From vivek at sarai.net Tue Apr 1 09:42:05 2008 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:42:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Nim Chimpsky Message-ID: <47F1B615.90201@sarai.net> http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/03/31/Nim_Chimpsky/index.html Fascinating and sad story of Nim Chimpsky, the chimp who was raised as a boy... From chiarapassa at gmail.com Tue Apr 1 16:20:59 2008 From: chiarapassa at gmail.com (Chiara Passa) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 12:50:59 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] [A10medialab] ()RE | BOOT 11th/12th April Event In-Reply-To: <20080331204022.ffyr4ik8u8wckk88@www.crealab.info> References: <20080331204022.ffyr4ik8u8wckk88@www.crealab.info> Message-ID: *We apologize for any cross-postings* AREA 10 Project Space, Peckham Presents: () RE | BOOT; The launch event of Area10's new media media platform: Live Event and Opening: 12th April 7pm - Late £5 Come to Area10 for an evening program of film screenings, live performances, interactions, vjing, sound art, experimental and electronic noise music. Join us between 11am - 5pm Friday 11th & Saturday 12th April Activities include workshops, lectures presentations being held alongside an exhibition of digital and interactive arts over two days. Participating Artist, Musicians and Hackers: Project Serendipity (UK) Rob Davis (UK) Andy Wheddon & Fraser Geesin (UK) Genetic Moo Project (Peckham) Radek Rudnicki (UK) Erik Groen & Piebe de Vries (Holland) CathSign (France) Peckham Space (UK) Deptford.TV (UK) Chiara Passa (Italy) Phill Niblock (USA) Thibaud De Souza (UK) Sinsynplus (Germany) Günther Albrecht (Germany) Sunshine Frere (UK) Jenny Pickett (UK) Anila Ladwa (UK) Apo33 (France) Martin John Callanan (UK) Jean-Phillippe Roux (France) Lawrence Upton (UK) Mattin (Basque Country) ManamiN N(Japan) Nanofamas (Corsica) Goto10 & OpenLab (UK) Constant (Belgium) Yvan Etienne & Brice Jeannin (France) Medialab Madrid (Spain), Sonic (France) Tim Goldie (UK)...and many more!! For more information on () RE | BOOT and see attached press release or visit http://www.area10medialab.co.uk We look forward to seeing you on the 11th and 12th April regards Jenny, Julien and Anila Area 10 Project Space Peckham Eagle Wharf Peckham Square London SE15 5JT (White building behind Peckham Library) Bus: 12, 36, 37, 63, 78, 436, 345, 177, 312, 343 owTrain: Peckham Rye or Queens Road Station http://www.area10 has been introduced to facilitate the development of research and art practices using open source new technologies in the media arts. The medialab will focus on engaging cross-disciplinary collaborations between various arts and science based practices, encouraging open and critical discussion in addition to sharing knowledge and skills transfer. () RE | BOOT; is part of the Node London Spring '08 season - www.nodel.org and is supported by APO33 - www.apo33.org _______________________________________________ news &amp; informations list for Area10 Medialab a10medialab at crealab.info http://crealab.info/mailman/listinfo/a10medialab -- Chiara Passa chiarapassa at gmail.com http://www.chiarapassa.it http://www.ideasonair.net http://twitter.com/jogador Skype: ideasonair From vikash.sen at gmail.com Wed Apr 2 00:12:44 2008 From: vikash.sen at gmail.com (Bikash Ballabh Singh) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 00:12:44 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] =?windows-1252?q?PM=92s_media_adviser_Baru_resigned?= Message-ID: <25c340bd0804011142t2414ec6aw75677cf41f81090@mail.gmail.com> SANJAY BARU, the media adviser to the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has put in his papers, according to a buzz. He is slated to take up a teaching assignment in a Singapore University. According to highly placed sources, Baru exit, after August this year has fuelled speculation of election anytime after that. Sources close to the PMO said that the former editor of Financial Express, who was responsible for Dr Singh's public image, would teach economics in his next assignment. A doctorate from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Baru, is a respected journalist. It is said that he was close to Dr Singh when he was a Finance minister during early Nineties. He was also a member of the National Security Advisory Board, other than being associated with leading newspapers. A pattern is palpable. Earlier, just before the elections, Shakti Sinha, during Atal Bihari Vajpayee's tenure as Prime Minister had jumped ship as well. He was the PM's private secretary. A bureaucrat of the Union Territory cadre, he had taken up an assignment with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). PMO watchers opined that those near the power center are sure indicators of which way the wind is blowing. Just as Sinha hung his boots just before the Vajpayee government collapsed, is Baru too doing the same? If Baru leaves after August, is election far away, asked a highly placed source, with a smile and glint in his eyes. Source: http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=131597 From markcmarino at gmail.com Tue Apr 1 11:56:47 2008 From: markcmarino at gmail.com (Mark Marino) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:26:47 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] April 1: Wiki Satire Message-ID: <287213f30803312326v7dad6a68na2ac0a0d02d62318@mail.gmail.com> Announcing the April 1 issue of Bunk Magazine and soliciting writers to contribute satirical posting to a fictional wiki newspaper. The premise: The Los Angeles Times, to save its flagging enterprise, has relaunched itself in an entirely wiki format as The Los Wikiless Timespedia. http://www.bunkmag.com/mediawiki/ The piece plays with the mode of wikis and is a consideration of how old media producers get new media wrong. We're specifically looking for media-specific parodies, poking fun at wiki features and wiki culture: *Revert Wars *Histories *Talk Pages *Interwiki links *Stubs You can already see examples of contested articles, articles accidentally pasted in help pages, odd comments in the update histories. Of course there is also plenty of room for wiki parodies of newspaper content. The issue already includes: Want Ads, Comics, DIY Obituaries, Kids soccer reports, and more. The feature is currently up but goes live as the home page April 1, and it will remain the Bunk front page for at least 6 months. Afterwards it will enter the hallowed Bunk archives. Please join us in some cyber-satire. This is online humor that everyone can edit. Participation guidelines below. This marks the 10th anniversary of Bunk Magazine! Best, Mark Marino Editor Bunk Magazine and Writing Program University of Southern California http://WriterResponseTheory.org http://CriticalCodeStudies.com How to Play 1. Create and Account (feel free to use ridiculous pseudonym) 2. Type the name of a new article in the box on the front page 3. Press the Button 4. Write the article 5. Choose the newspaper category for the article. Or just edit an existing article. Once you are done, give yourself credit by adding to the "contributors" list on the masthead on the front page. If you write an article for a category that does not exist, let us know, or create the category page if you know how to do that. -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From santhosh.kanipayur at gmail.com Tue Apr 1 11:46:40 2008 From: santhosh.kanipayur at gmail.com (Santhosh Kumar) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 11:46:40 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Documentary films Message-ID: <19d498870803312316s6ccfe903x1a78966851e7842@mail.gmail.com> *Dear friends,* * * *SPECIAL PACKAGE OF FILMS FROM Other Media Communications.* * * *Greetings from Other Media Communications, Bangalore!* Other Media Communications is an institution set up to cater to the communication needs of social movements and civil society groups in India. We work in print, audio-video and new media areas. We have produced more than half a dozen documentaries on social issues in India.** * * *As part of our endeavour to make socially meaningful films more accessible to individuals, organisations and educational institutions, we* are *pleased to present to you a very special package. Not only does the package include five of our highly acclaimed documentaries from the recent past, but more importantly, it comes to you at subsidised prices.* * * *The package comprises the following documentaries:* * * *Hey Ram!! Genocide in the Land of Gandhi* *Hey Ram!! was the first film to be completed on the Gujarat Genocide, February 2002 in the aftermath of Godhra and was released even as the violence was raging in Gujarat.* * * *Resilient Rhythms** * This film documents the various atrocities that are committed on people simply because of their caste and shows how Dalits are fighting back. ** *Naga Story: The Other Side of Silence* *The film provides an introduction to the history of the Naga struggle, and documents the human rights abuses suffered by the Naga people in more than 50 years of existence as part of Independent India. * * * *Naka Naka Dupont, Naka (No to Dupont) *** *This film is the story of the Goan peoples' triumph over the multinational company 'Dupont' and a sterling model for similar struggles.* * * *BHOPAL – The Survivor's Story* *'Bhopal – The Survivors Story' explores the grim reality of lakhs of survivors and their children, caught between Dow-Carbide's denial of liability and the Government's reluctance to pursue Dow-Carbide, as they continue to face the unfolding hardships of the nearness of death and living poisoned everyday. * * * *For more details visit, www.othermediacommunications.com* * * *The documentaries are available in both VCD and DVD formats, and you also get copy of 'Burma: A Multi Media Presentation' (VCD) in the package. The DVD package is priced Rs.3500/- and Rs.2000/- and VCD package Rs.2000/- and Rs.1000/- respectively for Institutions and Individuals within India. Prices are different outside the country.* * * *Please place your order either by a letter to the address below or by e-mail to santhosh at othermediacommunications.com. We will require three weeks for the delivery of these films, after your confirmation of order and payment. * * * *Seeking your co-operation in reaching out to a wider audience.* * * *With warm regards,* * * * * *E. Deenadayalan* *Other Media Communications Pvt. Ltd.* *139/9, Domlur Layout* *Opp. Trinity Golf Links Apartments* *Bangalore – 560 071, India * *Tel: 91 80 41151587* *www.othermediacommunications.com* -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From turbulence at turbulence.org Tue Apr 1 23:44:04 2008 From: turbulence at turbulence.org (Turbulence) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 14:14:04 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Turbulence Commission: "No Time Machine" by Daniel C. Howe and Aya Karpinska Message-ID: <008401c89424$3e4ff4a0$baefdde0$@org> Turbulence Commission: "No Time Machine" by Daniel C. Howe and Aya Karpinska http://turbulence.org/works/notime Needs a Java-Enabled Browser Quiet time, dead time, free time -- call it what you will, there seems to be less and less of it. What do people give up in the race to maximize every second of their waking life? What kinds of activities are replaced by the panicked drive for efficiency? "No Time Machine" explores these questions by mining the Internet for mentions of the phrase "I don't have time for" and variations such as "You can't find the time for" and "We don't make time for." Based on a set of procedures they've set up, a program analyzes the search results and reconstructs them into a poetic conversation. Interwoven with this "found poetry" generated by the program are sentences that they re-contextualized themselves; a human-computer collaboration that expands the field of creative writing to include networked and programmable media. "No Time Machine" is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation. BIOGRAPHIES Daniel C. Howe is a digital artist and researcher at NYU's Media Research Lab. His interests include generative systems for artistic practice (specifically for digital literary production) and the social/political aspects of technology design. In addition to a background in music, he has graduate degrees in both computer science and creative writing, and has exhibited and performed his work internationally since 1997. He is currently a visiting professor at Brown University. Aya Karpinska is an interaction designer and artist working in digital media. She creates interactive experiences through installation art, text, sound, and game design (but not all at the same time). Aya is currently an Electronic Writing Fellow at Brown University, developing children's stories for mobile devices. She splits her time between Providence and New York City. Daniel and Aya collaborated previously on a spatial poetry project, "open.ended." For more Turbulence Commissions, please visit http://turbulence.org Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856 Turbulence: http://turbulence.org Networked_Performance Blog: http://turbulence.org/blog Networked_Music_Review: http://turbulence.org/networked_music_review Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade New American Radio: http://somewhere.org _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From rana at ranadasgupta.com Wed Apr 2 08:39:45 2008 From: rana at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:39:45 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 1968 and its legacies: major show in London Message-ID: <47F2F8F9.1090005@ranadasgupta.com> All Power to the Imagination! 1968 and Its Legacies This curation marks the creative resistance of a remarkable year, while placing its lessons in the context of our own times. From April to June and across London, this major season explores 1968 culture, politics and thought and their legacy manifestations in cinema, visual art, literature, music and activism. http://www.1968.org.uk/ From sonia.jabbar at gmail.com Wed Apr 2 09:52:47 2008 From: sonia.jabbar at gmail.com (S. Jabbar) Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:52:47 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] China Human Rights In-Reply-To: <1950ca6c0804010037q5950becfi6855c3f541890a18@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: This is an old article but I found it useful especially in these times when some of our worthy leaders can¹t tell their imperialisms from their totalitarianisms. Simon Leys is the pen name of sinologist and author Pierre Ryckmans. Born in 1935 he lived in China and wrote extensively on its art, culture and history. He critiqued Mao and the cultural revolution in ŒChinese Shadows,¹ published in 1978. ------------------------------ THE BURNING FOREST Simon Leys "HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA" (This essay was originally published in 1978.) How much of this is known in the free countries of the West? The information is to be found in the daily papers. We are informed about everything. We know nothing. -SAUL BELLOW, To Jerusalem and Back On the question of human rights in China, an odd coalition has formed among "Old China hands" (left over from the colonial-imperialist era, starry-eyed Maoist adolescents, bright, ambitious technocrats, timid sinologists ever wary of being denied their visas for China, and even some overseas Chinese who like to partake from afar in the People's Republic's prestige without having to share any of their compatriots' sacri-fices or sufferings). The basic position of this strange lobby can be summarized in two propositions: (1) Whether or not there is a human-rights problem in China remains uncertain-"we simply do not know"; and (2) even if such a problem should exist, it is none of our concern. I shall attempt here to reply to the increasingly vocal and influential proponents of this theory; more simply, I shall try to remind my readers of certain commonplace and commonsense evidence that this line of thought seeks to conjure away. I do not apologize for being utterly banal; there are circumstances in which banality becomes the last refuge of decency and sanity. The starting point of any reflection on contemporary China- - especially with regard to the human-rights question - should be the obvious yet unpopular observation that the Peking regime is a totalitarian system. My contention is that totalitarianism has a quite specific meaning and that, inasmuch as it is totalitarian, Maoism presents features that are foreign to Chinese political traditions (however despotic some of these traditions might have been), while it appears remarkably similar to otherwise foreign models, such as Stalinism and Nazism. Yet "totalitarianism" has become a taboo concept among fashionable political scientists, and especially among contemporary China scholars; they generally endeavor to describe and analyze the system of the People's Republic without ever using the world "totalitarian"-no mean feat. It is akin to describing the North Pole without ever using the word "ice," or the Sahara without using the word sand. A convenient and generally acceptable definition of totalitarianism is provided by Leszek Kolakowski in his essay "Marxist Roots of Stalinism": I take the word "totalitarian" in a commonly used sense, meaning a political system where all social ties have been entirely replaced by state-imposed organization and where, consequently, all groups and all individuals are supposed to act only for goals which both are the goals of the state and were defined as such by the state. In other words, an ideal totalitarian system would consist in the utter destruction of civil society, whereas the state and its organizational instruments are the only forms of social life; all kinds of human activity-economical, intellectual, political, cultural-are allowed and ordered (the distinction between what is allowed and what is ordered tending to disappear) only to the extent of being at the service of state goals (again, as defined by the state). Every individual (including the rulers themselves) is considered the property of the state. Kolakowski adds that this ideal conception has never been fully realized, and that perhaps an absolutely perfect totalitarian system would not be feasible; however, he sees Soviet and Chinese societies as very close to the ideal, and so was Nazi Germany: "There are forms of life which stubbornly resist the impact of the system, familial, emotional and sexual relationships among them; they were subjected strongly to all sorts of state pressure, but apparently never with full success (at least in the Soviet state; perhaps more was achieved in China)." Lack of space prevents me from invoking a sufficient number of examples to show how well the above definition fits the Maoist reality. I shall provide only one illustration, selected from among hundreds and thousands, because this particular illustration is both typical and fully documented by one unimpeachable witness - I mean the noted writer Chen Jo-hsi, who is now free to express herself among us, and who reported it in a public lecture on the Chinese legal system, which she gave in 1978 at the University of Maryland. In 1971, when Chen was living in Nanking, she was forced with thousands of other people to attend and par-ticipate in a public accusation meeting. The accused person's crime was the defacing of a portrait of Mao Zedong; the accused had been denounced by his own daughter, a twelve-year-old child. On the basis of the child's testimony, he was convicted and sentenced to death; as was usually the case in these mass--accusation meetings, there was no right of appeal, and the sentence was carried out immediately, by firing squad. The child was officially extolled as a hero; she disclaimed any relationship with the dead man and proclaimed publicly her resolution to become from then on "with her whole heart and her whole will, the good daughter of the Party." This episode was neither exceptional nor accidental; it was a deliberate, well-planned occurrence, carefully staged in front of a large audience, in one of China's in major cities. Similar "happenings" recur periodically and accompany most "mass campaigns." They have a pedagogic purpose in that they fit into a coherent policy pattern and exemplify the state's attempt to become the unique, all-encompassing organizer of all social and human relations. It should be remarked that whatever feeling of scandal a Westerner may experience when confronted with such an incident, it is still nothing compared with the revulsion, horror, and fear that it provokes among the Chinese themselves. The episode not only runs against human decency in general, but more specifically it runs against Chinese culture - a culture which, for more than 2,500 years, extolled filial piety as a cardinal virtue. A second useful definition of totalitarianism is George Orwell's (in his postface to Homage to Catalonia). According to his description, the totalitarian system is one in which there is no such thing as "objective truth" or "objective science." There is only, for instance, "German science" as opposed to "Jewish science," or "proletarian truth" as opposed to "bourgeois lies": "The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future, but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event 'It never happened' - well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five, well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs." How does this definition square with Peking reality? Let us glance at Maoist theory. In one of its key documents (the so-called May 16 Circular) we read precisely: The slogan "all men are equal before the truth" is a bourgeois slogan that absolutely denies the fact that truth has class-character. The class enemy uses this slogan to protect the bourgeoisie, to oppose himself to the proletariat, to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. In the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between Marxist truth and the lies of the bourgeois class and of all oppressive classes, if the east wind does not prevail over the west wind, the west wind will prevail over the east wind, and therefore no equality can exist between them. In their latest book, Le Bonheur des pierres (Paris: Le Seuil, 1978), C. and J. Broyelle produce an interesting quotation from Mein Kampf and show that by merely substituting in Hitler's text the words "bourgeois" and "antihumanism" for the words "Jews" and "antisemitism" one obtains orthodox, standard "Mao Zedong Thought." "Two and two are five." We find countless variants of this type of proposition in the Chinese press: the downfall of the "Cultural Revolution" leaders and the rehabilitation of the "Cultural Revolution's" opponents are currently described as the supreme victory of the "Cultural Revolution"; Deng Xiaoping was in turn a criminal, then a hero, then again a criminal, and then again a hero; Lin Biao was a traitor; Madame Mao was a Kuomintang agent, and so on. Of course, none of this is new; we heard it all more than forty years ago at the Moscow trials, and we also remember how, in Stalinist parlance, Trotsky used to be Hitler's agent. Victor Serge, who experienced it all firsthand, analyzed it well: the very enormity of the lie is precisely designed to numb, paralyze, and crush all rationality and critical functioning of the mind. "The leader controls the past." In both Chinese Shadows and Broken Images I have described the constant rewriting of history that takes place in China (as it does in the Soviet Union) and in particular, the predicament of the wretched curators of the History Museums, who in recent years have been successively confronted with, for instance, the disgrace, rehabilitation, re-disgrace, and re-rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping. These political turnabouts can be quite bewildering for the lower cadres, whose instructions do not always keep up with the latest shakeup of the ruling clique. As one hapless guide put it to a foreign visitor who was pressing him with tricky questions: "Excuse me, sir, but at this stage it is difficult to answer; the leadership has not yet had the time to decide what history was." There is nothing furtive or clandestine about history rewriting; it is done in broad daylight, and sometimes, at its most humble level, the public itself is invited to collaborate. Thus, at one stage of Deng's political vicissitudes, journals that had already been printed before his latest successful somersault were sent to subscribers together with little slips of paper expatiating on his virtues, slips that were to be pasted by the readers themselves over various special passages that described him as a scoundrel. The most spectacular example of this practice will be remembered by many. The day after Mao's funeral, all Chinese newspapers carried photos of the top leadership standing in a long line in front of the crowd at the memorial ceremony. When it was the monthlies' turn to carry the same photos, the "Gang of Four" had meanwhile been purged. The photos, already known to the Chinese public, were issued again, but this time the disgraced leaders had all disappeared from the pictures, leaving awkward gaps, like missing front teeth in an open mouth - the general effect being underlined rather than alleviated by the censor's heavy handling of the airbrush, and by his clumsy retouching of the background. To crown the cynicism of such blatant manipulation, a little later, New China News Agency issued a report denouncing Madame Mao for the way in which, in her time, she had allegedly falsified various official photographs for political purposes! The incident of the missing figures in the official photographs, though widely circulated, did not provoke any comments in the West (with the exception of C. and J. Broyelle's remarkable book, from which I am borrowing freely here). After all, aren't Chinese always supposed to behave in inscrutable and strange ways? What was not realized was the fact that however odd the incident may have appeared in our eves, the Chinese themselves felt it was even more grotesque and humiliating. The explanation for this bizarre episode did not lie in the Chinese mentality, but in totalitarian psychology. The most masterly analysis of totalitarian psychology is cer-tainly the one provided by Bruno Bettelheim in his book The Informed Heart , which was rightly hailed as "a handbook for survival in our age." The great psychiatrist observed the phenomenon firsthand in Buchenwald, where he was interned by the Nazis. The concentration camp is not marginal to the totalitarian world; on the contrary, it is its purest and most perfect projection, since there the various factors of resistance to the system - -the familial, emotional, and sexual relationships mentioned by Kolakowski - have all been removed, leaving the subject totally exposed to the totalitarian design. Bettelheim noted that prisoners were subjected to a "ban on daring to notice anything. But to look and observe for oneself what went on in the camp - while absolutely necessary for survival - was even more dangerous than being noticed. Often this passive compliance - not to see or not to know - was not enough; in order to survive one had to actively pretend not to observe, not to know what the SS required one not to know." Bettelheim gives various examples of SS behavior that presented this apparent contradiction - "you have not seen what you have seen, because we decided so" (which could apply precisely to the blatantly falsified photo of the Chinese leaders) - and he adds this psychological commentary: To know only what those in authority allow one to know is, more or less, all the infant can do. To be able to make one's own observations and to draw pertinent conclusions from them is where independent existence begins. To forbid oneself to make observations, and take only the observations of others in their stead, is relegating to nonuse one's own powers of reasoning, and the even more basic power of perception. Not observing where it counts most, not knowing where one wants so much to know, all this is most destructive to the functioning of one's personality. . . . But if one gives up observing, reacting, and taking action, one gives up living one's own life. And this is exactly what the SS wanted to happen. Bettelheim describes striking instances of this personality disintegration - which again are of particular relevance for the Chinese situation. Western apologists for the Peking regime have argued that since the Chinese themselves, and particularly those who recently left China, did not show willingness to express dissent or criticism (a questionable assertion-I shall come back to this point later), we had better not try to speak for them and should simply infer from their silence that there is probably nothing to be said. According to Bettelheim, the camp inmates came progressively to see the world through SS eyes; they even es-poused SS values: At one time, for instance, American and English newspapers were full of stories about cruelties committed in the camps. In discussing this event old prisoners insisted that foreign newspapers had no business bothering with internal German institutions and expressed their hatred of the journalists who tried to help them. When in 1938 I asked more than one hundred old political prisoners if they thought the story of the camp should be reported in foreign newspapers, many hesitated to agree that it was desirable. When asked if they would join a foreign power in a war to defeat National Socialism, only two made the unqualified statement that everyone escaping Germany ought to fight the Nazis to the best of his ability. Jean Pasqualini -whose book Prisoner of Mao is the most fundamental document on the Maoist "Gulag" and, as such, is most studiously ignored by the lobby that maintains that there is no human-rights problem in the People's Republic - notes a similar phenomenon. He confesses that after a few years in the labor camps, he came. if not exactly to love the system that was methodically destroying his personality, at least to feel gratitude for the patience and care with which the authorities were trying to reeducate worthless vermin like himself. Along the same lines, Orwell showed premonitory genius in the last sentence of Nineteen Eighty-four: when Winston Smith realizes that he loves Big Brother, that he has loved Big Brother all along. . . . Seemingly, I have wandered away from my topic: instead of dealing with human rights, I have talked about the nature of totalitarianism, the falsification of the past, and the alteration of reality. In fact, all these observations are of direct relevance to our topic. We can summarize them by saying that totalitarianism is the apotheosis of subjectivism. In Nineteen Eighty-four, the starting point of Winston Smith's revolt lies in this sudden awareness: "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." (Once more, see the falsified photos of the Chinese leadership on Tian'anmen!) "His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him. . . . And yet he was in the right! The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall toward the earth's center. . . . If that is granted, all else follows." Objectivism - the belief that there is an objective truth whose existence is independent of arbitrary dogma and ideology - is thus the cornerstone of intellectual freedom and human dignity, and as such, it is the main stumbling block for totalitarianism. Objectivism, as opposed to totalitarianism, can take essen-tially two forms: legality or morality. For historicocultural reasons, Western civilization seems to have put more emphasis on legality, while Chinese civilization was more inclined toward morality. Yet to oppose the two concepts, as some admirers of Maoism have attempted to do, betrays a complete misreading of both notions. In traditional China, "morality" (which meant essentially Confucianism) was the main bulwark against incipi-ent totalitarianism. This question was best expounded by the Chinese historian Yu Ying-shih in a masterful essay ("Anti-intellectualism in Chinese Traditional Politics," Ming Pao Monthly, February and March 1976) which could be schematically summarized as follows: Confucianism described the world in terms of a dualism; on the one hand there is the concrete, changing realm of actual politics, on the other hand there is the realm of abstract, permanent principles. The duty of the scholar--politician is to serve the ruler insofar as the ruler's behavior and policies harmonize with the unchanging moral principles, which provide a stable reference by which to judge them. In case of a clash between the two realms, the Confucian scholar must, in the strong and unambiguous words of Xun Zi, "follow the principles and disobey the Prince." For this reason Maoist legality and Maoist morality are equally inconceivable; both are self-contradictions (the same applies to Stalinist or Nazi legality or morality; the terms are mutually exclusive). Mao himself readily and cynically acknowledged this situation; for his subordinates, however (as for Stalin's), in practice this created an increasingly dangerous and frightening predicament to the point where a number of old and prestigious Communist leaders could be bullied, persecuted and even tortured to death during the "Cultural Revolution." Those who survived the turmoil, having come so close to being devoured by the very beast they themselves had raised, suddenly discovered the urgent need to establish some sort of legality. Their appeals, which filled the pages of the People's Daily two years after Mao's death, were pathetic, because they ran against the nature of the regime. Establishment of legality would mean the end of the system; with legal boundaries, Party authority would cease to be infallible and absolute, and a genuine rule of law would mark the end of its ideological rule. From a Communist point of view, such a situation would obviously be inconceivable. It is in this context of quintessential - indeed, institutional -- illegality that the human-rights question must be considered. In other words, for such a system, the very concept of human rights is necessarily meaningless. Thus, in this respect, the historical record of the regime could be characterized as a continuous and ruthless war waged by the Communist government against the Chinese people. Let us briefly enumerate here a few episodes selected at random, merely as illustrations. - Liquidation of counterrevolutionaries, land reform, "Three Antis" and "Five Antis" campaigns (1949-52). Five million executions (conservative estimate, advanced by one of the most cautious and respected specialists of contemporary Chinese his-tory, Jacques Guillermaz, in Le Parti Communiste chinois au pouvoir [Paris: Payot, 1972], 33, n. 1). - "Anti-rightist campaign" (1957). According to the figures issued by the Minister for Public Security, during the period from June to October alone, "100,000 counterrevolutionaries and bad elements were unmasked and dealt with"; 1,700,000 subjected to police investigation; several million sent to the countryside for "reeducation." - "Cultural Revolution" (1966-69). No total figures are available as yet. By Peking's own admission, the losses were heavy. In the last interview he granted to Edgar Snow, Mao Zedong said that foreign journalists, even in their most sensational reporting, had grossly underestimated the actual amount of violence and bloodshed. A full and methodical count still remains to be established from the various figures that are already available at the local level (90,000 victims in Sichuan province alone, 40,000 in Guangdong). The trial of the "Gang of Four" was an opportunity for further official disclosures on the enormous scope of these atrocities. - The anti-Lin Biao and anti-Confucius campaigns (1973-75), and then the campaign for the denunciation of the "Gang of Four" (1976-78), were both accompanied by waves of arrests and executions. Finally, in 1979, the Democracy Walls were outlawed and the Democracy movement was suppressed. Arbitrary arrests and heavy sentences based on trumped-up charges eliminated vast numbers of courageous and idealistic young people and finally destroyed all hopes for genuine political reform within the Chinese Communist system. Political and intellectual dissent in Communist China has produced an endless list of martyrs. The first victims fell well before the establishment of the People's Republic, as early as the Yan'an period. Later on, the repressions that successively followed the "Hundred Flowers" and the "Cultural Revolution" decimated the intellectual and political elite of the entire country. Besides these illustrious victims, however, we should not forget the immense crowd of humble, anonymous people who were subjected to mass arrests - as happened in the aftermath of the huge anti-Maoist demonstration in Tian'anmen Square (April 5, 1976), or who are suffering individual persecution all over China. They are imprisoned, condemned to hard labor, or even executed merely for having expressed unorthodox opinions; no one takes notice of them, they never make the headlines in our newspapers. It is only by chance encounter that sometimes, here and there, a more than usually attentive visitor comes across their names and records their fate, from ordinary public notices posted in the streets. Moreover, besides these political dissen-ters, countless religious believers are also branded as criminals and sent to labor camps simply because they choose to remain loyal to their church and to their faith. The Chinese "Gulag" is a gigantic topic that has been well described by firsthand witnesses - Jean Pasqualini (Bao Ruo-wang) and Rudolf Chelminski, Prisoner of Mao (New York: Cow-ard McCann & Geoghegan, 1973), and Lai Ying, The Thirty-sixth Way (New York: Doubleday, 1969). The reading of these accounts is a basic duty for everyone who professes the slightest concern for China. I have commented elsewhere (in Broken Images) on the central relevance of the labor camps for any meaningful analysis of the nature of the Maoist regime. Suffice it to say here that whoever wishes to dispose of the human-rights issue in China without first tackling this particular subject is either irresponsible or a fraud. Zhou Enlai observed quite accurately (in 1959) that "the present of the Soviet Union is the future of China." There will be, in the future, Chinese Solzhenitsyns to provide us with the fully documented picture of what Maoism in action actually meant for millions of individuals. Yet it should be remarked that the most amazing thing about Solzhenitsyn's impact is that the West reacted to it as if it were news. Actually, Solzhenitsyn's unique contribution lies in the volume and precision of his catalogue of atrocities - but basically he revealed nothing new. On the essential points, information about Soviet reality has been available for more than forty years, through the firsthand testimonies of un-impeachable witnesses such as Boris Souvarine, Victor Serge, Anton Ciliga, and others. Practically no one heard of it at the time because no one wanted to hear; it was inconvenient and inopportune. In the foreword to the 1977 edition of his classic essay on Stalin, originally published in 1935, Souvarine recalls the incredible difficulties he had in finding a publisher for it in the West. Everywhere the intellectual elite endeavoured to suppress the book: "It is going to needlessly harm our relations with Moscow." Only Malraux, adventurer and phony hero of the leftist intelligentsia, had the guts and cynicism to state his position clearly in a private conversation: "Souvarine, I believe that you and your friends are right. However, at this stage, do not count on me to support you. I shall be on your side only when you will be on top (Je serai avec vous quand vous serez les plus forts)!" How many times have we heard variants of that same phrase! On the subject of China, how many colleagues came to express private support and sympathy (these were still the bravest!), apologizing profusely for not being able to say the same things in public: "You must understand my position . . . my professional commitments . . . I must keep my channels of communication open with the Chinese Embassy. I am due to go on a mission to Peking...." Finally, I would like to examine successively the various methods that have been adopted in the West to dodge the issue of human rights in China. The first line of escape is the one I have just mentioned. It is to say, "We do not know for sure, we do not have sufficient information on the subject." Actually, there are enough documents, books, and witnesses to occupy entire teams of researchers for years to come. Of course, much more material is bound to surface; however, when the Chinese Solzhenitsyns begin methodically to expose the Maoist era in all its details, anyone who exclaims in horrified shock, "My God! had we only known!" will be a hypocrite and a liar. We already know the main outlines; basically there can be no new revelations, only the filling in of more details. The essential information has been available practically since the establishment of the regime, and everyone even slightly acquainted with Chinese affairs is aware of it. It is true that, compared with the Soviet Union, there may be a relative scarcity of documentation; this does not mean (as some people have had the temerity to assert) that the situation is relatively better in China - it means exactly the opposite. Under Stalin, what Soviet dissenter ever succeeded in meeting foreign visitors or in smuggling manuscripts to the West? The Stalin analogy is acutely relevant here, since China has always kept, and still keeps, proclaiming its unwavering fidelity to the mem-ory of Stalin and to the principles of Stalinism. The main accusation that Peking directs against Moscow is precisely that it has partly betrayed this heritage. The second line of escape (and possibly the most sickening one) is to say sadly, "Yes indeed, we know; there have been gross irregularities-even what you might call atrocities-committed in the past. But this is a thing of the past: it was all due to the evil influence of the 'Gang of Four.'" This new tune is now being dutifully sung by the entire choir of the fellow-travelers, the traveling salesmen of Maoism, the sycophants, and the propaganda commissars-the very people who, a few years ago, used to tell us how everything was well and wonderful in China under the enlightened rule of the same "Gang of Four." Pretending shock and indignation, they now come and tell us horrible stories-as if we did not know it all, as if they had not known it all-the very stories we told years ago, but at that time they used to label them "anti-China slander" and "CIA lies." The downfall of the "Gang of Four," however momentous, was, after all, a mere episode in the power struggle within the system - it did not bring a significant modification of the system. It does not have any bearing upon the human-rights issue. Violations of human rights, political and intellectual repression, mass arrests, summary executions, persecutions of dissenters, and so on, were perpetrated for nearly twenty years before the "Gang of Four's" accession to power, and now they continue after the "Gang's" disgrace. Not only have these methods and policies not changed, but they are being carried out by the same personnel, people who were not affected by the ups and downs of the ruling clique. The terms in which criticism of the "Gang" is being expressed, and the methods by which the "Gang" is being denounced, represent a direct continuation of the language and methods of the "Gang" itself. At no stage was any politically meaningful criticism and analysis allowed to develop; the basic questions (From where did the "Gang" derive its power? What kind of regime is it that provides opportunities for such charac-ters to reach supreme power? How should the system be reformed to prevent similar occurrences in the future?) cannot be raised; whenever clearsighted and courageous people dare to address these issues (Wang Xizhe, Wei Jingsheng), they are immediately gagged and disappear into the Chinese "Gulag." Since Mao's death, the pathetic reformist efforts of the leaders have actually demonstrated that Maoism is consubstantial with the regime. What happened to the Maoists in China reminds us of the fate of the cannibals in a certain tropical republic, as described by Alexandre Vialatte: "There are no more cannibals in that country since the local authorities ate the last ones." The third line of escape: "We admit there may be gross infringements of human rights in China. But the first of all human rights is to survive, to be free from hunger. The infringement of human rights in China is dictated by harsh national necessity." What causal relationship is there between infringement of human rights and the ability to feed people? The relative and modest ability of the People's Republic to feed its people represents the bare minimum achievement that one could expect from any Chinese government that continuously enjoyed for a quarter of a century similar conditions of peace, unity, and freedom from civil war, from colonialist exploitation, and from external aggression. These privileged conditions - for which the Communist government can claim only limited credit - had been denied to China for more than a hundred years, and this factor alone should invalidate any attempt to compare the achievements of the present government with those of preceding ones. Moreover, to what extent is the People's Republic truly able now to feed its population? Deng Xiaoping bluntly acknowledged in a speech on March 18, 1978, the backwardness and basic failure of the People's Repu-blic's economy. After nearly thirty years of Communist rule, "several hundred million people are still mobilized full time in the exclusive task of producing food. . . . We still have not really solved the grain problem. . . our industry is lagging behind by ten or twenty years. . . ." In proportion to population, food production in the People's Republic has not yet overtaken the record of the best Kuomintang years of more than forty years ago! The economic takeoff has not yet been achieved: China is still in a marginal situation, not yet secure from potential starvation, always vulnerable to the menace of successive bad harvests or other natural catastrophes. Further, some of the major catastrophes that have hit the People's Republic and crippled its development were entirely Mao-made and occurred only because the totalitarian nature of the regime prevented rational debate and forbade informed criticism and realistic assessment of the objective conditions. Suffice it to mention two well-known examples. The "Great Leap Forward," which Mao's private fancy imposed upon the country, resulted in widespread famine (an authoritative expert, L. Ladany, ventured the figure of fifty million dead from starvation during the years 1959-62). Falsified production statistics were issued by the local authorities to protect the myth of the Supreme Leader's infallibility; the hiding of the extent of the disaster prevented the early tackling of the problem and made the tragedy even worse. In the early fifties, one of China's most distinguished economists and demographers, Professor Ma Yinchu, expressed the common-sense warning that it would be necessary to control population growth, otherwise the demographic explosion would cancel the production increase. Mao, however, held to the crude and primitive peasant belief that "the more Chinese, the better." Ma was purged, all debate on this crucial issue was frozen for years, and precious time was wasted before Mao reversed his earlier conclusion (before obtaining his rehabilitation, Ma himself had to wait twenty years for Mao to die). Such examples could easily be multiplied. In a totalitarian system, whenever common sense clashes with dogma, common sense always loses - at tremendous cost to national development and the people's livelihood. The harm caused by arbitrary decisions enforced without the moderating counterweight of debate and criticism almost certainly exceeds whatever advantage could be gained from the monolithic discipline achieved by the system. Totalitarianism, far from being a drastic remedy that could be justified in a national emergency, appears on the contrary to be an extravagant luxury that no poor country can afford with impunity. The fourth line of escape is articulated in several variations on a basic theme: "China is different." The first variation on this theme: "Human rights are a Western concept, and thus have no relevance in the Chinese context." The inherent logic of this line of thought, though seldom expressed with such frankness, amounts to saying: "Human rights are one of those luxuries that befit us wealthy and advanced Westerners; it is preposterous to imagine that mere natives of exotic countries could qualify for a similar privilege, or would even be interested in it." Or, more simply: "Human rights do not apply to the Chinese, because the Chinese are not really human. Since the very enunciation of this kind of position excuses one from taking the trouble to refute it, I shall merely add here one incidental remark: human rights are not a foreign notion in Chinese modern history. Nearly a century ago, the leading thinker and political reformer Kang Youwei (1858-1927) made it the cornerstone of his political philosophy. In practice, under the first Republic, a human-rights movement developed effectively as a protest against the "white terror" of the Kuomintang; the famous China League for Civil Rights was founded in 1932 and mobilized the intellectual elite of the time, with prestigious figures such as Cai Yuanpei, Song Qingling, and Lu Xun. It also had its martyrs, such as Yang Quan (assassinated in 1933). However, the history of human rights in China is, after all, an academic question. What is of burning relevance is the current situation. Foreigners who pretend that "the Chinese are not interested in human rights" are obviously blind and deaf. The Chinese were forcefully expressing this very demand on the De-mocracy Wall, and on this theme popular pressure became so great that even the official newspapers finally had to acknowledge its existence. Second variation: "We must respect China's right to be different." One could draw interesting logical extensions of that principle. Had Hitler refrained from invading neighboring countries and merely contented himself with slaughtering his own Jews at home, some might have said: "Slaughtering Jews is probably a German idiosyncrasy; we must refrain from judging it and respect Germany's right to be different. Third variation: "China has always been subjected to despotic regimes, so there is no particular reason for us to become indignant at this one." Such reasoning is faulty twice over: first, because Chinese traditional government was far less despotic than Maoism; and second, because, had it been equally as despotic as Maoism or even more so, this would still not provide a justification. The second point does not need to be argued (since when can past atrocities justify present ones?); let us briefly consider the first. The great ages of Chinese civilization, such as the Tang and the Northern Song, present a political sophistication and enlightenment that had no equivalent in the world until modern times. Other periods were markedly more despotic, and some (Qin, Ming) even tried to achieve a kind of totalitarianism. However, they were always severely hampered by technical obstacles (genuine totalitarianism had to wait for twentieth-century technology to become really feasible). Ming politics were ruthless and terrifying, but they were such only for the relatively small fraction of the population that was politically active, or in direct contact with government organs. In the mid-sixteenth century Chinese officialdom consisted of some ten to fifteen thousand civil servants for a total population of about one hundred and fifty million. This tiny group of cadres was exclusively concentrated in the cities, while most of the population was living in the villages. Distance and slow communications preserved the autonomy of most countryside communities. Basically, taxation represented the only administrative interference in the life of the peasants, and simply by paying their taxes, the people were actually buying their freedom from most other governmental interventions. The great majority of Chinese could spend an entire lifetime without ever having come into contact with one single representative of imperial authority. The last dynasty, which ruled China for nearly three centuries, the Qing government, however authoritarian, was far less lawless than the Maoist regime; it had a penal code that determined which officials were entitled to carry out arrests, which crimes entailed the death penalty, and so on, whereas Maoist China has been living for thirty years in a legal vacuum, which, as we have read in the official press, eventually enabled countless local tyrants to govern following their caprice, and establish their own private jails where they could randomly torture and execute their own personal enemies. Fourth variation: "Respect for the individual is a Western characteristic"; in China (I quote from an eminent American bureaucrat) there is "an utterly natural acceptance of the age-old Confucian tradition of subordinating individual liberty to collective obligation." In other words, the Chinese dissidents who are being jailed and executed merely for having expressed heterodox opinion, the millions who, having been branded once and for all as "class enemies" (the classification is hereditary!), are reduced, they and their descendants, to a condition of being social outcasts, or are herded into labor camps. These people either, as good traditional Chinese, imbued with "the age-old Confucian tradition of subordinating individual liberty to collective obligations," are supposed to be perfectly satisfied with their fate, or, if they are not (like the 100,000 demonstrators who dared to show their anger in Peking on April 5, 1976, and all those who, two years later, gathered around the "Democracy Wall"), thereby prove that they are un-Chinese, and thus presumably unworthy of our attention! In all these successive variations, "difference" has been the key concept. If Soviet dissidents have, on the whole, received far more sympathy in the West, is it because they are Caucasians - while the Chinese are "different"? When Maoist sympathizers use such arguments, they actually echo diehard racists of the colonial-imperialist era. At that time the "Chinese difference" was a leitmotiv among Western entrepreneurs, to justify their exploitation of the "natives": Chinese were different, even physiologically; they did not feel hunger, cold and pain as Westerners would; you could kick them, starve them, it did not matter much; only ignorant sentimentalists and innocent bleeding-hearts would worry on behalf of these swarming crowds of yellow coolies. Most of the rationalizations that are now being proposed for ignoring the human-rights issue in China are rooted in the same mentality. Of course, there are cultural differences - the statement is a tautology, since "difference" is the very essence of culture. But if from there one extrapolates differences that restrict the relevance of human rights to certain nations only, this would amount to a denial of the universal character of human nature; such an attitude in turn opens the door to a line of reasoning whose nightmarish yet logical development ends in the very barbarity that this century witnessed a few decades ago, during the Nazi era. The above essay, first published in 1978, was essentially based upon observation and experience of the Maoist era. To what extent can it still provide a valid reflection of today's situation? In the past, I have often expressed skepticism regarding the ability of the Communist system to modify its essential nature. I dearly wish that its political evolution may eventually prove me wrong. In this matter, however, the pessimism generally expressed by most Chinese citizens appears to have some justification: what can we expect from a regime that is now solemnly reaffirming that all its laws and institutions must remain subordinated to the supreme guidance of the "Thought of Mao Zedong"? From anoopkheri at gmail.com Wed Apr 2 17:12:58 2008 From: anoopkheri at gmail.com (anoop kumar) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 04:42:58 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Talk on Manual Scavenging on 6th April by INSIGHT STUDY CIRCLE In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Friends, Jaibheem INSIGHT Study Circle invites you for a public meeting on the issue of *'Manual Scavenging'* *Guest Speakers:* - *1. **Mr.** Saptarshi Mandal - Law Student , National University for Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata * *2. **Mr. Raj Kumar - Young Activist working on the issue of Manual Scavenging in Haryana* *3. **Ms. Seema - **Young Activist working on the issue of Manual Scavenging in Haryana* *Venue: - Indian Social Institute (ISI),* *[10, Institutional Area, Lodi Road, New Delhi]* *Time: - 11 am to 1 pm* *Date: - 6th April 2008 (Sunday)* *Programme: - * The Government of India's 'Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993', had promised the eradication of a pernicious practice that only certain Dalit sub-castes were subject to and thereby the restoration of dignity to the individual as enshrined in the Preamble to the Constitution. It was enacted as a uniform law for the whole of India to abolish manual scavenging by declaring employment of manual scavengers for removal of human excreta an offense, and thereby ban the construction of dry latrines. However, due to lack of political will and social consciousness, lakhs of Dalits (12 lakh approx) are still destined to clean and carry the human excreta with their bare hands in almost every part of the country, especially in the urban and semi-urban areas. Dalits involved in manual scavenging have been one of the worst sufferers of social exclusion and economic exploitation. *Mr. Saptrishi Mandal will present a paper on 'Manual Scavenging and the Legal Discourse'* *Mr. Rajkumar and Ms. Seema will share their experiences about working on the issue of manual scavenging in Haryana. * *INSIGHT: YOUNG VOICES is an English bimonthly Dalit Youth Magazine. Since inception, it has been organizing meetings and public talks on the issues related with the Dalit community both inside the campuses and outside. * *One of the prime objectives of the INSIGHT group has been to create a platform for Dalit students and youth to share their views and to interact with scholars, academicians, activists and organizations that have been working on the issues related with the Dalit community*. *Towards this objective, INSIGHT Study Circle* *organizes meetings on any one particular issue on the First Sunday of every Month. Through this we are aspiring to bring Dalit students, youth, activists, professionals, scholars and researchers on one platform to interact with each other. * *We encourage young Dalit students/researchers/activists to share their work with us during the meetings of Study Circle.* For more information please contact our Study Circle Coordinators: - Dr Ajita Rao [ajita_nav at yahoo.com] Anoop Kumar [anoopkheri at gmail.com] -- Anoop 0-9313432410 -- Anoop 0-9313432410 -- Anoop 0-9313432410 From moinakb at yahoo.com Wed Apr 2 19:58:14 2008 From: moinakb at yahoo.com (moinak biswas) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 07:28:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Journal of the Moving Image Message-ID: <207772.24073.qm@web54307.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Journal of the Moving Image, the annual publication of the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, is now available online. JMI 4 and JMI 5 are on view at the moment. JMI 6 has come out and will be uploaded by the end of this month. The earlier issues will be uploaded thereafter. We would like to receive your comments. www.jmionline.org Moinak Biswas On behalf of the Editorial Board (Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay, Moinak Biswas, Abhijit Roy, Madhuja Mukhopadhyay, Anindya Sengupta, Manas K. Ghosh, Subhajit Chatterjee) Department of Film Studies Jadavpur University, Calcutta 700 032 Ph. 033 2414 6689 ____________________________________________________________________________________ You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com From naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com Thu Apr 3 16:41:51 2008 From: naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com (Naeem Mohaiemen) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 15:11:51 +0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Schengen For You, But Not For Me Message-ID: The final step of Schengen enlargement – controls at internal air borders to be abolished in late March Source: Press room - Slovenian presidency of EU After the lifting of checks at internal land and sea borders with the Schengen area Member States on 21 December 2007, when Slovenia and eight other EU Member States entered the common area of free movement without internal border controls based on a decision by the EU interior ministers, border checks will also be lifted at air borders on 30 March 2008 This will represent the final step in the abolition of controls at internal borders. Based on its assessment that all nine candidates for enlargement of the Schengen area, including Slovenia, were ready for full application of the provisions of the Schengen acquis, the JHA Council on 6 December 2007 adopted the Council Decision on the full application of the Schengen acquis in the Czech Republic, Republic of Estonia, Republic of Latvia, Republic of Lithuania, Republic of Hungary, Republic of Malta, Republic of Poland, Republic of Slovenia and Slovak Republic. With Slovenia's entry into Schengen, border controls at the borders with Austria, Italy and Hungary were abolished, while at the same time border controls at the border with Croatia were reinforced, since this is now an EU external border. The entry into force of the Council Decision allowed for the lifting of checks at internal land and sea borders on 21 December 2007 and at air borders on 30 March 2008. The decision to abolish controls at airports at a later time has to do with changes in flight schedules, which are made twice a year in spring and in autumn. Apart from that, the reasons are also technical, as the implementation of the Schengen regime at airports imposes a strict separation between passengers on internal Schengen flights and other passengers in international traffic. In addition to high standards of physical border surveillance at land border crossing points and the use of the Schengen information system, the rules of Schengen external border control also require state-of-the-art technology for border checks at airports, which are simultaneously border crossing points at the external Schengen border (for extra-Schengen flights)and crossing points of internal borders without border checks (for intra-Schengen flights). To be able to meet the Schengen standards in air border control, Slovenia had to upgrade its airport infrastructure to allow for separation of passengers on Schengen and non-Schengen flights. Last year certain construction works and other measures were carried out at Ljubljana Jo~e Pu nik Airport to ensure the separation of internal and external flight passengers (a new passenger terminal at Jo~e Pu nik Airport was officially opened on 9 July 2007). For air passenger this means in practice that from 30 March onwards border checks will only be carried out on non-Schengen flights, i.e. flights involving the crossing of the external border. On these flights, border checks will be carried out for all passengers entering or exiting the Schengen area (including transit passengers catching a connecting intra-Schengen flight). There will be no border checks for internal flights from one Schengen country to another. The only remaining checks will be security checks, which will be performed by a security company and not by the police. From indersalim at gmail.com Thu Apr 3 20:03:20 2008 From: indersalim at gmail.com (inder salim) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:03:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: an open letter to Artists in Pakistan Message-ID: <47e122a70804030733m72355895paa32db97ed240417@mail.gmail.com> Rasheed Araeen London, 2 March 2008. During my last visit to Karachi in during December 2007 and January 2008, Durriya Kazi asked me: 'What can artists do...?' I couldn't respond to her question immediately. But it kept me thinking. However, I think Durriya's question was not just about what was happening politically, but about art's social role in society and how one could take up this role effectively. I'm glad that artists in Pakistan are concerned with political situation in the country, and want to do something to improve it. I therefore welcome the recent meeting of artists in Karachi on 29 February 2008. I wish I had been there and joined the meeting. However, it is imperative to recognize, first of all, that art does not possess the quality to intervene directly in political power and change it. All that artists can do is to protest against the violation of basic human rights and the suppression of the rights of individuals for self-expression. In this respect, I'm in solidarity with the meeting. This meeting has however given me an opportunity to say something about the situation of art in Pakistan. The main problem here, in my view, is not and should not be only about what is external to art (politics) but, more importantly, what constitutes art itself and the nature of its own production and recognition. Why do we make art? Is it merely to express one's inner needs, or/and to understand one's place in society? If it provides a value to society, how do we detect or recognise it? And how do we assess its significance? Do we have a rational system by which to discuss it, assess its merits and significance? These questions are seldom asked in Pakistan, let alone to pursue a critical discourse that can deal with these questions. When in fact I look at art in Pakistan, I find it extremely depressing. Every Tom, Dick and Harry (sorry for this expression) claims to be an artist. The problem here is not so much to do with someone claiming to be an artist, but with the problem of its reception and acceptance. First, does the claimant understand why he or she is an artist and what constitutes a responsibility in this respect? I'm not invoking here one's social or political responsibility, but a responsibility to art itself. Art demands a serious responsibility, dedication and commitment within its own discourse, which I'm sorry to say is totally lacking in Pakistan. Second, as for those who claim to be critics, I have not yet come across anyone who has the ability to distinguish horses from donkeys. The consequence of all this is that art in Pakistan, in general, has become deeply immersed in the culture of mediocrity. Worst of all, nobody can question or challenge this situation and change it, because mediocrity is the basis of power in Pakistan, and the imagination which is fundamental to art is trapped within and its existence is dependent on this power. In fact, it is not just mediocrity but its celebration that leads to the delusion of great claims: a spectacle of self-aggrandisement that is the product of infantile mentality. Let me be more specific about the problem of art in Pakistan. First of all, we must recognise that art is not just about making (pretty) pictures, sculpture (which doesn't exist in Pakistan), or what is now fashionable — performance, video or installation art — but a discipline. In order to understand the seriousness of the word 'discipline', let us turn to other disciplines, such as various braches of science, and see if we can learn something from this comparison. No serious scientist would ever say: 'Look, this what I do. This comes from inside me...', and so on. If someone were to say this, he or she would be dismissed as an idiot. But this happens in art all the time, specifically in Pakistan. The function of science is to produce new knowledge, so is (and must be) the function of art. In order to judge and evaluate the significance of what is claimed to be new knowledge, whether in science or art, it must be placed within the whole body of knowledge humanity has so far produced. Of course, the rules of art are not as rigid as those of science. Art involves one's own human subjectivity, and this subjectivity operates somewhat differently in science. It seems that art demands much more freedom of imagination, more play with the material involved in making art. But both art and science have something common: their histories. These histories tell us how both art and science originated and how they have evolved since their origins, accumulating a body of knowledge or ideas that are now there for humanity with which to move forward into the future. In fact, without an understanding of this body of knowledge — specifically of art, as this is our concern here — we cannot understand our present situation and have a vision of the future. Since I have used the analogy of science to explain the problems of art, let me take you to the time when I was a student of science. I'm in the chemistry lab with some of my fellow students, working with some chemicals. When we mix two chemicals, a fantastic change takes place in the tube with the appearance of a beautiful colour. We see in front of us a spectacle so exciting that we all jump with laughter. While we are amusing ourselves, our chemistry professor passes by: 'Ah, you think this is magic. Do you know why has this happened?' We are first dumfounded, by this sudden question, but then try to explain. If we didn't know that there was a rational explanation for what happened in front of our eyes, we would have been thrown out of the lab. We would have no right to be there pretending to be doing serious work. Art has now also been turned into a spectacle, and we amuse ourselves with it but without knowing if there is anything significant behind or within this spectacle. This came home to me recently when I watched the program 'Khuli Baat' on Pakistani TV on 24 December 2007. It was paying homage to Ismail Gulgee, who had been brutally murdered a few days earlier, and it was right that we had this program. It was also right on this occasion not to look at his work critically. But the participants — who were important members of Karachi's intellectual life =97 did talk about his work and put him high on a pedestal of greatness. Gulgee may be one of the great artists of Pakistan. But how do we know? Did anyone talk about the source of his work? Yes, they did. The words 'action painting' were repeatedly used. But no one asked how action painting arrived in Pakistan, and why? How come Gulgee became an action painter overnight, without a difficult process that artists have to go through to discover something new? A few weeks later, an article on Gulgee appeared in Dawn, the leading English daily newspaper published in Karachi (13 January 2008), in which the writer claimed Gulgee to be a visionary who 'harnessed the energy of the gesture in Islamic calligraphy and fused it with the dynamism of modern action painting'. If it were an ordinary journalist, one could ignore this nonsense. But these were the words of an important critic who did not know that there is nothing in Islamic calligraphy which can be described as 'gesture'. Islamic calligraphy is contemplative, which is opposite of the gestural angst of action painting. The meeting of Islamic calligraphy and action painting is like a meeting of two opposing forces; they cannot be fused without going through a confrontation out of which must emerge a synthesis. We do not find this in Gulgee's work. In fact, the supposed presence of Islamic calligraphy in Gulgee's work is an illusion, a superimposition or a mask, to hide what is a disturbing reality underneath; a reality that has entered Pakistan as a cancer to destroy its creative body with its own authentic vision. It is not my aim here to offer a critical scrutiny of Gulgee's work (I have written an article on him, but I was told it would not be possible to publish it in Pakistan). I'm here only using his example to ask some questions which are fundamental to art; questions that must be asked if we are interested in the seriousness of art. Artists must concern themselves with what is happening in Pakistan, but whoever comes to power will make little difference to art. The problem is not only with who is in power, but the culture of mediocrity that has penetrated our every walk of life and is destroying our creative imagination. I am writing all this because I have a faith and confidence in people's creativity in Pakistan. We don't have to look to the West and follow whatever it offers; nor should we succumb to nostalgia for the Mughals. Artists can offer an example, if not a lead, in developing a modern vision for Pakistan which is not only its own but offers a way forward for humanity at large. With best wishes, Rasheed Araeen London, 2 March 2008. Rasheed Araeen is the founding editor of Third Text. The journal has been published since 1987 and is now in its 92nd issue. The Asian edition, Third Text Asia, is being launched in April 2008 in Karachi, Paki -- From waliarifi3 at gmail.com Fri Apr 4 02:57:59 2008 From: waliarifi3 at gmail.com (Wali Arifi) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 14:27:59 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] PDP's Delhi handlers! Message-ID: <4fcaee300804031427q576c6b4al2c911fac4b7fff3a@mail.gmail.com> * Mufti's party tries to shake off its ' Delhi masters'* By Parvaiz Bukhari in Srinagar THE People's Democratic Party ( PDP)' s president Mehbooba Mufti has unveiled her " selfrule" plan for an undivided Kashmir and quashed allegations that her party is a creation of Indian intelligence agencies. She announced her grand plan to resolve the Kashmir issue at the recent Pugwash conference in Pakistan, of all places, before it was discussed with New Delhi or even people back home. This happened at a time when the PDP is facing internal rebellion and criticism from the National Conference ( NC), which alleged that her party was created and works for New Delhi's spies. To counter the attacks from her rivals, Mufti tried to show her party's independence and simultaneously distance the PDP from its perceived links with the intelligence establishment. These are difficult times for the PDP when it is preparing for the next assembly elections, slated for later this year. Launched in 1999, ostensibly as the biggest political operation of Indian intelligence in embattled Jammu and Kashmir, the party grew in strength to become a formidable challenger to the NC's strong hold in the Valley. But the party's think- tank is now finding it hard to get the history of its making off its back and give it the status of a credible alternative to the NC. And more so when Farooq Abdullah's NC is going through a rough patch and the former chief minister is trying to regain his position by attacking the PDP. " The PDP is a creation of New Delhi and ( intelligence) agencies, which are trying to divide and rule Kashmiris," Abdullah tells the people repeatedly. He may not be off the mark. The PDP's foundations were laid when New Delhi began to regain control in Kashmir after militancy struck a blow to the political power structure which existed in the shape of the NC. In the run- up to the 1996 elections, the first seven years, electoral politics was principally dependent on the NC. In such a scenario, New Delhi found the NC more demanding and reminiscent of 1952 when Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah began to question the state's accession to the Indian Union. The centre assigned former Union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed the task and he was spot on — cashing in on anti- incumbency and other factors to rise to the chief minister's share with the Congress in tow. But, the unpleasant history hung heavy over the party and immediately after Sayeed stepped down as chief minister in tandem with the PDP- Congress power- sharing deal, he and his daughter floated the " self- rule" proposal. " It was the first attempt by the PDP to break free from any handling from outside ( read New Delhi)," said a party rebel. Sayeed's party is using its selfrule idea to give an impression that the Kashmir- specific component of the Indo- Pak peace process is driven by it. But the biggest question is: will the PDP be able to hold its flock together? Many of its founding members are attempting to form a third front. parvaiz. bukhari@ mailtoday. in http://mailtoday.in April, 3, 2008 Page 20 From sonia.jabbar at gmail.com Fri Apr 4 13:27:48 2008 From: sonia.jabbar at gmail.com (S. Jabbar) Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:27:48 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The Hindu Message-ID: This is a letter I have written to The Hindu in response to Pallavi Aiyar¹s , How China sees the Dalai Lama and his cause (The Hindu, April 3). I¹m posting the original article FYI below. ---------------------------- Pallavi Aiyar¹s , How China sees the Dalai Lama and his cause (The Hindu, April 3) is full of inconsistencies and errors. The argument that the Chinese leadership cannot be expected to engage in talks with the Dalai Lama because they have portrayed him as the enemy for the last 50 years, is like agonizing over how the Sangh Parivar can ever embrace Indian Muslims after demonizing the community all its life. The only sane answer to this can be: well, that¹s your problem, now go figure! Aiyar admits that there is little information about Tibet within China and then strangely concludes that there is widespread anger at Tibetan protests based on her readings of Chinese blogs. How does one accurately ascertain what people genuinely feel or think under an authoritarian government that controls information, thought and expression? Besides, Aiyar seems totally unaware of the ripples generated by the recent letter to the Chinese government calling for a direct dialogue with the Dalai Lama by over 30 Chinese intellectuals, many of who are Han. To assert that the Chinese government has to Œsell¹ an idea to the public is specious. Since when have dictatorships bothered with popularity ratings? Did the Chinese government assess what 1.25 million of its citizens felt when they were displaced to make way for the Olympic games, or the millions displaced in the Three Gorge Project, or what people feel when the government regularly arrests and incarcerates Chinese intellectuals, journalists, lawyers and activists who may harbour different opinions from the present regime? Aiyar claims the Dalai Lama refused an invitation by China in 1989 Œin an effort to re-start stalled talks,¹ and that he Œchose instead to appeal to the West to put pressure on China to accede to his demands,¹ and that is why the Chinese view him Œas a chronically unreliable negotiator.¹ What is her source of information? Why does she fail to mention concrete Tibetan efforts of preceding years that include the Dalai Lama¹s 5-point Proposal (1987) and Strasbourg Proposal (1988), and an invitation for talks in Geneva in 1988? The Panchen Lama died on 28 January 1989. The Chinese invitation to the Dalai Lama came unexpectedly on Feb 7 to attend the cremation on Feb 15. Is it reasonable to expect him to jump at an invitation from hostile forces with just a week to prepare for thirty years of absence? Incidentally, when the Dalai Lama subsequently asked to visit Tibet and to meet Premier Li Peng during his visit to New Delhi in 1991, both were denied. The Chinese government¹s stonewalling of the Tibet issue and issues of human rights within China cannot be viewed as a sovereign state¹s legitimate rights over Œinternal matters¹. These are acts of hubris which will sooner or later force those in power to weigh what is more important, absolute power for the Communist Party of China or the very existence of China itself? Sonia Jabbar ------------------------------------ How China sees the Dalai Lama and his cause Pallavi Aiyar What those urging China to negotiate with the Dalai Lama fail to recognise is the fact that Beijing's main constituency is not the international community but its own domestic public. For Beijing to appear 'soft' on the Dalai Lama would be as politically unpalatable domestically asit would be in the United States were Washington to decide to engage in dialogue with Osama bin Laden.  With tensions in Tibet continuing to bubble, pundits and politicians in both India and the West are increasingly calling for talks between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama. One argument supporting the utility of talks between the Chinese leadership and the pre-eminent Tibetan Buddhist leader reasons that contrary to the dominant belief in Beijing, the Dalai Lama is in fact China's best bet for a long-term and stabl e solution to the Tibet issue. Only the Dalai Lama has the stature and authority to convince the Tibetan population at large that its interests lie within rather than separate from China, this line of reasoning proceeds. Thus it is argued that if Beijing loses out on the opportunity to reach an accommodation with the exiled leader now, it may end up with an even more unpredictable and hard to control situation regarding Tibetan aspirations for self-determination after the Dalai's death. Others are urging the Chinese leadership to negotiate with the Dalai Lama to prove to the world that it "deserves" to host the Olympic Games. Beijing will be able to boost its international image and prove its critics wrong if only it would agree to talks, it is claimed. What neither of these arguments takes into account, however, is how strongly divergent perceptions of the Dalai Lama within China and abroad, combined with the deep vein of government-stoked nationalism that runs through contemporary Chinese society, make it virtually impossible for Beijing to sell any potential deal reached with the Dalai Lama to its public. While in the West the Dalai is widely seen as a Nobel prize-winning, peace-loving figure of moral authority, within China the monk is regularly projected as not only a separatist but also a duplicitous trouble-maker not above unleashing violence. In the aftermath of the recent riots and protests in Tibet, Internet chat rooms in China are abuzz with anger and indignation at what many see as the biased portrayal of the situation by the western media and the 'hypocritical' actions and statements of the Dalai Lama. Revealingly, many Chinese have even lashed out at the authorities for their ostensible leniency in dealing with the protests, in sharp contradistinction to the 'repressive crackdown' most commentators abroad have criticised Beijing for. The majority of Chinese have little awareness that there is a Tibet problem at all. Although a relatively high-profile issue abroad, thanks in part to the efforts of Hollywood, within China Tibet is usually far less prominent in the consciousness of the average Chinese than Taiwan. In school, Chinese youngsters are taught how the region has only benefited from Communist rule. The feudal theocracy of the Dalai Lama was replaced by the enlightened policies of the People's Republic, they are told, with the result that Tibet has enjoyed rising living standards and economic development. While the Dalai Lama is portrayed as a sinister figure working to split Tibet from the Chinese nation, he is also described as having little support among the Tibetan population at large. When I gave a lecture to a class of about 50 students at one of Beijing's top journalism universities a few years ago, I discovered that not one of the bright, young things I was talking to was aware that the Dalai Lama had won the Nobel prize. Moreover, many Chinese regard Tibetans as being unfairly privileged since they are granted certain special subsidies and benefits from the government because of their ethnic status. For example, they are exempted from the one-child policy that restricts urban Han Chinese families to a single child. Given this background, the TV footage and photographs of rampaging monks in Lhasa and elsewhere attacking Han civilians and security forces have bewildered many Chinese. They are particularly outraged at western media stories that consistently blame the Chinese government for its handling of the situation while bolstering the Dalai Lama's version of events. With the Olympics being held in Beijing this August, 2008 was intended as a year for the Chinese to showcase their new globalised and friendly face to the world. Instead the reaction of the West to the Tibet issue, widely publicised daily in all official media, is leading to feelings of victimisation among the Chinese and a correspondingly sharp response from the authorities. "If the terrorists insist on carrying out their attacks on lives and properties of the Chinese nation," opined one netizen on the English language China Daily website chat room, "[the] next step would be to exterminate them, like so many cockroaches." He added: "The Olympics is only a party to celebrate China's successes. It is not a goal in itself. Allowing the terrorists to run amok would jeopardise the 30 years of successes from all that hard work and smart work of the Chinese citizenry." What those urging China to negotiate with the Dalai Lama fail to recognise is the fact that Beijing's main constituency is not the international community but its own domestic public. The Olympics, important though they may be to the country's prestige, are seen as far less important than China's territorial integrity. There is a range of scholarship on contemporary China that demonstrates the fundamental utility of nationalism as a source of legitimacy to the country's ruling party. Given this fact, for Beijing to appear 'soft' on the Dalai Lama would be as politically unpalatable domestically as it would be in the United States were Washington to decide to engage in dialogue with Osama bin Laden. The door for dialogue and genuine compromise between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama was open briefly in the 1980s. The two sides held secret talks in Beijing in 1982 and 1984. At the time however, the Dalai Lama was less clear than he states he is today on the issue of how far he was willing to accept Chinese rule over Tibet. The exiles repeatedly insisted that any solution must entail the governance of Tibet under a totally different political system than what the rest of China had. This would mean transforming the region into a self-governing democratic entity, something that was patently unacceptable to Beijing. When in 1989 the Chinese authorities invited the Dalai Lama to participate in a religious ceremony in an effort to re-start stalled talks, the exiled leader refused. He chose instead to appeal to the West to put pressure on China to accede to his demands. For Beijing this move branded the Dalai Lama as a chronically unreliable negotiator. Since then the Chinese leadership's preferred approach is to wait for the monk's passing. The idea is that any successor of the current Dalai is unlikely to inspire similar veneration in Tibetans and would thus lack the clout enjoyed by the current leader. Thus while Chinese leaders have repeatedly, in recent weeks, stated that they are open to talks with the Dalai Lama, they reiterate the caveat that he must give up his demand for independence. The Dalai Lama in turn has repeatedly insisted that he has no such claim. The Chinese respond by pointing to the riots in Lhasa and hence the Dalai's 'obvious insincerity.' And so on it goes, in circles. Even were the government persuaded to attempt a compromise with the exiled leader, its room for manoeuvre is slim given the way the public views the situation. Any change in Beijing's position, including talks with the Dalai Lama, would appear as bowing to foreign pressure and failing to respond firmly to violence. In 1989 the Dalai Lama won the Nobel peace prize. However, beyond symbolic gains for his cause, his strategy of appealing to the West for support failed to make China compromise on Tibet. In fact, it precipitated a more hard-line policy on the issue, which persists till today. With the recent protests and the upcoming Olympic Games, the Dalai and Tibet are once again in the international limelight. However, given the Chinese reaction there is little cause to believe any fundamental shift in Tibet's situation will be precipitated. From rashneek at gmail.com Thu Apr 3 09:56:55 2008 From: rashneek at gmail.com (rashneek kher) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 09:56:55 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Navreh Celebrations at Faridabad-Divay Message-ID: <13df7c120804022126i4d644209t729357da545a9ab7@mail.gmail.com> "*Roots in Kashmir*" in association with "*Kashmiri Sewak Samaj,Faridabad*" invites everyone to be a part of the Navreh(Kashmiri New Year) Celebrations on 6th of April,07. Renowned Kashmiri singer Kailash Mehra will enthrall the audiences with her mesmerizing voice. Others who will perform are Ravi Bhan(Light Kashmiri Classical and Sufiana Music),Sanjeev Raina"Gautam"(Traditional Kashmiri Folk-Chakri and Leela),Priyanka Patwari(Indian Classical Dance-Bharatnatyam). The Celebrations shall continue all night till the arrival of the first rays of Sun on 7th April,08. *Venue:* Hari Parvat Anangpur Village,Faridabad. *Time* from 2.30 PM onwards on 6th April,07 Anangpur is a small village,nestled between the Aravalis.A small by lane almost 1km ahead of Surajkund (on the Firing Range Road)takes you to the village.Atop the hillock,near the Anangpur Village,Faridabad,rests the replica of the temple of Sharika(the presiding deity of Kashmir). For any information please feel free to contact me at 9810049979. Best Regards and Have a Glorious Year Ahead... -- Rashneek Kher http://www.nietzschereborn.blogspot.com -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From markcmarino at gmail.com Fri Apr 4 11:52:11 2008 From: markcmarino at gmail.com (Mark Marino) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 22:22:11 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] CFP: Elit under the Stars (7/25/08) Message-ID: <287213f30804032322u6eaa3ffdt90292ea7b332e20a@mail.gmail.com> Hi, wanted to let you know about this event. Please help pass it along! Elit Open Mic/Open Mouse April 25,2008, 7:30pm USC, Institute for Multimedia Literacy Calling All creators (and fans) of Electronic Literature: authors, designers, and programmers. Sign up now to present your new or favorite work of elit in our Open Mic/Open Mouse. Venue: Outdoors under the stars at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, 746 West Adams Blvd., LA, CA 90089 at the University of Southern California. Potential Genres: * Electronic Poetry * Hypertext * Interactive Fiction * Interactive Drama * Conversational Agents * Video Mashups * Serious Games * Flash Works * Codeworks Any work that could be labeled "Electronic Literature" is welcome Or you may read an excerpt of one of your favorite elit works. Performance Spots Length: 7 Minutes Max The performance will be Free and Open to the public. Contact: To sign up, contact Jeremy Douglass [jeremydouglass [at] gmail] Organized by Mark Marino, Jeremy Douglass, and Jessica Pressman with support from Holly Willis of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy and from the Electronic Literature Organization. For more information see: http://writerresponsetheory.org/wordpress/2008/04/03/underthestars/ -- Writing Program University of Southern California http://WriterResponseTheory.org http://CriticalCodeStudies.com -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From mitoo at sarai.net Thu Apr 3 05:58:04 2008 From: mitoo at sarai.net (Mitoo Das) Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:28:04 -1200 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] 12th B.N.Ganguly Memorial Lecture Message-ID: <47F42494.8070900@sarai.net> Centre for the Study of Developing Societies cordially invites you to the 12th B.N. Ganguli Memorial Lecture "Rethinking Collectivities: Institutional Innovations in Group Farming, Community Forestry and Strategic Alliances" by "Professor Bina Agarwal" *Friday, 11th April 2008, 5:30 PM 29, Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 Professor Niraja Gopal Jayal will chair * "B.N. Ganguli Memorial Lectures" are instituted in memory of the distinguished economist-intellectual Professor B.N. Ganguli, former Chair CSDS Board of Governors. Earlier speakers in the series include Professors Charles Taylor, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Raimundo Panikkar, Bhikhu Parekh, Ernest Gellner, Ali Mazrui, Roberto Unger, Michael Walzer, John Keane, Amit Bhaduri and Giorgio Agamben. "Bina Agarwal" is Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University. She has written on a range of subjects: land, livelihoods and property rights; environment and development; the political economy of gender; poverty and inequality; law; and agriculture and technological change. Among her books are "Cold Hearths, Barren Slopes: The Woodfuel Crisis in the Third World" and "A Field of One's Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia". Her writings have been used extensively in framing policy by governments, NGOs and international agencies. She has participated in the formulation of several of India's Five Year Plans. She was conferred the Padma Shri in 2008. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Niraja Gopal Jayal" is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. She is the author of "Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India" and "Representing India: Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of Public Institutions". -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From moinakb at yahoo.com Wed Apr 2 15:59:22 2008 From: moinakb at yahoo.com (moinak biswas) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 03:29:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Journal of the Moving Image is Online Message-ID: <696009.52605.qm@web54307.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Journal of the Moving Image, the annual publication of the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, is now available online at www.jmionline.org JMI 4 and JMI 5 are on view at the moment. JMI. 6 will come up by the end of the month. The back issues will be uploaded thereafter. We would like to receive your comments. Moinak Biswas On behalf of the Editorial Board (Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay, Moinak Biswas, Abhijit Roy, Madhuja Mukhopadhyay, Anindya Sengupta, Manas K. Ghosh, Subhajit Chatterjee) Department of Film Studies Jadavpur University, Calcutta 700 032 Ph. 033 2411 1143 (home), 033 2414 6689 (office) ____________________________________________________________________________________ You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From rashneek at gmail.com Fri Apr 4 14:01:50 2008 From: rashneek at gmail.com (rashneek kher) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:01:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Navreh Celebrations-Invitation Message-ID: <13df7c120804040131j385ae475y7337de1f2dc40744@mail.gmail.com> "*Roots in Kashmir*" in association with "*Kashmiri Sewak Samaj,Faridabad*" invites your presence on the Navreh (Kashmiri New Year) Celebrations on 6th of April,07. Renowned Kashmiri singer Kailash Mehra will enthrall the audiences with her mesmerizing voice. Others who will perform are Ravi Bhan(Light Kashmiri Classical and Sufiana Music),Sanjeev Raina"Gautam"(Traditional Kashmiri Folk-Chakri and Leela),Priyanka Patwari(Indian Classical Dance-Bharatnatyam). The Celebrations and Prayers shall continue all night till the arrival of the first rays of Sun on 7th April,08. *Venue:* Hari Parvat Anangpur Village,Faridabad. *Time* from 2.30 PM onwards on 6th April,07 Anangpur is a small village,nestled between the Aravalis.A small by lane almost 1km ahead of Surajkund (on the Firing Range Road)takes you to the village.Atop the hillock,near the Anangpur Village,Faridabad,rests the replica of the temple of Sharika(the presiding deity of Kashmir). For any information please feel free to contact me at 9810049979. Best Regards - Rashneek Kher http://www.nietzschereborn.blogspot.com From taraprakash at gmail.com Fri Apr 4 19:39:31 2008 From: taraprakash at gmail.com (TaraPrakash) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 10:09:31 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] The Hindu References: Message-ID: <013101c89661$c539c1f0$4624ab0a@taraprakash> Thanks Sonia for writing this letter. However, Hindu which has seemingly assumed a role of being the mouthpiece of current Chinese regime, is the least likely to pay any attention to it, let alone publish it. ----- Original Message ----- From: "S. Jabbar" To: "sarai list" Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 3:57 AM Subject: [Reader-list] The Hindu > This is a letter I have written to The Hindu in response to Pallavi > Aiyar¹s > , How China sees the Dalai Lama and his cause (The Hindu, April 3). I¹m > posting the original article FYI below. > > ---------------------------- > > Pallavi Aiyar¹s , How China sees the Dalai Lama and his cause (The Hindu, > April 3) is full of inconsistencies and errors. The argument that the > Chinese leadership cannot be expected to engage in talks with the Dalai > Lama > because they have portrayed him as the enemy for the last 50 years, is > like > agonizing over how the Sangh Parivar can ever embrace Indian Muslims after > demonizing the community all its life. The only sane answer to this can > be: > well, that¹s your problem, now go figure! > > Aiyar admits that there is little information about Tibet within China and > then strangely concludes that there is widespread anger at Tibetan > protests > based on her readings of Chinese blogs. How does one accurately ascertain > what people genuinely feel or think under an authoritarian government that > controls information, thought and expression? Besides, Aiyar seems > totally > unaware of the ripples generated by the recent letter to the Chinese > government calling for a direct dialogue with the Dalai Lama by over 30 > Chinese intellectuals, many of who are Han. > > To assert that the Chinese government has to Œsell¹ an idea to the public > is > specious. Since when have dictatorships bothered with popularity ratings? > Did the Chinese government assess what 1.25 million of its citizens felt > when they were displaced to make way for the Olympic games, or the > millions > displaced in the Three Gorge Project, or what people feel when the > government regularly arrests and incarcerates Chinese intellectuals, > journalists, lawyers and activists who may harbour different opinions from > the present regime? > > Aiyar claims the Dalai Lama refused an invitation by China in 1989 Œin an > effort to re-start stalled talks,¹ and that he Œchose instead to appeal to > the West to put pressure on China to accede to his demands,¹ and that is > why > the Chinese view him Œas a chronically unreliable negotiator.¹ What is her > source of information? Why does she fail to mention concrete Tibetan > efforts of preceding years that include the Dalai Lama¹s 5-point Proposal > (1987) and Strasbourg Proposal (1988), and an invitation for talks in > Geneva > in 1988? > > The Panchen Lama died on 28 January 1989. The Chinese invitation to the > Dalai Lama came unexpectedly on Feb 7 to attend the cremation on Feb 15. > Is > it reasonable to expect him to jump at an invitation from hostile forces > with just a week to prepare for thirty years of absence? Incidentally, > when > the Dalai Lama subsequently asked to visit Tibet and to meet Premier Li > Peng > during his visit to New Delhi in 1991, both were denied. > > The Chinese government¹s stonewalling of the Tibet issue and issues of > human > rights within China cannot be viewed as a sovereign state¹s legitimate > rights over Œinternal matters¹. These are acts of hubris which will > sooner > or later force those in power to weigh what is more important, absolute > power for the Communist Party of China or the very existence of China > itself? > > Sonia Jabbar > > > > ------------------------------------ > > > How China sees the Dalai Lama and his cause > Pallavi Aiyar > > What those urging China to negotiate with the Dalai Lama fail to recognise > is the fact that Beijing's main constituency is not the international > community but its own domestic public. For Beijing to appear 'soft' on the > Dalai Lama would be as politically unpalatable domestically asit would be > in > the United States were Washington to decide to engage in dialogue with > Osama > bin Laden. > > With tensions in Tibet continuing to bubble, pundits and politicians in > both > India and the West are increasingly calling for talks between the Chinese > government and the Dalai Lama. > One argument supporting the utility of talks between the Chinese > leadership > and the pre-eminent Tibetan Buddhist leader reasons that contrary to the > dominant belief in Beijing, the Dalai Lama is in fact China's best bet for > a > long-term and stabl e solution to the Tibet issue. Only the Dalai Lama has > the stature and authority to convince the Tibetan population at large that > its interests lie within rather than separate from China, this line of > reasoning proceeds. Thus it is argued that if Beijing loses out on the > opportunity to reach an accommodation with the exiled leader now, it may > end > up with an even more unpredictable and hard to control situation regarding > Tibetan aspirations for self-determination after the Dalai's death. > > Others are urging the Chinese leadership to negotiate with the Dalai Lama > to > prove to the world that it "deserves" to host the Olympic Games. Beijing > will be able to boost its international image and prove its critics wrong > if > only it would agree to talks, it is claimed. > > What neither of these arguments takes into account, however, is how > strongly > divergent perceptions of the Dalai Lama within China and abroad, combined > with the deep vein of government-stoked nationalism that runs through > contemporary Chinese society, make it virtually impossible for Beijing to > sell any potential deal reached with the Dalai Lama to its public. While > in > the West the Dalai is widely seen as a Nobel prize-winning, peace-loving > figure of moral authority, within China the monk is regularly projected as > not only a separatist but also a duplicitous trouble-maker not above > unleashing violence. > > In the aftermath of the recent riots and protests in Tibet, Internet chat > rooms in China are abuzz with anger and indignation at what many see as > the > biased portrayal of the situation by the western media and the > 'hypocritical' actions and statements of the Dalai Lama. Revealingly, many > Chinese have even lashed out at the authorities for their ostensible > leniency in dealing with the protests, in sharp contradistinction to the > 'repressive crackdown' most commentators abroad have criticised Beijing > for. > > The majority of Chinese have little awareness that there is a Tibet > problem > at all. Although a relatively high-profile issue abroad, thanks in part to > the efforts of Hollywood, within China Tibet is usually far less prominent > in the consciousness of the average Chinese than Taiwan. In school, > Chinese > youngsters are taught how the region has only benefited from Communist > rule. > The feudal theocracy of the Dalai Lama was replaced by the enlightened > policies of the People's Republic, they are told, with the result that > Tibet > has enjoyed rising living standards and economic development. > > While the Dalai Lama is portrayed as a sinister figure working to split > Tibet from the Chinese nation, he is also described as having little > support > among the Tibetan population at large. When I gave a lecture to a class of > about 50 students at one of Beijing's top journalism universities a few > years ago, I discovered that not one of the bright, young things I was > talking to was aware that the Dalai Lama had won the Nobel prize. > > Moreover, many Chinese regard Tibetans as being unfairly privileged since > they are granted certain special subsidies and benefits from the > government > because of their ethnic status. For example, they are exempted from the > one-child policy that restricts urban Han Chinese families to a single > child. > > Given this background, the TV footage and photographs of rampaging monks > in > Lhasa and elsewhere attacking Han civilians and security forces have > bewildered many Chinese. They are particularly outraged at western media > stories that consistently blame the Chinese government for its handling of > the situation while bolstering the Dalai Lama's version of events. > > With the Olympics being held in Beijing this August, 2008 was intended as > a > year for the Chinese to showcase their new globalised and friendly face to > the world. Instead the reaction of the West to the Tibet issue, widely > publicised daily in all official media, is leading to feelings of > victimisation among the Chinese and a correspondingly sharp response from > the authorities. "If the terrorists insist on carrying out their attacks > on > lives and properties of the Chinese nation," opined one netizen on the > English language China Daily website chat room, "[the] next step would be > to > exterminate them, like so many cockroaches." He added: "The Olympics is > only > a party to celebrate China's successes. It is not a goal in itself. > Allowing > the terrorists to run amok would jeopardise the 30 years of successes from > all that hard work and smart work of the Chinese citizenry." What those > urging China to negotiate with the Dalai Lama fail to recognise is the > fact > that Beijing's main constituency is not the international community but > its > own domestic public. The Olympics, important though they may be to the > country's prestige, are seen as far less important than China's > territorial > integrity. > > There is a range of scholarship on contemporary China that demonstrates > the > fundamental utility of nationalism as a source of legitimacy to the > country's ruling party. Given this fact, for Beijing to appear 'soft' on > the > Dalai Lama would be as politically unpalatable domestically as it would be > in the United States were Washington to decide to engage in dialogue with > Osama bin Laden. > > The door for dialogue and genuine compromise between the Chinese > government > and the Dalai Lama was open briefly in the 1980s. The two sides held > secret > talks in Beijing in 1982 and 1984. At the time however, the Dalai Lama was > less clear than he states he is today on the issue of how far he was > willing > to accept Chinese rule over Tibet. The exiles repeatedly insisted that any > solution must entail the governance of Tibet under a totally different > political system than what the rest of China had. This would mean > transforming the region into a self-governing democratic entity, something > that was patently unacceptable to Beijing. > > When in 1989 the Chinese authorities invited the Dalai Lama to participate > in a religious ceremony in an effort to re-start stalled talks, the exiled > leader refused. He chose instead to appeal to the West to put pressure on > China to accede to his demands. For Beijing this move branded the Dalai > Lama > as a chronically unreliable negotiator. Since then the Chinese > leadership's > preferred approach is to wait for the monk's passing. The idea is that any > successor of the current Dalai is unlikely to inspire similar veneration > in > Tibetans and would thus lack the clout enjoyed by the current leader. > > Thus while Chinese leaders have repeatedly, in recent weeks, stated that > they are open to talks with the Dalai Lama, they reiterate the caveat that > he must give up his demand for independence. The Dalai Lama in turn has > repeatedly insisted that he has no such claim. The Chinese respond by > pointing to the riots in Lhasa and hence the Dalai's 'obvious > insincerity.' > And so on it goes, in circles. Even were the government persuaded to > attempt > a compromise with the exiled leader, its room for manoeuvre is slim given > the way the public views the situation. Any change in Beijing's position, > including talks with the Dalai Lama, would appear as bowing to foreign > pressure and failing to respond firmly to violence. > > In 1989 the Dalai Lama won the Nobel peace prize. However, beyond symbolic > gains for his cause, his strategy of appealing to the West for support > failed to make China compromise on Tibet. In fact, it precipitated a more > hard-line policy on the issue, which persists till today. With the recent > protests and the upcoming Olympic Games, the Dalai and Tibet are once > again > in the international limelight. However, given the Chinese reaction there > is > little cause to believe any fundamental shift in Tibet's situation will be > precipitated. > > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> From reartikulacija at gmail.com Thu Apr 3 12:40:35 2008 From: reartikulacija at gmail.com (reartikulacija reartikulacija) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 09:10:35 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] 3rd Issue of the journal for critical theory, political analysis and contemporary art REARTIKULACIJA Message-ID: <1f7bb6c60804030010x7946c624x873a6cf9753419ba@mail.gmail.com> REARTIKULACIJA, Ljubljana Self-organized platfom and journal for critical theory and political analysis of the Slovene, Balkan, EU and contemporary art. www.reartikulacija.org * * *Number 3 of Reartikulacija, MARCH 2008* *Contents: * *REARTIKULACIJA * Marina Grzinic:REARTICULATION OF THE STATE OF THINGS OR EURO-SLOVENIAN NECROCAPITALISM Stas Kleindienst:DE-POLITICIZING POLITICS: CONTROL OVER PRODUCTION AND LIFE Sebastjan Leban:IMPORT/EXPORT: THE LOGIC OF CONTEMPT IN CONTEMPORARY NEOLIBERAL IMPERIALISM *ERASED * The thematic issue of the Journal for Critique of Science: A STORY OF AN ERASURE *NEW FASCISMS * Sefik Seki Tatlic:ALIEN IN TRANSITION AS A REFLECTION OF CAPITALIST TOTALITARIANISM *DECOLONISATION * Subhabrata Bobby Banarjee: LIVE AND LET DIE: COLONIAL SOVEREIGNTIES AND THE DEATH WORLDS OF NECROCAPITALISM Sebastjan Leban:DEPRECIATING LIFE – A Conversation with Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee *QUEER * Tatjana Greif: SCHENGEN IN PRACTICE *LESBIAN BAR * Natasa Velikonja: EUROPE IS BORING *BELGRADE (OTHER) SCENE * Ana Vujanovic and Marta Popivoda in collaboration with Ana Vilenica: OPEN GLOSSARY – ENTRY No. 02/08 *POSITIONING * NSK STATE IN TIME *STATE OF EXCEPTION * EXCEPTION: CONTEMPORARY ART SCENE FROM PRISHTINA Eduard Freudmann and Ivana Marjanovic: THE EXCEPTION PROVES THE RULE Ana Vujanovic in collaboration with the actors of the Other Scene: NO EXCEPTION! *HARD (CORE) * Katja Kobolt: GREY STARS ON THE EUROPEAN BLUE(S) SKIES: The European Funds a Dream and a Precarization of Culture in Slovenia *(HARD) CORE * Katharina Morawek: UNFREEZING THE MUSEUMS: THE POWER OF DISPLAY *HYPERCOMMODIFICATION * Zolta kronika: A MANIFESTO OF THE YELLOW CHRONICLES (ŽOLTA KRONIKA) *DEEP THROAT * Marina Grzinic:WHAT IS TO BE DONE? – A Conversation with Dmitry Vilensky *Reartikulacija* is an art project by the group Reartikulacija (Marina Grzinic, Stas Kleindienst, Sebastjan Leban and Tanja Passoni). It is based on a precise intervention logic; through contemporary theory, critic, art projects, activism and self-organization it aims to intervene in Slovene, Balkan and international space. The platform allows networking with other critical, activist, theoretical and art subjects in Slovenia, Europe and worldwide, who are interested in the possibility to create and maintain a dialogue with concrete social and political spaces. -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From swakkhyar at gmail.com Sat Apr 5 15:28:08 2008 From: swakkhyar at gmail.com (swakkhyar deka) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 15:28:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] short film festival Message-ID: <99ca36500804050258w3266e2c1va8c8de9d1cef7d87@mail.gmail.com> hi there......would anybody like to inform me about short film festivals in India in the next few months....?.....I have made a short film of 14 mintues and would like to show it to people.....here in India mainly.....so please let me know.... From anivar at movingrepublic.org Sat Apr 5 11:09:37 2008 From: anivar at movingrepublic.org (Anivar Aravind) Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:09:37 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Join the ViBGYOR Film Fraternity! Message-ID: <47F71099.9050609@movingrepublic.org> *Join the ViBGYOR Film Fraternity!* ViBGYOR- the PEOPLE'S FILM FESTIVAL =================================== Celebrating Identities and Diversity The Annual ViBGYOR Film Festival in Thrissur, Kerala and its associated activities have, in the last 3 years, become a significant alternative space for issue based independent films and a meeting place for filmmakers, social movements, activists and the student community. It is today among the biggest independent documentary film festivals in the country and is fast becoming an important event for independent filmmakers and people's movements. Please visit our site www.vibgyorfilm.com for details on our festivals and other activities in the past three years. The 3rd edition of ViBGYOR was held from February 13-17 2008. Nearly 1500 women and men participated and 175 films were screened at the 3 venues in; Thrissur town, the `Village ViBGYOR' (held in different centers of Pananchery village panchayath) and `Campus ViBGYOR' (in 3 colleges). This year's edition also saw open forum discussions, a media exhibition and music performances. True to its activist traditions, the festival also served as a space to highlight three important campaigns on the Athirappilly (Chalakudy) Hydroelectric project, the Chakkankandam (Guruvayur) sewage plant and the ongoing Human Rights violations in the state of Manipur. 3 films relating to these struggles were screened at the festival and representatives from each area spoke to the public and media. We have been inspired and enthused by the support we received for the past three editions of ViBGYOR and hope to screen films across the country this year through a Traveling Festival. We are also in the process of making the collections of the ViBGYOR Digital Film Archives available to the general public, with around 2500 films--documentaries, short fiction, feature-length fiction, animations, music videos and spots—already in our stack. Depending on the type of membership that individuals and institutions may want to avail, different services of the Archives will be offered to them. This membership scheme is an attempt to broaden the organizational and financial support base of ViBGYOR. =/ APPEAL:/= As with any people led initiative, ViBGYOR film festival has faced severe financial crisis. In spite of support from local groups, activists and partner organizations, the local organizers of the festival have incurred a cumulative loss of approximately rupees Seven lakhs over the past 3 years. One of the reasons is that the festival in principle does not accept any corporate funding and has received little support from Government departments and public trusts. Major expenses incurred have been for travel, hire of equipment, halls, publications and accommodation and food for filmmakers and activists who attend the annual event. We appeal to friends and well-wishers to join the ViBGYOR Film Fraternity and thus support this alternative film festival, so that we can address the current financial crisis and also plan for the future. There are several ways to become part of the ViBGYOR Film Fraternity: 1. Contribute a lump sum of Rs. 5000 ($ 150 for people outside India) and be an Associate of the ViBGYOR Film collective. 2. Contribute Rs. 100 a month or Rs. 1000/- as one time payment and become a Member of the ViBGYOR Support Group 3. Contribute any amount as an individual Contributors to the ViBGYOR Fund, apart from becoming eligible for different types of Memberships, will be listed on our website, ViBGYOR Souvenir, the monthly News Letter and the next Festival Book. They will be entitled to one Guest Pass entry to ViBGYOR Annual Film Festival and associated activities. An e-group will link all friends and supporters of ViBGYOR, with monthly updates on all ViBGYOR events. We hope to collect at least rupees 10 lakhs towards the deficit in the past and for the activities we have planned for the next three years. If you are interested in supporting this initiative, please write a DD/cheque to `ViBGYOR Film Collective' payable at Thrissur and mail it to the address below. Or you may directly transfer the money to the ViBGYOR Collective account (a/c number: 110533, Catholic Syrian Bank, Thrissur Town Branch). Please provide us with your postal address so that we can send you the receipt. Awarding of Membership to the ViBGYOR Film Fraternity will take place in the near future in a public function attended by eminent filmmakers and other dignitaries. For ViBGYOR Collective, K.P.Sasi (President) C.Saratchandran (Vice President ) Fr. Benny Benedict (Secretary) K.C.Santhoshkumar, Anivar Aravind ,Jibu Thomas, T.N.Prasannakumar, K.K.Sunilkumar (Joint-Directors) Mustafa Desamangalam, Adv. Lima Ramadas (Depty. Directors) ViBGYOR Film Festival Office Chetana, Kalliath Square, Palace Road Thrissur: 680 020, Kerala, INDIA Tel: +91-487-2330830/0-9447000830 info at vibgyorfilm.com, www.vibgyorfilm.com _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From pratilipi.in at gmail.com Sat Apr 5 15:44:34 2008 From: pratilipi.in at gmail.com (Pratilipi) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 15:44:34 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcing "Pratilipi" - www.pratilipi.in - Possibly India's First Online, Bilingual (Hindi/English), Literary Magazine Message-ID: <435290ba0804050314t5afb529clfa6878714aa2d322@mail.gmail.com> मित्रों/ Hi, संभवतः, भारत की पहली द्विभाषी, ऑनलाइन , साहित्यिक पत्रिका – प्रतिलिपि – के लोकार्पण पर आपका स्वागत है/We welcome you to Pratilipi.in - quite possibly India's first bi-lingual, online literary magazine. प्रवेशांक आपके हाथों में है और हम ख़ुद नहीं बोलेंगे, प्रतिलिपि को ही बोलने देंगे /Our inaugural issue is out. And we shall let it speak for itself. हमें विश्वास है की प्रतिलिपि के पन्नों पर और भाषाओं व लिपियों में, और बहुत सारे लोग, और बहुत तरह के लेखन आयेंगे और बात करेंगे/ We are sure more people, more kinds of writings, more languages and scripts, will come together and converse at Pratilipi. हमारी वेबसाईट है / The website - http://www.pratilipi.in प्रवेशांक /The first issue - प्रतिलिपि अप्रैल २००८ / PRATILIPI - April 2008 शीर्ष आलेख / LEAD ARTICLE - प्रतिरोध और साहित्य: मदन सोनी /MADAN SONI ON RESISTANCE AND LITERATURE IN HINDI फीचर्स / FEATURES - THREE NEW INDIAN ENGLISH POETS AND A FEMALE MAX BROD/ तीन नए भारतीय अंग्रेज़ी कवि और एक स्त्री-मैक्स ब्रॉड - SUDHIR CHANDRA ON 1857 AND INDIAN INTELLIGENTSIA /१८५७ के बौद्धिक उत्तरजीवन पर सुधीर चंद्र - RUSTAM (SINGH) ON SELF AND TIME / आत्म और काल पर रुस्तम (सिंह) कथा /FICTION - गीतांजलि श्री और अनिरुद्ध उमट के उपन्यासों के अंश /EXCERPTS FROM NOVELS BY GEETANJALI SHREE AND ANIRUDDH UMATH कविता / POETRY - LARS LUNDKVIST / लार्श लुन्डक्विस्ट - MAMTA G SAGAR / ममता जी सागर - MATSYA / मत्स्या - MIRANHSHAH / मीरनशाह - NILIM KUMAR / नीलिम कुमार - SUNITI BHATT / सुनीति भट्ट - UDAYAN VAJPEYI / उदयन वाजपेयी कथेतर / NON-FICTION - हिन्दी साहित्य के पर्यावरण और एक स्त्री-लेखक पर गिरिराज किराडू / GIRIRAJ KIRADOO ON WOMEN WRITERS IN HINDI LITERARY ENVIRONMENT प्रतीक्षा में / Regards, Giriraj Kiradoo & Rahul Soni Shiv Kumar Gandhi (Editors) (Art Editor) गिरिराज किराडू एवं राहुल सोनी शिव कुमार गाँधी संपादक कला संपादक -- www.pratilipi.in ----Pratilipi is (for the time being) a completely non-commercial magazine running on the editors' investments and on the works of likeminded contributors. Pratilipi forbids itself nothing – except taking on a representational role on the web or catering to such expectations – and, hopefully, never will. From sadiafwahidi at yahoo.co.in Mon Apr 7 10:41:10 2008 From: sadiafwahidi at yahoo.co.in (S.Fatima) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 06:11:10 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] No Pizzas for Muslims (of Jamia Nagar) Message-ID: <632909.23204.qm@web8415.mail.in.yahoo.com> Fast-food chains don't deliver in Delhi's Muslim ghetto Fast-food chains like Domino's and McDonald's usually refuse home delivery in Jamia Nagar (in Delhi city)even though this dominantly Muslim neighbourhood, famed for its Jamia Islamia University, is close to their New Friends Colony (NFC) outlets. By the way, Jamia Nagar is not just another unplanned stinky ghetto--it has wide roads, spacious houses, and proper addresses. (See the story: Jamia Nagar - Delhi's Rich Muslim Ghetto) "We don't deliver there," was the reply when The Delhi Walla called up Domino's (011-26933951-56) at NFC. Different responses on different calls: "we are sorry", or "we haven't started our service there yet." Ditto with McDonald's. "There are areas we don't deliver to and Jamia Nagar is one of them," says the lady manning the McDelivery desk. According to McDonald's India North & East, "McDelivery ascertain the delivery area on various internal assessments including the convenience and safe accessibility of the area within the permissible timeframe." OK, fair enough. It takes less then 10 minutes to drive to Jamia Nagar from McDoanld's. So is the place not safe enough? An unusually forthcoming employee at Domino's said, "It's not a good area. We deliver there only to special customers." Who are these mysterious special customers? At least author Ms. Rakshanda Jalil, a Jamia Nagar resident who recently had luminaries like Khushwant Singh and Sheila Dikshit (Delhi Chief Minister no less) attending her book launch, is not special enough. She couldn't coax Domino's to deliver Veggie Delight with extra olives for her two daughters. "They go to faraway blocks of New Friends Colony and were delivering as far as Sarita Vihar but they won't come here which is closer", says Ms. Jalil. Now listen to the outlets' unofficial excuses: "customers there don't pay", "addresses are usually given wrong", and--this takes the pizza—"The Jamia University students forcibly take pizza boxes from delivery boys." Then why is Pizza Hut able to deliver, and deliver successfully, to Jamia Nagar? A quick phone call put things in perspective. Yes, Pizza Hut does deliver in Jamia Nagar. Yes, they have never faced problems. But sorry, they don't deliver after 7 pm. Reason? Traffic jam! Really? That's laughable. Jamia is essentially an university campus with verdant grounds