From kaiwanmehta at gmail.com  Wed Jun  1 21:07:05 2005
From: kaiwanmehta at gmail.com (kaiwan mehta)
Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2005 21:07:05 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Bombay Sarai - We meet again
In-Reply-To: <2482459d05052608314a7175a3@mail.gmail.com>
References: <2482459d05052608314a7175a3@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2482459d050601083718a8c344@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,
Many regulars have not yet responded, what Prashant said he did not
see the mail!

Some are out travelling, should I postpone?

Best Kaiwan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: kaiwan mehta <kaiwanmehta at gmail.com>
Date: May 26, 2005 9:01 PM
Subject: Bombay Sarai - We meet again
To: reader-list at sarai.net


Hi,

Feels good that many sarai relatives are congratulating us for the
Sarai (satsangs) in other cities!!

Well let all of us meet again, some of us specifically wanted to
discuss our researches with each other, so we could do that - else sit
and chat and feel good about meeting each other.

Its great some of us have developed interesting correspondences since
out first meeting.

Well I suggest,
Saturday 5 June at 6 pm - same place regal Barrista. If there is a
good night show at Regal - some of us could catch that too!!

If you have any other suggestions for date or place, let me know.

If most of you cant make it we can reschedule, so please do get in
touch with me.

Looking forward to meet you all,

Cool Regards,

Kaiwan

- --
Kaiwan Mehta
Architect and Urban Reseracher

11/4, Kassinath Bldg. No. 2, Kassinath St., Tardeo, Mumbai 400034
022-2-494 3259 / 91-98205 56436


- -- 
Kaiwan Mehta
Architect and Urban Reseracher

11/4, Kassinath Bldg. No. 2, Kassinath St., Tardeo, Mumbai 400034
022-2-494 3259 / 91-98205 56436


From ish at sarai.net  Wed Jun  1 02:13:35 2005
From: ish at sarai.net (ISh)
Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 02:13:35 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] Re: "Made with Linux" List?
In-Reply-To: <pan.2005.06.01.18.55.05.599807@dsl.pipex.com>
References: <1117557853.22174.20.camel@localhost.localdomain>
	<pan.2005.06.01.18.55.05.599807@dsl.pipex.com>
Message-ID: <429CCC77.1040909@sarai.net>

Would it be beneficial to encourage a separate "music made with Linux"

list?  Thoughts?

___________________________________________________________________________

Hi All.

Music itself holds no prejudice so I think it should be all promoted as 
Music. ( Pure and safe , which is free from definitions and critics) 
There are already too many categorizations nowadays in music which 
usually ride a fad or fashion curve and are used for filling up shelf 
space. I think categorizing music as ‘music made on linux’ is baseless.

And discriminating music on the basis of which platform it was produced, 
like Linux or from OS X of any other OS, actually degrades Music.(also 
is a very technical discrimination) It is not something like it is rock 
or jazz. It is also in a way admitting that linux is inferior in music 
circles, which is not true at all. So I think we should be a little 
careful while saying it is music produced on linux or a mac because for 
the end listener it will be our music that is doing the talking(not 
linux or windows). Linux, softwares, Mac, Sequencers etc are all 
important but are still 'tools' to achieve the music.

<>Boom

<>Ish
frEeMuZik.net/ sarai.net

(P.S I m a strong supporter of Free software and Linux ... but (1) the 
thoughts mentioned above are for ‘music’ and are not part of the 'free 
software Vs. Proprietary software’ argument and (2) I m not looking at 
'made with Linux' as a very technical definition, i m looking at it as 
an 'end listener' definition )



James Stone wrote:

>On Tue, 31 May 2005 12:44:13 -0400, Greg Wilder wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Would it be beneficial to encourage a separate "music made with Linux"
>>list?  Thoughts?
>>    
>>
>
>There is the recently created "free musicians" wiki to post info and links
>to music made with Linux: 
>
>musicians.opensrc.org
>
>There is also a radio station stream there to which can be added links to
>music.
>
>I think that it would be really good if people could set up pages there,
>to make the links to the music a bit more permanent, and also to help
>others to find out how the music was composed.
>
>Best,
>
>james
> 
>
>
>  
>



From soudhamini_1 at lycos.com  Thu Jun  2 08:10:50 2005
From: soudhamini_1 at lycos.com (sou dhamini)
Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 21:40:50 -0500
Subject: [Reader-list] madurai
Message-ID: <20050602024050.4B0C8E5BC7@ws7-2.us4.outblaze.com>

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050601/dffa3624/attachment.html 

From prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com  Wed Jun  1 10:56:57 2005
From: prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com (Prashant Pandey)
Date: 1 Jun 2005 05:26:57 -0000
Subject: [Reader-list] Murtaja Mustafa , Bollywood Music ,Prashant Pandey
Message-ID: <20050601052657.707.qmail@webmail10.rediffmail.com>


He has got training from the best
masters of the Indian classical tradition.
A voice that evokes in you what is
termed as spiritual. No wonder A.R
Rahaman has chased him from time to 
time for singing opportunities. 
The man is Murtaja Mustafa,son
of the legengary Ustad Ghulam Mustafa. 
Murtaja Mustafa is one of most chilled 
out singers that I have ever met.Both of us
are  sitting on a red persian carpet in 
his small drawing room decorated with 
trophies,awards,and ancient muscial 
instruments. " yaha pe Rahman ki class lagti
hai",(So this is AR Rahman's music class!)
I say to myself. Thats another story;we will 
come to it later.  



I had gone to his Turner Road residence 
to meet the legendary classical vocalist ,
Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan. Apart from 
being the leading light of the Rampur 
Ghrana , Ustad ji  has taught/mentored 
almost every second playback singer. 
Right from Asha Bhosle ,Manna De to 
Shaan  and Sonu Nigam, Ustad Ji has 
helped generations of playback singers 
to excel in their art. Then there are 
two special disciples who are just family 
to him- AR Rahman and Hariharan. Ustad is
extremely low-profile and quiet in 
his demeanour. He also doesn’t prefer to
talk much about his star students. 
I had lot of questions in mind when I 
started the interview but I started to 
realize that he was not at all interested 
in critiquing anybody or anything. He
answered all my questions in parables 
like a Zen master.Then he has also taught
his two sons Kadir and Murtaja. If you
have heard Rahmans’ Pia Haji Ali (Fiza),
Anarkali (Boys, Tamil) and Chupke se (Sathiya)
,and Ismail Darbars' Kisna (Kisna) you 
would feel instantly what and how their 
smooth vocals have contributed to these songs.
Murtaja has often collaborated with Rahman (bhai) 
on films like The legend of Bhagat Singh,
whose background score he recorded in London. 
Murtaja is also working on an album 
where all the three brothers will sing. 
Then there are usual routine classical
performances, studio recordings and 
riyaz and more riyaz ; Mustafa household 
never sleeps. Murtaja told me, “Even if
I come at 3 o clock in the night and I
have a 10 am mixing session next day in 
the studio I will reach the studio at 
sharp 10 am. Same applies to Papa, he
has taken sessions with Rahman bhai 
at 3 am in the morning”. Something 
like this offers an insight on the 
industry where professionals try to 
beat lack of time and space with passion.
Motivation levels are very high here.  


I had a good chat with Murtaja. I had 
been chasing him for a fortnight and
he finally got me an appointment 
with Ustad ji and also agreed to talk 
to my Dictaphone. The result – he got 
late for a recording session and missed 
altogether his Friday Jumma Namaz. 
It re-affirmed my belief that in my
research, respondents have at times 
proved to be more self-sacrificing 
than me. Such gestures often make me 
feel more responsible for my work.

Readers,let me know if you want to know
more about the interview I will do a 
detailed posting.

PRASHANT PANDEY, for SARAI 







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From steffl at bigfoot.com  Thu Jun  2 03:29:34 2005
From: steffl at bigfoot.com (Erik Steffl)
Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 14:59:34 -0700
Subject: [Reader-list] Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: "Made with Linux" List?
In-Reply-To: <429CCC77.1040909@sarai.net>
References: <1117557853.22174.20.camel@localhost.localdomain>	<pan.2005.06.01.18.55.05.599807@dsl.pipex.com>
	<429CCC77.1040909@sarai.net>
Message-ID: <429E2FC6.3040706@bigfoot.com>

   I think the point of having examples of music made with linux (i.e. 
tools available for linux) is to be able to see what can be done, to 
have subsequent discussions about which LADSPA plugin was used and all 
that stuff. IMO it makes sense for lot of people on this list.

	erik

ISh wrote:
> Would it be beneficial to encourage a separate "music made with Linux"
> 
> list?  Thoughts?
> 
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> 
> Hi All.
> 
> Music itself holds no prejudice so I think it should be all promoted as 
> Music. ( Pure and safe , which is free from definitions and critics) 
> There are already too many categorizations nowadays in music which 
> usually ride a fad or fashion curve and are used for filling up shelf 
> space. I think categorizing music as ‘music made on linux’ is baseless.
> 
> And discriminating music on the basis of which platform it was produced, 
> like Linux or from OS X of any other OS, actually degrades Music.(also 
> is a very technical discrimination) It is not something like it is rock 
> or jazz. It is also in a way admitting that linux is inferior in music 
> circles, which is not true at all. So I think we should be a little 
> careful while saying it is music produced on linux or a mac because for 
> the end listener it will be our music that is doing the talking(not 
> linux or windows). Linux, softwares, Mac, Sequencers etc are all 
> important but are still 'tools' to achieve the music.
> 
> <>Boom
> 
> <>Ish
> frEeMuZik.net/ sarai.net
> 
> (P.S I m a strong supporter of Free software and Linux ... but (1) the 
> thoughts mentioned above are for ‘music’ and are not part of the 'free 
> software Vs. Proprietary software’ argument and (2) I m not looking at 
> 'made with Linux' as a very technical definition, i m looking at it as 
> an 'end listener' definition )
> 
> 
> 
> James Stone wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, 31 May 2005 12:44:13 -0400, Greg Wilder wrote:
>>
>>  
>>
>>> Would it be beneficial to encourage a separate "music made with Linux"
>>> list?  Thoughts?
>>>   
>>
>>
>> There is the recently created "free musicians" wiki to post info and 
>> links
>> to music made with Linux:
>> musicians.opensrc.org
>>
>> There is also a radio station stream there to which can be added links to
>> music.
>>
>> I think that it would be really good if people could set up pages there,
>> to make the links to the music a bit more permanent, and also to help
>> others to find out how the music was composed.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> james
>>
>>
>>
>>  
>>
> 



From pukar at pukar.org.in  Wed Jun  1 10:35:16 2005
From: pukar at pukar.org.in (PUKAR)
Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2005 10:35:16 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] [announcements] Reminder: Talk on 3rd June
Message-ID: <004601c56667$87a1ce00$0dd0c0cb@freeda>

The PUKAR Gender and Space Project

 

presents a talk

 

by Nandita Godbole

 

on

 

The making of an immigrant home

Representation and improvisation of inherited cultural landscapes in immigrant homes

 

date:                 Friday, 03 June 2005

time:                 3 p.m.

place:               PUKAR Office, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Opp Stand Book Stall, Sir. P M Road, Fort, Mumbai 400001. 

    Tel: 5574-8152

 

 

Abstract

Overlays of political borders, contested lands and cultural landscapes often complicate and blur definitions of home.  In culturally diverse, cosmopolitan cities, immigrant families continually reinterpret the fundamental question, "What is home?"  As these families define their physical and cultural 'selves' in their adopted country, we witness the transformation of ordinary, mundane places into socio-culturally complex neighborhoods and cities.

This on-going study examines how immigrants use visual elements to reflect their intrinsic values and philosophies and reinforce the idea of 'home'.  It also explores how 'inherited' cultural landscapes influence, shape and define homemaking sensitivities of immigrant families.

 

Nandita Godbole has a Masters degree in Botany (University of Mumbai) and Landscape Architecture (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). She is currently an independent researcher and her areas of interest include public space usage and sacred landscapes. 

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research)
Mumbai

Address:: 1-4, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Sir P. M. Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001
Telephone:: +91 (022) 5574 8152 / +91 (0) 98204 04010
Email:: pukar at pukar.org.in
Website:: www.pukar.org.in
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_______________________________________________
announcements mailing list
announcements at sarai.net
https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements

From iram at sarai.net  Thu Jun  2 12:22:22 2005
From: iram at sarai.net (iram at sarai.net)
Date: Thu,  2 Jun 2005 08:52:22 +0200
Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd:HIMAL is back 
Message-ID: <1e5edb0a8f4724e3f2df5ddf226b09ed@sarai.net>

------  Original Message  ------
Subject: Fwd:HIMAL is back
From:    shivamvij at gmail.com
Date:    Thu, 02 Jun 2005 08:33:50 +0200


http://www.himalmag.com/

Within Grasp: Persian Gas for the Southasian Engine
by Kanak Mani Dixit

The Islamabad-New Delhi thaw has made real the possibility of a pipeline
that would transport natural gas from the offshore reserves of Iran,
through Pakistani territory into India. While it would cater to the
ever-increasing demand for energy in the Subcontinent, the appeal of the
Iranian gasline also lies in the economic linkages it would deliver to
cement ties of goodwill between India and Pakistan. Too good to be true,
but true, the gasline is an idea whose time has come. It will create,
literally, facts on the ground capable of sustaining a strong cross-border
relationship beyond the 'bhai-bhai bonhomie' of today. Full Article

Important Notice

This is a preview of the reintroductory July 2005 issue of Himal
Southasian, which suspended publication in May 2004. The magazine will
restart continuous publication in October 2005.

 To receive a hard copy of the full July 2005 issue at no charge, write to
distribution at himalmag.com
 To subscribe to Himal Southasian, write to subscription at himalmag.com
 For advertisement information, write to advertising at himalmag.com

Old subscribers are informed that their pending subscription will be
reactivated in October 2005.
-------------- next part --------------
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From: shivam <shivamvij at gmail.com>
Subject: HIMAL is back
Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2005 17:17:45 +0530
Size: 3522
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From mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com  Thu Jun  2 12:53:42 2005
From: mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com (mahmood farooqui)
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 00:23:42 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Reader-list] Murtaja Mustafa , Bollywood Music ,Prashant Pandey
In-Reply-To: <20050601052657.707.qmail@webmail10.rediffmail.com>
Message-ID: <20050602072342.17629.qmail@web80909.mail.scd.yahoo.com>


Dear Prashant,

Please post the interview as soon as possible...I have
been following with postings with great interest,
music being the very stuff of Hindi cinema it is
amazing how little we know about its conditions of
production, yours being one of the first serious and
sustained attempts I have come across.

I knew about the Kumar Sanu school of singing but the
Sonu Nigam school was news for me...

Lovely.

wrote:

> 
> He has got training from the best
> masters of the Indian classical tradition.
> A voice that evokes in you what is
> termed as spiritual. No wonder A.R
> Rahaman has chased him from time to 
> time for singing opportunities. 
> The man is Murtaja Mustafa,son
> of the legengary Ustad Ghulam Mustafa. 
> Murtaja Mustafa is one of most chilled 
> out singers that I have ever met.Both of us
> are  sitting on a red persian carpet in 
> his small drawing room decorated with 
> trophies,awards,and ancient muscial 
> instruments. " yaha pe Rahman ki class lagti
> hai",(So this is AR Rahman's music class!)
> I say to myself. Thats another story;we will 
> come to it later.  
> 
> 
> 
> I had gone to his Turner Road residence 
> to meet the legendary classical vocalist ,
> Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan. Apart from 
> being the leading light of the Rampur 
> Ghrana , Ustad ji  has taught/mentored 
> almost every second playback singer. 
> Right from Asha Bhosle ,Manna De to 
> Shaan  and Sonu Nigam, Ustad Ji has 
> helped generations of playback singers 
> to excel in their art. Then there are 
> two special disciples who are just family 
> to him- AR Rahman and Hariharan. Ustad is
> extremely low-profile and quiet in 
> his demeanour. He also doesn’t prefer to
> talk much about his star students. 
> I had lot of questions in mind when I 
> started the interview but I started to 
> realize that he was not at all interested 
> in critiquing anybody or anything. He
> answered all my questions in parables 
> like a Zen master.Then he has also taught
> his two sons Kadir and Murtaja. If you
> have heard Rahmans’ Pia Haji Ali (Fiza),
> Anarkali (Boys, Tamil) and Chupke se (Sathiya)
> ,and Ismail Darbars' Kisna (Kisna) you 
> would feel instantly what and how their 
> smooth vocals have contributed to these songs.
> Murtaja has often collaborated with Rahman (bhai) 
> on films like The legend of Bhagat Singh,
> whose background score he recorded in London. 
> Murtaja is also working on an album 
> where all the three brothers will sing. 
> Then there are usual routine classical
> performances, studio recordings and 
> riyaz and more riyaz ; Mustafa household 
> never sleeps. Murtaja told me, “Even if
> I come at 3 o clock in the night and I
> have a 10 am mixing session next day in 
> the studio I will reach the studio at 
> sharp 10 am. Same applies to Papa, he
> has taken sessions with Rahman bhai 
> at 3 am in the morning”. Something 
> like this offers an insight on the 
> industry where professionals try to 
> beat lack of time and space with passion.
> Motivation levels are very high here.  
> 
> 
> I had a good chat with Murtaja. I had 
> been chasing him for a fortnight and
> he finally got me an appointment 
> with Ustad ji and also agreed to talk 
> to my Dictaphone. The result – he got 
> late for a recording session and missed 
> altogether his Friday Jumma Namaz. 
> It re-affirmed my belief that in my
> research, respondents have at times 
> proved to be more self-sacrificing 
> than me. Such gestures often make me 
> feel more responsible for my work.
> 
> Readers,let me know if you want to know
> more about the interview I will do a 
> detailed posting.
> 
> PRASHANT PANDEY, for SARAI 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and
> the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to
> reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the
> subject header.
> List archive:
<https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>



		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. 
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail 


From mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com  Thu Jun  2 12:53:53 2005
From: mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com (mahmood farooqui)
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 00:23:53 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Reader-list] Murtaja Mustafa , Bollywood Music ,Prashant Pandey
In-Reply-To: <20050601052657.707.qmail@webmail10.rediffmail.com>
Message-ID: <20050602072353.59879.qmail@web80908.mail.scd.yahoo.com>


Dear Prashant,

Please post the interview as soon as possible...I have
been following with postings with great interest,
music being the very stuff of Hindi cinema it is
amazing how little we know about its conditions of
production, yours being one of the first serious and
sustained attempts I have come across.

I knew about the Kumar Sanu school of singing but the
Sonu Nigam school was news for me...

Lovely.

wrote:

> 
> He has got training from the best
> masters of the Indian classical tradition.
> A voice that evokes in you what is
> termed as spiritual. No wonder A.R
> Rahaman has chased him from time to 
> time for singing opportunities. 
> The man is Murtaja Mustafa,son
> of the legengary Ustad Ghulam Mustafa. 
> Murtaja Mustafa is one of most chilled 
> out singers that I have ever met.Both of us
> are  sitting on a red persian carpet in 
> his small drawing room decorated with 
> trophies,awards,and ancient muscial 
> instruments. " yaha pe Rahman ki class lagti
> hai",(So this is AR Rahman's music class!)
> I say to myself. Thats another story;we will 
> come to it later.  
> 
> 
> 
> I had gone to his Turner Road residence 
> to meet the legendary classical vocalist ,
> Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan. Apart from 
> being the leading light of the Rampur 
> Ghrana , Ustad ji  has taught/mentored 
> almost every second playback singer. 
> Right from Asha Bhosle ,Manna De to 
> Shaan  and Sonu Nigam, Ustad Ji has 
> helped generations of playback singers 
> to excel in their art. Then there are 
> two special disciples who are just family 
> to him- AR Rahman and Hariharan. Ustad is
> extremely low-profile and quiet in 
> his demeanour. He also doesn’t prefer to
> talk much about his star students. 
> I had lot of questions in mind when I 
> started the interview but I started to 
> realize that he was not at all interested 
> in critiquing anybody or anything. He
> answered all my questions in parables 
> like a Zen master.Then he has also taught
> his two sons Kadir and Murtaja. If you
> have heard Rahmans’ Pia Haji Ali (Fiza),
> Anarkali (Boys, Tamil) and Chupke se (Sathiya)
> ,and Ismail Darbars' Kisna (Kisna) you 
> would feel instantly what and how their 
> smooth vocals have contributed to these songs.
> Murtaja has often collaborated with Rahman (bhai) 
> on films like The legend of Bhagat Singh,
> whose background score he recorded in London. 
> Murtaja is also working on an album 
> where all the three brothers will sing. 
> Then there are usual routine classical
> performances, studio recordings and 
> riyaz and more riyaz ; Mustafa household 
> never sleeps. Murtaja told me, “Even if
> I come at 3 o clock in the night and I
> have a 10 am mixing session next day in 
> the studio I will reach the studio at 
> sharp 10 am. Same applies to Papa, he
> has taken sessions with Rahman bhai 
> at 3 am in the morning”. Something 
> like this offers an insight on the 
> industry where professionals try to 
> beat lack of time and space with passion.
> Motivation levels are very high here.  
> 
> 
> I had a good chat with Murtaja. I had 
> been chasing him for a fortnight and
> he finally got me an appointment 
> with Ustad ji and also agreed to talk 
> to my Dictaphone. The result – he got 
> late for a recording session and missed 
> altogether his Friday Jumma Namaz. 
> It re-affirmed my belief that in my
> research, respondents have at times 
> proved to be more self-sacrificing 
> than me. Such gestures often make me 
> feel more responsible for my work.
> 
> Readers,let me know if you want to know
> more about the interview I will do a 
> detailed posting.
> 
> PRASHANT PANDEY, for SARAI 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and
> the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to
> reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the
> subject header.
> List archive:
<https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>



		
__________________________________ 
Discover Yahoo! 
Have fun online with music videos, cool games, IM and more. Check it out! 
http://discover.yahoo.com/online.html


From freestspirit at yahoo.co.uk  Thu Jun  2 12:54:36 2005
From: freestspirit at yahoo.co.uk (Bikram Jeet Batra)
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 08:24:36 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Delhi Master PLan 2021
In-Reply-To: <20050602065605.A00E628D9A3@mail.sarai.net>
Message-ID: <20050602072436.72182.qmail@web25302.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>

Hi Aman and Sanghmitra,

The draft 2021 plan is available from the DDA website.
It is also available at the Jain Book Agency in CP and
Aurobindo Mkt.

Aman - It might be a good idea to talk to Lalit at
Hazard Centre in New Delhi. They've been doing a lot
of work around the master plan, and are following work
on the commonwealth village etc.

best,
Bikram 



>  Thnks Aman. Your mail gives me a chance to visit 
> the book stores. I am also looking for it. We are
> working with urban poor in calcutta.  
> Thanks
> Sanghamitra
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Aman Sethi 
>   To: reader-list at sarai.net 
>   Sent: Monday, May 30, 2005 6:47 PM
>   Subject: [Reader-list] Delhi masterplan 2021
> 
> 
>   Dear all
> 
>   I am working on an article on the Commonwealth
> Games Village, to be built in time for the 2010
> Commonwealth Games - Delhi .. I don't really have an
> angle yet .. but Delhi's proposal included plans for
> a review of the transportation and residental
> infrastructure in east and central delhi.
> 
>   I need a copy of the draftplan of the 2021
> masterplan for delhi .. does anyone know where i can
> get  a copy from? .. am already trying to contact
> the Urban development department, DDA and MCD .. if
> anyone has any other resources/ ideas?
> 
>   regards
>   Aman 
> 



	
	
		
___________________________________________________________ 
Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


From ysaeed7 at yahoo.com  Thu Jun  2 14:14:55 2005
From: ysaeed7 at yahoo.com (Yousuf)
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 01:44:55 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Reader-list] Murtaja Mustafa , Bollywood Music ,Prashant Pandey
In-Reply-To: <20050602072353.59879.qmail@web80908.mail.scd.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20050602084455.79136.qmail@web51401.mail.yahoo.com>

Dear Prashant 
Are you sure if his name is Murtaja? Maybe you could
check if he spells it as MURTAZA...

Yousuf 

wrote:

> 
> Dear Prashant,
> 
> Please post the interview as soon as possible...I
> have
> been following with postings with great interest,
> music being the very stuff of Hindi cinema it is
> amazing how little we know about its conditions of
> production, yours being one of the first serious and
> sustained attempts I have come across.
> 
> I knew about the Kumar Sanu school of singing but
> the
> Sonu Nigam school was news for me...
> 
> Lovely.
> 
> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > He has got training from the best
> > masters of the Indian classical tradition.
> > A voice that evokes in you what is
> > termed as spiritual. No wonder A.R
> > Rahaman has chased him from time to 
> > time for singing opportunities. 
> > The man is Murtaja Mustafa,son
> > of the legengary Ustad Ghulam Mustafa. 
> > Murtaja Mustafa is one of most chilled 
> > out singers that I have ever met.Both of us
> > are  sitting on a red persian carpet in 
> > his small drawing room decorated with 
> > trophies,awards,and ancient muscial 
> > instruments. " yaha pe Rahman ki class lagti
> > hai",(So this is AR Rahman's music class!)
> > I say to myself. Thats another story;we will 
> > come to it later.  
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > I had gone to his Turner Road residence 
> > to meet the legendary classical vocalist ,
> > Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan. Apart from 
> > being the leading light of the Rampur 
> > Ghrana , Ustad ji  has taught/mentored 
> > almost every second playback singer. 
> > Right from Asha Bhosle ,Manna De to 
> > Shaan  and Sonu Nigam, Ustad Ji has 
> > helped generations of playback singers 
> > to excel in their art. Then there are 
> > two special disciples who are just family 
> > to him- AR Rahman and Hariharan. Ustad is
> > extremely low-profile and quiet in 
> > his demeanour. He also doesn’t prefer to
> > talk much about his star students. 
> > I had lot of questions in mind when I 
> > started the interview but I started to 
> > realize that he was not at all interested 
> > in critiquing anybody or anything. He
> > answered all my questions in parables 
> > like a Zen master.Then he has also taught
> > his two sons Kadir and Murtaja. If you
> > have heard Rahmans’ Pia Haji Ali (Fiza),
> > Anarkali (Boys, Tamil) and Chupke se (Sathiya)
> > ,and Ismail Darbars' Kisna (Kisna) you 
> > would feel instantly what and how their 
> > smooth vocals have contributed to these songs.
> > Murtaja has often collaborated with Rahman (bhai) 
> > on films like The legend of Bhagat Singh,
> > whose background score he recorded in London. 
> > Murtaja is also working on an album 
> > where all the three brothers will sing. 
> > Then there are usual routine classical
> > performances, studio recordings and 
> > riyaz and more riyaz ; Mustafa household 
> > never sleeps. Murtaja told me, “Even if
> > I come at 3 o clock in the night and I
> > have a 10 am mixing session next day in 
> > the studio I will reach the studio at 
> > sharp 10 am. Same applies to Papa, he
> > has taken sessions with Rahman bhai 
> > at 3 am in the morning”. Something 
> > like this offers an insight on the 
> > industry where professionals try to 
> > beat lack of time and space with passion.
> > Motivation levels are very high here.  
> > 
> > 
> > I had a good chat with Murtaja. I had 
> > been chasing him for a fortnight and
> > he finally got me an appointment 
> > with Ustad ji and also agreed to talk 
> > to my Dictaphone. The result – he got 
> > late for a recording session and missed 
> > altogether his Friday Jumma Namaz. 
> > It re-affirmed my belief that in my
> > research, respondents have at times 
> > proved to be more self-sacrificing 
> > than me. Such gestures often make me 
> > feel more responsible for my work.
> > 
> > Readers,let me know if you want to know
> > more about the interview I will do a 
> > detailed posting.
> > 
> > PRASHANT PANDEY, for SARAI 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > > _________________________________________
> > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and
> > the city.
> > Critiques & Collaborations
> > To subscribe: send an email to
> > reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in
> the
> > subject header.
> > List archive:
> <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
> 
> 
> 
> 		
> __________________________________ 
> Discover Yahoo! 
> Have fun online with music videos, cool games, IM
> and more. Check it out! 
> http://discover.yahoo.com/online.html
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and
> the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to
> reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the
> subject header.
> List archive:
> <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
> 



		
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From machleetank at gmail.com  Thu Jun  2 15:31:25 2005
From: machleetank at gmail.com (Jasmeen P)
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 15:31:25 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] blank noise: lost and found.
Message-ID: <faa8cf8e05060203014c52af5@mail.gmail.com>

(SHORT TEXT MESSAGE)
One Night Stand: public participatory performance to reclaim the
streets. May 27 Brigade Road Coffee Day 6 pm. Please call to
participate. 98868 40612


27th may 2004

Payal, Romal, Sandhya and I are drenched as we enter at Coffee House
on MG Road. Time 4 30 pm.

I begin to believe that god is a man against feminism.

It continues to pour and I receive a hundred text messages:

"Is it on?"

"Sorry I don't think I can make it."

"Am stuck in traffic."


6 pm:

It is still drizzling. The traffic is less. We move from coffee house
to coffee day. The people there are nice, smiley, friendly.

Out of the 13 expected the people that showed up were Payal, Rahima,
Romal, Sandhya, Hemangini, Rahima, Namita. Umesh.  Smriti, Umang and
Yashas showed up as documenters of the event..

People required: 14
Numbers present: 8
People missing: 6


"Let's get people on the street to participate!"



The event for the evening took various avatars while being introduced
to different people.

At the traffic signal we say, "Hello, we are doing social work here.
Can you put these posters up at the police traffic signals?" we also
let him know that we were going to do a small performance without
interrupting the traffic.

( The traffic police man was a nice man. He whistled and we would
exit. No problem on that front at all. )


Or "hello we are doing a project on street sexual harassment…err….eve
teasing and we invite you to participate. Would you like to be an
alphabet of the sentence, ' Y R U LOOKING AT ME?' and appear/disappear
at traffic signals?


We targeted the shop "Health and Glow": a shop where one can buy all
the girly things from body wash to cosmetics to sanitary napkins.
Rahima, Namita and I went about introducing the project idea to both
customers and the working staff. We were lucky to find participants in
the customers there. Neha, Vikram, Siraj and Rajitha there. THANKYOU!!

(Everyone is all smiles and we walk onto the road.)



Yes it happened. 

The reactions included curiosity, surprise, discomfort, more
questions, public support.

"I think people were willing to listen. it was a good place to catch
them. But they need a slogan. Something condensed so that they get the
point. There were also some inquisitive people who got into a dialogue
and supported it." Smriti Chanchani.

Namita felt that we could illustrate different characters through the
clothes we wear during the performance.

My response: to bring on the different people and include them in the
performance versus us trying to illustrate their presence.


Plan B:
To do it again. It is evolving. Will keep you posted.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Hi everyone,

For those of you wondering about the incoherence from my part here's a
'brief' update-
My mails and the blog seem a bit confusing I hope this mail should
clear things a little-

The project in two phases:
The first phase was with 'dealing with the victim hood' of street
sexual harassment.
The second phase is towards being proactive and confronting.

Here are some of the tangible materials I have right now with which I
would want to work-

-	A handful of clothes; -from the 'did you ask for it' project (most
of it my own. I'm still hoping people will send me theirs)
-	Testimonies via sound.
-	The news piece.
-	Newspaper reports
-	Emails- responses to the project- responses to clothes email-'did
you ask for it'. Testimonies.
-	Photographs of stalkers.
-	Smaller sub projects: a project on women bus conductor's perception
of safety in relation to the uniform she wears daily. (photo and
sound)
-	Questionnaire results: questions on clothing and safety, answered by
college students.
-	Documentation of presentation
-	A floating group of I'm interested' participants.
-	Documentation of performances.




About Building testimonies in a public space
I was concerned with the form I would adapt. I toyed around with the
idea of 'cleansing and spitting'- I thought of an interactive sink
into which you could expunge your memories (of these unpleasant
incidents). I'm not sure if I would like to go through with this
because while this would fit perfectly in a space like a gallery I
don't see it there at this point in time.

There were also initial ideas of confession booths around the street
and broadcasting testimonies. I am not convinced about this either
(plus the whole religious connotations that come with confession
booths)

The third idea was to use clothing to build testimonies-for this I've
collected my clothes, my mother's clothes-clothes that we wore when we
were sexually threatened. The initial response from people was that
this was a great idea and that they wanted to help but soon the
excitement subsided and degenerated into the standard, familiar
responses:

-I don't remember what I was wearing
-I burnt it, but can I send you something similar?
-I don't agree with you on this one-It's not about the clothes
-I don't want to give it you, they are my favorite pair/I can't give it away
-why don't you take a photograph of it? Or ask people to send you
photos of them in it??

Despite these minor hiccups I definitely want to take this part
forward. It is ongoing.


This could never be an isolated arts project. People fear the word
activist. In the initial stages (2003) I did too. While I don't have a
problem with my project being 'activist art' or 'community art' or
'public art' disillusionment creeps in when the people I'm supposed to
be working with don't respond the way I would expect them to (not
turning up for meetings, not being responsive enough…etc).

I've been thinking about 'approach', 'strategy', 'transparency', and
the language or tone addressing participants and wonder if I should be
relying on other participants or just going ahead with it (which seems
to be the easy and convenient way even though it defies the whole
purpose of what I'm trying to achieve).

I'm still grappling with these conflicts and would be grateful for any
feedback/suggestions/advice.


Things I actually did :

Went around to colleges looking for participants. Most of the colleges
were busy with the exams but some of them were nice enough to give me
time, space and students to make 2 hour presentations. The
presentations made it clear that this wasn't some
feminist/ultra-feminist project and that anyone (men especially) was
welcome. About 200 pamphlets, questionnaires and enthusiastic 'yes's'
later 3 people showed up for the meetings.

Bangalore University was an eye-opener. No one wanted to
participate-they either had exams or were concerned with the
'morality' of the whole issue.

These moral issues not impinging I've still decided to work on my
immoral project with smaller groups (the most promising one seems to
be a group of journalism students from Christ College)








The concrete ideas that came out of these meetings were

A)	A newspaper

B)	 A street performance on the street with help of costumes designed
by students of  fashion at srishti,nift.

C )Have also been meeting with people who own cafes and have TVs
installed; they    could broadcast the news video there. I've already
discussed this with owners of cafes who seemed open and enthusiastic.)


Things I  am doing/ have happened and are still happening.
The night walk in collaboration with Pukar.( was to happen on the 20th
of May in Mumbai, it didn't quite work but was quite an experience.)
on the 20th of May, Friday or the 27th:  key performers wearing a
reflective badge will perform through the night in Marine Drive in
Bombay and Brigade Road in Bangalore :

I'm still trying to figure out ways in which it wont be an exclusive
'feminist performance'.

Should it be transparent and direct?

In terms of form, I have been in dialogue with Ashok Sukumaran. We
have chosen to go ahead with reflectors. The one/ two main performers
in each city will be wearing a costume made of reflectors. In addition
they will also be carrying speakers that will disperse testimonies of
women who have experienced street sexual harassment. I can see the
performance being static. That is just standing for two hours while
the people are walking by. Others present are free to do what they
want; they will also be wearing reflector badges. Hopefully people
will keep joining in, there will be a floating crowd of women in
reflectors. Every woman walking there will wear a reflector.

In performance I will be dispersing testimonies of women who have
experienced street sexual harassment, implicitly.

I am also hoping to gather about 10 people who will choreograph the
performance with me. For example (Brigade Road) there are men who just
hang around on the railing of the footpath, outside movie halls,
against the walls; something a woman will be less inclined to do). 
This would happen through the night.

I'd be very grateful for any feedback/suggestions

PS: eagerly waiting for the clothes.


Jasmeen 

www.blanknoiseproject.blogspot.com
www.fotolog.net/machlee/

-- 
ph: + 91 98868 40612

From sastry at cs.wisc.edu  Fri Jun  3 11:37:54 2005
From: sastry at cs.wisc.edu (Subramanya Sastry)
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 11:37:54 +0530 (IST)
Subject: [Reader-list] Report for May
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0506031136350.1111@krishna>

        NewsRack: Automating News Gathering and Classification
        ------------------------------------------------------

Here is my report for the month of May.

Bug fixes
---------
I have made several minor bug fixes and the software is now more stable.
The Sarai installation has now been running for the over 3 weeks without
crashing, or having to be restarted.

New developers 
--------------
A couple of students (undergraduate, masters) are now considering working on
NewsRack for their projects under the joint guidance of Prof.Om Damani of
IIT-Bombay.  I have been working on creating suitable workable projects for
them to work on, based on their background, skills, and time commitment.
One of these students will work for about 1.5 months, and the masters student
will work for about an year.

Current development
------------------- 
I have begun the process of making NewsRack usable with news sites that
do not provide RSS feeds (Hindu, Deccan Herald, Hindustan Times, for ex).
The algorithm itself is straightforward and is outlined below and is
essentially a spidering process.
  1. Download main URL
  2. Identify Base HREF, if any
  3. Identify all unique relative URLs in the page -- but weed out
     links that point to images.
  4. Construct a list of URLs to follow using the Base HREF and the relative
     URLs found in the page.
  5. Recursively follow the links found in 4 above by repeating steps 2-4
     for every candidate link.
By this process, the title, date, and URL links can be identify for every
possible news item.  There are (of course) problems with this approach
which I am going to list later on.
  
I have begun this experiment by writing Perl scripts to fine-tune the
algorithm.  I now have a working Perl script that successfully downloads
the day's news links for Hindu, Deccan Herald, and The Telegraph (of those
newspapers that I have tried).  But, it doesn't work well for Hindustan Times,
Indian Express, or Times of India.  On a little further investigation,
it can be noticed that Hindu, Deccan Herald, and Telegraph organize
their news as: http://<ROOT>/<DATE>/<STORY-LINK> (or some such variation).
Since only relative links are followed, only links relative to
"http://<ROOT>/<DATE>" are followed and hence only news for that day is
downloaded.  But, ToI, HT, and IE all organize their websites as
database-driven sites.  So, this strategy does not quite work.  So, I am
now investigating other ideas, including examining time stamps of the
published news items and only downloading news published in the last 24
hours or so. 

In addition, there is still the problem of sifting through downloaded files
to identify which files are actually news stories.  For example, some of the
downloaded files are page indexes and headline pages.  It is unclear how to
do this without some sort of newspaper-specific hacks -- for example, all
Hindu stories are stored as http://<ROOT>/<DATE>/stories/<LINK> so, I could
discard all other links.  But, there is no obvious generic solution to this
problem at this time.

New Interest
------------
There is continuing interest in this tool.  When possible, I am now trying
to meet with individuals and groups and help them with the process of
setting up a profile, since the tool still requires a fair bit of initial
time investment.


From prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com  Thu Jun  2 12:09:34 2005
From: prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com (Prashant Pandey)
Date: 2 Jun 2005 06:39:34 -0000
Subject: [Reader-list] Quotes, Bollywod Music,Prashant Pandey
Message-ID: <20050602063934.17972.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com>

 
Its a must read for you all... What everybody here has to say about a researcher from Sarai. 

1. Aree Sarai na... mujhe yaad hai ek baar hum log kisi seminar me gaye the... i think Adoor was also there... the panel spoke so much about the films...jitna sala filmmaker ne bhi na socha ho...You are a film student... wahe pe jo chala jaiga sari filmmaking bhool jaiga...
(Oh Sarai, i remember now...once there was a film seminar there...Adoor Gopalakrishnan was also there...Even the filmmakers hadnt thought of all that what the panel was talking about...You are a film student...dont go there you will forget your film making"

Sudhir Mishra(filmmaker)

2. Does your work make you an anthropologist ?
 Vivienne Poacha( Singer)

3. Do they pay you for all this ?
 Asif (Music company executive)

4. He is a student doing a research project for his college...
  Shantanu(Bombays' ace sound engineer introducing me to his colleages)

5. Chalo accha hai ki koi pehli baar hum logo ka haal chaal poochne aaya hai...aap please media me hum logo ke bare me likho.(For the first time somebody has come to us...Please write about us in media)

Yogesh Pradhan(Music Arranger for Lucky,Devdas,HumDil De Chuke Sanam)

6. Is this for a newspaper ? 
  (Himesh Reshamiya, Music Director) 
 
7. Please tell me all the jargons that you have thrown in your proposal...Sarai is a scam. You must be staying in a posh hotel on their money.
(A senior from College) 


8. Impressive. You have done your homework. Can I have your CV ? 

  (Shameer Tandon, Head of Virgin Records India and Music Director,Page 3)

...................................................................

PRASHANT PANDEY 


 
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From zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in  Thu Jun  2 14:41:08 2005
From: zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in (khalid jamal)
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 10:11:08 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [Reader-list] Fast food chains:McDudes!!
Message-ID: <20050602091108.17880.qmail@web8608.mail.in.yahoo.com>


Hi all,

 

I m almost finished with my Post Graduation (and my bank balance TOO..!!)

And hence am able to spend a great deal of time with “Fellows” at fast food chains. Our discussions, as usual, starts with a lot of curls and curves, comes to our work and then to our employers.

 This time I deliberately chose to provoke questions pertaining to “work pressure” and the general dissatisfaction amongst employees across fast food joints.

 

Following are some of the responses that came out as a result of my provocations.

 I must admit here that provoking is a real fun!! And a fine Art too, Especially if you are a researcher at Sarai.

 Its time for my next posting which also becomes the time to put all the fun I have had in writing.

 

READ!!!!

 

    -------------------------------------------

The McDonald’s 

Way.

 

 

Move forward.

Focus on what is best for the system.

 

 

Contributions.

Recognize individual and team achievements.

 

Develop.

Integrity and trust

 

Open communications.

Confront and resolve solutions.

 

No losers.

Aim for “win-win” situation.

 

Actively Listen.

Act the way you talk.

 

Leverage diversity

Debate for the benefit of customer and system.

 

Deliver.

All commitments.

 

Support.

Decisions 100%

 

-------------------------------------

 

 

 

“Your Work is your choice, dude!!”



 I’ve been a McDonalds employee for almost 4 years now.  2 as crew 1 as a shift
manager and now an assistant manager.  Yes I work at McDonlads it has
been my choice I choose to work there, I may not like it all the time
but I could quit any time if I wanted to.  I do empathize with a lot of
the people here.  I have employees that are the best I could possibly
have and see them get treated like crap by our Owner/Operator and
General Manager.  I also have to deal with the employees that call me a
f**king A*s when I asked them nicely to sweep (seriously I had
someone say that to me)  I've been crew and been crapped I've also been
a manager and been crapped on.  But I chose to stay for my own reasons. 
Like I said it is my choice, I could go down to some call center, Departmental store or some factory job and get paid maybe a little less, or maybe a little
more, but I choose to stay. (Somedays I wounder why)  But I still stay. 
I dont mind reading about peoples complaints because no matter where you
work you will always have that one day were you just come home and rant.
Every job has that.  But if some one has found a job where they haven't
had a day like that send me an application!!  I just think
everyone needs to chill out and realize that its just a work, a job and its your choice to work there. 

 Have fun with it.  I try
to have fun with my employees we try to have fun and work at the same
time sometimes it goes a little to far and I have to step in a little but
99.9 % of the times when there happy Im happy.  And if you have a
crankey manager just hit them over the head with the reality board a
couple of times.  I promise it won’t hurt them much.  Have fun and have
a great day at work.

 

Bharat,McDonald’s.

 

---------------------------------

 

 

 

I have been working there for roughly 1.5years. 
Here are the reasons why I have stayed there for so long, and will
probably never leave for a while:

* 

 Managers treat you like they would treat their friends. No, they don't
let you off with eating in the crew room while clocked on, or swearing
on shift etc, but they are very sociable, open people who are great to
work with. I am not a lonely person who accepts anyone with open arms, I
am a very social person myself and I can see how these Managers are a
great asset to the store.

*

The condition of the store is second-to-none and the store looks like something you
would see on a training video.

 *

Management and Owners treat staff with the utmost respect with things
like rostering, wages and training. No crew is treated differently from
the other, whether full time or casual.

*

The "old school" crew who work there are never going to leave, because
they have learnt that it is a good job. Up to 12 crew haven't left in the last 6 months.
 This is an obvious sign that this store is
doing really well.

Whether you are good or bad comes from the customer.

 It seriously comes from customer feedback. It's like everyday that a
McDonald's restaurant has a new employee being trained, these employees
get in shit for going too slow or doing everything wrong or not doing
things that they weren't taught. Sure they make like millions of
mistakes but that’s because they're learning, and what do customers do?
They glare at the manager on duty and they get the crew person in shit.
Sure it's not all customers but its most of them.

 

 I basically hate work only because of the way I get treated by
the customers. I admit that I love working with the people I work with
but not these Inspectors who expect everything to be perfect and
dandy, they focus on customer satisfaction but not the satisfaction of
their employees. Here's my point, the crew working in the service get in
shit from customers, the back people get in shit from the service people
for going too slow, the crew get in shit for arguing, then all of this
leads to some of the employees abusing the work and the employer.

 

 I'm just gonna agree with people saying that you're not forced to
be working for the company, you have a god damn choice!

 

 If I , being a woman, can travel for almost an hour by bus during this scorching heat to do the work that  I do, why not others? 

 

The crux of the matter is: My work engages me and hence   imlovinit!!

 

And iminit!!

 

Lubna khan,McDonald’s 

------------------------------------------
 

I'm a college student, and I make overtime pay all the time,
but only because I choose to work those hours.  If someone is so stupid
they stay with a job they hate, that's their problem.  I was promoted
because I care about the job I do.

Managers at McDonalds do the same job as the crew.  I was a crew person
for 2years, and I was treated perfectly fine and paid more money than
most professions that require the same skills.  Why?  BECAUSE I KNEW HOW
TO DO MY JOB.  Of course you won't be treated as well if you don't do
your job right.  Nobody likes that.  I have news for you.  If you work hard,
your pay will reflect it.  If you are lazy or stupid, or both, of course
you will make low wages.  I have more news for people who think our job is sad... THAT'S NOT
MCDONALD'S PROBLEM!  It is a business just like any other.  I can tell
you right now though, I probably make more money at McDonald's and get
more benefits than you do at whatever the hell you choose to do, and
this is just a job to get me through college.  



  When things are slow, we may cut some labor and send someone
home or when things are high we don’t hesitate to overstaff either, but basically, we have a lot of fun.  Managers and crew laugh and
make jokes constantly with each other and we all have a good time. 
Working at my store is more like getting paid for going out to club. 
Sure there is work involved, but hey, there's no reason you can't have
fun. So, you must work for the shittiest McDonald's in the Nation, That,
or you're just the shittiest employee and you don't know how to make
your bosses laugh

Sandeep, McDonald’s,

 Pursuing MBA Correspondence from IGNOU. He regularly sees McDonald’s website, likes McD TV ads. and dreams of going to Hamburger University to learn trade formally.



-----------------------------------------

Hi, I will have been a McD's employee for 2 years next month. I think this
has given adequate time for me to judge the good side and bad side.

PROS:



Money- working at McDonalds gives me the opportunity to earn money 
which means i don’t have to beg for money from family to go out on a
week end at PVR   or to buy clothes of my choice,like some of my friends do.

People- I ve met lots of people at my store who i now consider to be
close friends. these include managers and other crew. also, ifind managers at my store
are very understanding about problems with scheduling, being late etc. i
suppose im just lucky.

Working conditions-I find that my store is a good, safe place to work.
there are plenty of first-aid to go to if you injure
yourself, if a piece of equipment beaks it will usually get fixed pretty
soon afterwards.


CONS:

Scheduling- although managers are usually understanding when it comes to
changing shifts, it doesn't stop the scedule being f*cked up. people get
put down fo shifts they cant turn up for, people requesting days off
months in advance and not getting them, people asking for shifts and not
getting them, full timers getting part time hours and vice versa,
sometimes at night you'll be lucky to have 3 crew and 2 managers on which isnt nearly enough.

Customers- i dont think people realise that a mcdonalds extra value meal
is NOT a culinary delicacy.....its fast food!!! We can’t get them meticulously prepared food with right amount of salt and pepper and sause all the time. Sometimes,our customers expect us to be their mothers!! 



McDonalds disciples- these are people who love their job...too much.
they spend all their time in the store forsaking education and a social
life for a good pay review. from these seeds unpopular managers do grow.
it comes as no surprise that these people are unpopular manager's
favourite crew members.

Some managers- the minority of managers at my store think they are
better than crew because of the type of shirt they wear. These are the
type of managers who try to run a kitchen on a Saturday afternoon and
fail miserably and blame it on the crew. Luckily, other managers put
these ones in their place.

Food- well, if you eat the same thing over and over in the same environment which is a strictly regulated work place , you too will be exhausted soon.

 

Ahh well, I suppose that the cons outweigh the pros slightly. but still I love my work,
basically because i have many good friends there and i
know i am good at my job.

 

Sandhya Sharma,McDonald’s

 

---------------------------------------------------

 

 

Smile in the Golden Arches

 

 

Apparently,”Lean Time is Clean Time”, at McDonald’s. However,”Smile” remains an integral part of the McD uniform. 

And You See It On
  

 

 Smiling Cashier : greeting in a “friendly” manner.

 

Smiling manager: Making passes through the dining room on a regular basis, interacting with customers, raising a smile or two. 

 

Smiling customers: Hung on the wall (wall of fame!!) after being photographed during one of their parties at Mc D.



Smiling Stars: McD employees being honored as Employee of the month, or Rising star, stamped on the wall with their pass port-size-smiling –face-snap.

 

Smiling service guy: Looking directly into your eye and Offering you a Meal-solution; “Would you like some extra cheese with mustard ketchup, sir? “ 

 

And last and also the least


 

Smiling interiors: With changed color, look and the “feel” inside the store, particularly emphasizing on “environmental graphics” and “warmer tones”.

 



ONE LIFE. ONE SHOT. 

Happiness, Health & Peace, 
Syed Khalid Jamal   

		
---------------------------------
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From cahen.x at levels9.com  Fri Jun  3 13:19:18 2005
From: cahen.x at levels9.com (xavier cahen)
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 09:49:18 +0200
Subject: [Reader-list] pourinfos  letter / 05-26 to 06-02-2005
Message-ID: <002401c56810$bf2a8f10$0301a8c0@acerkxw6rbeu2s>

pourinfos.org
l'actualité du monde de l'art / daily Art news
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

infos from May 26, 2005 to June 02,2005 (included)
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(mostly in french)

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01 Call : call for works/sound is art, Phonurgia,
Arles, France.
http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1686
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02 Call : Call for generative sound artists/composers,
Toy Satellite,Victoria, Australia.
http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1685
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03 Call : Call for paper, A Creativity & Cognition
Symposium, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.
http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1684
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04 Call : Avent Calendar exhibition, Biot, France.
http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1683
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05 Job : director of Art Center, Serigan, France.
http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1681
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06 Job : Art teacher, Ecole Régionale Supérieure d'Expression Plastique, Tourcoing, France.
http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1680
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07 Job : Director of Institut d'Arts Visuels, Orleans,
France.
http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1679
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08 Job : art teacher assistant - Photography, Lorient,
France.
http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1678
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09 Job : Art teacher assistant - communication,  Ecole supérieure d'arts de Lorient, France.
http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1677
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10 Job : Art teacher graphic design, Ecole
supérieure d'arts de Lorient, France.
http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1676
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11 Workshop : Workshop franco-german about sound documantary of creation, Summer University of radio, phonurgia, Paris, France.
http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1675
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12 Job : art teacher assistant - video, Ecole supérieure
d'arts de Lorient, France.
http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1674
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13 Publication : archée cybermensuel, may_2005, Montréal, Canada.
http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1673
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14 Residency : artist residence Abbadia, Henday, France.
http://pourinfos.org/residences/item.php?id=1672
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15 Exhibition : Guillaume Leblon, winner of XV th monumental art award of Ivry, galerie fernand léger, Ivry, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1671
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16 Exhibition : "Chapitre 2"  At abbey of Maubuisson / student exhibition from
l'Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts de Paris-Cergy,Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1670
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17 Exhibition : David Bioulès, open studio MMV,  la reserve,
Montpellier, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1668
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18 Exhibition : artcore 10 : " BRÉSIL ÉCOSOPHIE ", galerie artcore,
Paris, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1667
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19 Exhibitionn : Fluxer... it is taken part ! Villa Myosotis, Dunkerque,
France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1666
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20 Exhibition : Fabrice Hyber, "Nord-Sud", Frac des Pays de la Loire,
Carquefou, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1682
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21 Exhibition : Like animals, Association art visuel, Tour des
archives, Vernon, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1669
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22 Exhibition : Hussein Chalayan, Turkey Pavillon, 51 st Venice Bienniale 2005, Italy. 
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1665
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23 Various : The Audio-visual creation killed by his ? Paris,
France.
http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1663
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24 Various : Petition against the demolition of Metelkova, Ljubljana,
Slovénia.
http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1664
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25 Various : Petition : NO to dismantling of the royalties of Visual artists,Paris, France.
http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1662
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26 Call : Young creation : Jeune Création 2006, Paris, France.
http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1661
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27 Call : Emerging Curator Program, Firstdraft, Surry
Hills, Australia.
http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1660
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28 Call : Refuse To Die, Propeller Centre, Toronto,
Canada.
http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1659
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29 Call : Furtherfield.org, Londres, United Kingdom.
http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1656
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30 Call : Light feast /Faites de la Lumière, France.
lien http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1655
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31 Call : Accumulation Project, Brooklyn NY, USA.
http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1657
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32 Screening : daily images,  Maison du Théâtre et de la Danse,
Epinay-sur-Seine, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1654
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33 Meeting : Conference : " Artists versus medias.", POLART, Strasbourg, France.
http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1653
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34 Performance : De In Search Of The Miraculous, David Christoffel,
Centre d'Art du Quartier Quimper, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1652
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35 Various : First International City of Vinaròs Award for Digital
Literature, Vinaròs, Spain.
http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1651
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36 Exhibition : Vienneses Videos, Bétonsalon-Paris, Paris, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1650
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37 Exhibition : Six millions, Fanny Aboulker, Espace Brochage
Express,Paris, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1649
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38 Exhibition : web exhibition  "Why rock?" Annie Abrahams,
France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1648
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39 Exhibition : 2nd episode, Olivier Leroi, la box_bourges, Bourges,
France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1647
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40 Exhibition : Festival for Jubilee of art Cybernetique,SCHÖFFER studio, Paris, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1646
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41 Sceening : Compilation #3 " The invention of the laughter "videobox, Lunch
Box, Paris, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1645
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42 Call : Festival of new cinema de Montréal,
Canada.
http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1644
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43 Call : sound pieces about social control for
Zeppelin2005, Barcelone, spain.
http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1643
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44 Call : documentary screening, 1st International show
of A E P C E, Saint-Ouen, France.
http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1642
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45 Call : 'Out of Darkness', Artist's video and
cinema, Liverpool, United Kingdom.
http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1641
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46 Publication : portrait, number 5, review Parade, Ersep,
Tourcoing, France.
http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1640
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47 Rencontres : Cycle "Exil(s)" Art en exil Association, Brood des
Récollets, France.
http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1639
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48 Meeting : seminars about Pure Data interactivity, Art Sensitif,
Mains d'Œuvres, Saint Ouen, France.
http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1638
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49 Meeting : What means to represent today? transversale, Brood des Cordeliers, Paris, France.
http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1637
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50 Meeting : Rendez-vous, Anne Laplantine, La Salle de Bains,
Consortium, Dijon, France.
http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1636
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51 Exhibition : " Postures ", Michaëll Sellam, lagalerie, Paris,
France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1635
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52 Screening :  Draft of a dream, the beautiful moment, Hall, Scam,
Paris, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1634
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53 Rencontres : programme Critical Secret, Paris, France.
lien http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1633
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54 Program : Tatiana Trouvé et cneai editions, cneai,
Chatou, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1632
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55 Exhibition : Inventory 2003/2005, Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture
E.S.A., Paris, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1631
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56 Exhibition : Africa Remix, Pompidou center, Paris, France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1630
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57 Exhibition : Saverio Lucariello, Parc Saint Léger, Pougues-les-Eaux,
France.
http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1629




From madhumita at disabilityindia.org  Sat Jun  4 07:27:14 2005
From: madhumita at disabilityindia.org (Dr Madhumita Puri)
Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2005 07:27:14 +0530 (IST)
Subject: [Reader-list] Millennium Development Goals
Message-ID: <E1DeNvL-0002SU-00@smtp.net4india.com>

Dear All
Sorry for the cross posting....

A group of professionals involved with disability development have been 
striving to bring to the attention of the UN, non-inclusion of 
disabilities in the Millennium Development Goals.

We have finally drafted the petition and put it up on 
www.disabilityindia.org

I request you to read the draft and please add your signature as well as 
pass it on to others. You can mail your agreement to 
sales at disabilityindia.org

Looking forward to your support,

Dr Madhumita Puri



From jassim.ali at gmail.com  Fri Jun  3 12:29:37 2005
From: jassim.ali at gmail.com (Jassim Ali)
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 12:29:37 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] Quotes, Bollywod Music,Prashant Pandey
In-Reply-To: <20050602063934.17972.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com>
References: <20050602063934.17972.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com>
Message-ID: <271ece9c050602235922cc8e46@mail.gmail.com>

Wow prashant ...the cross section of the music industry and their varied 
quips and questions throws up a very interesting picture of our jing bang 
(whatever that means, hhehee) music industry with its own bruce dickinsons 
and cowbells ! 

great going and lookin fwd for more fireworks 

regards,
jassim 

On 2 Jun 2005 06:39:34 -0000, Prashant Pandey <
prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Its a must read for you all... What everybody here has to say about a 
> researcher from Sarai. 
> 
> 1. Aree Sarai na... mujhe yaad hai ek baar hum log kisi seminar me gaye 
> the... i think Adoor was also there... the panel spoke so much about the 
> films...jitna sala filmmaker ne bhi na socha ho...You are a film student... 
> wahe pe jo chala jaiga sari filmmaking bhool jaiga...
> (Oh Sarai, i remember now...once there was a film seminar there...Adoor 
> Gopalakrishnan was also there...Even the filmmakers hadnt thought of all 
> that what the panel was talking about...You are a film student...dont go 
> there you will forget your film making"
> 
> Sudhir Mishra(filmmaker)
> 
> 2. Does your work make you an anthropologist ?
> Vivienne Poacha( Singer)
> 
> 3. Do they pay you for all this ?
> Asif (Music company executive)
> 
> 4. He is a student doing a research project for his college...
> Shantanu(Bombays' ace sound engineer introducing me to his colleages)
> 
> 5. Chalo accha hai ki koi pehli baar hum logo ka haal chaal poochne aaya 
> hai...aap please media me hum logo ke bare me likho.(For the first time 
> somebody has come to us...Please write about us in media)
> 
> Yogesh Pradhan(Music Arranger for Lucky,Devdas,HumDil De Chuke Sanam)
> 
> 6. Is this for a newspaper ? 
> (Himesh Reshamiya, Music Director) 
> 
> 7. Please tell me all the jargons that you have thrown in your 
> proposal...Sarai is a scam. You must be staying in a posh hotel on their 
> money.
> (A senior from College) 
> 
> 
> 8. Impressive. You have done your homework. Can I have your CV ? 
> 
> (Shameer Tandon, Head of Virgin Records India and Music Director,Page 3)
> 
> ...................................................................
> 
> PRASHANT PANDEY 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
>  <http://clients.rediff.com/signature/track_sig.asp> 
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with 
> subscribe in the subject header.
> List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
> 
> 


-- 
Cheers,

Jassim Ali
Client Partner
(Strategic Planning & Business Development)
Webchutney 

"Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."- St Tyler
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From zulfisindh at yahoo.com  Fri Jun  3 20:29:37 2005
From: zulfisindh at yahoo.com (Zulfiqar Shah)
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 07:59:37 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Reader-list] Europe: an identity against civil war
Message-ID: <20050603145937.41176.qmail@web30708.mail.mud.yahoo.com>


Europe: an identity against civil war

Josep Ramoneda 


In order to be assured of at least the possibility of becoming just another citizen in a world free from the spectre of blood and the bewitchment of horror, he could only anticipate the destruction of the existing world. 



These are the words, slightly paraphrased, of Hannah Arendt. The citizen to whom she refers, the "man of goodwill", is Franz Kafka. Kafka died in 1924 and thus did not live to see the collapse he foresaw; neither did he see the destiny that was in store for his city, Prague, doomed to linger for so long in suffering. Now that Europe is at last becoming whole, this evocation of Kafka helps to remind us that the great founding myth of Europe has been that of the taboo against civil war. 



The "no" votes in France and the Netherlands over the proposed treaty establishing a constitution for the European Union demonstrates the enormous difficulty of progressing towards constructing a European cosmopolitanism based on shared experience. Yet this is the only possible way for Europe to overcome the contradictory impulses that challenge it: a flight into globalisation versus a retreat into nationalism (the latter being, as Olivier Roy has pointed out, the most serious risk Europe faces). 



The injection of more democracy into the process of uniting Europe will encounter obstacles and diversions along the way – which the French and Dutch results can be seen to represent – but it is essential that Europe proceeds by devising a minimal framework that can accommodate but also go beyond the cultural exceptions of each nation. 



The meaning of a taboo

If it is true that identities are defined in opposition to something or somebody, the identity of Europe has been defined in opposition to civil war. I say "civil" because, if we Europeans really wish to form a shared "demos", then wars between Europeans are civil wars (perhaps it is significant that in China, what was first known as "the great war", then as "the first world war" – the combat of 1914-18 – was long referred to as "the European civil war"). 



Europeans have been killing each other for centuries. But it took the Nazi extermination of the 1940s, which went beyond all limits in the exercise of evil, for Europeans to realise the need to construct a Europe that would define itself in opposition to the massacre of Europeans, to industrial-scale genocide, and to the conversion of "crimes of logic" (Albert Camus) into state imperatives. Thus, after 1945 and taking shape from the early 1950s, the new Europe was born. 



Civil war – a clash between members of the same community rather than between states – is the worst of war’s many horrors. Human beings inhabit spaces that are delimited by belonging, which slowly have been expanding: family, community, city, nation. From the moment that Europe becomes common territory, any war between European states will be at least in part a civil war. With the construction of the European Union, civil war in Europe became – and remains – unthinkable. 



In order to establish this taboo, however, it was necessary to descend to the seventh circle of hell that the Nazi era represented. The European Union is, in its origins, a huge market (and it is difficult to make of it anything more than a market) but it also entailed from the very start a profound moral component: "never again".



In the 20th century, Europe demolished the idea of limits. Totalitarianism started from the idea that anything is possible. Reason ceased being critical to become the legitimiser of the will to power, of systemic injustice. As accomplice to extermination, reason died. When the reality of Nazi genocide came to light after 1945, the idea that this could never be repeated took root in the consciousness of citizens. If the European Union has any meaning today, it is precisely this: the taboo against civil war. 



The lesson of Buchenwald

The sense of the European demos that is now under construction was already present in 1945, in Albert Camus’s Letters to a German Friend.



When Camus wrote "we", he did not mean "we, the French" but "we, the free Europeans"; when he wrote "you", he did not mean "you, the Germans" but "you, the Nazis". This "we" of Camus is the origin of the new European demos whose identity and legitimacy have emerged in opposition to total evil, to civil war, and is therefore inextricably united with the defence of freedom. 



Jorge Semprún describes how he understood for the first time what Europe was when a prisoner in the in Buchenwald concentration camp. There, a handful of Europeans struggled for survival against Nazism. That group was Europe itself. 



Among them were young people from the Soviet Union, in particular Ukrainians. Those who endured the camps and returned home were suspected of being accomplices of the Nazis for the mere fact of having survived. The great majority ended up in Siberia, where they continued to resist the Stalinist form of totalitarianism. In other words, they continued, albeit unknowingly, to construct Europe. It would be enormously unjust to deny them the right to be Europeans. This is why Europe was incomplete until the countries of its east began to join; it is also why (though it may seem paradoxical), although Europe cannot be unlimited, it must attend to all countries that knock at its door. 

The Balkans failure

Europeans have not lived along the same timescales. In the east, the descent into hell was prolonged. For millions of citizens, "liberation" in 1945 simply meant changing from one form of totalitarianism to another. Now, they have started to come together again in the Europe to which they always belonged. 

The peaceful course of the revolutions of 1989 shows that east-central Europeans too had begun to internalise the taboo of civil war. But a Europe returning to itself was shadowed by persistent scars, above all the Balkans. The savage wars of a disintegrating Yugoslavia from 1991 saw the triumph of ethnic cleansing, internationally endorsed. 



This failure of Europe is a reminder that nothing is ever achieved definitively: not even the taboo against war. Each time that Europe has surrendered its principal weapon, critical reason, to the service of the will to power (in the name of fatherland, class, ethnic group, religion, or technology) the way has been opened up for civil war and disaster. The Balkans are Europe, and Europe needs the Balkans. We must not look away again, nor keep the region at a distance, as if it was some kind of potential reserve of base passions. 



Europe as critical reason

A mean-spirited dialectic seems to be confronting the countries that were in 2004 incorporated into the European Union in the form of a fidelity test: either Europe or the United States. This is an absurd game, fostered by people who have an interest in debilitating Europe. What is so strange about people, who have lived for so many years with Russia as a constant threat, feeling a special admiration for the prime enemy of their oppressors: the United States? 



The evolution towards authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin’s regime (with the assent of certain European governments that suffer from paralysis of their democratic reflexes whenever they are anywhere near Moscow) is hardly reassuring. Yet the destiny of these countries is Europe. And only if Europe should fail will it be different. 



What might be the failure of Europe? Two things: the inability to extend to everyone the social cohesion that has so far been attained; and the breaking of the civil war taboo. The "Europe of 25" raises short-term problems of economic, financial and social adjustment but in the long term its strength depends on a key area: that of education and culture. The ability to invent, create and seduce (viral power) must be the distinctive hallmark of Europe. 



Europe presents herself as a bearer of human rights. But if, as erudite people claim, the basic principle of humanity is reason, human rights are universal and not the exclusive property of anyone. It would be ethnocentric to believe otherwise. 



Europe developed curiosity (the driving force of knowledge) in the interests of both conquest and science, deploying critical reason to advance beyond other nations that remained bogged down in their own glory. Europe has come to grief every time it has abandoned critical reason. In our present-day society of risk, Europe will once again undergo the test critical reason presents. 



Europe cannot remain a prisoner of its own impotence in international relations; neither can it respond by dispersal its energies in new conflicts. Europe must define its own model without fear of being different or being led astray by dogmas of economic growth as the foundation of all progress. 



Europe must defend its secularism and institutional neutrality as territory that is common to all: those who are here now and those yet to come, without detriment to the beliefs of anyone. If it abandons critical reason and comes under the sway of truths that solidify in the brain (to use JM Coetzee’s expression), if it takes the path of security at any price, if it gives way to community fragmentation in the name of false relativism out of fear of the newcomer, or if it forgets the centrality of the human individual (a notion that has dominated its culture since the Renaissance), instead of growing Europe will shrink. 



The recently incorporated countries (and those still on the waiting list, like Romania and Ukraine) have emerged from an experience different to that of modernity, and they come with renewed energies after tremendous change. Europe will be at once denser and more open as a result. Some people stress the economic weakness of the new arrivals, but it is more intelligent and forward-looking to highlight their great educational and creative potential. 



An identity without enemies

An identity against civil war is exactly the opposite of units of destiny in universal terms. "A civilisation is an anti-destiny", writes Andre Glucksmann; it unites "against what destroys it". The peculiarity of the European identity is its nature as an open or transcendent identity, one not defined by exclusion of the other, but rather by the incorporation among ourselves by all those who reject civil war, independently of their origins or where they might be coming from. 



Europe must demonstrate that, contrary to Carl Schmitt’s doctrine, it is possible to engage in politics without any need to point at an enemy. This is why it is an error to believe that the European identity will be constructed in opposition to the United States. There are and will be conflicts of interests with the United States, but it is absurd to think of Europe’s relations with the US in polarised ways. This is a trap set by American neo-conservatives; only those who suffer from the childish ailment called anti-Americanism will fall for it. 



The European identity is always projected beyond Europe – with the risk of being suspected of identity imperialism – in keeping with the enlightened requirement that obliges Europe to act in accordance with Kant’s categorical imperative: "as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature....." And, precisely because it was founded in the experience of evil, it is a vigilant identity, one that is alert to threats of destruction and self-destruction. 



If closed identities have been and are (as in the Balkans) the standard-bearers of civil conflict among Europeans, the identity that will arise to oppose this conflict will naturally be open. The only condition for including the "other" as one of "us" is rejection of civil war and acceptance of the framework agreed for the rules of the game. 



Like any process of de-territorialisation, this generates crises and fissures. There will always be somebody who reacts fearfully when borders and certainties are blurred. A few seek shelter and protection under the wing of the strongest party (like the Atlanticist front that clustered around George W Bush during the war in Iraq), while others lose themselves in the time warp of closed societies (like the nationalist front that rejects the processes of globalisation). 



It is natural that, when faced with the uncertainties that come hand-in-hand with change, more conservative people want to reaffirm the values of tradition in the founding documents of the new Europe. They should not forget that Christianity is, in Europe, both Catholicity (another form of universal vocation) and diversity, and that the splits within Christianity represent a step towards freedom; as Voltaire remarked, "if there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism; if there were two they would cut each other’s throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness." 



An open Europe

Why is the identity constructed against civil war an open one? Because the lowest common denominator is rejection of fraternal destruction. And beyond that, all ideas and positions are amenable to being presented and discussed on the European stage. As George Steiner has noted, being a European means seeking to reconcile, morally, intellectually and existentially, the incompatible ideals, claims and praxes of the city of Socrates with those of the city of Isaiah. 



The proposed, contested European constitution has dispensed with the erroneous category of "the people", a category designed to snare individuals in the cobwebs of atavism, of a story that presumes to be above them. The European demos was not founded on peoples but on citizens and states. The next step will be to recognise the full, founding power of citizens. Europe’s patriotism is not one of freedoms, nor one of conflict between the different groups of "we"; if it were, the only line of exclusion would be drawn by the person who wants to regress to civil war, the self-destruction of Europe. 



The European identity thus defines a peculiar relationship with the "other". This makes the debate on borders – understood in relation to internal frontiers as well as geographic limits – decisive. Europe cannot be a fortified "white world" that reacts in paranoid fashion to anything that seems to be different. With regard to the exterior, it must be permeable enough both to project itself and to permit itself to be inseminated; with regard to its interior, it must accept that globalisation is happening in all directions and that Europe too is at once recipient and motor of the process. This means not fleeing from contact or from conflict but transforming them into shared policies and institutions. 



True, there is a danger in believing that Europe’s pacification means that plenitude has been achieved and Europe’s potential historically realised. This fantasy, if accepted, would confirm the prejudice of Europeans’ inability to take responsibility for themselves – corroborating the views of Americans like Robert Kagan who see Europe as a post-heroic paradise that cannot recognise, far less confront, the problems of the world. 



Europe knows, precisely because its only general requirement is rejection of self-destruction and its results, that unity is not a value in itself. The value is pluralism. Europe’s identity is not a fact prior to some common project inscribed on the skin of the history of Europeans but (as Etienne Balibar says) "a quality of collective action" continually being shaped in the course of the complex evolution of European society. 

In the European space of freely-associated states, we see the emergence of a potential system of political articulation, one capable of overcoming the physical and spiritual divisions that accompany what is national: the system of cities, of the diversity of cultures brought into relationship on the basis of the protocols of urbanity, of modernity. The city overflows borders and makes it possible to weave a fabric that prevails from within over all national packaging, thanks to the viral power of what is urban. Only the city can save us from multiculturalist errors. 



>From regression to renewal 

The identity against civil war as a minimalist identity, pared down to the essential, one that does not attempt to befuddle the consciousness of citizens. It is etched into the modern European awareness that war is something to be avoided. United States neo-conservatives see this as a weakness or sign of impotence. It may be, in part; but the taboo against war, constructed upon images of extermination, is a key component of the European identity. 



In the past, Europeans engaged in a classical form of imperialism: that of conquest and occupation of territories. The experience has left gaping wounds and a bitter aftertaste. Today, for Europe, negotiation and agreement are frontline instruments. The Americans, by contrast, have been engaging in a modern, return-ticket kind of imperialism: they act and then leave, they are present to destroy and absent when it is time for construction. 

Europe’s strength now is in what I call "viral power" (although others prefer the more prissy formulation of "soft power"): the ability to make contagious those ideas and customs that give shape to a certain way of being in the world. 



In the network society the viral capacity of countries or regional groups is decisive, so much so that I believe that it is possible to divide societies into two types. The first has the viral power that can transcend its borders, in terms of life, information, money, industry, inventiveness and ideas (exogenous viral power, or cosmopolitan power); the second has a self-destructive form of viral power perhaps because of an inability to generate viruses that are expansive and universal (so that the miasmas remain in the family, as endogenous – or national – viral power). 



Europe should use the tremendous potential of its exogenous viral power as an antidote, both against ethnic multiculturalism and against any order that is founded in fantasies of the end of history. 



A European demos

The preamble of the European constitution – not exactly a memorable text – refers to the terrible disagreements that have led to this coming together: "Believing that Europe, reunited after bitter experiences, intends to continue along this path of civilisation, progress and prosperity 
 " 

An identity is not imposed, but is formed, is developed and is extended: the taboo against civil strife was followed in Europe by a rejection of political totalitarianism and moral authoritarianism. Such an identity would continue to assert itself as the everyday experience of the citizens took on a European dimension in addition to local and national ones – a necessary condition for the consolidation of a European demos. 

But European identity will always be open to other countries that share the same standards of coexistence and communication. Hence Europe does not have closed borders. This means Turkey, of course, and why not Israel and Palestine some day? 



It might be argued that as long as European identity is so minimalist, national identities will be assured of a long life. People need to feel they belong and want to have strong community feeling but are not aware that every identity represents a certain loss of freedom, which is ever greater with each turn of the identity screw. The European identity cannot be – in the experience of the citizens – an identity that is of the same order as national identities, and neither need it be incompatible with them. The feeling against civil war is stronger than the mythical national stories that are constructed upon the abuse of power, selective memory and outright deception. Spain knows something of this: being against civil war is the shared value that has made a relatively peaceful transition possible. 



An identity against civil war is something like a renewal of the promises of the social contract now that modern experience has reached its limits, in totalitarianism and weapons of mass destruction. The European social model is not far removed from the bases of this identity. It was constructed in the post-war years to buttress a rejection of civil war and it requires updating and reforms. To destroy it would be a kind of self-destruction of Europe, regression to civil war.



This essay was translated by Julie Wark



Source: Open Democracy 


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From shekhar at crit.org.in  Sun Jun  5 02:02:39 2005
From: shekhar at crit.org.in (Shekhar Krishnan)
Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2005 21:32:39 +0100
Subject: [Reader-list] Mumbai Free Map
Message-ID: <9bd41d1116e5a85477001c0fda4dc916@crit.org.in>

Dear All:

Please see the latest demo of the Mumbai Free Map on 
http://freemap.crit.org.in

This now contains detailed vector layers for roads, railways, buildings 
and plots, projected onto a satellite composite image of the city. The 
data has been sourced from existing municipal development plans, 
surveys, and maps, which we have scanned, traced and stitched together 
with our archive of project materials at CRIT.

This project has been developed using completely free and open source 
software (Map Server, GRASS, QGIS) and copyleft and public geographic 
data.

The project web page is on http://www.crit.org.in/projects/gis and we 
welcome comments and feedback on it as we begin developing an interface 
by which to annotate the maps and develop the Mumbai Free Map as an 
open source and interactive city archive and community information 
infrastructure.

Regards,


S.K.
_____

Shekhar Krishnan
CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust)
B-43, Shravasti
Goregaon-Malad Link Road
Malad (West), Mumbai 400064
India

http://www.crit.org.in/members/shekhar



From singhgurminder2000 at hotmail.com  Sun Jun  5 14:43:47 2005
From: singhgurminder2000 at hotmail.com (gurminder singh)
Date: Sun, 05 Jun 2005 14:43:47 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] Visit a Gurdwara in Delhi
Message-ID: <BAY16-F15BE1B46E89B88641BDF2ACFF80@phx.gbl>

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From shivamvij at gmail.com  Sat Jun  4 15:16:11 2005
From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam)
Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2005 15:16:11 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] Caste and Gender (Insight Magazine)
In-Reply-To: <20050602180947.31013.qmail@webmail49.rediffmail.com>
References: <20050602180947.31013.qmail@webmail49.rediffmail.com>
Message-ID: <fd72ba1a05060402463fd75807@mail.gmail.com>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Insight Magazine <insightjnu at rediffmail.com>
Date: 2 Jun 2005 18:09:47 -0000
Subject: new issue-insight

Dear All,

the new issue of INSIGHT on Caste and Gender is now online at
http://www.sammaditthi.com/INSIGHT/insight_home.asp

we have worked hard to put forward dalit women perspective.
we are eagerly waiting for ur response. the printed version will be
released tommorow

regards
 Anoop


From kranenbu at xs4all.nl  Mon Jun  6 16:11:49 2005
From: kranenbu at xs4all.nl (Rob van Kranenburg)
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 11:41:49 +0100
Subject: [Reader-list] IV Global Conference of =?iso-8859-1?q?Peoples=92?=
	Global Action, 	Haridwar, Uttaranchal, North India
Message-ID: <p04330103bec9d8915760@[192.168.2.132]>

Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2005 16:40:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: pga-4globalconf at riseup.net
To: "caravana" <caravan99 at lists.riseup.net>

Subject: [caravan99] CALL: IV Global Conference of
      Peoples´Global Action


IV Global Conference of Peoples’ Global Action
27th September to 2nd October 2005
Haridwar, Uttaranchal, North India


1.	Background
2.	Why a global conference now? Why in Asia?
3.	Objectives of this conference
4.	Asian convenors and conference hosts
5.	Dates, venue and logistics
6.	Programme and preparation process
7.	Participants

Appendixes:
I.	Hallmarks of PGA
II.	Organizational Principles of PGA
III.	A brief history of Peoples’ Global Action
IV.	Sustained campaigns
V.	Application form


1. Background

Global capitalism is causing more exploitation, oppression, destitution
and war in our times than ever before. The governments, multinational
corporations and financial interests that rule over the global economy
continue concentrating wealth and power. They fasten their control over
our lives and resources on multilateral institutions and agreements, such
as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), and regional trade agreements like the EU, FTAA,
APEC, etc. These entities ensure that injustice and destruction expand all
over the world, increasing the pain and despair of all oppressed and
discriminated people, such as peasants, indigenous peoples, women,
workers, the unemployed, slum dwellers, ethnic or religious minorities,
Dalits and other exploited castes, Hijras, etc . The monstrous global
inequalities have reached an absurd level where almost 1 billion people
suffer chronic hunger and more than 1 billion lack access to safe drinking
water, while the 3 richest men own more wealth than the poorest 48
countries, and 285 individuals posses as much as half of the humanity.

In addition to the daily economic violence engendered by capitalism,
imperialist countries are waging more and increasingly destructive wars to
steal resources from the poor. This is why many anti-capitalist movements
have actively participated in anti-war protests as a natural extension of
their activity. The atrocious nature of those wars is one more consequence
of capital’s expansion, just like the suicides of thousands of indebted
peasants in South Asia, the displacement of indigenous peoples, the
exploitation of workers and women, etc. The world is full of such examples
of the destructive and insatiable greed of a social and economic system
that most humans reject and despise.

The people and institutions that rule over this system will continue
generating abuse, misery and death, and any attempt to reform them are a
waste of energy and time. For this reason, grassroots movements are
working in all continents to take back collective and democratic control
over our resources and forms of life, to rebuild our autonomy and
self-organisation. This is the continuation of an ancient revolutionary
tradition which encompasses slave insurrections and anti-colonial
liberation struggles, indigenous and feminist uprisings, peasants’ and
workers’ revolutions, anti-capitalist direct action and environmental
activism, cultural and sexual self-affirmation, grassroots antagonist
education and independent media, just to mention some examples.

Over the last decades, growing numbers of grassroots movements have come
to the common conclusion that we need to strengthen and interconnect this
revolutionary tradition. We are all fighting against common problems and
adversaries, and this struggle requires the participation of all people
who suffer the consequences of discrimination or oppression of all kinds.
Today more than ever, the emancipation of any of us is connected to the
emancipation of all oppressed people in the world. This results in an
urgent need to learn from and about each other, in order to be able to
support each other as much as possible. To achieve that, we also need to
become aware of our own participation in sexism, racism or other forms of
inequality and exploitation, and fight against them.

Another shared conclusion is the need to build locally controlled and
genuinely democratic and participatory social and economic relations as
alternatives to capitalism. We don’t want to repeat past mistakes and
replace one form of exploitation and control by another. We cannot make
our freedom depend on the good will of any revolutionary vanguard or
political party. All revolutions of the 20th century have confirmed that
centralised power corrupts and leads to disappointment and collapse.
Therefore if we want emancipation to last, it should be built and
maintained by the equal participation of all people in struggle, by local
autonomy combined with international solidarity and globally coordinated
action.

For these reasons, grassroots movements all over the world have built
tools for non-hierarchical communication and coordination on the basis of
diversity, autonomy and decentralisation. Peoples’ Global Action (PGA) was
created with this aim in February 1998 by a wide range of grassroots
movements from the South and the North. It has served as tool to call for
Global Days of Action against Capitalism during summits of global bodies
(like the WTO, the G8, the IMF/WB, etc), and it inspired other forms of
action and solidarity (such as inter-continental caravans, local actions,
gender conferences, seminars and exchanges, publications, etc). PGA is
defined by a number of features that distinguish it from other
international networks, expressed in its hallmarks (the basic points of
consensus on which the network is based, see appendix I), and
organisational principles (see appendix II).

The 4th global PGA conference will take place in a very different context
than the previous one, which took place in September 2001 (see appendix
III for a brief history of PGA). The September 11th 2001 attacks have been
used by some Western countries and economic interests to attempt regaining
the legitimacy of the global capitalist regime, after a period of
extraordinarily fast growth of anti-capitalist protests all over the world
(also in the North). The attacks were also presented as a justification to
invade and devastate Afghanistan and Iraq, and to intensify control and
repression and foster fear and racism all over the world. This fear and
racism is targeted especially against Arabs and Muslims, who are used as
scapegoats to divert attention from the daily violence inflicted by
capitalism over millions of people all over the world.

Due to all these changes, from 2001 to 2005 the international activity of
many social movements was focused on reacting to the aggressions and wars
caused by imperialist countries and economic interest. Many movements did
so in the framework of large coalitions and platforms, which were not
necessarily anti-capitalist or horizontal, and more often than not
dominated, by NGOs and political parties. We believe that it is time to
strengthen again the global self-organised coordination of grassroots
antagonist action, to take again the initiative and attack the economic
interests and entities in the driving seat of global capitalism.






2. Why a global conference now? Why in Asia?

At the last global conference (Cochabamba, Bolivia, September 2001) it was
decided by consensus to focus on strengthening the regional processes at
continental level. The decentralised process that followed has been
different in each region: in some the process slowed down, while in others
it has been strengthened, expanded and consolidated (see appendix III).

Regarding the Asia region, the PGA process has been further strengthened
and consolidated after its last regional conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh,
hosted by Krishok Federation (Organization of farmers of Bangladesh) and
Kisani Shaba (Farmers women organization of Bangladesh). It was attended
by over 150 activists from grassroots people's movements from South and
South East Asia, comprising peasants, women, trade Unions, fisher folk,
indigenous people and youth.

One of the conclusions of this conference was that at this point in time
it makes sense to bring together again the regional processes into a
global conference, in order to revitalise successful forms of global
action against capitalism and explore new strategies to reinforce the
cooperation, exchange and solidarity at the global level.

It was also argument that even when there are new and well-funded
platforms with similar aims, such as the Social Forums, which started in
January 2001, there is the strong necessity of a specific space, with a
real horizontal, anti-capitalist and feminist nature for grassroots
movements.  Thus, we believe in the urgent necessity of strengthening and
consolidate globally the anti-capitalist network  “People Global Action”
as a tool of coordination and communication, which combines a
confrontational action-orientation with decentralisation and the full
autonomy of all participant movements (NGOs may only participate as
observers, if at all, and that representatives of political parties are
not welcome).

So, following the Asian PGA Conference, South Asian movements met in
Bangalore (India) and discussed the necessity of holding the Fourth PGA
Global Conference. As a result, Asian movements proposed that the next PGA
Global Conference takes place in Asia, few months before the next World
Trade Organization Ministerial Conference, which will be held in Hong Kong
in December of 2005. This proposal was bring to the rest of regions. The
European Regional Conference that took place in Belgrade in summer 2004
also agreed and supported the Asian proposal for the global conference.


3. Objectives of this conference

The objectives that we propose for the global conference are:

·	Contributing to the consolidation of regional PGA processes.

·	Planning in-depth exchanges between movements in different regions, in
particular about the construction of decentralised and alternative
livelihoods and social relations as alternatives to capitalism.

·	Define a plan of action and strategies of struggle, including Global
Days of Action against Capitalism, especially before and during the
upcoming WTO ministerial conference.

·	Revitalising a collective discussion about the global PGA process,
alongside the consolidation of autonomous regional processes.

·	Promoting gender work within each organisation and within PGA
as a whole.

·	Creating a PGA women network and introducing masculinity work at global
level.
4. Asian convenors and conference hosts

The convenors of Asia, chosen at the last regional conference in
Bangladesh are:

Asian Convenor: All Nepal Peasants’ Association (ANPA), Nepal
South East Asian Convenor: Assembly of The Poor, Thailand
South Asia Convenor: Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU), India

This conference was initially going to take place in Nepal, hosted by
ANPA, but due to the outrageous coup d'état and dictatorship recently
imposed by the King, the venue had to be shifted to North India, near the
border with Nepal. The Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers’ Movements
(ICC) has taken on the task of hosting the conference.

We are holding the conference near the Nepalese border in order to make it
possible for conference delegates to visit Nepalese movements after the
conference, in case the conditions allow. Nepal is undergoing a very
interesting pre-revolutionary situation, due to the combined efforts of
many different grassroots movements. Many of these movements are eager to
meet the delegates of the PGA conference. Therefore, if the security
conditions allow, ANPA and other movements will organise a visit to Nepal,
and if that is not possible, there could be a solidarity action at the
border. We therefore advise all participants to leave some days free after
the conference.


5. Date, venue and logistics

The conference will take place from the 5th to 12th October in Haridwar,
India.

Haridwar is a town of 220.000 inhabitants in the state of Uttaranchal
(North India), 5 hours away from Delhi by train. It will be preceded by a
mass protest in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) on the 2nd October,
which we hope to be attended by all conference participants, since it will
set a very positive and action-oriented collective tone for the rest of
the conference. A caravan of grassroots movements from South India will
reach Mumbai on the 2nd October to meet the international delegates and
participate in the protest with them, and we will travel all together to
Haridwar after the protest. We hope that all participants will join us in
Mumbai.

Haridwar is situated at the foothills of the Himalayas, in the precise
place where the Ganges River leaves the mountain range. It has therefore
been considered a sacred place for centuries, and every night floating
lights are deposited at the point where the river enters the plains (known
as “The Stairs of God”). Thousands of people come to bath in the cold and
crystalline water (considered to have special healing powers in this
location) and every 12 years there is an immense spiritual festival. This
explains the large amount of ashrams (places for meditation, yoga and
spiritual introspection) that exist in this town.

The accommodation will take place in ashrams, which are sympathetic to the
aims of the conference. The conditions will be modest and coherent with
the principles and ideas of PGA: sleeping on thin mattresses on the floor,
quite a lot of people in each room, collective toilets, etc. Participants
should bring their own sleeping bags or sheets and blankets, and are
advised to bring anti-mosquito cream and mosquito nets. There will be
rooms for women only and men only, as well as mixed rooms. The food will
be contributed by Indian peasants, members of the farmers’ organisations
of the ICC (conference hosts), who despite their difficult situation want
to make this contribution to the success of the conference. We hope that
all participants will be happy to share the same simple and unpretentious
conditions. We will do our best to do special arrangements for people with
restricted mobility or any other particular need. Anyone needing any other
type of accommodation for comfort reasons should make their own
arrangements.

As mentioned above, besides the action in Mumbai before the conference,
there will hopefully be a visit to Nepal at the end, if the security
conditions allow. This visit will be organised by the Nepalese movements.
Registered participants will receive more information in the future. If
this visit is not possible, there might be an action of solidarity at the
border with Nepal, and visits to Indian movements. We therefore advise
everyone to leave at least one week free between the end of the conference
and their date of return.


6. Programme and preparation process

The final programme for the conference will be defined over the next
months through a collective discussion process, which will hopefully
include grassroots movements from all continents. The basic structure
proposed by the conference hosts is:

2nd October:  Action in Mumbai. Travel to Haridwar with Indian movements.

4th October: Arrival of the participants to Haridwar.

5th  - 6th October:  Gender training workshops, including masculinity.

7th – 8th October:  Information Exchange: workshops proposed by the
participant organizations, such as on the struggle against sexism and
other forms of oppression, militarism, privatisation, trade and gender,
etc.

9th – 10th October: Campaigns and plan of actions. Building alternatives.
These two days proposals of the organization of initiatives and action
strategies at the global level: exchanges, inter-regional solidarity,
sustained campaigns, etc, as well as coordination of actions against the
Hong-Kong WTO conference and other future Global Days of Action against
Capitalism will be discussed and concretised.

11th - 12th October: PGA global process: convenors committee, manifesto,
organisational principles, next conferences, etc.

13th October: Visit to Nepalese grassroots movements. If it is not
possible to visit Nepal, solidarity action at the border and visits to
Indian movements.

The parts in italics are not part of the conference programme but we hope
that all participants will be able to attend them.

All the organizational process, as well as decision-making will be
completely transparent and collective. Regular reports on the progress of
the organization of the conference will be sent to all regional PGA lists.
The following elements will be use in the discussion process for the
preparations of the conference:

·	E-mail discussion: we propose to use the list
caravan99 at lists.riseup.net. To subscribe, send an email to
caravan99-subscribe at lists.riseup.net
·	Preparatory meetings: According to the conclusions of the last European
PGA conference (Belgrade, summer 2004), there should be at least a
preparatory meeting in Europe which should be attended by all European
organisations and collectives that want to participate in the global
conference. One of the purposes of this meeting is to discuss which issues
Europeans want to take to the conference, and to talk about the programme
and all other aspects of the conference. We hope that this meeting will
take place, and would be very glad if similar meetings could take place in
other regions. Where it is not possible to hold such meetings, regional
lists can be used (such as agplatina at lists.riseup.net for Latin America,
pga at lists.riseup.net for North America and pga-asia at lists.riseup.net,
pga-asia at cupboard.org for Asia)
·	Direct communication with participants: the application form asks
participants their opinion about the programme of the conference and
whether they want to present any workshop, film, exhibition, etc. All
answers will be sent to caravan99 at lists.riseup.net and the regional lists
as contributions to the collective discussion.

We hope that the combination of all these elements will make it possible
to prepare collectively the conference and define its contexts. According
to the PGA organisational principles (see appendix II), the convenors
committee has the mandate to set the conference programme, but we hope
that it will be possible to set it by a consensus-based collective
process.


7. Participants

Grassroots movements, organizations, collectives, unions, etc that agree
with the PGA hallmarks (see appendix I) are welcome to join the
conference. Delegates from NGOs may have a status of observer if the
grassroots organizations coming from the same country agree. Political
parties are not allowed to send representatives.

In the case of delegations of more than one representative, at least half
of them must be women.

The Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers Movements will provide food
and accommodation for a maximum of 600 participants.

The organisations from Africa, Latin America and Asia that need support
for part of their travel costs should apply before the 20th August. Visas
or other expenses besides the travel costs will not be covered. Only in
very exceptional cases the complete cost of the flight tickets will be
reimbursed, we ask all the organisations to contribute with a minimum of
20% of their tickets, if possible more.

In order to avoid an imbalance in the representation from the South and
the North due to economic reasons, all participants from Western Europe,
North America and Australia are asked to cover their own travel costs and
establish redistribution channels to ensure the participation of
disadvantaged social sectors or regions (such as Eastern Europe). In
addition to this, we expect all participants from the North to contribute
to the travel costs of participants from Africa, Latin America and Asia.
We will try to raise funds for this purpose from coherent sources besides
the contributions of participants from the North, and any help in that
respect will be more than welcome. However, the contributions from
Northern participants are most likely to be essential to the success of
the conference, since Southern participation might otherwise be very
limited.

There will be a fee of 50 US$ for participants from Western Europe, North
America and Australia, and 10 US$ for participants from other regions.

All participants should apply and pay for their tourist visas in their
respective Indian consulates or embassies. If you face any problems to get
a tourist visa, please let us know with enough time.

The working languages during the conference will be English, Spanish and
Hindi. If you need translation to other language and cannot arrange it,
you should let us know well in advance, to see if translation can be
organised.

The final application deadline will be the 2nd September in order to leave
enough time to send the information to the different regional lists and
the caravan99 at lists.riseup.net list. Participants asking for help with the
travel costs should apply before the 20th August.  The application form
can be found in the appendix V, and it should sent to:

pga-4globalconf at riseup.net


Appendixes

I Hallmarks of PGA

The following hallmarks define the basic consensus on which PGA is based:

1.	A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism; all
trade agreements, institutions and governments that promote destructive
globalization;

2.	We reject all forms and systems of domination and discrimination
including, but not limited to, patriarchy, racism and religious
fundamentalism of all creeds. We embrace the full dignity of all human
beings.


3.	A confrontational attitude, since we do not think that lobbying can
have a major impact in such biased and undemocratic organizations, in
which transnational capital is the only real policy-maker;

4.	A call to direct action and civil disobedience, support for social
movements' struggles, advocating forms of resistance which maximize
respect for life and oppressed peoples' rights, as well as the
construction of local alternatives to global capitalism;


5.	An organizational philosophy based on decentralization and autonomy


II Organizational Principles of PGA



III. A brief history of Peoples’ Global Action

A brief history of PGA will be included in the web page www.agp.org

IV. Sustained Campaigns

The following global campaigns were defined at the previous global
conference in Cochabamba (Bolivia):

·	Campaign against state militarism and para-militarism
·	Campaign for defence and recognition of self-determination and land
sovereignty of all people
·	Campaign against all privatisation
·	Campaign on construction of alternative models to the
capitalist system,
based on education and training

Most campaigns have not even started at the global level, due to different
reasons (such as the post-Sept 11th wars, the fact that they were defined
at the global conference rather than emerging from the grassroots level
and passing through regional conferences, etc). At the Haridwar conference
we should decide what to do about them.



V. Application form

Please send this application form to pga-4globalconf at riseup.net before the
2nd September. Organisations that need help with travel costs should send
this application before the 20th August.


1.	ORGANISATION DETAILS

Name of the organization:
Address:
Email:
Tel:
Fax:

2.	DESCRIPTION OF THE ORGANISATION

·	When and why was it created, where and on which issues does it work?
·	Objectives of the organisation
·	Current activities, campaigns, actions, etc.
·	Is your organization working on alternatives to capitalism,
such as seed
banks, decentralised water management, alternative energy, cooperatives,
etc
? If yes, please describe briefly such projects.

3.	PARTICIPANT(S)

Name and gender of the participant(s):
Languages:

4.	CONTENTS OF THE CONFERENCE

·	Which issues does your organisation think should be discussed in the
conference?
·	What is your opinion of the proposed structure of the conference?
·	Does your organisation want to organize any workshop, performance or
culture event?
·	Does your organization bring any exhibition or video?

5.	LOGISTICS AND TRAVEL

·	Do any members of your delegation need any special arrangement, such as
a special diet, special beds, wheelchair or medical care?
·	Could your organisation help with translation of documents before the
conference? Could your delegation help with translation during the
conference (documents, workshops or informal conversations)? If yes, in
which language?
·	For organisations located in Africa, Latin America or Asia: does your
organisation need help with travel costs? In that case, how much can your
organisation contribute?
·	For organisations located in rich countries: can your organisation
contribute to the travel costs of organisations from the South? If yes,
how much?

6.	DOCUMENTATION

Please, send with this form any document that your organization wants to
be distributed during the conference.

We are going to prepare a welcome document with the description of the
participant organizations and the documents send by them. This welcome
document will be distributed in Spanish, English and Hindi, but we invite
all organizations to translate this document into their own language.

If you want any document to be included in the welcome document, please
send it to us as soon as possible. We would be thankful if you could also
provide translations of your document in English and/or Spanish and/or
Hindi.





caravan99 at lists.riseup.net
--

http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/person-1024.25.html&lang=en
http://blogger.xs4all.nl/kranenbu/
http://locative.net/blog/mixreality/
0031 (0) 641930235







From iram at sarai.net  Mon Jun  6 15:15:18 2005
From: iram at sarai.net (iram at sarai.net)
Date: Mon,  6 Jun 2005 11:45:18 +0200
Subject: [Reader-list] 4th post by Biswajit and Nilanjan: How children view
	the hanging
Message-ID: <f102f5faafcb99ea42371a732adb8e1e@sarai.net>

How children view the hanging

Fourth posting by Biswajit and Nilanjan

Hetal Parekh, the victim in the most talked about rape and murder case of
out time, was a schoolgirl. How did her peers react to the crime, the
punishment and the media coverage? We have seen some of them in the TV and
newspaper pictures holding up placards evidently prepared by grown-ups to
demand “exemplary” punishment of the convict, Dhananjay Chatterjee, or
silently standing in prayer lines. But beyond that? We did not know because
we did not want to know. As we started talking to the children, it became
apparent that not only did the mass media have a deep impact on young minds
(as expected), but the young ones, too, had important things to say about
the issues raised by the media and the way these were raised.
The first group we discussed with was an all-girl one. It comprised nine
students (class VI-IX) of Jagatpur Rukmini Vidyamandir for Girls, a rather
“ordinary” school in Behala at the south-west fringe of Kolkata. The
students mostly belonged to working-class families. Their fathers were
masons, gardeners, petty shop-owners or cab-drivers, or had left them in
the care of their mothers, who worked as domestic helps. Most of these
children were not yet born when the Hetal was raped and murdered by the
security guard of her apartment building, Dhananjay, in 1991.
Two of the children do not have TV at home while two others have no cable
connection. None of their families subscribe to any newspaper regularly.
However, their elders read newspapers particularly when some news turns
into hot topic. The children, too, read newspapers occasionally but watch
TV regularly, either at home or at some neighbour’s place.
What did they like to watch? Almost all of them named crime-related
programmes such as Police File, Crime Diary, Crime Files, etc., as well as
detective soaps like CID. There is an abundance of prime-time crime-related
programmes, both on Bengali and Hindi channels, where the highly dramatised
and gory reconstructions of violence, particularly crimes on women like
rape and murder are being dished out every evening. Our interaction with
these children shows that their perceptions – rather imaginations, fears
and hatred – about the crimes and criminals as well as values about the
punishments are greatly shaped by these programmes.
According to them, the elders in their families, too, avidly watch these
programmes and ask the teenaged girls to do the same to make them “aware
of the dangers ahead”. “My grandpa told me to watch the Police File to
know how the girl (Hetal Parekh) was tortured and murdered by Dhananjay. It
will enhance my knowledge about the dangers that girls face,” recalled
one of them. Another said that her father told her to follow the news on
Dhananjay’s hanging. “An aunt in the neighbourhood told me watch it to
learn about the bad things that boys do to girls,” reported one of them.
All of them came to know about the crime and punishment of Dhananjay
chattarjee from elders who were engrossed in hot discussions before as well
as after the judicial execution. “It was discussed everywhere – at
home, in the locality and school. TV and newspapers were also full of
stories on the hanging. This made us curious,” said one girl.
Most of them followed the news of hanging on TV channels. Like the elders,
they became conditioned to the gradual building of climax to the great
spectacle of the hanging, orchestrated by the media and the government.
“I watched the TV whole night on the day of the hanging. We have never
seen a hanging. I wanted to watch the hanging to know how a normal living
person was turned into a dead man,” said a girl. Others, too, were keen
to watch the episode.
The images of Dhananjay they had received from the TV reconstructions of
his crime were grotesque. They particularly mentioned the Police File
programme on Akash Bangla, the TV channel known as the ruling CPI(M)’s
unofficial organ. “The person who acted as Dhananjay was ugly and
fearsome. His loafer looks, bloody eyes and beastly body movements sent
chills through our spines. We began to hate and fear Dhananjay. This
portrayal of Dhananjay led us to support the hanging,” said Lipika, while
other girls corroborated her. But they were able to make a distinction
between the hyper-real and real. “Later, we saw Dhananjay’s picture in
the newspapers and TV news. He looked like a normal bhadralok in bridegroom
make-up and certainly not as horrific as he was shown in the Police File.
The Police File report tried to convince us that he was a bad man who
deserved the hanging. People came to favour his hanging after this episode
was telecast. In other episodes, there were commercial breaks, but this one
hardly had any,” observed Sebika and Lipika while others in the group
supported them.
The children reflected the divisions and swings in public opinion on the
death sentence. While the elders and the media influenced their judgments,
their ability to articulate was striking. There were arguments both for and
against the death sentence and taking a decision was not easy, they noted.
According to them, the hanging could be justified because: a) Dhananjay had
tortured and killed Hetal, b) if released, he would have committed the same
crime again, and c) this could have happened to them also. At the same
time, they felt opposed to the hanging on the following grounds: a)
Dhananjay had been in jails for years together, b) it was his first crime,
c) many criminals who had committed multiple crimes of similar nature were
still evading arrest or conviction, d) there would be no difference between
the killer and the judge if the latter ordered killing of the former, and
e) it was often found that courts rectified the previous conviction orders,
which had compelled innocent persons to languish in jail for long. There
would be no chance of such judicial rectification if the convict was hanged
to death.
“Initially, most of the people were in favor of the hanging. But the mood
changed substantially on the eve of the hanging. We, too, felt it was
better to keep Dhananjay in prison for life rather than killing him. The
government should stop hanging but imprison the criminals for li