, we care about privacy” = “we have a privacy policy” “At XXX company your privacy is our paramount concern” = “we have an updated privacy policy” “We’re enhancing the customer experience” = “We need to exploit more customer behavioral data.” “We’ve got the customer experience just right” = “We’ve exploited as much customer behavioral data as we possibly can”. Implied Consent = it should have been in our privacy policy Informed Consent = it was in our privacy policy Explicit Consent = it was in our privacy policy along with a check box “Reach out”; an expression used by companies when they need to impress lawmakers. Example: “We’d better reach out to the consumer groups before we see Commissioner Smith on Tuesday”. We consulted = we delayed publication of the final plan while we spoke to our trade association We widely consulted = we published a discussion paper somewhere on our trade association’s site. We extensively consulted = we actually read some of the responses. Compliance = testing the limits of legality Privacy Enhancing Technology = 1990s cryptography Privacy by Design = 1990s cryptography backed up by a Statement of Values Strong user controls = a dashboard Advanced user controls = a dashboard that changes every other week “Privacy is a Western concept” = “Privacy is a Western concept as long as you ignore all cultural and religious history to the contrary.” Achieving the right privacy balance = “We need to modernize”. The Cloud = outsourcing. Big Data = lots of people making dubiously legal profits but you can’t see them because of the cloud cover. Further reader suggestions most welcome. In the meantime, here’s the “real” version of the above company statement: "Here at company XXX we have an updated privacy policy. We’ve exploited as much customer behavioral data as we possibly can and we’ve published a discussion paper somewhere on our trade association’s site that tells you about our new technology. Our lawyers advise us to contact you before our lobbying gets underway to help us build a dashboard in an environment of 1990s cryptography backed up by a Statement of Values. However we know how economically important it is to weaken privacy regulation and so we actively support Data Protection minimization. We believe in putting things in a privacy policy, that all organizations should test the limits of regulation but avoid prosecution and that in the end if we can push hard enough for an exemption then you can all sod off!" _________________________________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From chandni_parekh at yahoo.com Tue Nov 1 11:24:59 2011 From: chandni_parekh at yahoo.com (Chandni Parekh) Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:54:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Film Screenings in November Message-ID: <1320126899.5390.YahooMailNeo@web161421.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Hi, Here's my compilation of non-mainstream film screenings in November: Korean Film Festival, Nov 1-3, Bombay http://www.ncpamumbai.com/event/korean-film-festival-day-1   'For A Few Marbles More' by Jelmar Hufen (Dutch) and 'Basket Bronx' by Martin Rosete, Nov 2, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films/for-a-few-marbles-more.php Short Films presented by Shamiana, Nov 3, Bombay http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=231641966896759 'From the Other Side' by Stephane Mercurio (French), Nov 3, Delhi http://delhi.afindia.org/node/4500 'Journey Called Love' by Michele Placido (Italian), Nov 4, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films/journey-called-love.php 'El Greco' by Yannis Smaragdis (Spanish/Greek), Nov 5, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films/el-greco.php 'Viva Cuba' by Juan Carlos Cremata and Iraida Cabrera (Spanish) and 'The Peace Tree' by Mitra Sen, Nov 5, Bombay http://www.ncpamumbai.com/event/kshitij-new-perspectives-viva-cuba-the-peace-tree 'New Muslim Cool' by Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, Nov 5 and 6 on NDTV 24x7 http://on.fb.me/vdmQ65 'El Benny' by Jorge Luis Sanchez, Nov 6, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films/el-benny.php 'Balgandharv' by Nitin Chandrakant Desai (Marathi), Nov 7, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films/balgandharv.php 'La Danse: The Paris Ballet Opera' by Frederick Wiseman (French), Nov 7, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/4543 'Love Songs' by Christophe Honore (French), Nov 8, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/4551 'Zsolnay - The Lover Of The Soil' by Zsolt Pozsgai (Hungarian), Nov 8, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films/the-lover-of-the-soil.php 'Cuddles in the Kitchen' by Sébastien Laudenbach (French), Nov 9, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/4561 'Two Days in Paris' by Julie Delphy (French), Nov 9, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/4563 'Allonsanfan' by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (Italian), Nov 9 and 12, Delhi http://www.iicnewdelhi.esteri.it/IIC_NewDelhi/Menu/Gli_Eventi/Calendario 5th CHINH India Kids Film Festival, Nov 9-14, Delhi http://bit.ly/vwFAIO 'Diet for a New America' by Ed Schuman, Nov 10, Bombay http://www.facebook.com/theleafinitiative/posts/211789485558814 'Kids for Kids' – Films from CHINH Early Education Web Channel, Nov 10, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films.php Short Films presented by Shamiana, Nov 11, Delhi http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=279032965453007 'Rumi: The Dance of Love' by Kürşat Kızbaz, Nov 11, Bombay http://bit.ly/uBk1XF Short Films presented by Shamiana, Nov 12, Ahmedabad http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=177430119008486 'Neither Milk Nor Yogurt' by Arti Jain, Nov 12 and 13 on NDTV 24x7 http://on.fb.me/vdmQ65 2nd Siliguri International, Short and Documentary Film Festival, Nov 12 and 13 http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/docuwallahs2/message/10185 17th International Children's Film Festival of India, Nov 14-20, Hyderabad http://www.indiaprwire.com/pressrelease/entertainment/2011100799957.htm Vikalp at Alliance Screening of Four Short Films, Nov 15, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/4557 'Nature’s Greatest Defender' by Thomas Veltre, Nov 15, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films.php 'Stavisky' by Alain Resnais (French), Nov 16, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/4555 'The Beaches of Agnes' by Agnes Varda (French), Nov 17, Delhi http://delhi.afindia.org/node/4504 'Online and Available' by Samreen Farooqui and Shabani Hassanwalia, Nov 18, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films.php Films on Wildlife and Environment, Nov 19, Delhi http://bit.ly/vRZEdX 'Breast Cancer Diaries' by Linda Pattillo, Nov 19 and 20 on NDTV 24x7 http://on.fb.me/vdmQ65 Short Films presented by Shamiana, Nov 20, Baroda http://www.facebook.com/groups/241585092532586 'The Sailboats of the Luxembourg' by Nicolas Engel (French), Nov 21, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/4565 'Change of Address' by Emmanuel Mouret (French), Nov 21, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/4567 'It's Sunday!' by Samir Guesmi (French), Nov 22, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/4569 'Andalucia' by Alain Gomis (French), Nov 22, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/4571 'A Special Lesson' by Raphaël Chevènement (French), Nov 23, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/4573 'Games of Love and Chance' by Abdellatif Kechiche (French), Nov 23, Bombay http://bombay.afindia.org/node/4575 'Little Box Of Sweets' by Meneka Das, Nov 23, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films/little-box-of-sweets.php 42nd International Film Festival of India, Nov 23-Dec 3, Goa http://bit.ly/ukfrGa 'Victory Terminus' by Florent de la Tullaye and Renaud Barret (French), Nov 24, Delhi http://delhi.afindia.org/node/4510 Short Films presented by Shamiana, Nov 24, Pune http://www.facebook.com/groups/256621014358788 India International Students Film Festival, Nov 24 and 25, Delhi http://yhoo.it/sx4KeX 'Dreaming Taj Mahal' by Nirmal Chander, Nov 26 and 27 on NDTV 24x7 http://on.fb.me/vdmQ65 'The Dance Of Shiva' by Benoy Behl, Nov 27, Delhi http://www.habitatfilmclub.com/films.php Vikalp at Prithvi Screening of 'This Prison Where I Live' by Rex Bloomstein, Monday, Nov 28, 7 pm, Prithvi House, Juhu, Bombay http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=142544205845489 - Chandni PS: To join the Vikalp at Prithvi group on Facebook, visit http://tinyurl.com/vikalp-prithvi From asit1917 at gmail.com Tue Nov 1 14:59:05 2011 From: asit1917 at gmail.com (asit das) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2011 01:29:05 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] Citizen Statement on Koodankulam: For your endorsement In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ** Hi ! Kindly see and endorse the below statement on Koodankulam. In case you have any suggestions/corrections to offer, please write back. With best regards, P K Sundaram DiaNuke.org ** * * * * *Citizen Statement on Koodankulam* * * We are shocked and disturbed by the recent spate of misinformation campaign launched by the nuclear establishment regarding the Koodankulam nuclear power plant. Even as the Expert Committee, appointed by the Prime Minister recently as a result of consistent struggle by the local people, springs into action and takes into account the views of activists and the Tamil Nadu government, the AEC and the NPCIL have gone on a media offensive claiming the protests are triggered by foreign elements. While this is an affront to the protesting people’s integrity and knowledge and agency, it is also a clear attempt to undermine the ongoing consultation process. This is entirely unacceptable. The AEC Chairman has also tried to undermine the very rationale of the consultation process by claiming that the Koodankulam reactor cannot be shut down. Independent experts have questioned the validity of such pronouncement and have underlined that a ‘hot run’ of the power plant does not involve any irreversible radioactive process. The PMO’s press release last month also assured the activists that no radioactive process has been started in Koodankulam. There have been precedence, like Shoreham in the US, where nuclear reactors have been shut down due to public disapproval. We urge the government to go ahead with a transparent and democratic review of the Koodankulam nuclear power project. We also urge the nuclear establishment to desist from scuttling such process by going to media with misleading claims. From rohitrellan at aol.in Tue Nov 1 17:07:26 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2011 07:37:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Reader-list] ALL India Children's Educational Audio Video Festival (AICEAVF) Message-ID: <8CE66A1C376B757-1FA8-1F2D5@webmail-m042.sysops.aol.com> 17th ALL India Children's Educational Audio Video Festival (AICEAVF-2012) (February 1-3, 2012) Venue: Thiruavanthapuram Each year, CIET organizes annual All India Children’s Educational Audio Video Festival (AICEAVF). It aims to provide opportunity to producers of educational audio-video programmes to showcase their creative work and to share their experiences of making educational programmes with each other. Began in 1988 to showcase audio and video programmes produced by the Central Institute of Educational Technology and State Institutes of Educational Technology in India, it has blossomed as India’s major educational programme festival inviting entries from all those creative producers who contribute significantly to the process of broadening the horizons of children and teachers through their audio and video programmes. There have been sixteen festivals till now. The 17th edition of the festival will be held in Thiruavanthapuram during Feb.1- 3, 2012. Festival Details (Rules & Regulations) http://ciet.nic.in/docs/Criteria%20for%20selection%20Festival_2012.pdf Download Entry Form http://ciet.nic.in/docs/17th%20festival%20details-12.doc From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Tue Nov 1 22:31:53 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2011 22:31:53 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] =?windows-1252?q?Statement_on_the_killing_of_Niyama?= =?windows-1252?q?t_Ansari_and_=93apology=94_by_the_CPI_=28Maoist?= =?windows-1252?q?=29?= Message-ID: http://www.pragoti.in/node/4567 Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From c.anupam at gmail.com Wed Nov 2 10:37:28 2011 From: c.anupam at gmail.com (anupam chakravartty) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2011 10:37:28 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] =?windows-1252?q?Statement_on_the_killing_of_Niyama?= =?windows-1252?q?t_Ansari_and_=93apology=94_by_the_CPI_=28Maoist?= =?windows-1252?q?=29?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: isn't strange this apology comes a day after Madhu Koda announced Integrated Action Plan in Jharkhand seeking appointment of gram sahayaks across the state for MNREGA? On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 10:31 PM, A. Mani wrote: > http://www.pragoti.in/node/4567 > > > > Best > > A. Mani > > > > -- > A. Mani > CU, ASL, CLC, AMS, CMS > http://www.logicamani.co.cc > _________________________________________ > 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 asit1917 at gmail.com Wed Nov 2 15:09:14 2011 From: asit1917 at gmail.com (asit das) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2011 01:39:14 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] [OrissaConcerns] URGENT APPEAL FROM POSCO PRATIRODH SANGRAM SAMITI AS ON 1st NOVEMBER 2011. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: SOS *Please *SMS Immediately and ask others also to do the same - lets clog their sms with our protests. NO ATTACK ON INNOCENT VILLAGERS FOR SAKE OF POSCO - and sign your names and cities Mr. Narayan Chandra Jena, District Collectior, Jagatsinghpur, Contact number +919437038401 Fax No : +916724220299 Mr. Debadutta Singh, Superintendent of Police, Mobile No- +919437094678, dmjsp at ori.nic.in Arati ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Anivar Aravind Date: Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 3:41 PM Subject: [OrissaConcerns] URGENT APPEAL FROM POSCO PRATIRODH SANGRAM SAMITI AS ON 1st NOVEMBER 2011. To: connect From: alter nate URGENT APPEAL FROM POSCO PRATIRODH SANGRAM SAMITI AS ON 1st NOVEMBER 2011 Dear Friends, We earnestly appeal to all of you to send your immediate protest letter to the government of Odisha regarding its recent decision to start the construction of coastal road from Paradeep to our village for POSCO. We fear that over 400–500 henchmen of POSCO followed by police forces might forcibly enter into our area. From media reports, it may construe that they can attack on or before 3rd of November 2011. On 30th October 2011, our villagers have decided to intensify the protest if the Government goes ahead with land acquisition and construction of the coastal road. On 27th of October 2011, the Chief Secretary of Odisha Mr. B.K Patnaik said in the media that he had asked POSCO authorities to begin work on the acquired land. Of the 4,000 and odd acres of land required by the company, the state government claims to have acquired 2,000 acres and hence POSCO could start work over this land. In this regard, Mr. Priyabrat Patnaik, Chief Managing Director of Industrial Development Corporation of Odisha (IDCO) held a meeting with the Jagatsinghpur district officials on 28th of October, 2011. As you all know that the government’s move to allow POSCO to start work in the area is completely illegal as the MOU has lapsed more than a year back. Opposition parties including Congress and BJP opposed Orissa government’s move to invite POSCO-India to begin work on the acquired land even before a fresh MoU was signed. At this critical juncture, we appeal to all concerned citizens activists, intellectuals and media friends to extend their support and put consistent pressure on the government to stop the forcible eviction of the people. Our villagers in a meeting in Dhinkia also have resolved to oppose any move by the state. We know Priyabrata Pattnaik as an officer with criminal credential and can do anything to harm us and help the project. Any intervention from your side will be of help to us. We shall inform you the further developments here. Kindly circulate this mail widely. In Solidarity, Prashant Paikaray Spokesperson, POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti Mobile no – 09437571547 E -Mail- prashantpaikray at gmail.com Please Write and Call..... 1.Mr. Shri Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, Prime Minister’s Office, Room number 152, South Block, New Delhi, Fax: + 91 11 2301 6857; manmohan at sansad.in 2. Mr. P. Chidambaram, Union Minister of Home Affairs, Ministry of Home Affairs, 104-107 North Block, New Delhi 110 001 India, Fax: +91 11 2309 2979 / 23094221 E.mail hm at nic.in 3. Justice K. G. Balakrishnan, Chairperson, National Human Rights Commission of India, Faridkot House, Copernicus Marg, New Delhi 110 001, Fax: +91 11 2334 0016, Fax No. 23384863 Email: chairnhrc at nic.in ; covdnhrc at nic.in, ionhrc at nic.in 4. Naveen Patnaik, Chief Minister, Odisha, Fax 0674-2535100 E. mail cmo at ori.nic.in 5. Mr. S. K. Patnayak, Chief Secretary, Government of Odhisa, FAX: 0674 – 2536660 e.mail csori at ori.nic.in 6. Mr. Narayan Chandra Jena, District Collectior, Jagatsinghpur, Contact number +919437038401 Fax No : +916724220299 7. Mr. Debadutta Singh, Superintendent of Police, Mobile No- +919437094678, dmjsp at ori.nic.in _______________________________________________ connect mailing list connect at lists.orissaconcerns.net http://lists.orissaconcerns.net/listinfo.cgi/connect-orissaconcerns.net http://orissaconcerns.net From peter.ksmtf at gmail.com Wed Nov 2 19:04:04 2011 From: peter.ksmtf at gmail.com (T Peter) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2011 19:04:04 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] KSMTF seeks closure of Kudankulam power plant In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: KSMTF seeks closure of Kudankulam power plant Special Correspondent :November 2, 2011 http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/article2590545.ece Expresses solidarity with agitating fishing community members The Kerala Swathantra Matsya Thozhilali Federation (KSMTF) has urged the State government to take steps to ensure that the Kudankulam nuclear power plant is closed down immediately. A pressnote quoting KSMTF leaders, who recently visited the site near the plant where thousands of people have been staging a sit-in, expressed solidarity with the members of the fishing community involved in the agitation. “The struggle is not just to protect the fish and the ocean from radiation; it is a struggle to protect the lives of the people in Kerala and Tamil Nadu,” T. Peter, president of the federation, said. The pressnote said the plant posed a threat to prominent tourism sites such as Kanyakumari, Kovalam, Varkala, Kuttanad, and coastal Alappuzha. “The Atomic Energy Regulation Board has admitted in its recent report that there should be no tourism site within a radius of 20 km from the plant. The distance between Kudankulam and Kanyakumari is only 14 km,” Mr. Peter said. The pressnote feared that the plant would pollute marine resources and vegetables produced in Tamil Nadu and exported to Kerala. “We are fighting this battle not just for the fishing community,” Mr. Peter said. “It is for the future generations.” The federation ridiculed nuclear scientists vouching for the safety of the plant. “It is the same theory which was propagated at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima,” leaders of the federation said. “An accident at Kudankulam will be unmanageable for the governments in Tamil Nadu and Kerala because of the density of population in the southern parts of the States,” they said. “For those politicians who ask us for alternatives, we say there are safer alternatives,” Mr. Peter said. “But first, let them tell us how they will dispose of radioactive waste in a safe manner, since no nuclear scientist anywhere so far can really say this honestly. The people of the western world will not tolerate one more nuclear plant in their countries, and some countries have already started decommissioning the existing plants. If you accept their technology, you have the responsibility to reject it when they reject it.” The federation activists reminded MLAs in the State that they had a moral responsibility to protect the lives of the people who elected them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- •Says struggle to protect the lives of the people •‘Plant will pollute marine resources, vegetables' From asit1917 at gmail.com Thu Nov 3 11:08:06 2011 From: asit1917 at gmail.com (asit das) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 11:08:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] JOINT STATEMENT IN SOLIDARITY OF ANTI-POSCO STRUGGLE ODISHA Message-ID: *(Please endorse and forward it to others)* * * *JOINT STATEMENT IN SOLIDARITY OF ANTI-POSCO STRUGGLE ODISHA* News reports say that the Orissa government is once again planning an assault on the proposed POSCO project area. Apparently at least 14 platoons of police will attempt to attack the coastal side of the villages. This comes after the people of Dhinkia and Gobindpur heroically resisted police attacks for more than two months in the heat of summer, drawing the attention of the entire country. It also comes in the wake of a grossly illegal clearance to the project from the Environment Ministry, in direct violation of the Forest Rights Act, despite two of the Ministry's own enquiry committees finding that the grant of clearance would be a crime. Moreover, the Centre itself now claims that projects of this kind will be subject, under its proposed new law, to the consent of 80% of the local community. Despite all this, the Orissa government is relaunching its criminal offensive, and the Centre as usual is doing nothing to stop it or to uphold the law. The sheer absurdity and injustice of the upcoming attack is further shown by the fact that, for more than a year, POSCO and the Orissa government have not even been able to renew their MoU on the project. When there is no agreement on what the project should be, what is the need to attack people and grab their land? We condemn the imminent criminal attack on the peaceful people of the POSCO project area. We stand with them in their struggle agianst this destructive, unjust and illegal project. Please send your endorsement to Asit Email id: asit1917 at gmail.com Prof Manoranjan Mohanty POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity Delhi Ajit Jha Samajwadi Janaparishad Prafulla Samantra NAPM Vijay Pratap Socialist Front Shankar Gopal Krishnan Campaign for Survival and Dignity Kiran Shaheen Media Action Group Delhi Mamta Das POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity Delhi Subrat Sahu POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity Delhi Asit Das POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity Delhi Bhanumati POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity Delhi Faisal Khan NAPM, Delhi From indersalim at gmail.com Thu Nov 3 23:34:55 2011 From: indersalim at gmail.com (Inder Salim) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 19:04:55 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Pause in Kashmir Message-ID: For those of you who are in Bangalore As a part of Pause-in times of conflict, maraa invites you to : Pause at Kashmir 5th November from 4.30 pm to 7 pm at the rafiki workspace, K. K. Foundation and Public Charitable Trust,Opposite Al Ameen Hospital , Miller’s Tank Bund Road, Off Cunningham Road In a participatory form, Pause in Kashmir is constructed around the performance and talk by Delhi-based artist Inder Salim. Inder Salim engages with the bodily dimension of experiences of fear and socio-political constraint and oppression. Visual excerpts of the graphic novels by Malik Sajad and a performative reading of passages from Mirza Waheed’s debut novel The Collaborator (2011) accompany the event. The evening concludes with an exchange with Abhishek Majumdar and an open discussion with the audeince. From lalitambardar at hotmail.com Fri Nov 4 01:50:06 2011 From: lalitambardar at hotmail.com (Lalit Ambardar) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 20:20:06 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Pause in Kashmir In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: THE COLLABORATORS!Rgds allLA -------------------------------------------------- > Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 19:04:55 +0100 > From: indersalim at gmail.com > To: reader-list at sarai.net > Subject: [Reader-list] Pause in Kashmir > > For those of you who are in Bangalore > > As a part of Pause-in times of conflict, maraa invites you to : > > Pause at Kashmir > > 5th November from 4.30 pm to 7 pm at the rafiki workspace, K. K. > Foundation and Public Charitable Trust,Opposite Al Ameen Hospital , > Miller’s Tank Bund Road, Off Cunningham Road > > In a participatory form, Pause in Kashmir is constructed around the > performance and talk by Delhi-based artist Inder Salim. Inder Salim > engages with the bodily dimension of experiences of fear and > socio-political constraint and oppression. > Visual excerpts of the graphic novels by Malik Sajad and a > performative reading of passages from Mirza Waheed’s debut novel The > Collaborator (2011) accompany the event. The evening concludes with an > exchange with Abhishek Majumdar and an open discussion with the > audeince. > _________________________________________ > 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 rohitrellan at aol.in Fri Nov 4 09:02:30 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 23:32:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Reader-list] PROJECT Y: A Yamuna-Elbe Public Art and Outreach Project -4th November, panel discussion "Public Art: sifting through the ground" In-Reply-To: <4EB26B7B020000400004FBE0@mail.jnu.ac.in> References: <4EB26B7B020000400004FBE0@mail.jnu.ac.in> Message-ID: <8CE68B98415A720-CB0-EAF00@webmail-m086.sysops.aol.com> SCHOOL OF ARTS AND AESTHETICS JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY NEW DELHI, 110067 You are cordially invited for a panel discussion Public Art: sifting through the ground With Ravi Agarwal & Rohan D’Souza, chaired by Shukla Sawant VENUE: BUILDING II, School of Arts and Aeshtetics DATE & TIME: 4TH NOVEMBER 2011, 4PM The discussion is a part of PROJECT Y: A Yamuna-Elbe Public Art and Outreach Project A Public Art Project at the Yamuna in Delhi and the Elbe in Hamburg Curated by Ravi Agarwal (Delhi) and Till Krause with Nina Kalenbach (Hamburg) The panel discussion will take an interdisciplinary approach to examine the recent intensification of artistic engagement with environmental concerns; often site specific in nature. This commitment to direct intervention in the landscape has brought with it an attentiveness to the public space as a plural space, eliciting a multiplicity of creative responses and discursive methods. From antagonistic methods, provoking dissensus, to collaborative forms of community initiatives, “public art” as an activist art practice has had a thought provoking trajectory in recent years. The panel brings together artists and environmental activists to discuss some critical and aesthetic concerns around these interventions. Panelists Ravi Agarwal, is an artist and environmentalist, founder director of Toxic links, a public advocacy group based in New Delhi. Ravi’s recent work delves into “personal ecologies” through photography, installation and video, marking a shift from his early documentary work. His work has been included in important exhibitions such as Documenta 11 and Indian Highway at the Serpentine Gallery, London and he has had four solo shows in Delhi. Dr Rohan D’Souza,teaches at the Centre for Science Policy Studies, JNU. He has written extensively on hydraulic manipulation of river systems in India, and other issues dealing with environmental history , the political economy of nature, conservation and history of technology. His recent publication includes Drowned and Damned:Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India (1803-1946) Shukla Sawant is an artist and writer and teaches at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU The Site for Project Y in Delhi • Golden Jubilee Park near Old Yamuna Bridge To be held from November 9th to 20th, 2011 From indersalim at gmail.com Sat Nov 5 00:17:55 2011 From: indersalim at gmail.com (Inder Salim) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2011 00:17:55 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Pause in Kashmir In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear all, Due to unforeseen circumstances, tomorrow's Pause: Conversations with Kashmir from 4:30-7:00 pm, scheduled to happen tomorrow at the rafiki space in K.K Foundation and Public Charitable Trust stands CANCELLED. We will keep you informed about the details shortly. We regret any inconvenience caused. Apologies. Please spread the word around. warmthekta On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 1:50 AM, Lalit Ambardar wrote: > THE COLLABORATORS! > Rgds all > LA > -------------------------------------------------- > >> Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 19:04:55 +0100 >> From: indersalim at gmail.com >> To: reader-list at sarai.net >> Subject: [Reader-list] Pause in Kashmir >> >> For those of you who are in Bangalore >> >> As a part of Pause-in times of conflict, maraa invites you to : >> >> Pause at Kashmir >> >> 5th November from 4.30 pm to 7 pm at the rafiki workspace, K. K. >> Foundation and Public Charitable Trust,Opposite Al Ameen Hospital , >> Miller’s Tank Bund Road, Off Cunningham Road >> >> In a participatory form, Pause in Kashmir is constructed around the >> performance and talk by Delhi-based artist Inder Salim. Inder Salim >> engages with the bodily dimension of experiences of fear and >> socio-political constraint and oppression. >> Visual excerpts of the graphic novels by Malik Sajad and a >> performative reading of passages from Mirza Waheed’s debut novel The >> Collaborator (2011) accompany the event. The evening concludes with an >> exchange with Abhishek Majumdar and an open discussion with the >> audeince. >> _________________________________________ >> 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 asit1917 at gmail.com Sat Nov 5 17:51:06 2011 From: asit1917 at gmail.com (asit das) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2011 17:51:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] JOINT STATEMENT IN SOLIDARITY OF ANTI-POSCO STRUGGLE ODISHA Message-ID: *JOINT STATEMENT IN SOLIDARITY OF ANTI-POSCO STRUGGLE ODISHA* News reports say that the Orissa government is once again planning an assault on the proposed POSCO project area. Apparently at least 14 platoons of police will attempt to attack the coastal side of the villages. This comes after the people of Dhinkia and Gobindpur heroically resisted police attacks for more than two months in the heat of summer, drawing the attention of the entire country. It also comes in the wake of a grossly illegal clearance to the project from the Environment Ministry, in direct violation of the Forest Rights Act, despite two of the Ministry's own enquiry committees finding that the grant of clearance would be a crime. Moreover, the Centre itself now claims that projects of this kind will be subject, under its proposed new law, to the consent of 80% of the local community. Despite all this, the Orissa government is relaunching its criminal offensive, and the Centre as usual is doing nothing to stop it or to uphold the law. The sheer absurdity and injustice of the upcoming attack is further shown by the fact that, for more than a year, POSCO and the Orissa government have not even been able to renew their MoU on the project. When there is no agreement on what the project should be, what is the need to attack people and grab their land? We condemn the imminent criminal attack on the peaceful people of the POSCO project area. We stand with them in their struggle agianst this destructive, unjust and illegal project. 1. Justice Rajinder Sachar 1. Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity Delhi 1. Ajit Jha Samajwadi Jan Parishad 1. Subhas Gatade New socialist Initiative 1. Dr. Arati Choksi General Secretary PUCL Karnataka 1. Dr. Sunilam Kisan Sanghrash Samity, M.P. 1. Kiran Shaheen Media Action Group Delhi 1. Vijay Pratap Socialist Front, Delhi 1. Mamta Dash POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity, Delhi 1. Subrat Sahu POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity, Delhi 1. Asit Das POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity, Delhi 1. Meher Engineer Ex Director, Bose Institute, Kolkata 1. Bhanumati Gochhait POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity, Delhi 1. Shiraz Prabhu Kastakari Sanghathana, Maharashtra 1. Shankar Gopal Krishnan Campaign for survival and dignity 1. Sudha Reddy Social Activist Bangalore 1. Prakash Kumar Ray Editor Bargad.org 1. P.K. Sundaram Editor dia nuke.org 1. Peeyush Pant Editor Lok Samvad 1. Kavita Krishnan C.C Member, CPIML, Liberation 1. Vinod Raina Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samity 1. Kamayani Bali Mahabal Human Rights Activist, Mumbai 1. Ranjana Padhi Forum against Sexual Exploitation and State Repression 2. Sachidanand Mishra Independent Film Maker, Delhi 1. Laxman Singh Research Scholar, Jamia Milia Islamia, Delhi 1. Subhashini Shriya Krantikari Navjawan Sabha, Delhi 1. Kanchi Kohli Kalpavriksh, Delhi 1. Pushpa Achanta Writer, Bangalore 1. Vivek Sundara Human Rights Activist, Mumbai 1. Shah Alam Independent Film Maker, Delhi 1. Nayan Jyoti Krantikari Navjawan Sabha, Delhi 1. Amit Chakrabarty Research Scholar, JNU 1. Mohd. Usman Researcher Scholar, JNU 1. Rashid Ali Independent Film Maker, Delhi 1. Shree Prakash Journalist, Indore 1. Madhu Sarin CSD, Chandigarh 1. Dr. Abhay Shukla Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, Pune 1. Preeti Sampat Activist, Research, Delhi 1. Anuradha Talwar Paschim Barga Khet Majdoor Samity, West Bengal 1. Maj. General (rtd) Sudhir Vombatkare, Mysore 1. Arya Thomas Research Scholar, JNU 1. Anand Krisnaraj Research Scholar, JNU 1. Shruti Research Scholar, JNU 1. Uma Chandru Regional Coordinator, WSS, Karnataka 1. Saraswati Kavula NAPM, Andhra Pradesh 1. Praveen Research Scholar, Delhi University 1. Gabriete Dietrich NAPM 1. Prof. Arun Kumar Prof. Centre for Economic and Social Planning, JNU 1. Ulka Mahajan Sarvahara Jan Andolan Planning, JNU 1. Kabir Khan Youth Climate Network 1. Chanda Asani 1. Kirity Roy Secretary, Masum, Kolkata 1. Binu Mathew Editor, Counter Currents.org 1. Shukla Sen Ekta Mumbai 1. Himanshu Kumar Vanvasi Chetna Ashram 1. Praful Bidwai Writer, Journalist, Delhi 1. Pushkar Raj Gen. Sec., PUCL, Delhi 1. Ashok Choudhury NFFPFW 1. Gautam Bandopadhyaya NFFPFW 1. Roma NFFPFW 1. Munilal NFFPFW 1. Shanta Bhattacharya NFFPFW 1. Shashank Yadav Research Scholar, JNU 1. Swathi Equations, Bangalore 1. Rohit Prajapati Paryavaran Suraksha Samity, Gujarat 1. Swati Desai Paryavaran Suraksha Samity, Gujarat 1. Rajni Dave Paryavaran Suraksha Samity, Gujarat 1. Piyoli Swatija Vidyarthi Yuvajan Sabha 1. Dhirendra Panda Social Activist, Bhubaneswar 1. Rakesh Ranjan SRCC, Delhi University 1. Biswajit Mohanty Teacher, Delhi University 1. Ravi Hemadri Development and Jusitce Initiative 1. Humane Koraput, Odisha 1. Sandeep Kumar Pattnaik NCAS, Pune 1. Students For Resistance Delhi 1. Babu ICRA, Bangalore 1. Maya Velecha Jan Andolan, Surat, Gujarat 1. Gowru Chinappa Andhra Pradesh 1. Amit Slathia Artist, Delhi 1. Prof. Kamal Nayan Kabra Economist, Delhi 1. Prof. Vir Bharat Talwar Prof. Centre for Indian Languages, JNU 1. Daneil Mazgaonkar Sarvodaya Activist, Mumbai 1. S. Seshan Tamilnadu 1. Sunanda Sanyal 1. Bhuwan Pathak Himalay Swaraj Abhiyan, Uttarakhand 1. Ranjeet Kumar Thakur Journalist, Uttarakhand 1. Rita Kumari Pravasi Nagrik Munch, Delhi 1. Pratyush Chandra Radical Notes, Delhi 1. Radhika Krishnan AISA, JNU 1. Rajvir Power Kisan Maha Panchayat 1. Deba Prasad Roy Chowdhury General Secretary, APDR, West Bengal 1. Vijay Singh Editor, Revolutionary Democracy 1. Benny Kuruvilla Focus on Global South From indersalim at gmail.com Sun Nov 6 13:56:54 2011 From: indersalim at gmail.com (Inder Salim) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2011 13:56:54 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Pause in Kashmir In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: dear Shuddha thanks http://news.webindia123.com/news/articles/India/20111103/1864780.html http://www.newkerala.com/news/2011/worldnews-99742.html Kranti Sena led by Tajinderpal singh Bagga, the same guy who abused Prashant Bushan, lodged a complaint with Police Banngalore that MARAA, the organization which conceptualized Pause In Kashmir, are inviting SAS Geelani and other seperatist Huriyat leaders for Seminar in Bangalore. This obviously led the Police to take quick actioin. Lawrence Liang, our friend was quite supportive yesterday morning and they all went to face the Police who arrived at the venue of KK foundation ( some old cinema studio space of Mr. Rafiki) and questioned them all. one guy called Avinash was told by the Police to singh vandehy Mataram, and others to sing Jana Gana Mana. Some one was told to sing Karanataka state song, and Lawrance was questioned his Nationality. Since the complaint was based on a lie and so action was possible, but rendered the venue dysfunctional at the same time. in this depressing scenario, we all at the office of Lawrence decided to do something at any alternative space, They found one SANGAMA org. who were already doing an event, and they encouraged us to perform at the end of their proceedings. It was a good interactive performance about Kashmir which everybody liked. what a day it was, oh this Guy tajinder singh bagga on Face Book invited all to come with egges and broom sticks, black paint... love inder On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 10:42 AM, Shuddhabrata Sengupta wrote: > Dear Inder, > > What happened? What are the unforseen circumstances, I hope that they are not what I fear they are, and I hope that you will be ale to do the Pause soon > > let me know, > > Shuddha > > On 05-Nov-2011, at 12:17 AM, Inder Salim wrote: > >> Dear all, >> Due to unforeseen circumstances, tomorrow's Pause: Conversations with >> Kashmir from 4:30-7:00 pm, scheduled to happen tomorrow at the rafiki >> space in K.K Foundation and Public Charitable Trust stands CANCELLED. >> We will keep you informed about the details shortly. We regret any >> inconvenience caused. Apologies. >> Please spread the word around. >> warmthekta >> On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 1:50 AM, Lalit Ambardar >> wrote: >>> THE COLLABORATORS! >>> Rgds all >>> LA >>> -------------------------------------------------- >>> >>>> Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 19:04:55 +0100 >>>> From: indersalim at gmail.com >>>> To: reader-list at sarai.net >>>> Subject: [Reader-list] Pause in Kashmir >>>> >>>> For those of you who are in Bangalore >>>> >>>> As a part of Pause-in times of conflict, maraa invites you to : >>>> >>>> Pause at Kashmir >>>> >>>> 5th November from 4.30 pm to 7 pm at the rafiki workspace, K. K. >>>> Foundation and Public Charitable Trust,Opposite Al Ameen Hospital , >>>> Miller’s Tank Bund Road, Off Cunningham Road >>>> >>>> In a participatory form, Pause in Kashmir is constructed around the >>>> performance and talk by Delhi-based artist Inder Salim. Inder Salim >>>> engages with the bodily dimension of experiences of fear and >>>> socio-political constraint and oppression. >>>> Visual excerpts of the graphic novels by Malik Sajad and a >>>> performative reading of passages from Mirza Waheed’s debut novel The >>>> Collaborator (2011) accompany the event. The evening concludes with an >>>> exchange with Abhishek Majumdar and an open discussion with the >>>> audeince. >>>> _________________________________________ >>>> 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/> >>> >> _________________________________________ >> 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/> > > Shuddhabrata Sengupta > The Sarai Programme at CSDS > Raqs Media Collective > shuddha at sarai.net > www.sarai.net > www.raqsmediacollective.net > > > From samvitr at gmail.com Sun Nov 6 18:23:12 2011 From: samvitr at gmail.com (Samvit) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2011 18:23:12 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Pause in Kashmir In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Finally, someone stood up against the real COLLABORATORS! On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 12:17 AM, Inder Salim wrote: > Dear all, > Due to unforeseen circumstances, tomorrow's Pause: Conversations with > Kashmir from 4:30-7:00 pm, scheduled to happen tomorrow at the rafiki > space in K.K Foundation and Public Charitable Trust stands CANCELLED. > We will keep you informed about the details shortly. We regret any > inconvenience caused. Apologies. > Please spread the word around. > warmthekta > On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 1:50 AM, Lalit Ambardar > wrote: >> THE COLLABORATORS! >> Rgds all >> LA >> -------------------------------------------------- >> >>> Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 19:04:55 +0100 >>> From: indersalim at gmail.com >>> To: reader-list at sarai.net >>> Subject: [Reader-list] Pause in Kashmir >>> >>> For those of you who are in Bangalore >>> >>> As a part of Pause-in times of conflict, maraa invites you to : >>> >>> Pause at Kashmir >>> >>> 5th November from 4.30 pm to 7 pm at the rafiki workspace, K. K. >>> Foundation and Public Charitable Trust,Opposite Al Ameen Hospital , >>> Miller’s Tank Bund Road, Off Cunningham Road >>> >>> In a participatory form, Pause in Kashmir is constructed around the >>> performance and talk by Delhi-based artist Inder Salim. Inder Salim >>> engages with the bodily dimension of experiences of fear and >>> socio-political constraint and oppression. >>> Visual excerpts of the graphic novels by Malik Sajad and a >>> performative reading of passages from Mirza Waheed’s debut novel The >>> Collaborator (2011) accompany the event. The evening concludes with an >>> exchange with Abhishek Majumdar and an open discussion with the >>> audeince. >>> _________________________________________ >>> 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/> >> > _________________________________________ > 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 geetaseshu at gmail.com Sun Nov 6 18:30:52 2011 From: geetaseshu at gmail.com (geeta seshu) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2011 18:30:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Pause in Kashmir In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: yes it is but its a shame the venue had to be changed and I'm so upset with the police behaviour. Why do they have to get some people to sing various anthems to investigate a complaint? Geeta On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 6:23 PM, Samvit wrote: > Finally, someone stood up against the real COLLABORATORS! > > On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 12:17 AM, Inder Salim wrote: > > Dear all, > > Due to unforeseen circumstances, tomorrow's Pause: Conversations with > > Kashmir from 4:30-7:00 pm, scheduled to happen tomorrow at the rafiki > > space in K.K Foundation and Public Charitable Trust stands CANCELLED. > > We will keep you informed about the details shortly. We regret any > > inconvenience caused. Apologies. > > Please spread the word around. > > warmthekta > > On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 1:50 AM, Lalit Ambardar > > wrote: > >> THE COLLABORATORS! > >> Rgds all > >> LA > >> -------------------------------------------------- > >> > >>> Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 19:04:55 +0100 > >>> From: indersalim at gmail.com > >>> To: reader-list at sarai.net > >>> Subject: [Reader-list] Pause in Kashmir > >>> > >>> For those of you who are in Bangalore > >>> > >>> As a part of Pause-in times of conflict, maraa invites you to : > >>> > >>> Pause at Kashmir > >>> > >>> 5th November from 4.30 pm to 7 pm at the rafiki workspace, K. K. > >>> Foundation and Public Charitable Trust,Opposite Al Ameen Hospital , > >>> Miller’s Tank Bund Road, Off Cunningham Road > >>> > >>> In a participatory form, Pause in Kashmir is constructed around the > >>> performance and talk by Delhi-based artist Inder Salim. Inder Salim > >>> engages with the bodily dimension of experiences of fear and > >>> socio-political constraint and oppression. > >>> Visual excerpts of the graphic novels by Malik Sajad and a > >>> performative reading of passages from Mirza Waheed’s debut novel The > >>> Collaborator (2011) accompany the event. The evening concludes with an > >>> exchange with Abhishek Majumdar and an open discussion with the > >>> audeince. > >>> _________________________________________ > >>> 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/> > >> > > _________________________________________ > > 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/> > _________________________________________ > 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 indersalim at gmail.com Sun Nov 6 21:27:54 2011 From: indersalim at gmail.com (Inder Salim) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2011 21:27:54 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Pause in Kashmir In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The MARRA in Bangalore will respond legally against this false complaint by Tajinderpal Singh Bagga On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 6:23 PM, Samvit wrote: > Finally, someone stood up against the real COLLABORATORS! > > On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 12:17 AM, Inder Salim wrote: >> Dear all, >> Due to unforeseen circumstances, tomorrow's Pause: Conversations with >> Kashmir from 4:30-7:00 pm, scheduled to happen tomorrow at the rafiki >> space in K.K Foundation and Public Charitable Trust stands CANCELLED. >> We will keep you informed about the details shortly. We regret any >> inconvenience caused. Apologies. >> Please spread the word around. >> warmthekta >> On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 1:50 AM, Lalit Ambardar >> wrote: >>> THE COLLABORATORS! >>> Rgds all >>> LA >>> -------------------------------------------------- >>> >>>> Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 19:04:55 +0100 >>>> From: indersalim at gmail.com >>>> To: reader-list at sarai.net >>>> Subject: [Reader-list] Pause in Kashmir >>>> >>>> For those of you who are in Bangalore >>>> >>>> As a part of Pause-in times of conflict, maraa invites you to : >>>> >>>> Pause at Kashmir >>>> >>>> 5th November from 4.30 pm to 7 pm at the rafiki workspace, K. K. >>>> Foundation and Public Charitable Trust,Opposite Al Ameen Hospital , >>>> Miller’s Tank Bund Road, Off Cunningham Road >>>> >>>> In a participatory form, Pause in Kashmir is constructed around the >>>> performance and talk by Delhi-based artist Inder Salim. Inder Salim >>>> engages with the bodily dimension of experiences of fear and >>>> socio-political constraint and oppression. >>>> Visual excerpts of the graphic novels by Malik Sajad and a >>>> performative reading of passages from Mirza Waheed’s debut novel The >>>> Collaborator (2011) accompany the event. The evening concludes with an >>>> exchange with Abhishek Majumdar and an open discussion with the >>>> audeince. >>>> _________________________________________ >>>> 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/> >>> >> _________________________________________ >> 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 rohitrellan at aol.in Mon Nov 7 13:44:30 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2011 03:14:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Reader-list] INVITATION: Join us for the European Union "Sanskriti Festival", 11 to 17 November 2011, Delhi In-Reply-To: <180B74B278C42345A877B20C1C15C253610BB267DA@IN-DEL-OB-VS01.bmaa.local> References: <180B74B278C42345A877B20C1C15C253610BB267DA@IN-DEL-OB-VS01.bmaa.local> Message-ID: <8CE6B3C68AA1B73-FD0-1A73E0@webmail-m135.sysops.aol.com> Dear friends, In collaboration with the National School of Drama, Theatre in Education Company, New Delhi, the European Union and its member states are organizing a cultural festival, with music and theatre performances, exhibitions, literature shows and special film screenings. While the programme focuses on children and youth, an interested audience of all ages is welcome to the European Union “Sanskriti Festival”! Come and enjoy Polish and Romanian puppet theatre, contemporary dance from Belgium and Netherlands, Lithuanian folk dance, and juggling from Luxembourg. You are also welcome to attend classical music concerts performed by Austrian or Hungarian musicians – or perhaps a dynamic Masala music mix from Poland! When? Friday, 11th to Thursday, 17th November 2011 Where? Events take place at the National School of Drama, Bahawalpur House, 1 Bhagwandas Road, New Delhi 110 001, as well as other venues (see “schedule of events”) For a complete schedule of events, please visit http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/india/documents/more_info/eu_cultural_events/cultural_event_201110 With best wishes, Viktoria Wagner From patrice at xs4all.nl Mon Nov 7 14:08:46 2011 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2011 09:38:46 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Gary Farnell on our age of Zombies ... Message-ID: <20111107083846.GB16645@xs4all.nl> (bwo Nettime, on Haloween Day) (original formatting was a disaster, sorry if glitches remain...) For a Symposium on Zombies by Gary Farnell (University of Winchester) The zombie is the official monster of our Great Recession. So says Time magazine. "[Zombies] seem to be telling us something about the zeitgeist". We might expect Time magazine to know a thing or two about the Zeitgeist.[1] But in this short article by Lev Grossman, "Zombies Are the New Vampires", relatively little is said about what indeed zombies are telling us about the Zeitgeist. At the same time, however, for socio-historical transformations to be registered in the language of monstrosity is nothing new. At the time of the Great Depression, for example, Antonio Gramsci in his prison cell wrote "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."[2] "Now is the time of monsters", Gramsci says, noting the configuration of the Zeitgeist and thus outlining how terror springs from torpor (a situation of dead-lock, if ever there was one) in the early 1930s. Gramsci's remark concerning monsters, terror and torpor acquires a new currency in the current crisis of the Great Recession. A new teratology "more plainly, a new monsterology" is emergent, witness, for example, the publication of the late Chris Harman's Zombie Capitalism in 2009, Evan Calder Williams's Combined and Uneven Apocalypse in 2011 and David McNally's Monsters of the Market also in 2011. As well as this, there has been since late 2009 a concerted theoretical effort to conceive of the present as a "conjuncture" in the pages of the journal Soundings.[3] This initiative marks the return of a Gramsci-inspired conjunctural analysis of the early neo-liberal era formulated by writers in Marxism Today in the 1970s and 1980s. The point about the conjunctural analysis as such is that it enjoins consideration of the coming together of structural contradictions "as economically, politically and ideologically inflected" into a social crisis situation (a ruptural fusion, as Louis Althusser would denote it). Moreover, it prioritizes the issue of "representing the crisis" the better to find an exit from it. In light of this, this paper argues for the value of the zombie myth as an interpretative motif in relation to the Hegelian "Night of the World" that is the present crisis of our Great Recession. The zombie should indeed be seen as the official monster of the moment. There has been a striking proliferation of images of monsters and of the apocalypse in the financial press starting with the sub-prime crisis of 2006 that mutated into the credit-crunch crisis of 2007 that mutated into the financial crisis of 2008 that mutated into the global economic crisis we know of today. Thus, "What created this monster"? asked the New York Times in March 2008.[4] In April 2009 the Financial Times warned that "Curse of the zombies rises in Europe amid an eerie calm".[5] We have been warned that we face "Acropalypse now" by the Sunday Times in September 2011.[6] But it can be argued that it is specifically the figure of the zombie, at once spectacular and toxic, that traverses (intersects, negates) this problem of the representation of the present crisis. For from its origins in the culture of Haitian Vodou and from a time when the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804 lay, as Susan Buck-Morss has said, "at the crossroads of multiple discourses as a defining moment in world history"[7] the image of the zombie has signified the end of civilization itself: it is the eschaton-made-flesh. It represents (in Hegelian terms) an image of the truth of the current conjunctural crisis of global capitalism. (Or put differently, "What if truth were monstrous"? as the Heideggerian philosopher John Sallis once asked.[8]) Therefore we should seize on the zombie"s image in all its sublime ugliness, itself a variation of Slavoj Zizek's "sublime object of ideology". This obscene-deformative figure of the zombie speaks to power. Recall how Occupy Wall Street protestors dressed as zombies, allowing Wall Street employees to "see us reflecting the metaphor of their actions". (Likewise, as Arthur Schopenhauer once joked, where else did the horrors of Dante's Inferno come from if not the horrors of the present real world itself?) Hence it's time to love the living dead, a race of monsters for the age of deterritorialized, new ethnicities crossed with the politics of speed. (No wonder Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari should have suggested quite so boldly in the first part of Capitalism and Schizophrenia 'Anti-Oedipus' that "The only modern myth is the myth of zombies".[9]) Sublime ugliness The zombie"s sublime ugliness, as pressed into relief by the force of conjunctural analysis of the neo-liberal era from the 1970s to the present, looks like this. It is now clear that the origins of the present financial and economic crisis lie in the resolution of the social-democratic "Keynesian" crisis that marked the end of the historic post-war settlement in the seventies. In other words, the neo-liberal solution to that earlier crisis has now become the problem of the present crisis. For if credit, deployed within an expanding deregulatory regime (a gloriously immaterial space of flows), was once the principal instrument of a great transformation, redressing the various ills of "stagflation", a disgruntled working class and big government, it has subsequently folded back on itself and crumbled to dust in the neo-liberals' own hands. A credit boom, bringing into play the circulation of vast amounts of virtual money, has at length become the generator not of general prosperity but of acute inequality (crystallized, above all, in terms of the sub-prime mortgages scandal). Then confirmation that the crisis situation of the late 1970s/early 1980s was in fact being repeated (but in reverse!) in the late 2000s/early 2010s came in August 2011. Whereas forms of industrial unrest and street violence precipitated a credit boom (centring on London's "big bang" of deregulation in the City in 1986) as capital's means of expanding its way out of a crisis, so, as the bubble of a hyperinflated economy has finally burst in 2008, the credit boom has in fact been causal vis-a-vis the recent rioting in English cities. The fires, the scenes of violence in the first half of August have been frightening indeed. But at the same time, like true "possessive individualist" subjects of neo-liberal ideology the urban rioters and looters have acted, curiously, like shoppers who want to go shopping without paying for anything with real money. This explains why the violence of the bad old days of the eighties has returned, but no longer in the form of that of politically conscious collectives rather than that of post-credit boom consumers or pure neo-liberal shoppers. The general situation of the implosion of not just the financial sector but also the market system more generally is, ironically, precisely what credit qua fetish object was meant to forestall. Prescient indeed is Karl Marx's comment in the third volume of Capital (Marx's Crisis Book) that "At first glance ... the entire crisis presents itself as simply a credit and monetary crisis."[10] This analysis of the neo-liberal conjuncture presses into relief the zombie's sublime ugliness (the beautiful excrementalism, the shitty sublime of the zombie) as portrayed in press coverage of the August riots of 2011: see, in particular, the well-known Sun front page of August 10th that led with the headline "Shop a Moron". "Shop a Moron" This Sun front page belongs in the category of the "public image". Using pictures taken by closed-circuit television cameras, it presents a spread of photographs of rioters and looters, laid out under the headline "Shop a Moron", accompanied by the encouragement to readers to "name and shame" those photographed by contacting the police " the page as constructed is a virtual identification parade.[11] Public images in this sense are as they have been described by Stuart Hall and his co-authors in Policing the Crisis, now a canonical reference regarding conjunctural analysis, dating from 1978. Here a "public image" as articulated in media discourse is "a cluster of impressions, themes and quasi-explanations, gathered or fused together".[12] It is added: "These are sometimes the outcome of the [news] features process itself; where hard, difficult, social, cultural or economic analysis breaks down or is cut short .[13] A "public image", then, is a form of ideological mechanism used as a means to foreclose and hence "resolve" difficult issues articulated in media discourse, through a process of rhetorical closure. The "Shop a Moron" front page constitutes a public image in the above sense. The pictures as arranged allow the Sun to display its customary wit via the pun on "shop" and "shopping". This forms the basis of another of the paper's "public-interest" campaigns, promoting the cause of law and order, here against the stupid, idiotic, jouissant behaviour of the "morons". At the same time, usage of the word moron in the context of this front page is the means of cutting-short of analysis and hence of achieving rhetorical closure regarding issues "the story behind the news" arising from the rioting. The other main news story of the day (and indeed of that week) was of "turmoil in the markets", as fears spread about a return to the stormy climate (or the forms of moronic behaviour!) of the credit boom. Yet it was not seen as necessary to draw any connections between the two (or follow the "chain of equivalences" in the style of Laclau and Mouffe's discourse analysis). Even so, what appears the pressure in the Sun to portray the rioters and looters as zombie-like figures may be the most important thing of all about the "Shop a Moron" case. For the fact that the "moronic" rioters and looters represented in the Sun are made to look like zombies who have shuffled out of George A. Romero's (later Zack Snyder's) Dawn of the Dead, a film classic of consumerist alienation, is striking indeed. This "will to zombify" is what gives the game away. Conclusion: the zombie as 'objet petit'. In short, there is at the level of representation a general reach for the zombie in the aspect of its sublime ugliness to show, as it were, the human face of the present crisis, the face of the moronic bankers on Wall Street as well as that of the moronic looters on Main Street. Gillian Tett's article in the Financial Times in 2009, "Curse of the zombies rises in Europe amid an eerie calm", warns of the threat of what happened to Japanese banks in the late 1990s that tipped over into crisis, a sort of "undead state", Tett says, "in the sense of being too weak to flourish, but too complex and costly for their lenders to shut down".[14] (The general "zombiness" of all this, incidentally, is summed up nicely in the title of Colin Crouch's recent book The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism.) But if the Japanese experience of extended economic depression (the "lost decade") is, as Gillian Tett feared, now becoming a reality in the West, it is notable beyond that how "universal" now is the zombie image-repertoire in a universe that incorporates both the broadsheet Financial Times and the tabloid Sun. In this sense, both the high end and the low end of representation of the current crisis. We may conclude, then, that the zombie figures in all this as an embodiment of the Lacanian objet petit a, itself a forerunner of the Zizekian sublime object of ideology. Jacques Lacan has identified the objet a "the always-already other, reflexive, surplus object around which the drives circulate" as the object of psychoanalysis and, in the process, has paved the way for the retheorization of the Marxist concept of ideology pursued by Zizek. The zombie qua Lacanian objet petit a is what we are presented with as an obscure object of desire we seek in the other ("in you more than you") in the at once compulsive and repetitive turn to the zombie image-repertoire that structures our stories about the current conjuncture and its monsters. The living dead, we may say, act out the death drive (the spectral "eternal life" of the undead) of the current global capitalist crisis. They are thus a valuable form of political resource in the Occupy Wall Street sense of finding a means of reflecting the metaphor of capitalist power. Analogous with this is Elaine Scarry's argument formulated in her extraordinary work The Body in Pain that physical pain represents "the destruction of language through the reversion it causes to the cries and groans in Ingmar Bergman, the cries and whispers of a pre-Oedipal, pre-verbal state". The point is that that pain (in extremis that of the living dead) is relieved in the moment when it takes an object, thereby "project[ing] the facts of sentience into speech ... at the birth of language itself".[15] This clarifies how it is in the present moment that representing the present crisis is to find an exit from it "and the object-as-pivot in this respect is nothing other than the zombie qua objet petit". And so, in the end, if you have a T-shirt that says "We Zombies", then wear it with pride. Notes 1 Lev Grossman, "Zombies Are the New Vampires", Time, 9 April 2009. 2 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, Lawrence and Wishart 1971, p276. 3 See John Clarke, "What Crisis Is This"? and Michael Rustin, "Reflections on the Present", Soundings 43, Winter 2009, pp7-17, 18-34. 4 Nelson D. Schwartz and Julie Creswell, "What created this monster"? New York Times, 23 March 2008. 5 Gillian Tett, "Curse of the zombies rises in Europe amid an eerie calm", Financial Times, 3 April 2009. 6 Simon Tilford, "Acropalypse now for the euro", Sunday Times, 18 September 2011. 7 Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti and Universal History, University of Pittsburgh Press 2009, p13. 8 John Sallis, "Deformatives: Essentially Other Than Truth", in John Sallis, ed., Reading Heidegger: Commemorations, Indiana University Press 1993, p29. 9 Gilles Deleuze and F??lix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane, Continuum 1984, p335. 10 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 3, introd. Ernest Mandel, trans. David Fernbach, Penguin Books 1981, p621. 11 See the electronic (expanded) version of this page at www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/ 3742163/SHOP-A-MORON.html. 12 Stuart Hall, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke and Brian Roberts, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order, Macmillan Education, 1978, p118. 13 Loc. cit. 14 Tett, "Curse of the zombies" 15 Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, Oxford University Press 1985, p6. ------------------------------------------------------------------- # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets From shahzulf at yahoo.com Tue Nov 8 13:36:09 2011 From: shahzulf at yahoo.com (Zulfiqar Shah) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2011 00:06:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] The Murder of Hindus in Shikarpur: Let the Insanity not be prevailed! Message-ID: <1320739569.69642.YahooMailClassic@web38804.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The brutal carnage caused the murder of Dr. Satya Pal, Dr. Ajeet, Naresh and Ashok in Chak village near Shikarpur, where around 200 Hindu households inhabit since decades is not a simple as well as an accidental issue.   Although the apparent reasons are connecting this criminal act with another issue that happened almost one week ago in Shikarpur in which some Hindu boys were booked and taken into  custody; the carnage seems to be targeting those who were attempting to resolve the issue through traditional community conflict resolution mechanisms.   The increasing fundamentalism and its patronization in Shikarpur after Great Foods of 2010 is the major factor behind the incident, where existence of religious militants in the area that used to be visible more than once in the form of setting the NATO tankers on fire as well as the open sale of weaponry by the weapon rackets in Shikarpur and other districts of north Sindh.   This incident is definitely potent, if not a conspiracy, to air communal violence in Sindh and has raised a sense of insecurity in the already harassed and insecure Hindu community of the province, which is being pushed to migrate to India in as much as worst manners as during portion of Indian Subcontinent.          We condemn this criminal act, term it an conscious attempt to dismantle harmonious interfaith environment of Sindh and demand the government to take a set of steps to secure Hindu as well as other minority communities of Sindh.   This is the time when the political parties and broader civil society stand together to protect our Hindus, Christians and other minority communities.   Let the Insanity not be prevailed!   Regards,   Zulfiqar Shah Convener, Movement for Peace & Tolerance www.movementforpeace.net Cell: +92 333 464 888 1 Hyderabad   From ram at maraa.in Tue Nov 8 19:02:14 2011 From: ram at maraa.in (Ram Bhat) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2011 19:02:14 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena strikes again Message-ID: Dear All, Our experience of trying to host a discussion on the role of creative practice and how it can address conflict afflicted areas, such as Kashmir. Please read more about it here: http://maraa.in/bhagat-singh-kranti-sena-strikes-again/ Would request you to kindly share it amongst your contacts/lists and also would like to hear your thoughts and comments on this best, Ram maraa.in @Maraa_blr http://www.facebook.com/pages/maraa-a-media-collective/135629861736 From shahzulf at yahoo.com Wed Nov 9 04:33:39 2011 From: shahzulf at yahoo.com (Zulfiqar Shah) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2011 15:03:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Press Release: Killing of Three Hindus in Shikarpur: Fill the Besant Hall Road against Religious Intolerance Message-ID: <1320793419.87314.YahooMailClassic@web38805.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Killing of Three Hindus in Shikarpur: Fill the Besant Hall Road against Religious Intolerance  Press Release Hyderabad: Paigham-e-Sindh Forum, Movement for Peace & Tolerance, Pakistan Peace Coalition and Woman Action Forum condemning the brutal murder of three innocent Hindus in Shikarpur has announced ‘Fill the Besant Hall Road against Religious Intolerance’ rally in front of early 20th centaury Theosophical Society’s interior Sindh’s centre Besant Hall in Hyderabad on Monday November 14, 12:00 PM. Representatives of the forums Punhal Sariyo (Sindh Harri Porihyat Council), Zulfiqar Shah (Institute for Social Movements (ISM), Jabbar Bhatti (Indus Institute for Education & Research), Amar Sindhu (Woman Action Forum), Zahida Detho (Pakistan Peace Council), Mohammad Ali Shah (Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum), Mustafa Baloch (Strengthening Participatory Organization), Suleman G Abro (Sindh Agriculture and Forestry Workers Coordination Organization), Shehnaz Shidi (South Asia Partnership Pakistan), Jami Chandio (Centre for Peace & Civil Society), Dr. Ashothama (Human Rights Commission of Pakistan), Shuja Qureshi (Pakistan Institute of Labour Education & Research), Masood Mahesar (Research & Development Foundation), Sikandar Brohi (Participatory Village Development Program), Javed Soz (Sindh Community Foundation), Murad Pandhrani (Prbhat), Mahesh Kumar (We Journalists), Iqbal Mallah, Kashif Bajeer (SPARC), Ghaffar Malik (SDS), Asghar Leghari (Laar Human Development Program), Shaheena Ramzan (Bhandar Sangat), Dr. Haider Malokani (Green Rural Development Organization), Akbar Dars (Civil Society Support Program), Adam Malik (PPC), Shaukat Memon (Indus Rural Development Organization), Mansoor Dahiri (Dharti Development Society) and others demanded the government to take immediate actions for detention of the culprits and ensure security to the Hindus, Christians and other minorities in the province. In a statement the civil society representative have said that the killing seems to be a targeted action that is potent threat to the composite and harmonious environment of Sindh. They showed their deep concern over the increasing intolerance in Sindh particularly in flood hit northern districts of the province where tribal conflicts and weaponization have been major challenges to the law and order, peace and human security.     They said that the victimization and harassment of Hindus through kidnapping, murders and forced convergences since last decade in Sindh has left no other option to the minority community then that of migrating from Pakistan.   They demanded that provincial and federal government should ensure the security to the minority in Pakistan particularly in Sindh, which houses a larger number of Hindus, Christians, Zoroastrians, Bihais and others. They said that this is the high time when political parties, broader civil society, enlightened religious scholars and media should act together to prevent such insanity in the interfaith tranquil province of Sindh.    Ends Contacts:  Punhal Sarriyo, PSF, 0332260557 Zulfiqar Shah, MPT, 03334648881 Amar Sindhu, WAF, 03003033095 Zahida Detho, PPC, 03083902297 From rohitrellan at aol.in Wed Nov 9 09:22:11 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2011 22:52:11 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Reader-list] Reminder: A Wall is A Screen/ Bal Sangam 2011/ Screening of a Film on Tibet, Nov 9, TISS, Bombay/ Save the Date : Belgian Film Festival - 21st to 30th November Message-ID: <8CE6CAA180D48CA-C2C-132669@webmail-m078.sysops.aol.com> Tuesday, November 8 and Thursday, November 10, 7 pm Meeting Point: Central Park Main Market, Defence Colony, 6.45 pm A Wall is a Screen is a mobile cinema, a combination of a guided city tour and a film night. Using a beamer, a sound system, and a car battery, short films are projected on walls. At the end of a film, the group moves on to the next wall. Each and every tour is different. The films are selected according to the surroundings and the occasion, with a specific film being chosen for a specific location. Film and location are in harmony with each other and allow the observer a different view of his surroundings. The resultant associations – sometimes deliberate, sometimes coincidental - between the film and the location are exciting, and often surprising. Be it the street sounds that mingle with what is happening on the screen or the reactions of the audience and passers-by – the tours are special and unique precisely because of these random disturbances. The screenings are free, on principle, and a film is selected bearing the local language in mind. This is a low-profile programme for passers-by and invited guests to come together and experience art in the public space. In the course of the evening, a growing number of spectators attaches itself to the group and the crowd swells. People, who perhaps would never have been at the same programme together, now stand side by side to watch a film and talk about it as they walk to the next venue. For further information please contact 011 23471139 or visit http://www.germany-and-india.com/en/event/32. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bal Sangam 2011 New Delhi, November 4, 2011: Sanskaar Rang Toli (Theatre-in-Education Company) of National School of Drama (NSD) announced Bal Sangam 2011 at Sammukh Auditorium, NSD today. As part of its constant endeavor towards cultural and educational development of children, this year’s edition of the bi-annual cultural mela will focus on the revival of dying cultural art forms of India through children. Bal Sangam 2011 is being organized at Crafts Museum, Bhairon Marg, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi from 8th to 14th November, 2011 and will be featuring an ensemble of various traditional performing art forms that will be presented by children from different states across India. Ranging from the folk dances and martial art forms of the North East to the Kallari Payattu of Kerala in the South to the traditional dance forms of Jammu & Kashmir in the North, the children belonging to traditional performing families, guru-paramparas and institutions will present a kaleidoscopic view of rich Indian culture. Participating groups include Bhavesh Chaue Natya Kala Kendra from Jharkhand, Hari Saran Cultural Centre, Reasi from J&K, Hindustan Kalari Sangam from Kerala, Sahitya Kala Mandal from Mumbai, Garh Joypur Saptarshi (Vatdi Chhau Akademi) and Sarabhuj, Medinipur from West Bengal, Dasabhuja Gotipua Orissi Nrutya Parisad and UKIA (An Institution of Sambalpuri Folk and Tribal Dance Group) from Orissa, Huyen Lallong Manipur Thang Ta Cultural Association from Manipur, Pragati Sangha and Kadam Toli Ojahpali Dal from Assam, Kohinoor Langa Group and The Performers, Udaipur from Rajasthan, Anand Niketan Eklavya Model Residential School from Gujarat and Shri Krishna Lok Sanskritik Vikas Sansthan from Madhya Pradesh. Children from these groups will showcase the various art forms of their respective states and regions during the 7 day festival. The festival also includes art and craft workshops like origami, pottery, puppet-making, recycling, etc. Theatre In Education Company (Sanskar Rang Toli) of National School of Drama was established on October 16, 1989, and is one of the important educational resource centers in the country. TIE Company consists of a group of actor-teachers working with and performing for children. The major focus of TIE Company is to perform creative, curriculum based and participatory plays in schools specially designed and prepared for children of different age groups. The major thrust of the plays is to create an atmosphere to encourage children, to raise questions, make decisions and choices with an awareness of themselves within larger society. TIE Company has done more than 800 performances of 26 plays in Delhi and other parts of the country. More than 5.5 lakh children, apart from college students, teachers, parents and theatre lovers, have witnessed these plays. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Screening of a Film on Tibet, Nov 9, TISS, Bombay From: Friends of Tibet TWO DAYS FOR TIBET (MUMBAI, NOV 9-10, 2011) Wed, November 9, 2011 The Root Reel in association with Friends of Tibet invite you for the screening of the documentary "The Sun Behind The Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom" by Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam at the Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Deonar, Mumbai on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 6:15pm. The award-winning documentary film will be presented by Tenzin Tsundue, Tibetan poet and activist followed by a question and answer session. All are invited. Thu, November 10, 2011 Join us for a book reading session by Tibetan poet-writer-activist Tenzin Tsundue as he reads from the seventh edition of Kora and shares his thoughts, hopes and concern around his homeland - Tibet. The event will be held at Kitab Khana, Somaiya Bhavan, 45/47 MG Road, Fort, Mumbai. All are invited. To know about the event, call Nitesh Mohanty of The Root Reel at: 9820095432 or email: jointheroot at gmail.com More about Tenzin Tsundue: www.friendsoftibet.org/tenzin/ More about "The Sun Behind The Clouds": www.thesunbehindthecoulds.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Save the Date : Belgian Film Festival - 21st to 30th November Alliance Française de Delhi In association with theRoyal Belgian Embassy in India Cordially invite you to The Belgian Film Festival (More info to follow) From rohitrellan at aol.in Wed Nov 9 09:37:47 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2011 23:07:47 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Reader-list] See If It Can Happen, an audio-visual installation / Nainsukh-the 18th century pahari painter/ SWISS BOX at Dilli Haat Message-ID: <8CE6CAC45F5420C-810-1B40A6@webmail-m134.sysops.aol.com> See If It Can Happen, an audio-visual installation A collaborative presentation by the Swiss musician, Hans Koch and the Indian artist Rashmi Kaleka, ‘See If It Can Happen’ will transcend sounds as moments of energy will be ensnared between music and voices of real people and real situations. An electronic synthesis that arrives at a coherent sound design. Date: Wednesday 16 November 2011 at 6:30 pm Venue: Lalit Kala Akademi-Garhi Artist Studios, Kalka Devi Marg, East of Kailash, New Delhi - 110065 Project brief: Hawkers voices are of real people whose survival roles decree their own rules, it's a form of 'surrender'. A whole life can be written around them - voices that spawn amazing ways of singing, the idea is to use the form and to play with its expectations. It's an unknown territory that has the potential to produce a 'sonic' pleasure. A social aspect of music that has the possibility of losing its own 'self' is what interests me. To use the old monument in Garhi as a backdrop for that night is to suture indigenous with the 'western', -'western' as manifested in the mainstream) The idea is to ensnare moments of energy between music and a voice - point of departure and return, new and old, past and present. I was thinking what would come closer to creating a 'within': in regards to musical instruments, many are able to morph into a variety of sounds that echo a human voice. The closest in today's sounds that has an electronic beat that pulses around a one-note baseline, has to be Radiohead's song The Butcher. It slides and glides around shadows that rise and fall. The other seven minute song Supercollider is beautifully calm, electronic pulse, riffs of synth, unpredictable chorus, the synth crescendo merges beautifully with Yorke's, (lead singer), falsetto. I wanted very much to create a symphony of music which combine live instruments as well as electronic apparatus, weird chord sequences, strange keys which can be musically challenging. The innovation of today's time is a combination of live instruments and a sonic pleasure created with recordings, (voices) and electronic synth to arrive at a coherent sound design. Rashmi Kaleka New Delhi 2011 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nainsukh-the 18th century pahari painter Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council in partnership with Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi, Amar Mahal Museum and Library Jammu, India International Centre New Delhi, National Institute of Design Ahmedabad and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai presents “Nainsukh” - the 18th century pahari painter lectures by Dr Eberhard Fischer and Prof B.N Goswamy and biographical film by Amit Dutta (Venice Film Festival 2010) Schedule: Chandigarh / 18 November 2011 Venue: Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi / Government Museum & Art Gallery at 5:30 pm Programme: film (with brief introduction) Partner: Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi Jammu / 20 November 2011 Venue: Amar Mahal Museum and Library at 10:30 am Programme: lecture & film Partner: Amar Mahal Museum and Library New Delhi / 23 &24 November 2011 Venue: India International Centre at 6:30 pm Programme: lecture & film (respectively) Partner: India International Centre Ahmedabad / 26 November 2011 Venue: National Institute of Design Programme: lecture & film Partner: National Institute of Design Mumbai / 29 & 30 November 2011 Venue: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya at 2:30 pm Programme: lecture & film (respectively) Partner: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya The Film Nainsukh (c. 1710 - 1778) was trained in a traditional Pahari painters' family-workshop at Guler in today's Kangra District (H.P.) and became the major retained artist at the court of Jasrota (J&K). Famous for his intimate, well observed and precise, sometimes humorous, often somewhat enigmatic, always sensitively drawn pictures, especially of his long-time patron Balwant Singh, Nainsukh is today considered the most extraordinary Indian artist of his time. His biography and extensive oeuvre as researched and reconstructed by Prof. B. N. Goswamy has been the basis of the film "Nainsukh" by Amit Dutta, produced by Dr. Eberhard Fischer. The film ‘Nainsukh, the Great Pahari Painter of the 18th Century’, premiered at the Venice Film Festiva in 2010. Film Credit: Producer: Dr Eberhard Fischer Research and guidance: Prof. B. N. Goswamy Director: Amit Dutta Miniature artist who plays Nainsukh: Manish Soni The Lecture Eberhard Fischer has researched, propagated and collected Nainsukh's unique artistic work for the last thirty years. In his lecture, he will present pictures, art-historical documents and major sites connected with Nainsukh's life and discuss this painter's extraordinary achievements. This background information will serve for a better understanding of the exquisite film "Nainsukh" by Amit Dutta. For information on Swiss art-anthropologist Dr Eberhard Fischer, Indian art historian Prof B. N. Goswamy and film director Amit Dutta click here. http://www.prohelvetia.in/fileadmin/pro_helvetia_india/docs/_Nainsukh__cv_s.pdf ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SWISS BOX at Dilli Haat Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council in collaboration with Dilli Haat & The Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust presents SWISS BOX Four languages. Four fairy tales. One country: Switzerland. A seven-minute puppet performance that brings Switzerland to you right here in New Delhi! on Tuesday 8, Wednesday 9 and Thursday 10 November 2011 can be viewed by two persons at a time from 5 to 9 pm at Dilli Haat, Sri Aurobindo Marg, (opposite INA Market) New Delhi - 110016 Puppeteers: Anurupa Roy, Vivek Kumar, Pawan Waghmare, Asha and Swiss puppeteer Frida Leon. Story tellers: Nina Taho Zanetti, Astride Schläfli, Katharina Baldauf and Roman Weishaupt. Entry: Admission as per Dilli Haat regulations. Language: German with strong visual impressions. Comprehensible to all. ---------- Swiss puppeteer, Frida Leon Béraud is currently in India on a Studio Residency. Frida is a puppeteer and an actress from Zurich. She has specialised in doll-theatre and has travelled extensively with her performances in USA, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. She studied puppetry at the «Ernst Busch» Drama College in Berlin. After gaining experience in acting, street and movement theatre, Frida Leon Béraud joined hands with musician Frauke Jakobi to establish the Dalang Puppencompany in 2004. A freelance director and scenographer, Frida is also the co-founder of ‘Chamäleon’. From subhachops at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 19:32:25 2011 From: subhachops at gmail.com (Subhash) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2011 19:32:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] U.S. Used Chemical Weapons In Iraq Message-ID: U.S. Used Chemical Weapons In Iraq Veteran admits: Bodies melted away before us. Shocking revelation RAI News 24. White phosphorous used on the civilian populace: This is how the US "took" Fallujah. New napalm formula also used. 11/07/05 "La Repubblica" -- -- ROME. In soldier slang they call it Willy Pete. The technical name is white phosphorus. In theory its purpose is to illumine enemy positions in the dark. In practice, it was used as a chemical weapon in the rebel stronghold of Fallujah. And it was used not only against enemy combatants and guerrillas, but again innocent civilians. The Americans are responsible for a massacre using unconventional weapons, the identical charge for which Saddam Hussein stands accused. An investigation by RAI News 24, the all-news Italian satellite television channel, has pulled the veil from one of the most carefully concealed mysteries from the front in the entire US military campaign in Iraq. A US veteran of the Iraq war told RAI New correspondent Sigfrido Ranucci this: I received the order use caution because we had used white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military slag it is called 'Willy Pete'. Phosphorus burns the human body on contact--it even melts it right down to the bone. RAI News 24's investigative story, Fallujah, The Concealed Massacre, will be broadcast tomorrow on RAI-3 and will contain not only eye-witness accounts by US military personnel but those from Fallujah residents. A rain of fire descended on the city. People who were exposed to those multicolored substance began to burn. We found people with bizarre wounds-their bodies burned but their clothes intact, relates Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji, a biologist and Fallujah resident. I gathered accounts of the use of phosphorus and napalm from a few Fallujah refugees whom I met before being kidnapped, says Manifesto reporter Giuliana Sgrena, who was kidnapped in Fallujah last February, in a recorded interview. I wanted to get the story out, but my kidnappers would not permit it. RAI News 24 will broadcast video and photographs taken in the Iraqi city during and after the November 2004 bombardment which prove that the US military, contrary to statements in a December 9 communiqué from the US Department of State, did not use phosphorus to illuminate enemy positions (which would have been legitimate) but instend dropped white phosphorus indiscriminately and in massive quantities on the city's neighborhoods. In the investigative story, produced by Maurizio Torrealta, dramatic footage is shown revealing the effects of the bombardment on civilians, women and children, some of whom were surprised in their sleep. The investigation will also broadcast documentary proof of the use in Iraq of a new napalm formula called MK77. The use of the incendiary substance on civilians is forbidden by a 1980 UN treaty. The use of chemical weapons is forbidden by a treaty which the US signed in 1997. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10901.htm From rohitrellan at aol.in Thu Nov 10 07:24:14 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2011 20:54:14 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Reader-list] Harkat@Sarai 4: An Evening with Greta Mendez / Childrens Cinema Festival at Instituto Cervantes/ Short Film Audition in Noida Message-ID: <8CE6D62C8A4F513-508-68296@webmail-d132.sysops.aol.com> Harkat at Sarai 4: An Evening with Greta Mendez Time Thursday, November 10 · 6:00pm - 9:00pm Location Sarai Basement, 29, Rajpur Road, Civil Lines, Delhi-110054 THREE SHORT FILMS BY GRETA MENDEZ (1) THE VISIBLE INVISIBLE (5 minutes) A work created during Art Karavan (2) DE/MOC/ CRY/ C ( 10 minutes) (3) OPHELIA set in Kashmir (5 minutes). Greta Mendez is a performance artist, dancer, producer, director, carnivalist, and choreographer. Originally hailing from Fyzabad, Trinidad, she moved to London very early in her life to expand her horizons in dance. Over her forty-year career she has performed and choreographed worldwide, including projects in Greece, India, Italy, and China. She has received the BP & National Westminster Dance and Mime Award, a New York International Film and Video Award, a Dance Fellowship from the Greater London Arts Council, and been awarded a Travel Bursary by the Arts Council. In April 2009, she presented her performance work Ndulgence at Alice Yard. In 2010 Mendez participated in Art Karavan International, an initiative developed by artist Inder Salim. She joined the Karavan in Shimla and journeyed on to Jammu, Srinagar, and Delhi. The central premise was to involve local Indian and international artists, to find a vehicle for common expression and common ground. THE THERESA AND NEHA CHAT SHOW A live interactive work, based on identity, presented in the form of a television chat show by Inder Salim, with questions from the audience. Featuring the young emerging artist Zooni Tickoo & the Trinidadian artist Greta Mendez. MYSTICISM IN KASHMIRI SUFI POETRY: A SHORT INTRODUCTORY LECTURE BY M.H. ZAFFAR. M.H.Zaffar is a well known poet and writer in Kashmir. He is Director, Institute of Kashmir Studies, Kashmir University. He has translated many ancient texts from Sanskrit to Kashmiri. All are welcome. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Childrens Cinema Festival at Instituto Cervantes “Manolito Gafotas” (Manolito Four-Eyes), 1999 Director: Miguel Albaladejo Idioma / Language: Español con subtítulos en Inglés / Spanish with English subtitles Duración /Duration: 89min Sinopsis: Manolito se halla en plenas vacaciones navideñas y a punto de celebrar las fiestas con su estupenda y simpática familia, mamá Cata, papa Manolo, el abuelo y el Imbécil. El tío Nico, el hermano de mamá que reside en Oslo, donde trabaja de camarero, llega a pasar la Nochebuena en una increíble autocaravana acompañado por su prometida, la fantástica y rutilante noruega Trudi, la amiga de los renos y algo así como mitad hada, mitad gran vikinga, mitad Pipi Calzaslargas, que al instante flipa a Manolito, quien la toma por una especie de sirena. Synopsis: Manolito is in full holiday season and about to c elebrate the holidays with his great and nice family, his mom Cata and dad Manolo, the grandfather and the Moron. Nico's uncle, the brother of his mother who lives in Oslo, where he works as a waiter, comes in an incredible motor home to spend Christmas Eve. Accompanied by his fantastic and brilliant Norwegian fiancée, Trudi, friend of reindeers and something like half fairy, half great Viking, half Pippi Longstocking, who Manolito instantly likes and he thinks she is a sort of siren. Fecha y hora: Sábado 12 nov. a las 10:30am y domingo 13 nov. a las 12:30 pm Lugar: Auditorio Date and time: Saturday 12th Nov at 10:30am and Sunday 13th Nov at 12:30pm Place: Auditorium “Nocturna, una aventura mágica” (Nocturna, a magic adventure), 2007 Dirección / Direction: Adrià García, Víctor Maldonado Idioma / Language: Español con subtítulos en Inglés / Spanish with English subtitles Duración /Duration: 80min Sinopsis: En Nocturna, cientos de criaturas de lo más variopinto trabajan para crear ese espacio de tiempo en el que lo racional deja paso a la magia y en el que cualquier cosa puede suceder. Tim, un visitante inesperado de este mundo, recorre extraños caminos de la mano de sus nuevos amigos en busca de las estrellas extraviadas. Un largo y tortuoso viaje en el que vamos a tener la oportunidad de desvelar todos estos misterios y conocer a quienes los hacen posibles, los extraños e imposibles habitantes de la noche, los nocturnos. Synopsis: In Nocturna, hundreds of colourful creatures work to create a space of time in which the rational gives way to magic and in which anything can happen. Tim, an unexpected visitor of this world, travels strange paths by the hand of his new friends in search of the m issing stars. A long and tortuous journey that we will have the opportunity to unravel its mysteries and meet the strange and impossible people of the night: the nocturnes. Fecha y hora: Sábado 12 nov. a las 12:30pm y domingo 13 nov. a las 10:30 am. Lugar: Auditorio Date and time: Saturday 12th Nov at 12:30pm. and Sunday 13th Nov at 10:30am Place: Auditorium ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Short Film Audition in Noida Dear All, Tanzil Art and Montage Urgently Requires 1) Lead Actor (Male & Female) 2) Supporting Actor (Male & Female) For its upcoming short Film “Craving”. “Craving” (Short Film): It’s a Dark Emotional Film based on Drugs & its effect. The Four to Five Days Shoot will be held in Delhi/Noida from 15 to 20 Nov-2011. Character Description 1) Radhye (22 to 26 years): A young Innocent boy who becomes drugs addict. 2) Jacob (30 to 35 years): A Drug dealer. 3) Gudiya (18 to 21 years): Radhye’s Sister. 4) Sheela (21 t o 25 years): Radhye’s friend & drugs addict. 5) Dharamsingh (45 to 50 years): Radhye’s Father. Audition Preparation: Prepare any scene of Maximum 3 mins on Drugs Addiction. Audition Date: Thursday, 10-Nov-2011 Time: 1 pm to 5 pm Venue: A-71, Sector-40, Noida (UP) Call: Viral-9350790284, Ankit-9999556998, Amul-9717268688 From rohitism at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 09:36:23 2011 From: rohitism at gmail.com (Rohit Shetti) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:36:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Seminar: Nuclear Energy's Deadly Secrets In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY TEACH-IN SEMINAR "From Hiroshima to Fukushima: Nuclear Energy's Deadly Secrets" WHEN: 13 November, 2011. 1.30 to 6.30 p.m. WHERE: B.Ed Hall, Dept of Education, Loyola College, Chennai WHAT: Photo Exhibition, Film Screenings, Lectures by eminent scientists and activists, discussion Organised by: Chennai Solidarity Group for Koodankulam Struggle c/o H16/9 Seevakan Street, Kalakshetra Colony, Chennai 600 090 More info: nity682 at gmail.com From rama.sangye at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 10:28:25 2011 From: rama.sangye at gmail.com (V Ramaswamy) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:28:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Satyesh Chakraborty Message-ID: <17FEA2D4-A123-4F89-BD5C-EE94CFCDB736@gmail.com> Prof Satyesh Chakraborty, eminent georgrapher, and former professor at IIM Joka, passed away on Monday. He was 81. There will be a memorial meeting on Sunday, 13 November 2011, at Birla Academy, Southern Avenue, Calcutta, 11 am to 2 pm. V Ramaswamy From rama.sangye at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 10:30:23 2011 From: rama.sangye at gmail.com (V Ramaswamy) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:30:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] latest news on rickshaws References: <01E1C4AA-D575-4715-B421-A03673458902@gmail.com> Message-ID: <8803E4BC-9ACF-41F1-9459-C59529A8EB0E@gmail.com> Today's Telegraph (Calcutta) reports: Rickshaw licence Fresh licences would be issued to hand-pulled rickshaws and carts, mayor Sovan Chatterjee announced on Wednesday. The CMC had stopped issuing licences in 2009. (It may be recalled that on 15 Aug 2005, Chief Minister BUddhadev Bhattacharya had announced that rickshaws would be banned.) V Ramaswamy From arvindkdas at rediffmail.com Thu Nov 10 12:50:39 2011 From: arvindkdas at rediffmail.com (arvind das) Date: 10 Nov 2011 07:20:39 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] =?utf-8?b?4KSy4KSC4KSm4KSoIOCkoeCkvuCkr+CksOClgCAo?= =?utf-8?b?4KSm4KWLKQ==?= Message-ID: <20111110072039.12968.qmail@f5mail-224-114.rediffmail.com> मार्क्स के नाम संदेश: लंदन डायरी अरविंद दास हम दिन भर पैदल लंदन की सड़कों को नाप चुके थे. विवियन यूँ तो वियना की है पर लंदन की गलियों से उसकी पहचान है. शहर के उन हिस्सों में उसकी दिलचस्पी ज्यादा है जो 'लोनली प्लैनेट' सरीखी किताबों और टूरिस्ट गाइडों में जगह नहीं पाती. सबेरे ‘टेम्स नदी’ की खोज में हम निकले. सिटी सेंटर से टेम्स बहुत दूर तो नहीं था पर इस खोज में हमने कई ऐसी इमारतें देखी जो शायद हम ट्यूब या बस में चढ़ कर नहीं देख सकते थे. वैसे भी शहर की पुरानी गलियों में भटकना नए इलेक्ट्रॉनिक उपकरण से खेलने की तरह होता है. कोई इंजीनियर हमें तकनीकी बारीकियाँ भले समझा दे पर सीखते हम खुद उससे उलझ कर ही है. किसी भी पुरानी सभ्यता की तरह लंदन में पुराने स्थापत्य और नई इमारतें एक साथ हमजोली की तरह खड़ी नजर आती है. एक तरफ क्रिस्टोफर वारेन की तीन सौ साल पुरानी ‘सेंट पॉल कैथिडरल’ की अदभुत और दिलकश वास्तुशिल्प है तो दूसरी तरफ कारोबार के दमकते नए भवन हैं जो आधुनिक कला के नजारे दिखाते हैं. शहर के अंदरुनी हिस्सों में मजबूत और विशाल भवन ब्रितानी साम्राज्य के अतीत के गवाक्ष हमारे सामने खोलते � �ैं. बहरहाल, थोड़ी दूर पर लंदन टॉवर ब्रिज के दो बुर्ज दिख रहे हैं. आसमान साफ है. सफेद-नीले बादलों का गुच्छा टेम्स नदी पर लटक रहा है. हल्की गुलाबी ठंड है और हवा में खनक. टेम्स नदी के किनारे काफी रौनक और चहल पहल है. नदी के तट पर एक जगह मुझे कुछ कंटीले गुलाबी रंग के फूल दिख रहे हैं मैंने ठहर कर अपने कैमरे में उसे कैद कर लिया. हल्की हवा का स्पर्श पाकर चिनार के हरे-पीले पत्ते इधर-उधर उड़ रहे हैं. एक ���त्ता उठा कर मैंने अपनी जेब में रख ली. टेम्स के सम्मोहन में मैं बंधने लगा हूँ. यूरोप की नदियाँ शहरों से इस कदर गुंथी हुई हैं कि आप उसे शहर की संस्कृति से अलगा नहीं सकते. पेरिस में सेन हो, कोलोन में राइन या लिंज में डेन्यूब! क्या कभी गंगा, यमुना और पेरियार भी हमारे शहर की संस्कृति का हिस्सा रही होगी? टेम्स के ‘साउथ बैंक’ पर सेकिंड हैंड किताबों का बाजार सजने लगा है. सामने नेशनल थिएटर की इमारत पर रंग-बिरंगे पोस्टर दिख रहे हैं. दूसरी ओर कुछ फर्लांग की दूरी पर ‘शेक्सपीयर ग्लोब थिएटर’ और ‘टेट मार्डन गैलरी’ है. लंदन की यात्रा से पहले मेरे बॉस करण (थापर) ने कहा था कि ‘लंदन जाने पर वहाँ के थिएटर मे जरुर जाना और देखना कि किस तरह बिना चीखे-चिल्लाए वे अपने भावों को अभिव्यक्त करते हैं. हमारे बॉलीवुड की तरह नहीं...’ शेक्सपीयर ग्लोब थिएटर के पास पहुँचने पर हमने देखा कि शो छूटने में बस 10 मिनट है. हम पाँच पांउड में खड़े होकर नाटक देखने का टिकट लेकर ‘द गॉड ऑफ सोहो’ देखने ऑडिटोरियम में घुस गए. खुले आसमान में मंच बना है और दर्शकों के लिए दोनों ओर सामने लकड़ी की दो मंजिला बैठक है. खड़े हो कर देखने वालों के लिए बारिश की बूंदा-बांदी से बचाव का कोई साधन नहीं. जितने लोग दर्शक दीर्घा में बैठे है उतने ही खड़े. नाटकों में मेरी अभिरुचि रही है पर इस तरह का बेबाक डॉयलॉग और अभिनय पहली बार देखा-सुना. वैसे हमें अगाह कर दिया गया था कि नाटक में ‘अभद्र भाषा (filthy language)’ का प्रयोग है और यह नाटक कमजोर दिलवालों के लिए नहीं है!! थिएटर के निकल कर हम सोचते रहे कि कैसे नाटक की मुख्य स्त्री पात्र ने मंच पर एक-एक कर अपने कपड़े फेंक दिए...! हमारी संवेदना को झकझोरने के लिए यह एक नया और अलग अनुभव था. वैसे नाटक के कथानक को देखते हुए हम दृश्य संयोजन से अचंभित नहीं थे. शाम हो रही थी और हमें तय करना था कि अब लंदन के किस कोने में हमें जाना है. किन सड़कों पर भटकना है. बातों बातों में मैंने कहा कि ‘कार्ल मार्क्स की कब्र लंदन में ही है.’ अच्छा! मुझे पता नहीं था….विवियन ने कहा. हाइड पार्क या मार्क्स की कब्र- दो में एक चुनना था और हमनें हाईगेट कब्रगाह जाने का निश्चय किया. कब्रगाह शहर से बाहर था. हाईगेट स्टेशन पर ट्यूब से निकल कर हम जिस कॉलोनी से कब्रगाह की ओर बढ़ रहे थे वह पॉश कॉलोनी लग रही थी. ऊँची पहाड़ियों पर खूबसूरत भवन. महंगे कार और करीने से सजे लॉन. दो-तीन किलोमीटर पैदल चल कर जब हम कब्रगाह पहुँचे शाम के करीब सात बज रहे थे. चारों तरफ सन्नाटा था और कब्रगाह में ताला लटक रहा था. अगल-बगल हमने नजर दौड़ाई पर वहाँ कोई नहीं दिख रहा था. अलबत्ता कब्रगाह के अंदर एक लोमड़ी टहलती दिख रही थी. इसी बीच सड़क पर निकले एक व्यक्ति को रोक कर हमने पूछा कि ‘क्या मार्क्स की कब्रगाह यही है?’ भले मानुष ने थोड़ी हताशा भरी स्वर में कहा कि ‘बेशक यही है. पर आप देर हो चुके हैं. यह पाँच बजे बंद हो जाती है.’ हमारे चेहरे पर आए निराशा के भाव को पढ़ कर उन्होंने पूछा आप कहाँ से आए हैं? मैं भारत से हूँ और ये ऑस्ट्रिया से आई हैं... कोई नहीं, आप फिर कल आ जाइएगा... विवियन ने कहा कि क्यों ना हम मार्क्स के नाम एक संदेश छोड़ जाएँ. मैनें कहा जरूर.. ‘कामरेड मार्क्स, हृदय के अंतकरण से हमारी श्रद्धांजलि! दुनिया बदल गई है पर इस बदली हुई दुनिया में तुम्हारे सिद्धांतों की जरुरत कम नहीं हुई, बल्कि और बढ़ गई है!’ विवियन ने कपड़े के एक छोटे से टुकड़े में इस संदेश को लपेट कर कब्रगाह के दरवाजे पर बांध दिया... (जनसत्ता में समांतर कॉलम के तहत 'टेम्स के किनारे' शीर्षक से 9 नवंबर 2011 को प्रकाशित) From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 19:34:26 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:34:26 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Book Review: State Power and Democracy Message-ID: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27561 The US is a Police State Review of Andrew Kolin, State Power and Democracy by Prof. John McMurtry Global Research, November 9, 2011 Review of Andrew Kolin, State Power and Democracy (2011), New York: St. Martin’s Press/Palgrave Macmillan, 248 pp. Many readers may have thought the U.S. is “like a police state” - - think of the security dress down of everyone boarding a flight within the U.S. sphere of control. Political scientist Andrew Kolin goes far beyond hasty analogue. He argues with rich factual substantiation that the U.S is a police state all the way down – not only since the stolen elections and war state of George Bush Jr., but before and since in a cumulative throughline of bureaucratized despotism across borders. Documented examples are reported in detail from 1950 on to disclose a record that is as systematic in suppressing public dissent as its client dictatorships elsewhere – albeit far more successfully kept out of public and scholarly attention. Since the electoral contests of, by and for the rich in America are proclaimed as “the leader of the Free World” in the ad-vehicle media many still watch and read, an example helps to clarify the reality not reported. When three nuns protested before the war-criminal bombing of Iraq in 2002 where no war crime was left undone, “they were arrested, handcuffed, left on the ground for three hours and then jailed for seven months before trial - - [for] sabotage and obstruction of justice” (p. 153). Every step of their police repression was within the laws that had been concocted before and after 9-11, in particular by the provisions of “the Patriot Act” – with here as elsewhere the legislative title as integral to the Orwellian language of rule. The symbolic action of the nuns - painting blood on a missile silo – was in fact backed by international law against the “supreme crime” of non-defensive armed invasion of another country. Indeed their protest occurred just before the saturation bombing of civilian Baghdad which ended in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. But mass-murderous facts, citizen responsibility, moral courage and peaceful expression of the law of nations do not detain U.S. legal machinery. It is this legal machinery that Kolin focuses on to make his case that the U.S. is a police state. What is a police state? Kolin states no criterion, but it can be deduced as unlimited state power of armed force freely discharged without citizen right to stop it. Anyone who has lived in the U.S. or its client dictatorships may recognize the concrete phenomena, but what is featured in this account are the laws and directives which empower the police state norms. While the men at the top always proclaim their devotion to the defence of freedom as armed force assaults on domestic dissent and dissident countries increase, none have been found guilty of breaking the law or repressing freedom of speech or assembly. It is U.S. laws and policies which form the U.S. police state, the argument is, and they are continuously made to enable an endless litany of crimes against human life. The sustaining concern of this work, however, is not to define ordering principles, but to track the bureaucratic trails of legally terrorist offices, directives, and channels. The result is a detailed history of the inner workings of the U.S. state which exposes the legal suppression of democratic speech and action (omitting the use of laws against harmless non-pharmaceuticals as lettres de cachet to imprison the poor and the rebellious by the millions). Beneath continuous corporate-state and media proclamation of America’s freedoms and simultaneous academic fear to expose the lines of despotism, this work largely succeeds in providing the procedural workings of the U.S. police state building both before, and dramatically after, the turning point of 9-11. The manufacture of pretext imprinted in the very timing and naming of the high-tech destruction of the World Trade Center as “9-11”, and the fact that the Bush Jr. presidency needed a war or two to distract from its illegitimacy and to empower its program of “full spectrum dominance” are not, however, raised in this book. They remain unspeakable facts within the official conspiracy theory now normalized as fact. Yet this canonical theory of the 9-11 tragedy assumes the collapse of the fireproof steel-cored buildings into their footsteps near the the speed of gravity - an impossibility within the laws of physics – and the first legal question of any homicidal crime – cui bono, who benefits?- is erased from its record. So although this official story allowed all the post-9-11 police state legislation and unlimited powers Kolin focuses on, he avoids the pretext itself. Critical attention is instead confined to the silencing of questions, alternatives and dissent by the legal machinery of repression justified by it. Such “institutional analysis” is favoured by America’s lead critics, and positivist social science rules out what is not so corroborated. The clear exception to this methodological silencing here is attachment of the descriptor “police state” to the U.S., and the legally well informed record of demonstration. The maze-like bureaucratization of operations of repression is not ultimately covert, Kolin shows, but sanctified by official policies and laws. Kolin’s attention to dated laws, directives, offices, and machinations behind the spotlight and personalization of politics is a welcome re-grounding amidst the daily media kaleidoscope of ever-changing images and personalities. In contrast to the usual academic fear of ideological non-conformity, Kolin clearly summarizes at the outset: “In the latter part of the twentieth century, when mass movements for all intents and purposes were eliminated, what remained was for the most part was procedural democracy, which in a short period, would also be eliminated, to be replaced by a form of absolute power in which government had been made into a permanent police state. Much of this took place after the attacks of 9-11, during which the administration of George Bush in a very short time, was able to put in place many of the essential features of what is now an American police state” (p.2). U.S. Police State in Formation from the Revolution through Reagan to Bush-Obama Kolin goes back to the U.S. state’s foundation to find the dictatorial impulse. “The truth of the matter”, he says, “is that after the American Revolution there was thinking among economic and democratic elites that America had become too democratic, especially as mass democracy was expressing itself on the state level”(p. 3) – a view better known since a Rockefeller-founded Trilateral Commission Report made it famous centuries later. The Founding Fathers’ anti-democratic politics have been explored before by Michael Parenti, who blurbs for the book. For Kolin, it is “mass democracy” that frightens the dominant ownership class from the start because it threatens their ruling proprietary control. But this economic diagnosis is not pursued by Kolin. He conceives the motor force as “control over people and territory by the state in itself. This non-Marxian thesis is historically associated with theoretical anarchism, but is here conjoined to the idea of “mass democracy”, a motivating idea behind this work which is not given further definition. Yet we may surmise that mass democracy entails popular assemblies - the traditional “town hall meeting” of classical American democracy - in place of representation by professional politicians controlled by corporate and financial lobbies. The meta-argument is that the nature of the U.S. state itself is disposed towards power after power “over people and territory” and is thus structured against mass democracy from the beginning. It is implied that mass democracy could not itself lead to a police state. This implied argument is not secure. Desires of popular masses can be as overwhelmingly compelled to control people’s thought, action and dissent by force as state elites are, and they can be as driven to seize the territories of other people and to lord it over them via great majorities – as in the popular witch-hunts through American history and as, more broadly, age-old ethnic warfare and killing and enslavement of losing societies. Something deeper than the will of the demos to which it is accountable is required - rules to live by which protect and enable life itself. This may be the most fundamental gap in democratic theory. Annihilating Not Only Democracy, But Countless Lives and Life Supports For perhaps the majority in the U.S., loathing of government is a national pastime except for “our men in uniform” – that is, arms-laden American enforcers chasing, shooting and bombing designated enemies of America at home and abroad. Wars seem in fact very popular with the majority if they are not being lost, and public pillories and prisons for deviators from the American Way seldom lack similar support. Police state laws, the invasion of Iraq and so on seem to have been popular if they are successful. Yet Kolin’s work is more concerned to expose the state which is represented as the world leader in democracy while it rules by armed force, secrecy and terror and – especially since 9-11 - violently suppresses dissent in its own society. The inside mechanisms of legalist-bureaucratic rule not discussed or connected in the dominant media or political science are uniquely laid bare. There were many designated “enemies” from the beginning – from American Indians and genocidal laws against them to the FBI, Sedition, Alien and Espionage Acts of 1917-18, the CIA founding in 1947, followed by the Internal Security Act of 1950, McCarthy’s House UnAmerican Activities Committee from 1957, and the Patriot and Homeland Security Acts of today. All of these legal mechanisms, he shows, have been structured to silence alternative thoughts and voices in the public sphere. When to be merely unAmerican brings life ruin to U.S. citizens and designation as “the enemy” can justify the saturation bombing of weaker societies, the derangement becomes clear amidst a sustained train of such abuses over generations. When these systematic attacks simultaneously annihilate life-serving advocacy and institutions at home and elsewhere, a more sinister and unidentified pattern emerges. Not only non-conforming speech and thought are repressed, but standing up for other people’s lives and life means becomes criminalized. An invisible war is waged on social conscience and defence of life itself. Indeed this is the unrecognized selector of what the U.S. police state invariably attacks inside and outside its borders – social movements and orders to enable the lives of citizens opposed to transnational private money sequencing to more. Consider here for immediate example what the police protected in New York in the Wall Street protests until world attention no longer allowed the savage beating to continue with the dominant media cheering it on. Government armed force did not protect the lives of citizens or their cause of life justice or real market businesses on the street. Armed protective attention was directed instead to Wall Street operations by barricades, long swinging truncheons, continuous special vehicles of service to the money-men, and moving lines of trap and assault of the citizens standing for “the 99%”. In the wider world, the seven-month U.S.-NATO bombing of Libya– not to defend citizens as pretended, but to bomb main cities and government capacities, seize control of the country’s wealthy financial assets and sub-soil oil fields – went on with hardly a voice of dissent. That it destroyed Libya’s social state of free healthcare, higher education and guaranteed subsistence in food, housing and fuel was never reported even by public broadcasters. The U.S. state is in these ways structured not only towards total force and control. It is, more deeply, programmed to liquidate what serves the lives of people so as to grow transnational corporate profit for the few. Always however, there is a pretext of a demonic enemy that people are being protected from – “communism”, “subversives”, “Islamic militants”, “terrorists”, “violence-threatening protestors”, all with no criteria. Most warred upon by the U.S. state are societies’ social life support systems – including public water, electricity, health and living subsidies. Consider here the bombed former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya - not to mention trillions of dollars of defunding of U.S. social security itself to pay for private bank bailouts by public dollars. This is the deeper shadow side of the U.S. state and its global allies. On the other hand, the non-police state dimension of America - the relative but important freedom of people to say what they want in private – is an anomaly not engaged by this text. The strength of its analysis is its encyclopaedic report of the U.S. record through successive repressive laws, witchhunts and official policies, from cancelling the passports and rights of alleged communists to run for office to ever more “outlawing of dissident thought. For Kolin, this propulsion towards “absolute control” where citizen security is usurped not protected is a silent telos of the police state. Some of the revelations are hair-raising (although published errors like “Senglarb” for “Singlaub” and “Chili” for “Chile” do not assist disclosure of what most are reluctant to face). President Ronald Reagan supported El Salvador’s death-squad leaders, remained complicitly silent in the murder of Archbishop Romero and Jesuit priests calling for social justice, and backed Guatemala’s bible-fundamentalist Rioss Montt who mass-murdered Mayan peasant villagers in the tens of thousands , saying “beans for the obedient; bullets for the rest”(p. 117). His administration also secretly funded war crimes against Nicaragua by drug sales into the U.S. and arms to Iran, repudiated guilt and damages awarded by the World Court, and mounted endless attacks on “any individual or organization that voiced discontent toward the military or government”, including a 1992 CIA training manual for torture, false imprisonment and extortion including of Americans. Effective impunity - the primary marker of a police state – ruled. The Bush Jr. presidency then outdid Reagan in criminal impunity, war crimes and direction of mass murder, while the Obama presidency sustained all the mechanisms, added a third war and further stripped the social security system. Command over ever more external territory and peoples is always the direction. Permanent war is the omnibus vehicle of its advance, and mass mind control including by torture is a standard method, along now with serial murders across borders by drones. While seldom penetrating these generic principles of the global police state, Kolin follows the specifica of the inside workings of the legal-bureaucratic machine through many phases, acronyms and abhorrence of real democracy built into policies and laws. One better knows why the U.S. becomes a failed state when one sees the absolutist overriding of every attempt to bring it back into line with life-respecting values during the last half century. The Fulbright and Church Committees, the mass progressive movements of the 1960’s and 70’s, all come to nought until post-9-11 laws, terror and surveillance make the police state a formal affair, and what is not mentioned here, Congress increasingly degenerates into the best frontmen the banking, oil, weapons, med-insurance and pharma corporations can buy. The apogee of police state method follows - military tribunals in place of due process to deal with endless arrests for an open-ended charge of terrorism against people in their own countries, systematic rendition and torture against international laws, abolition of habeus corpus and all procedures protecting against false charge, simultaneous denial of legal standing as prisoners of war, and evidence kept secret without possibility of disproof. The legal limbo of the Guatanomo prison has helped to permit evasion of any accountability to the rule of law. After promising to eliminate it, President Obama did not. If one ignores the blinkering out of the private transnational corporate-financial system behind ever more people and territory for natural resource, market, labor, and strategic exploitation without limit, the book is a treasure-trove of the U.S. state-machinery for undemocratic world rule. The despotic compulsion to intimidate, control and terrorize innocent and conscientious citizens across the world including within the U.S. is hard to deny in face of such organized evidence. Just about every horror story one has heard of U.S. state rule finds a reference here. Even Franklin Roosevelt (internment of Japanese citizens) and Robert Kennedy (greenlights to FBI spying and bugging without cause, including of M.L. King) are flagged. As for Bill Clinton, he led genocide of Iraqi’s social state, attack on social security at home, and refused to ratify the International War Crimes Court. “Abstract wording” of laws against “terrorism” from the 1960’s on is the means whereby progressive non-violent organizations and people have been criminalized for standing against mass-murderous U.S. state policies from Latin America to the Middle East to Indonesia to Vietnam. “Empire rolling back democracy” is the stated theme across decades and continents, but it might be more disquietingly understood as an ecogenocidal program of money-party rule across borders. People are replaced, but the mechanism rules on. With the presidential brand change of Obama, for example, no law, directive and policy of disemployment, union-busting, social security elimination, or foreign war was stopped, whatever the promises to do so. All have in fact increased, including by new bombing of a defenceless oil country. Least of all is the Wall Street license to print debt-money and siphon trillions of dollars more of taxpayers’ money reversed. Rather taxpayers at home and abroad are increasingly ruined to pay for the bankers’ fraud while ever more lose their homes, jobs, social security supports, and futures of their children. Yet the economic level of the U.S. police state remains in the shadows. From the start, the founding of the U.S. was on the basis of protecting private wealth and its accumulation with no common life interest defined. It allowed the limitless seizure of Indian people’s lands and territories West of the Appalachians which George III had forbidden, and extended the unregulated rights of the private money power so fast and far that Thomas Jefferson himself warned that “banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The [money and credit] issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it belongs”. Over 230 years later, the problem is clearer as U.S. state rule by force and dictate becomes a visible dead-end. But as to whether the Wall-Street money power behind the state that predates the world is brought under control is a question not posed in this study. So far the first step solution of public-bank utilities and non-profit loans to government has been silenced wherever it is raised. _______________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From rohitrellan at aol.in Thu Nov 10 20:21:06 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:51:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Reader-list] =?utf-8?q?SRIJAN_2011=3A_Cultural_Fest_and_Inter_Co?= =?utf-8?q?llege_Competitions__for_Students_with_Disabilities_/_Saturday_F?= =?utf-8?q?ilm=3A_QUANTO_=C3=88_BELLO_MURIRE_ACCISO_/__SHORT_TERM_COURSE_O?= =?utf-8?q?N_ACTING_FOR_THE_SCREEN?= Message-ID: <8CE6DCF4F78341D-66C-5007@Webmail-d107.sysops.aol.com> EQUAL OPPORTUNITY CELL UNIVERSITY OF DELHI Invitation We take great pleasure in inviting you to Srijan-2011 The two day Cultural Fest and Inter College Competitions for Students with Disabilities on November 12-13, 2011 at Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce, Pitam Pura. Chief Guest: Prof Vivek Suneja, Pro Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi Guest of Honour: Padmashri Smt Geeta Chandran, Dancer & Choreographer at the Inaugural Session: November 12, 2011 at 10.15 am & Celebrating Disabilities Dance Performances by Persons with Disabilities presented by Ability Unlimited on November 13, 2011 at 5.30 pm Schedule http://du.ac.in/fileadmin/DU/Events/08112011_srijan_eoc-schedule.pdf Invitation http://du.ac.in/fileadmin/DU/Events/08112011_srijan_eoc-invite.pdf Brochure http://du.ac.in/fileadmin/DU/Events/08112011_srijan_eoc-brochure.pdf ------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday Film: QUANTO È BELLO MURIRE ACCISO (How wonderful to die assassinated) FILM SCREENING At Italian Embassy Cultural Centre/New Delhi ON SATURDAY 12TH NOVEMBER 2011 AT 2.00 P.M. FOCUS ON HISTORY AND CINEMA The Film : QUANTO È BELLO MURIRE ACCISO (How wonderful to die assassinated) Director : Ennio Lorenzini Duration : 85 min. Year : 1975 Cast : Stefano Satta Flores, Giulio Brogi, Alessandro Haber, … Venue : Italian Embassy Cultural Centre, New Delhi, Multimedia Hall The story of Carlo Pisacane, Baron ofSan Giovanni (1818–1857), Italian patriot and one of the first Italiansocialist thinkers. When politician, journalist, and activist for Italianreunification Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872), undeterred by the failure of theabortive Milan rising on 6 February 1853, determined to organize an expeditionto provoke a rising in the Neapolitan kingdom, Pisacane offered himself for thetask. Entry by a valid photo ID Card --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SHORT TERM COURSE ON ACTING FOR THE SCREEN ADMISSION NOTICE Name of the programme: Acting for the screen. Duration of the programme: 6 months. Aims & Objective:  To train already trained actors towards understanding the film medium and its possibilities.  To orient actors towards utilizing the “acting” resources.  Actors actively participate in the making of a short film. No. of students: 12 (Reservation as per extant Government of India Rules) Eligibility: Graduate in Drama/Acting/Stagecraft from a reputed Institution. Or Graduate with 5 years acting experience on stage/television. Age: Not more than 35 years. Method of selection: Interested candidates apply on a standard application forms with a CD/DVD recording samples of their “acting”. Selected candidates, (around 30) are called for an orientation course at SRFTI. Based on their performance at the orientation course, the first 12 according to merit are selected. Course fees: Rs. 40,000.00 Session: 16 th January – 15 th July, 2012 Last date of receiving application: 27 th November, 2011. Orientation: 21 st & 22 nd December, 2011. Commencement: 16 th January, 2012. N.B. Those who have been already applied need not apply again. From peter.ksmtf at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 20:58:10 2011 From: peter.ksmtf at gmail.com (T Peter) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:58:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] SAARC has exhausted its potential: Mani Shankar Aiyar In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Today's Paper » NATIONAL » KERALA Thiruvananthapuram, November 9, 2011 Special Correspondent Share · print · T+ Wants to build South Asia on the strength of diversity [image: Major concern: Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar (third from left0 after inaugurating the People's SAARC India Assembly 2011 in Tiruvananthapuram on Tuesday. Pakistani rights activists B.M. Kuty, historian K.N. Panikkar, and organising committee member Ashim Roy are seen. — Photo: S. Mahinsha] Major concern: Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar (third from left0 after inaugurating the People's SAARC India Assembly 2011 in Tiruvananthapuram on Tuesday. Pakistani rights activists B.M. Kuty, historian K.N. Panikkar, and organising committee member Ashim Roy are seen. — Photo: S. Mahinsha Senior Congress leader and former Union Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar has said that the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has exhausted its potential as an inter-governmental movement. Delivering the inaugural address at the People's SAARC India Assembly 2001, a two-day national convention of people's movements in South Asia, here on Tuesday, he said nothing imaginative had come out of SAARC for decades. “The only thing reported about SAARC meetings is what happens on the sidelines. The same is true of the Non Aligned Movement also. Leaders of SAARC nations meet only to decide when and where to meet next. The circus moves on from one capital to another,” he said. Citing the case of the G20 and WTO summits, Mr. Aiyar said inter-governmental meetings were today marked by parallel people's conventions all over the world. “We need such a movement in South Asia. Governments have to be taught what the people want,” he said. Highlighting the need to take SAARC back to its vision, Mr. Aiyar said the principle of unity in diversity had to become the principle of nationhood in South Asia. “If it does, it could show the way to a united Asia,” he said. Such an Asia, he said, could easily be leaders of the world. “But we will never become leaders of the world if we are fractured. We can never have South Asian unity as long as there is Indo-Pak disunity.” Mr. Aiyar said it was ironic that Asia remained the most divided continent while countries in Europe, America, and Africa were coming together. Citing the case of the aborted project to build a gas pipeline from Iran to India through Pakistan, he said every step taken to bring the countries of Asia together was thwarted by vested interests. Secularism, he said, was in the constitution of all countries in South Asia but not in the minds of the people. “You cannot Sinhalise Sri Lanka, you cannot make it a Buddhist country; you cannot make Nepal a Hindu country. You can only build South Asia on the basis of a celebration of diversity,” he said. Mr. Aiyar said the hatred spawned by the manner in which Partition was implemented had poisoned the relationship between India and Pakistan. “Pakistan today is a country trying to find itself. If Islam is what unites Pakistan, Islamisation is what divides it. But I am sure Pakistan will become a strong state the minute internally it gets accepted by the people that they have to be tolerant, they should celebrate the unity of Islam in the diversity of Islam. The same is true of India also,” he said. Historian K.N. Panikkar, who presided over the function, stressed the need to promote political, cultural, and economic exchanges between South Asian nations as an antidote to communalism that had emerged as a common threat. Mr. Panikkar said the capitalist influence had affected social relations and the ties between countries in the region. He proposed a union of countries in South Asia. Organising committee member Ashim Roy, convener T. Peter, State Planning Board member C.P. John, Sri Lankan film-maker Someetharan, human rights activist from Pakistan B.M. Kutty, and Manipuri activist Babloo Loitongbam were among those who spoke. The parallel meeting has been organised on the theme ‘People's movements unite South Asia.' Representatives from various social action groups and human rights organisations will address major concerns in the region, including livelihood and human rights issues, environmental problems, and climate change. Group Sites The Hindu Business Line Sportstar Frontline Publications eBooks Images Disclaimer: *The Hindu* is not responsible for the content of external internet sites. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of *The Hindu.* Comments to : web.thehindu at thehindu.co.in Copyright © 2011, The Hindu From patrice at xs4all.nl Fri Nov 11 17:19:12 2011 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:49:12 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] [Fwd: Building the Freedombox] Message-ID: bwo unlike-us list/ Marc Stumpel BANGALORE, November 6, 2011 by Deepa Kurup from The Hindu: http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/karnataka/article2601600.ece Jonas Smedegaard holds in his hand a box that's no larger than a power adapter and much lighter than an average laptop charger. A Danish technologist and a well-known Debian developer, Mr. Smedegaard is a hero of sorts in the world of free software, and no less than an idol to the students he's meeting at various tech conferences, lectures and workshops being held this week in the city. Besides being among the key developers involved for over a decade in the evolution of Debian, the Free Linux distribution, his ‘stardom' has a lot to do with the year-old collaborative project that he is part of: the FreedomBox. With its promise to decentralise information and power by simply taking online interactions off the cloud and the centralised servers owned by corporations, the FreedomBox has been one of the most-talked-about projects in recent times. Still very much in its development stages, Mr. Smedegaard carries a small prototype of what the box will be. His eyes light up when he talks about the possibilities of a perfect world where the Internet would be a conglomeration of personalised nodes, where power structures and hierarchies cease to exist. The actual product, software stacks and all, he says, will take at least a year to complete. However, the hardware part of the plug (akin to a mini-server) is nearly ready and is currently being manufactured by GlobalScale, a hardware company. The Box runs on an ARM chip (however, it is not tied to this chipset) and has a 512 MB RAM. Though it will provide for internal storage, he explains that the way he sees it, users can simply add on external hard drives for storage memory. The device will run on the Debian Operating System, customised to provide privacy tools with an extremely simple user interface. This is the part that Mr. Smedegaard works on. The technologist, who identifies himself as an “idealist and Internet architect” on his visiting card, got on to this ambitious project after he heard a lecture by academic, hacktivist and lawyer Eben Moglen, who propounded the simple yet powerful idea of the FreedomBox. A personal plug-in server, stacked with software applications that provide privacy and security, he envisaged, would ‘free' the online experience and restore anonymity online. It would enable people to have conversations online that are safe, secure, and the controls for which are located in your own homes. Priceless? Mr. Smedegaard agrees. The FreedomBox is nothing but an Internet server, he says. This means you reach it exactly the same way you would connect to a service located in, say, California. “So you do not physically connect your devices to the box. Instead, you connect the box to the Internet, and then connect your (other) devices to the Web where they locate the box as they would any other Web service.” The ‘look and feel' of the services, or the interface itself, Mr. Smedegaard feels, is critical. One possible design, he explains, could look like Facebook or any popular email service interface. “You would then type your FreedomBox address, login and password, and then have access to mail, chat, storage, etc. Like Facebook and Gmail, there could be specialised apps providing an alternate interface more suitable for the small screens on phones.” Another possible design, he explains, could be “native” services for mail or chat (many services already provide native access to email and chat). Currently, the price of a FreedomBox is around $163. This, Mr. Smedegaard and the brains behind the Box, are confident it will come down significantly. The tools for most of this already exist, points out Mr. Smedegaard. “It's not about inventing tools but about delivering what we have, and what we know can decentralise the system in a way that non-geeks can use.” He feels very strongly about this: “As geeks, we do not realise that the world out there (of non-technical users) is not going to learn the interfaces we are familiar with. The interface has to be simple.” He believes it isn't that people want to give all their information to private companies, it's just that they don't know any other way, he says. “The FreedomBox will give them the way out.” _______________________________________________ unlike-us mailing list unlike-us at listcultures.org http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/unlike-us_listcultures.org From turbulence at turbulence.org Fri Nov 11 21:01:13 2011 From: turbulence at turbulence.org (Turbulence.org) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:31:13 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Turbulence Commission: "Endgame: A Cold War Love Story" by Tal Halpern Message-ID: <21311637-066B-4E57-AE8A-520D62FA6960@turbulence.org> Turbulence Commission: "Endgame: A Cold War Love Story" by Tal Halpern http://turbulence.org/works/endgame [Needs Adobe Flash Player] "Endgame: A Cold War Love Story" -- for the web and Flash enabled touch screen devices (DROID) -- is a puzzle whose pieces are culled from an archive of long forgotten propaganda. In it a story about art, exile and history takes shape from the fragmentary remains of one woman's life. "Endgame: A Cold War Love Story" is a 2011 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence website. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation. BIOGRAPHY Tal Halpern is a new media artist and electronic writer. His visual literary work includes "Digital Nature the Case Collection," "Le Nouveau Western," "Archiving Nature: Preservation Practices for a Digital Age," and "Chromosome 22." He has been a New York Foundation for the Arts Computer Arts fellow and been featured in numerous museums and festivals including Iowa Review Web, Turbulence.org, Sundance Film Festival Web 2006, File Electronic Language International Festival 2006, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM), Karlsruhe Germany. "Like" us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/nrpa.org http://facebook.com/turbulence.org Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/turbulenceorg Please support the Turbulence Commissions Program. See http://turbulence.org for details. Turbulence.org turbulence at turbulence.org http://turbulence.org http://new-radio.org From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Fri Nov 11 22:23:37 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:23:37 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Power Sector Crisis Message-ID: http://newsclick.in/india/looming-power-sector-crisis-chickens-2003-coming-home-roost Power tariffs to go up by 50%+. Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From oishiksircar at gmail.com Sat Nov 12 13:11:08 2011 From: oishiksircar at gmail.com (OISHIK SIRCAR) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 13:11:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] ICI Berlin Fellowship Announcement, Deadline: 6 January 2012 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: FELLOWSHIP ANNOUNCEMENT: COMPLEMENTARITY AND WHOLES WHICH ARE NOT ONE The ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry announces six post-doctoral fellowships on the topic "Complementarity and Wholes Which Are Not One" within the core project "Tension/Spannung". Like the notion of tension, that of ‘complementarity’ is deceptively simple: it is just as unquestioningly embraced in some contexts as it is rejected in others. The divergent attitudes towards complementarity have much to do with different ways in which this notion conjures up the figure of a whole and specifies the relationship between parts. With the focus for 2012-13, the ICI Berlin seeks to inquire about the potential and limits of complementarity for reconsidering questions of totality, the whole and the relation of parts within different fields and to explore further how diverse cultures and discourses can be brought into productive confrontation beyond indifferent coexistence and violent conflict. The ICI Berlin invites scholars from all disciplines – including literary and art studies, history and philosophy of science, postcolonial, feminist and queer studies, and the social sciences – to link their individual projects to the topic of "Complementarity and Wholes Which Are Not One" and engage in a joint exploration with other fellows at the Institute. We especially welcome applications from individuals who will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity in scholarly research. There is no age limit, but applicants should have obtained their PhD within ten years of the date of appointment or have fulfilled all requirements for receiving their PhD by then. Interested applicants should consult the announcement at http://www.ici-berlin.org/fellowships/announcement/ and send their application by e-mail only to the address indicated there. Application deadline: 6 January 2012 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Das ICI Kulturlabor Berlin schreibt sechs Stipendien für den Fokus “Complementarity and Wholes Which Are Not One” des Leitprojekts “Tension/Spannung” aus. Das ICI Berlin lädt Bewerber und Bewerberinnen aus allen Disziplinen ein, eigene Projekte mit dem Fokus "Complementarity and Wholes Which Are Not One" zu verknüpfen und das Thema in Zusammenarbeit mit anderen Fellows am Institut zu erkunden. Besonders willkommen sind Bewerbungen, die zur Diversität und Chancengleichheit in der wissenschaftlichen Forschung beitragen. Interessierte lesen bitte die Ausschreibung auf http://www.ici-berlin.org/fellowships/announcement/ und schicken ihre Bewerbung per Email an die dort angegebene Adresse. Bewerbungsschluss: 6. Januar 2012 ICI KULTURLABOR BERLIN / INSTITUTE FOR CULTURAL INQUIRY Christinenstr. 18/19, 10119 Berlin - Tel: 030 / 473 7291 10 www.ici-berlin.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ICI gemeinnütziges Institut für Cultural Inquiry Berlin GmbH Geschäftsführer: Christoph F.E. Holzhey, Ph.D., Ph.D. Sitz Berlin, Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg HRB 104798 B Steuernummer: 27/604/01019 -- OISHIK SIRCAR oishiksircar at gmail.com oishik.sircar at utoronto.ca From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Sat Nov 12 20:20:20 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 20:20:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] IHRD Report'11 - A Flawed Analysis Message-ID: From: People's Democracy November 13, 2011 India Human Development Report 2011 A Flawed Analysis Archana Prasad The India Human Development Report, 2011 (IHDR)was released on October 21, 2011 on the eve of the meeting of the National Development Council. This report, a joint effort of the Planning Commission and the Institute of Manpower Research, is widely interpreted in the media as a positive one with few worrying factors. One of the main arguments lauding the report is that the degree of social inclusiveness of development policies has increased in the post reforms era. Reports claim that the trends in the human development index (HDI) elaborated upon in the HDR showed that vulnerable social groups especially the scheduled castes (SCs), scheduled tribes (STs) and Muslims are "catching up" with the rest of the people as far as social indicators like health, education and income levels are concerned. However this interpretation of the IHDR is based on a selective reading and ignores the contradictory evidence presented in the report. Further, such an interpretation is also laced with a pre-neoliberal reforms ideology as it attempts to show that economic reforms lead to more socially inclusive development. Hence it is necessary to understand the nature of the evidence presented in the IHDR. HDI & ITS METHODOLOGY The HDI methodology was developed by the UNDP from the 1990s onwards. Its main aim was to develop a criterea by which the overall development of nations and the well being of their people could be measured. The variables used to measure the HDI are access to basic amenities and income level; access to education and knowledge and access to health. Assessment of overall development is based on the measurement of indicators and their compilation into broad aggregate indexs in order to provide a comprehensive assessment. While such indices have been seen as a significant advance over "the growth is equal to development" model; several concerns have also been expressed vis-a-vis this method. Amongst other shortcomings, one of the main concerns emphasised that such an index does not throw enough light on the social and economic inequities and their impact on access to social and economic infrastructure. Hence the comparison between different social groups is not always valid as subjective factors impacting on social and economic status were disregarded in such an index. Hence issues of quality, language, infrastructure, distance and pedagogy having a major impact on educational status are largely disregarded. Similarly in the health sector emerging issues of availability of doctors, medicines, distance, location and other cultural barriers are ignored. This has led to an inappropriate comparison between social groups. Another major issue raised with regard to the HDI methodology is that it did not look at access to socio-economic infrastructure as a question of rights. Therefore it has depoliticised the question of access and presented it in a manner that has ignored the causal factors that should be structured into any social comparison. The current IHDR has attempted to address some of these issues by refining its methodology and taking into account the index of income inequality that has been calculated by using the 2007-08 NSSO data. It also attempts to pose questions in a socially sensitive manner by asking whether different social groups like the SCs, STs and Muslims are excluded from the developmental process; whether India is experiencing inclusive growth in the true sense and whether the flagship programmes of government were addressing issues of social inclusion. TENOUS CONCLUSIONS INADEQUATE EVIDENCE While answering these questions the general and the oft quoted hypothesis reached by the report is that the development of socially vulnerable groups is fast converging with the development of the rest of the society, thus leading to more inclusive growth. However the evidence presented in the report does not provide a basis for this sweeping conclusion as is evident from the analysis made from the very beginning. In its preface, the report states that: "poorer states namely Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal account for 56 per cent of the SC and 55 per cent of the ST population of the entire country. Further, 58 per cent of the Muslim population is concentrated in these states. There is a two way relationship here; poorer states are so because there is a large proportion of excluded social groups (who are generally poorer) living there; conversely in the poorer states different developmental programmes do not reach the targeted populations..". The rest of the report describes how some of these states are performing vis-a-vis different variables and assumes that rise in the index of poorer states will result in a positive development for "socially excluded people". The first section deals with asset employment, asset ownership and poverty. Based on NSS figures the IHDR states that rural and urban poverty has declined significantly between 2004-2005. Rural poverty declined from 28.3 per cent to 14.9 per cent, urban poverty has declined from 25.7 to 14.5 per cent. It is well known that these figures are suspect and poverty estimation has been much debated, the IHDR itself acknowledges that the number of poor people does not seem to have declined. Further it admits that if the methodology of the Tendulkar Committee is used then the percentage of poor people in the country remains at 32 per cent, a figure considered quite conservative by most critics of poverty estimates. It further acknowledges that the rate of decline of poverty amongst the SC, ST and Muslims is much slower than all India rate of decline of poverty thereby negating the main argument about declining inequities. As far as employment is concerned the IHDR argues for a declining rate of unemployment amongst all social groups. The rise in employment has taken place largely in the non-agricultural sector, but these figures do not tell the whole story. The rise in employment amongst the SC and ST is discussed only in terms of current daily status and does not reflect the subsidiary and casual nature of the labour that these social groups are performing. Recent studies show that SC and ST people are largely turning to migrant casual labour and the women labourers are increasing in the workforce. This also reflects the severe displacement and agrarian distress that has impacted on the life of these social groups. Hence the analysis of the IHDR is misleading in this respect and does not reflect the declining work status of the SC and ST people. In its analysis of nutrition and right to food, the IHDR is quick to point out that trends in malnutrition are worrisome and that the situation does not seem to have drastically improved since the last HDR in 2001. The food intake in rural India is far less that 2400 kcal per day and in urban India it is less than the required intake of 2100 kcal per day. Nearly half of India's children are malnutritioned and the level of malnutrition is severe in 12 of the 17 states covered by the IHDR. Even states like Gujarat with "high growth rates" have high rates of malnutrition and aenemia in women. The report also points out that "socially marginalised groups (SC and ST) living in rural areas of Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh have child malnutrition rates which are well above the national average of 46 per cent. The female malnutrition rate is also much higher than the national average. This conclusion once again points to divergence rather than converging trends between socially vulnerable groups and the rest of the population. Further it is surprising that the state of nutrition in the country has not been linked to the failure of the targeted public distribution system, even as in other areas such as education and basic amenities the improvements are attributed to flagship programmes that as the Pradhan Mantri Grameen Sadak Yojana, or Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. One of the areas that the IHDR acknowledges as a sector where much has been acheived is education. It claims that poorer states have done especially well as far as this sector is concerned and enrollment rates have gone up even amongst the SC, ST and Muslims, even though the gender gap remains alarming. It attributes this acheivement to the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and the Right to Education Act. However the limitations of the implementation of this Act and the SSA are well known and the increase in numbers does not necessarily reflect the inequities that exist in the quality of education amongst different social groups and regions. Several studies have shown that even though enrollment numbers may have increased, the quality of education in tribal areas leaves much to be desired. Further social discrimination between dalit and other students; and between rich and poor students is rampant in schools showing how the social divide has crystallised rather than eroded under the current development paradigm. Thus even while the IHDR makes mention of the question of quality education, it does not state what bearing this factor may have on the nature of inequities in the educational system. In the above context, it is only correct to state that the overall conclusion and interpretation of the IHDR is not supported by the limited evidence presented in the report. A more detailed look at the report suggests that inequities in every sector may be growing rather than decreasing as suggested by many media reports. Thus any talk of convergence in developmental trends of SC, ST, Muslims and the rest of the population shows that human development is illussionary even in states with high economic growth. Hence any talk of declining inequalities on the basis of the interpretation of the IHDR is motivated to justify the flawed neo-liberal socio-economic policies of the present government and make a case for more exploitative economic reforms. ______________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From a.mani.cms at gmail.com Sat Nov 12 20:28:35 2011 From: a.mani.cms at gmail.com (A. Mani) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 20:28:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Kanoria Jute Mill: Saga of a Treachery Message-ID: Kanoria Jute Mill: Saga of a Treachery Source: People's Democracy' 05th Nov'2011 >From Our Special Correspondent in Kolkata THE workers of Kanoria Jute Mill in Uluberia, Howrah, have already learnt what the much-trumpeted ‘change’ means in West Bengal. The mill opened after two years of closure on August 22. Shiv Shankar Pasari, the promoter personally accompanied state labour minister Purnendu Basu in a hyped ‘opening’ of the mill. Purnendu Basu assured Kanoria workers on August 22 that within one year all problems would be resolved through discussion and not movement. Since then, 2700 workers of Kanoria Jute Mill were denied their jobs as they were not allowed to enter the mill itself. Only 318 workers, according to the mill attendance register, are working for the maintenance of machines in the mill. Rest of the 3041 workers are stunned at the unique way of treachery. This is causing a further problem. The Left Front government initiated a monthly allowance for the workers of closed factories. The workers of Kanoria Jute Mill were also getting that allowance. As the mill is opened officially, the payment of this allowance may be closed, denying them the meager source of livelihood. Meanwhile, no dues including provident fund have been paid. To make things worse, the promoter of the mill has demolished the bathroom in the labour line. This, according to the workers, is an ominous sign. Even those who have been chosen to enter have been recruited by local Trinamul leaders. They terrorised the mill area. Sponsored by the promoter Shiv Shankar Pasari, these TMC leaders have appointed some unskilled labourers from Sijberia, Howrah, in exchange of their unconditional loyalty to the Trinamul Congress. One of the leading trade union leaders of the mill, Prafulla Chakraborty, once a very close associate of the TMC, has now been ousted and arrested. The ‘misdeed’ he perpetrated was that he sharply criticised the ‘labour policy’ of the TMC government. He also slammed the government and TMC leaders for creating autocracy and hooligan-raj in the mill. The government however rewarded their electoral associate and the leader of Sangrami Shramik Union Prafulla Chakraborty, stunning even TMC-spiked intellectuals by putting him behind the bars under fake allegation. The CITU while condemning the situation at Kanoria Jute Mill demanded immediate release of Prafulla Chakraborty. In a statement, the CITU Howrah district president Nemai Samanta said the workers are being deprived of their legal rights by sheer force. The government is also arresting Left workers under false cases, thus trying to curb the workers’ movement and mass movement in the state. ___________________________________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc From peter.ksmtf at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 08:33:50 2011 From: peter.ksmtf at gmail.com (T Peter) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011 08:33:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Concern over move for deep sea sand-mining In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Today's Paper » NATIONAL » KERALA Thiruvananthapuram, November 13, 2011 Concern over move for deep sea sand-mining http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/article2623695.ece T. Nandakumar Eco activists, fisherfolk say it will threaten livelihood A proposal mooted by the State government for deep sea sand-mining has triggered protest from traditional fishermen and concern among marine scientists and environmentalists. It was at a workshop on Kerala's approach paper to the 12th Five Year Plan held here on Wednesday that Finance Minister K.M. Mani came up with the proposal. Addressing the workshop, he said it was not difficult for the Kerala economy to achieve a 10 per cent growth rate, provided it was able to mobilise revenue from non-conventional sources such as offshore mining of sand. Scientists fear that the environmental impact of such a project will be disastrous, while fishworkers see it as a direct threat to their livelihood. In 2002, the then government backed off from implementing a similar project following stiff resistance by environmentalists and fisherfolk. A Bahrain-based company that had submitted the project had claimed to have located a huge offshore deposit of construction- quality sand amounting to four billion tonnes at a depth of 30 to 40 metres. The government had held out the project as a viable option to resolve the acute scarcity of river sand for the construction industry. This time however, it is being projected as an alternative revenue source. K. Venkataraman, Director, Zoological Survey of India, said large-scale dredging for sand in the sea could lead to turbidity and movement of silt, affecting marine life in the biodiversity rich areas off the State's coast. “The silt could move in different directions, affecting the natural habitat of several species. It could also enrich the nutrient content in seawater, triggering algal blooms that are harmful to fish. Dredging has the potential to change the contours of the sea bed,” he told *The Hindu* over telephone from his office in Kolkata. A marine biologist, Dr.Venkataraman said dredging could also affect the long-shore drift along the Kerala coast, leading to a further decline in fish stocks and affecting the livelihood of the fisherfolk community. Using suction pumps for controlled dredging would not alleviate the problem of turbulence, he said. *Accelerated erosion* Dr. Venkataraman said tampering with the steep slopes of the continental shelf off the State's coast could alter the underwater topography, leading to accelerated coastal erosion and other unforeseen consequences. The absence of a monitoring and regulatory mechanism for offshore sand-mining could encourage violation of environmental safeguards for more profitable operations, he said. Traditional fishermen fear deep-sea mining would deplete the dwindling fish stocks and jeopardise the livelihood of 10 lakh fish workers in the State. T. Peter, president of the Kerala Swathantra Matsya Thozhilali Federation, said: “We will oppose the project tooth and nail.” He warned that fishermen would use their boats and catamarans to blockade dredgers. “Indonesia paid a heavy price for deep sea sand-mining to reclaim land for the Singapore airport. That experience should be taken as a warning against tampering with the marine ecosystem.” Renjan Varghese Mathew, State director, WWF-India, said deep sea sand-mining was a very technology intensive process that could cause a negative impact on the marine ecosystem. “It could destroy the spawning grounds of fishes and other marine organisms, triggering an effect down the food chain. Removal of the top soil could also ravage the marine ecology.” Vinod Malayilethu, coordinator, marine programme, WWF-India said, “Sucking up the sand from the seabed is likely to release poisonous gases such as hydrogen sulphide and heavy metals. Also, the suspended silt will be deposited on corals and sponges, destroying them.” ** ------------------------------ Movement of silt could affect marine life Fishermen threaten to blockade dredgers From rohitrellan at aol.in Sun Nov 13 16:04:00 2011 From: rohitrellan at aol.in (rohitrellan at aol.in) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011 05:34:00 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Reader-list] 17th Kolkata Film Festival (10th-17th November 2011)/ 5th Chinh India Kids Film Festival 9th - 14th November 2011/ Guidelines for Proposal Submission to CFSI/17th International Children's Film Festival India 14-20 Nov 2011 Message-ID: <8CE7006E3AC3EAD-1F34-55686@webmail-m147.sysops.aol.com> 17th Kolkata Film Festival 8 days . 50 countries . 125 directors . 150 films The journey for the second oldest film festival in India began in 1995 when the first independent international film festival was inaugurated at Nandan- West Bengal Film Centre. It was essentially the culmination of a sincere Film Society Movement which has its roots in the works of the master filmmakers of Kolkata like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak . Retracing this glorious heritage, Nandan, created by Government of West Bengal in 1985, was inaugurated by Satyajit Ray. He was the first chairman of its governing body,too. Nandan continues to be the focal point of Kolkata Film Festival. The city of Kolkata, once being the prime hub of film industry in India and in Asia, has always been full of passion and appreciation for quality cinema since motion picture has been around. The Kolkata Film Festival, an accredited film festival of the FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Association, Paris) has grown in stature over the years with multiple venues and ever increasing number of cinelovers. In earlier editions, legendary film makers like Miguel Littin, Fernando Solanas, E. Subriela, Ali Ozgenturk, Amos Gitai, Krzysztof Zanussi, Catherine Breillat, Jeon Soo-il, Gus Van Sant, jafar panahi,Tehmina Milani and others have graced the Festival with their presence. Recognized as a major film event in the country and abroad, the Kolkata Film Festival will once again showcase a host of quality movies from around the world in the presence of prominent guests and the cine enthusiasts. For schedule Log on to http://kff.in/schedule/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5th Chinh India Kids Film Festival 9th - 14th November 2011 CIKFF 2011 Festival Films: http://www.chinh.in/Festival%20Films%202011.html Schedule:http://www.chinh.in/2011%20CIKFF/CIKFF%20Schedule%202011.html Workshops:http://www.chinh.in/2011%20CIKFF/Workshops%202011.html CHINH The symbol that represents phoenix like strength, amazing culture, unassuming life skills and humane traditions of INDIA CHINH is Meenakshi Vinay Rai’s initiative to reposition local in global. CHINH supports social initiatives promoting causes of children and marginalized nomadic communities through harnessing traditional wisdom, art and culture and rediscovering them in contemporary contexts. Meenakshi Vinay Rai [ Award Gallery ] http://www.chinh.in/Awards/Awards%202011/index.htm Founders of an Early Education Web channel (www.chinh.in) and Community Web Channel (www.chinhwebchannel.in), ;National Award Winning Film & Culture activists’ duo Meenakshi Vinay Rai is passionate about creating films on issues of social relevance, education and culture. With 39 international & national awards to their credit, they are successfully using animation as a therapy for special children via ‘Spandan- the vibrating visuals' – an award winning ambitious animation project initiated to encourage talent among mentally challenged, spastic and orthopedic children.Their extensive research in nomadic communities from past seven years has resulted in launching Certificate course in Nomadic Studies & establishment of NOW (Nomadic Orchestra of World). Presently the couple is actively engaged in building a movement- ‘Reposition Local in Global’ by sensitizing young people on nomadic issues. Successfully linking culture with livelihood for nomadic communities, they are on their way to motivate nomads in demanding their share in governance. Authors of a book on animation, they have been regularly invited to guide workshops at international platforms. Promoting media literacy initiatives among children & youth in Asia and Europe, they are creating world's biggest library of children films. Their initiatives are opening up a way for CHINH International Cooperative for children films to cater to the needs of South East Asia in children programming. Council of Advisors Thakur Ranvir Singh, Dr. R. Sreedher, Dr. Dharam Prakash, Dr. Asha Singh, Deepa Chandra, Dr. Rajesh Jain, Robert Ruoff, Neeta Rastogi, Nikel Markus, Mag Hatol, G.S.Chani, Jasjit Purewal, Dr. Samta Rai, Mridul Kadyan National Office A-103 LGF Amar Colony Lajpat Nagar-IV, New Delhi-110024 (INDIA) Ph : 011- 26488898 chinh_india at yahoo.co.in, raientertainment at yahoo.com Grass Root Offices Lalwa, Haryana / Alwar, Rajasthan (INDIA) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Guidelines for Proposal Submission to CFSI For more info Log on to http://cfsindia.org/downloads/Submit_proposal_form.pdf ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17th International Children's Film Festival India 14-20 Nov 2011 View Catalogue: http://issuu.com/cfsindia/docs/17_th_icffi_catalog?mode=window&backgroundColor=%23222222 View Schedule:http://cfsindia.org/downloads/Finalschedule.pdf Contact: International Children's Film Festival India (ICFFI) 8th Floor, Films Division Complex, 24-Dr. G. Deshmukh Marg, Mumbai-400 026 (India) Ph: 91-22-2352 6120/ 2353 5517 Fax: 91-22-2352 2610 E-mail: festival at cfsindia.org ==========================================