September 5, 2004

PERSONAL POLITICAL
The Artery

Beena Sarwar

Houston from the air is surprisingly green
although the sprawling Texan city is known more
for its concrete structures, gas-guzzling SUVs
(monstrous four-wheel drives that ply its myriad
flyovers), cowboy hats and a certain Bush
father-son duo. Anecdotal legend has it that at
an environmental seminar there some twenty years
ago, in the days before environment was ‘in’, a
Houstonian questioned why they should bother
about the Amazon rainforests. To which Britain’s
Prince Phillip is said to have drawn himself up
to his full six foot plus height and drawled:
“Because if we don’t, the whole world will look
like Houston, Texas.”

His Highness was on the same wavelength as at
least one reluctant Houstonian -- Mark Larsen, an
out-of-state art student who moved in 1983 to a
dense forested lot in the city where, amazingly,
a variety of trees had been allowed to remain in
the 1940s and 50s development. That year, a
hurricane and then a record freeze in winter
knocked holes in the otherwise dense canopy of
trees. In spring Larsen planted trees to fill in
these ‘holes’ – and that began what he calls his
“obsession to maintain and protect this fragile
miniature ecosystem… an act of defiance against
the ‘total human appropriation region’ (Tobias)
that is Houston, and much of Texas.”

After graduating as a painter in 1987, he
realized that his economic situation would not
let him escape Texas. “I had always intended to
live in a beautiful place, such as my native
Michigan, or any place where people were
environmentally conscious and the natural world
was less abused.” And so “the idea of an
inner-city environmental sanctuary came to be.”

The project became a community activity, with
artists, inventors and musicians chipping in,
using the building materials, cinder blocks,
bricks, and concrete samples left behind by the
elderly previous occupant who had compulsively
collected these ‘treasures’. The Artery emerged
as a performance space in 1987, with regular
rehearsals by a steel drum band, and soon,
frequent ‘Arteries’ were being held. “With a
focus on original content, the Artery celebrated
creativity through visual art, music of all
sorts, dance, poetry, and guest speakers (often
addressing environmental themes),” relates
Larsen.

The thatch-roofed counter just inside the
entrance forms a drinks stop as people mill
around before or after an event. At the far end,
a large white screen forms the backdrop to the
low stage before which cinder block seats are
arranged in ascending height. The idea, as Larsen
explains it, is to experience an event or art
“outdoors in a forested setting, as opposed to a
claustrophobic gallery”. And so, perspiring
Houstonians use improvised paper fans one warm
and humid August evening, an attentive and
receptive audience at an audio-visual
presentation on voices of dissent in Pakistan.

The Artery encourages such multi-media
presentations and inter-disciplinary
collaborations, in the process developing, as
Larsen puts it, into a “laboratory for ideas and
expression” in the quiet, leafy Houston
neighbourhood where it is unobtrusively located.

The Artery founder is equally unassuming.
Slightly built and un-artist-like in checked
shirt and jeans, he is proud of the fact that the
Artery does not accept money for the use of its
space, in keeping with the Artery’s guiding
principles, which include the notion that “for an
experience to be authentically spiritual it
should not involve profit”. It’s a reciprocal
relationship: artists and performers present
without charge – many Artery events are
fund-raisers for various groups and causes,
including, increasingly, political ones. “After
the 2000 ‘election’ and the subsequent war
against nature, Artery events have included
support for candidates and causes in defense of
Reason and Justice.”

He and his wife moved from the house in 1999, so
that it could be used as Larsen’s full-time art
studio. Gigantic canvases and drawings cover the
walls of the spacious purpose-built art space at
the back of the building where Larsen conducts
life-drawing classes. A square kitchen in the
front (where a huge antique porcelain sink takes
up one wall) leads into a tiny photo-covered,
closet-like room that in turn connects to
another, smaller studio. Overlooking the
performance space, this is the television control
room, equipped with laptop computers, monitors,
sophisticated sound equipment and switchboard –
all donated, like the time of the expert
volunteers who run it.

Since 2003, their efforts at documenting
‘Arteries’ are finally proving successful,
“thanks to video guru Ted Barwell and tech genius
Bill Day,” says Larsen. “With up to five cameras
shooting with guidance from Ted via headsets, we
arrive at the end of an evening's performance
with a handsome live mix.” He wants edited
versions of these events to find a wider audience
and has recently finally overcome his resistance
to the idea of an Artery website
(http://www.arteryhouston.org/), in order to
encourage others to build an ‘Artery’ of their
own and repeat the formula (principles) behind
this “temple to nature”.

“The only way we will know anything like Eden on
Earth is if we protect what is left and foster
stewardship and inspiration for nature's return
to areas from whence she has been banished,” says
Larsen. Prince Phillip would approve.

(ends)







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Most of you have probably already come across
Arundhati Roy's latest essay  'TIDE? OR IVORY
SNOW? Public Power in the Age of Empire' -
available at
www.democracynow.org/static/Arundhati_Trans.shtml

here's something else i wanted to share.
beena

  http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/090804A.shtml

   One Thousand and One
     By William Rivers Pitt
     t r u t h o u t | Perspective

     Wednesday 08 September 2004

     On the day Operation Iraqi Freedom suffered
the 1,000th death of a United States soldier,
some quick numbers are in order:

     1,095 days since the attacks of September 11;


     538 days since the invasion and occupation of
Iraq;

     1,001 American soldiers dead in Iraq;

     1,132 total Coalition soldiers dead in Iraq;

     More than 20,000 'medical evacuations' of
American soldiers from Iraq;

     More than 10,000 civilians dead in Iraq;

     0 weapons of mass destruction;

     0 democratic elections in Iraq;

     0 connections between Iraq and the attacks of
September 11;

     0 captures of Osama bin Laden, in Iraq or
anywhere else;

     $1.7 trillion to be spent on Iraq in the next
decade, according to the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences report by the Committee on
International Security Studies (CISS).

     Jane Bright wrote to me in November of 2003
about the death of her son, one of the 1,001. "I
must share with you," wrote Bright, "the obituary
I wrote for my son, Sgt. Evan Ashcraft, who was
killed July 24 near Mosul. I often think of the
contributions my intelligent, sensitive wonderful
son could have made. He could have been President
of the United States. He could have been a doctor
caring for children in a Third World Country. He
had so much potential. He told us that when he
came back from Iraq he wanted to help people. He
said he had seen so much hatred and death that
the only way to live his life was through aid to
others. Look at what we've lost. The loss is not
just mine, it's the world's loss. Evan will
always be alive in my heart. He and all the other
victims of this heinous action in Iraq must be
more than mere numbers emerging from the
Pentagon's daily tally. His death is a crime
against humanity and the fault lies with the war
criminals who inhabit our White House. Please
share his story so that he may come alive to your
readers."

     Writer Bruce Mulkey spoke recently to Jane
Bright, and wrote about his conversation in an
essay titled 'Military Families Speak Out.'
Bright said to him, "Several months ago when
George Bush was performing his skit for the media
in which he was looking under his desk and under
chairs for weapons of mass destruction, I was
horrified by the insensitivity of his
performance. I thought to myself, here is the
president of the United States making a joke out
of a pre-emptive war and laughing about weapons
of mass destruction, the basis for going to war,
a war in which my dear son died, over 1,000
coalition troops have died and thousands of Iraqi
civilians have died. How dare he!"

     There are a lot of women like Jane Bright in
America now.

     Brooke Campbell lost her brother, Sergeant
Ryan M. Campbell, in Iraq on April 29, 2004. In
his last letter to her, Ryan wrote, "Just do me
one big favor, OK? Don't vote for Bush. No. Just
don't do it. I would not be happy with you."

     Ms. Campbell, in a subsequent letter to
George W. Bush, wrote, "I last saw my loved one
at the Kansas City airport, staring after me as I
walked away. I could see April 29 written on his
sad, sand-chapped and sunburned face. I could see
that he desperately wanted to believe that if he
died, it would be while 'doing good,' as you put
it. He wanted us to be able to be proud of him.
Mr. President, you gave me and my mother a folded
flag instead of the beautiful boy who called us
'Moms' and 'Brookster.' But worse than that, you
sold my little brother a bill of goods. Not only
did you cheat him of a long meaningful life, but
you cheated him of a meaningful death."

     At some point, you simply run out of words.
1,000 dead soldiers in Iraq, no weapons of mass
destruction, no connection to September 11,
torture and rape of men, women and children at
Abu Ghraib prison, the outing of a deep-cover CIA
officer for political revenge, Rumsfeld ally
Ahmad Chalabi spying for Iran, the Israeli spy in
the Pentagon, all the dead civilians everywhere,
the substantial failures of Bush et al. on
September 11, the crater in the economy, a gutted
health care system, the abandonment of the
elderly, the evisceration of the environment, and
a federal budget deficit that guarantees a bleak
future for anyone planning to be alive sometime
in the next ten years...

     At some point, you simply run out of words.
Let us instead have a moment of silence for those
1,001 soldiers, and all the civilians who have
joined them in the Iraqi dust.

-----------------------------------------------
     William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and
international bestseller of two books - 'War on
Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know'
and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'





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The Nepali government has responded to the Maoist
rebellion with force, but, argues Isabel Hilton,
there is no military solution in this war on
terror, any more than in Iraq, Chechnya or
Palestine. Bottom line is that violence begets
violence, and as long as this spiral continues,
the most vulnerable will always be the weaker
targets, like the schoolchildren of Beslan.

beena

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1297179,00.html

Comment

------------------------------------------
There will be another Beslan

In asymmetrical war, the most vulnerable will
always be on the frontline

Isabel Hilton
Saturday September 4, 2004
The Guardian

It descended into blood, panic, violence and
tragedy. None of the children, parents and
teachers killed and wounded in Beslan deserved
this barbarism. The children who set off for the
first day of school on Wednesday, wearing their
new clothes and holding their balloons, could not
have been a more innocent target, the anguish of
their teachers and parents more undeserved.

Beslan is an extreme example of what is rightly
seen as a depraved military tactic. But the
equally unpalatable truth is that hostage taking
is also a rational tactic in the desperate
context of asymmetrical warfare. Despite the
likelihood of a bloody end to most hostage
situations, they are likely to grow more, rather
than less, frequent.

At first sight the appeal of hostage taking is
questionable: the hostage takers rarely achieve
their stated objectives and often die in the
attempt. There is nothing in Putin's record or in
that of his security services to suggest that a
peaceful solution in Beslan was likely - or that
respect for the lives of the hostages would
predominate over the political need to end the
crisis quickly. Preserving lives takes time.
Putin's interest, as it has been in Chechnya, is
to create an impression of overwhelming force to
pacify domestic anxiety. The hostage takers knew
from the outset that they were likely to die.

Hostage taking has not always been so
unrewarding. In November 1986, an American
hostage was released by an Iranian group that had
held him captive for more than 17 months. His
release had been bought by the Reagan
administration with the transfer of military
spare parts for Iran. Despite official denials,
governments from Washington and Bogota to Paris
have sometimes found it convenient to negotiate
the quiet release of prisoners. In doing so they
created a double bind. Negotiating improved both
the life chances of the hostages and the leader's
image: a return in triumph was better than a
tragic outcome. But rewarding hostage-taking also
raised the incentives: as long as something could
be gained, the practice was risky, but in some
sense profitable.

Today's hostage-taking, though, from Iraq to
Ossetia, is more savage, born of the spread of
asymmetrical warfare that pits small, weak and
irregular forces against powerful military
machines. No insurgent lives long if he fights
such overwhelming force directly. His tactical
success has always been in surprise and in
picking his target. If insurgent bullets cannot
penetrate military armour, it makes little sense
to shoot in that direction. Soft targets - the
unprotected, the innocent, the uninvolved -
become targets because they are available. If the
hostage-takers in Beslan knew they were likely to
die, they also knew they would die with the
world's attention upon them. Had they died in a
regular firefight with Russian forces, we would
neither have known nor cared.

In asymmetrical warfare everyone is involved and
anyone is a potential victim. To promise that
security in such conflicts will result from the
deployment of large military machines is a sham.
To fight asymmetrical war with tanks makes as
much sense as trying to shoot mosquitoes with a
machine gun. The result is counter-productive.

As the drama of Beslan was entering its final
hours, George Bush was bidding for re-election on
the promise of security to the American people, a
security premised on the willingness to use
overwhelming military force. It was the same
promise that Putin gave to the Russians and Ariel
Sharon to the people of Israel. All three have
used violence freely in pursuit of electoral
reward: Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple
of the Mount that triggered the second intifada,
Putin's reckless adventurism in re-launching the
Chechen war in 1999, and the Bush invasion of
Iraq. None has produced the peace or security
that was their justification; all have generated
more violence and widened the circle of killing
far beyond the formal engagement of armed men on
both sides. Now the most likely victims are the
poor and the helpless, as collateral damage,
bombing casualties or hostages.

In Iraq last week, the resources of the French
state were, rightly, mobilised to try to save the
lives of two French journalists who are now as
familiar to everyone in France as Terry Waite was
in Britain during his ordeal in Lebanon. But the
names of the 12 Nepalese workers gruesomely
murdered last Tuesday have not even been
published in most of our newspapers. In
hostage-taking, too, there is a hierarchy of
importance.

The Nepalis were victims twice over. They came
from one of the world's poorest countries, which
suffers the legacy of a rapacious aristocracy who
built lavish palaces while denying even basic
education to the majority. Today a tiny elite
still dominates business and commerce while the
mass of the people suffer the familiar catalogue
of deprivation. To add to the country's misery,
Nepal is in the grip of its own "war on terror".
An increasingly successful Maoist rebellion now
operates in 73 out of 75 districts in Nepal in an
insurgency that has cost 10,000 lives in eight
years. When the Maoists declared Kathmandu under
siege, nothing moved. When they order foreign
businesses to leave, they obey in increasing
numbers.

The government has responded with force, but
there is no military solution in this war on
terror, any more than in Iraq, Chechnya or
Palestine. An outright victory by either side in
Nepal could only come at appalling cost and would
presage further suffering. If Nepal is to have a
future, it must be a negotiated one - and one
which addresses the Nepal's extremes of social
injustice.

For now, for Nepal's poor, the best chance of
escape from this misery and violence is to find
work abroad, legally or illegally. Women are
trafficked into the sex trade, men recruited into
international labour gangs that service the
lifestyles of the well-off. The 12 victims of
last week's atrocity were poor: cooks and
cleaners, recruited by an agency in Kathmandu
that told them they were going to Jordan. Once
there, they were ordered to Iraq.

The Nepalese government has no troops in Iraq and
has banned its own citizens from going there. But
the ban is gesture politics. The realities of
Nepal are what counts. According to recent
reports up to 15,000 Nepalis have gone to Iraq,
some recruited by agencies in Kathmandu, others
through Indian operators in Mumbai. In the final
video, one of the men, a US flag pinned to his
chest, read out a statement that accused the US
of using deception to recruit them. "We ask
anyone who wants to come to Iraq not to be
cheated by these high salary (sic) because they
are false and America is lying," he said.

Nepal has no troops in Iraq and the Nepalese
government was given no chance to negotiate. The
US was at one end of the long chain of lies that
brought the men to Iraq, their miserable
conditions at home at the other. The men who
murdered them picked them not for their
connection to the US, but because they were
unprotected and their deaths would be a warning
to others to stay away. In Nepal, it will
probably work. For the hostage-takers, that is
enough.

isabel.hilton@...







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"First Bush, and now Putin, have picked up
lessons for their wars on terror from Israel's
campaign against the Palestinians". Excellent
piece. thanks Marzia.
beena

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040909/COKLEIN0\
9/TPComment/TopStories

article also at Klein's website www.nologo.org
and the Guardian website.

The Likud Doctrine

9/11's real legacy is that Bush has adopted
Sharon's rigid views, says NAOMI KLEIN

By NAOMI KLEIN

Thursday, Sep 9, 2004


Russian President Vladimir Putin is so fed up
with being grilled over his handling of the
Beslan catastrophe that he lashed out at foreign
journalists on Monday. "Why don't you meet Osama
bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White
House and engage in talks," he demanded. "No one
has a moral right to tell us to talk to
child-killers."

Mr. Putin is not a man who likes to be
second-guessed. Fortunately for him, there is
still one place where he is shielded from all the
critics: Israel.

On Monday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warmly
welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
for a meeting about strengthening ties in the
fight against terror. "Terror has no
justification, and it is time for the free,
decent, humanistic world to unite and fight this
terrible epidemic," Mr. Sharon said.

There is little to argue with there. The essence
of terrorism is the deliberate targeting of
innocents to further political goals. Any claims
its perpetrators make to fighting for justice are
morally bankrupt and lead directly to the
barbarity of Beslan: a carefully laid plan to
slaughter hundreds of children on their first day
of school.

Yet sympathy alone does not explain the
outpourings of solidarity for Russia coming from
Israeli politicians this week. In addition to Mr.
Sharon's pronouncements, Israeli Foreign Minister
Silvan Shalom said the massacre showed "there is
no difference between terror in Beersheba and
terror in Beslan." And Haaretz quoted an
unidentified Israeli official saying that
Russians "understand now that what they have is
not a local terror problem but part of the global
Islamic terror threat. The Russians may listen to
our suggestions this time."

The underlying message is unequivocal: Russia and
Israel are engaged in the very same war, one not
against Palestinians demanding their right to
statehood, or against Chechens demanding their
independence, but against "the global Islamic
terror threat." Israel, as the elder statesman,
is claiming the right to set the rules of war.
Not surprisingly, the rules are the same ones Mr.
Sharon uses against the intifada in the occupied
territories.

His starting point is that Palestinians are only
interested in annihilating Israel. From this
basic belief, several others follow. First, all
Israeli violence against Palestinians is an act
of self-defence, necessary to the country's very
survival. Second, anyone who questions Israel's
absolute right to erase the enemy is an enemy.
This applies to the United Nations, other world
leaders, to journalists, to peaceniks.

Mr. Putin has clearly been taking notes, but it's
not the first time that Israel has played this
mentoring role. On Sept. 12, 2001, Israeli
Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked how
the previous day's terrorist attacks in New York
and Washington would affect relations between
Israel and the United States. "It's very good,"
he said. "Well, not very good, but it will
generate immediate sympathy." The attacks, Mr.
Netanyahu explained, would "strengthen the bond
between our two peoples, because we've
experienced terror over so many decades, but the
United States has now experienced a massive
hemorrhaging of terror."

Common wisdom has it that, after Sept. 11, a new
era of geopolitics was ushered in, defined by
what is usually called the "Bush doctrine":
pre-emptive wars, attacks on "terrorist
infrastructure" (read entire countries), and an
insistence that all the enemy understands is
force. It would be more accurate to call this
rigid world view the "Likud doctrine." What
happened on Sept. 11 is that the Likud doctrine,
previously used only against Palestinians, was
picked up by the most powerful nation on Earth
and applied on a global scale. Call it the
Likudization of the world, the real legacy of
Sept. 11.

Let me be absolutely clear: By Likudization, I do
not mean that key members of the Bush
administration are working for the interests of
Israel at the expense of U.S. interests (the
increasingly popular "dual loyalty" argument).
What I mean is that, on Sept. 11, George W. Bush
went looking for a political philosophy to guide
him in his new role as "war president." He found
that philosophy in the Likud doctrine,
conveniently handed to him ready-made by the
ardent Likudniks already ensconced in the White
House. No thinking required.

Since then, the Bush White House has applied this
logic with chilling consistency to its global
"war on terror." It was the guiding philosophy in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and may well extend to Iran
and Syria. It's not simply that Mr. Bush sees
America's role as protecting Israel from a
hostile Arab world. It's that he has cast the
U.S. in the same role in which Israel casts
itself, facing the same threat. In this
narrative, the U.S. is fighting a never-ending
battle for its survival against irrational forces
that seek nothing less than its total
extermination.

And now the Likudization narrative has spread to
Russia. In that meeting with foreign journalists
on Monday, The Guardian reported that Mr. Putin
"made it clear he sees the drive for Chechen
independence as the spearhead of a strategy by
Chechen Islamists, helped by foreign
fundamentalists, to undermine the whole of
southern Russia and even stir up trouble among
Muslim communities in other parts of the country.
'There are Muslims along the Volga, in Tatarstan
and Bashkortostan. . . . This is all about
Russia's territorial integrity,' he said." It
used to be just Israel that was worried about
being pushed into the sea.

There has, indeed, been a dramatic and dangerous
rise in religious fundamentalism in the Muslim
world. The problem is that, under the Likud
doctrine, there is no space to ask why this is
happening. We are not allowed to point out that
fundamentalism breeds in failed states, where
warfare has systematically targeted civilian
infrastructure, allowing the mosques to start
taking responsibility for everything from
education to garbage collection. It has happened
in Gaza, in Grozny, in Sadr City.

Mr. Sharon says terrorism is an epidemic that
"has no borders, no fences," but this is not the
case. Terrorism thrives within the illegitimate
borders of occupation and dictatorship; it
festers behind "security walls" put up by
imperial powers; it crosses those borders and
climbs over those fences to explode inside the
countries responsible for, or complicit in,
occupation and domination.

Ariel Sharon is not the commander-in-chief of the
war on terror; that dubious honour stays with
George Bush. But on the third anniversary of
Sept. 11, he deserves to be recognized as this
disastrous campaign's spiritual/intellectual
guru, a kind of trigger-happy Yoda for all the
wannabe Luke Skywalkers out there, training for
their epic battles in good versus evil.

If we want to see the future of where the Likud
doctrine leads, we need only follow the guru
home, to Israel -- a country paralyzed by fear,
embracing pariah policies, and in furious denial
about the brutality it commits daily. It is a
nation surrounded by enemies and desperate for
friends, a category it narrowly defines as those
who ask no questions, while generously offering
the same moral amnesty in return.

That glimpse at our collective future is the only
lesson the world needs to learn from Ariel
Sharon.

-----
Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences
and Windows.








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Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004
From: Pritam K. Rohila, Ph.D. ACHA (Association
for Communal Harmony in Asia)<pritamr@...>
Subject: Three Years Later: Peaceful Tomorrows
9/11/04 Statement

Three Years Later: Peaceful Tomorrows 9/11/04
Statement

09/10/04 "ICH" -- Nearly three years ago,
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
was born out of a shared belief that America's
military response to the 9/11 attacks which took
our loved ones' lives would result in the deaths
of countless innocent civilians and increase
recruitment for terrorist causes, making the
United States, and the world, less safe and less
free for generations to come.

Today, as we commemorate September 11, 2004, we
find that our worst fears have been realized. The
terrorism of September 11th has been neither
neutralized, nor ended, by the terrorism of war.

Since our bombing and military action in
Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of more than
130 American troops and an estimated 4,000
civilians - and compounded by our failure to
rebuild that broken nation--we have seen the
return of Taliban warlords, the departure of
relief agencies, and the continuing deaths of
American service people and innocent civilians.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has acknowledged
that he is seeking the support of former Taliban
officials in an effort to stabilize the political
process. Osama bin Laden remains at large, and
al-Qaeda remains a potent terrorist force, as
evidenced by the March 11 train bombings in
Madrid, Spain.

Our illegal, immoral and unjustified invasion of
Iraq, a nation that had nothing to do with the
September 11th attacks, has cost the lives of
1,000 American troops and an estimated 12,000
Iraqi civilians, while leaving tens of thousands
of others physically and emotionally traumatized.
Today, our continuing occupation, our failure to
provide basic services like electricity and
water, and our torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib
has turned Iraq into a focus of anti-American
sentiment where a new generation of terrorists is
being recruited from around the world.

In Guantanamo, approximately 600 detainees from
40 countries remain incarcerated without charge
and without access to lawyers. Those who have
been returned to their home countries attest to
conditions that violate the Geneva Conventions
and our own democratic principles. In America,
the USA Patriot Act gives government free reign
to surveil law-abiding citizens. Restrictions on
peaceful protest mock our Constitutional
guarantees of freedom of speech and assembly.
Meanwhile, bias crimes and discrimination
continue to cast a shadow over our nation.

That all of this has been done in the names of
our loved ones who died on September 11th makes
the suffering of their innocent counterparts
around the world even harder to take. When
actions that are making the world less secure are
carried out in the name of US security, we must
reconsider the true sources of the security,
freedom, and respect we once commanded around the
globe.

Is the source of our security and freedom the
exercise of overwhelming military power? Have we
found security and freedom by dividing the world
into "us and them," and labeling entire nations
"evil"? Three years ago, the French declared, "We
are all Americans," and Iranians held spontaneous
candlelight vigils for our dead. Today, American
prestige is at an all-time low. Friend and foe
alike tremble at the sense of exceptionalism that
drives America to conduct pre-emptive war.

And what example have we set by our use of
violence as a tool for addressing complex
grievances? In the past week, heartbreaking
pictures of children abducted and killed in
Russia remind us that terrorism against civilian
populations, which did not begin on September
11th, has not abated as a result of our actions
since then. In Iraq, abductions of more than 40
civilians from nations including Japan, Jordan,
Italy, China, Ukraine, South Korea, Egypt, Nepal,
India, Kenya, the Philippines, Bulgaria and our
own have escalated the level of human suffering.

On September 11th, 2002, we urged America to
participate fully in the global community, by
honoring international treaties, endorsing and
participating in the International Criminal
Court, following the United Nations charter, and
agreeing in word and action to the precepts of
international law. Today, we redouble our call
for America to return to full membership in the
community of nations.

We call for an end to war as our nation's one
blunt instrument of foreign policy in our
increasingly complex world. We recognize that our
freedoms and security derive not from politicians
or the Pentagon, but from our Constitution, and
call on all Americans to rise in its defense
against the triple threats of fear, lies and
ignorance.

Finally, we draw hope from those around the globe
whose historical experiences of terrorism and war
have brought them not to a place of vengeance,
but to a commitment to creating a peaceful world.
They include victims of the violence in Israel
and Palestine; families of victims of the Bali
nightclub bombing; family members of those killed
in Oklahoma City; atomic bomb survivors from
Hiroshima and Nagasaki; those who survived the
bombing of Guernica, Spain and Dresden, Germany;
those affected by terrorism in Kenya; Cambodia;
Chechnya; South Africa; Northern Ireland; Bosnia;
Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Through their witness
and their efforts towards reconciliation, they
have demonstrated that peace begins in the heart
of every individual, and that people united have
an unparalleled power to change the world.

Every day, we choose to create the world we want
to live in, through our words and through our
actions. Today, we reach out to others around the
world who recognize that war is not the answer.
Today, three years after September 11th, we
continue to choose peace.

--September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
- http://peacefultomorrows.org/#threeyearslater







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September 12, 2004

PERSONAL POLITICAL

The price of love

Beena Sarwar

“Mian biwi raazi, to kiya kare ka qazi?” goes the
old saying – if the bride and groom are willing,
what can the priest do? Legally and religiously,
not much, except solemnize their wedding. But in
Pakistan, many couples still live in fear of
their lives even if they have legitimized or want
to legitimize their relationship with marriage --
as the so-far unreported case of young Aasiya and
Abdul Kalam illustrates.

The two met in February this year at a college in
Bahawalpur, where he was visiting a cousin.
Immediately drawn to each other they became
friends, keeping in touch through telephone and
email after Kalam, a young factory worker,
returned to his native Karachi. Two months later,
he returned to Bahawalpur, and they agreed to
marry.

Aasiya was desperate to escape the oppressive
atmosphere at home. Since her mother’s death
about ten years ago, Aasiya’s father Hafiz
Hameed, a government school-teacher, and
step-mother constantly beat her. Things became
worse after the high phone bill aroused their
suspicions, even though Kalam sent her money to
pay it. Aasiya completed her BSc final exams with
difficulty, under constant surveillance and
pressure.

Her khalas, late mother’s sisters, feel for her
and want to help her. One of them agreed to let
Aasiya marry Kalam in her own house in
Bahawalpur. Although apprehensive about her son’s
involvement with a girl from an unknown family,
Kalam’s mother telephoned Aasiya’s khala and they
agreed on a date for the wedding. The family made
preparations to welcome the bride, including
getting some furniture. “We made no demands for
any dowry,” stresses Kalam.

In mid-July, Kalam, his parents, brother,
brother’s wife, their two children and some
friends, went to the khala’s house in Bahawalpur.
But before the nikkah (marriage contract) could
be signed General Ziaul Haq’s Hudood Ordinances
reared their ugly head. “If I allow this marriage
to take place, Hameed will have me arrested for
kidnapping under the Hudood Ordinance,” argued
Aasiya’s uncle Riaz, worried about the
implications of this marriage for his own
daughters.

The wedding party returned to Karachi, berating
the distraught Kalam for putting them all in such
an embarrassing situation, and to so much expense
and trouble. Back in Karachi, concerned about her
son’s happiness, his mother made another attempt,
and telephoned Aasiya’s father Hameed. He refused
to discuss the matter.

Kalam later learnt that he had locked Aasiya up,
beaten her, and forced her to sign a nikkah with
her cousin – a nikkah that is illegal since her
consent is not involved.

Since the contract was signed secretly, without
any neighbours being invited, they are willing to
testify that no wedding ceremony has taken place.
In fact, Hameed has been unable to organize the
‘ruksati’ or wedding reception after which the
bride would go to her new home. He has cut off
Aasiya’s communication with the outside world,
but she recently managed to get word out
apprehending that the ‘ruksati’ will be conducted
secretly. Her father has severely beaten her, she
says, and threatened to her with a gas cylinder.
She fears that ‘this may be the last month of my
life’.

But Hameed may not find it so easy to dispose of
his daughter, who has refused to accept her fate
lying down; before being locked up, she managed
to contact some human rights activists.
Subsequently, a local lawyer took up this case
without charge and filed a habeus corpus petition
to recover Aasiya from her illegal detention.

Kalam is also refusing to stand by and let her be
married off against her wishes. At one point,
before the lawyer had been contacted, he got a
friend to telephone Hameed and warn him not to
detain or mistreat Aasiya. Hameed responded by
disconnecting his telephone lines. Another friend
who operates a public call office near Aasiya’s
house is also keeping an eye on the situation.

However, Aasiya was not presented in court on the
day of the hearing last week, and amazingly, the
judge did not order her production. Kalam’s
family in Karachi is now getting anonymous
telephone calls (made from public call offices in
the Bahawalpur area) threatening to kill him and
Aasiya.

The urgency now is to ensure that Aasiya is
produced in court so that she can state her
wishes as an adult citizen of Pakistan, so that
she may be allowed to go to the place of her
choice – whether it is to remain at home, or go
to her aunt’s house, or with Kalam, or to a
women’s shelter.

The law is on her side, as is her religion,
Islam, according to which a marriage is only
valid if the consent of both parties is involved.
However, unless social attitudes change to
incorporate zero tolerance of such cases, the
ancient saga of star-crossed lovers will continue
to be played out in modern-day Pakistan, at
terrible cost to individual freedoms -- and the
country’s reputation.

(Note: The names in this article have been
changed to protect the privacy of the individuals
involved)








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This distressing report on a student hitting a
teacher at Karachi University appeared in The
News on Sunday, Aug 22, 2004 (the students who
started the whole thing got a sound thrashing as
well). The follow up to this is that the incident
has been sectarianised by the administration.

The student who attacked the teacher happens to
belong to a Shi'a student organisation, while Dr
Muttahir Ahmed Shaikh, the teacher, happened to
have been born a Sunni. The administration played
up this factor (which had nothing to do with the
incident reported) - and most teachers, even the
supposedly progressive and liberal ones, took up
stands along the lines of their own sectarian
preferences. Some resent the expulsion of the
student, pointing out (correctly) that action is
rarely taken against students from the majority
sect who misbehave.

Dr Muttahir and a small band of like-minded
teachers have tried to put the matter in
perspective, but the administration has ensured a
media blackout. The only report I'm aware of
appeared in TNS - this eyewitness account by a
student, below. Since the ban on student unions
in 1983, the educational institutes have on the
one hand become depoliticised, and on the other,
divided along religious, sectarian and ethnic
lines.

The silver lining to this particular incident is
that a large number of students have rallied
round and protested against it.

beena


http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2004-weekly/nos-22-08-2004/kol.htm

The ultimate in campus violence

Karachi University has become home to a culture
of teachers being thrashed by their own students

  By Inam Hasan

A professor of the University of Karachi was
beaten up badly at the campus while he was
delivering a lecture in the classroom on Tuesday.
Dr Muttahir Ahmed Shaikh, a professor at the
department of international relations, was
conducting the routine class of B.A. (Hons.) 2nd
year, when four men belonging to the Imamia
Students' Organisation (ISO) entered the
classroom. They asked him to leave the class and
join a rally, which was being organised by the
organisation in protest against events in Iraq.

The professor refused to quit the class while
saying, 'this is no way of organising a protest;
you should respect the class decorum also if you
give respect to the holy places.' This led to an
exchange of heated words between the professor
and the ISO sleuths. A few minutes later the
young men first slapped the professor and then
started beating him. As class students tried to
defend their teacher, ISO members threw classroom
chairs on the students. The situation got out of
control when Prof Muttahir took the attackers to
the Rangers and asked them to register a case
against the attackers. Surprisingly, the Rangers
refused to do so, which caused resentment among
the students.

Earlier, the university administration had
refused to allow the students from holding a
protest demonstration. Many described it as a
display of an insensitive attitude towards the
religious sentiments of youth who were shocked to
learn about the attacks on the holy mausoleum of
Hazrat Ali (RA) by the Allied Forces. Later, the
students of international relations department
organised a rally against the attitude of the
administration and staged a sit-in in front of
the Administration Block.

Due to the pressure of the protesting students,
the Students' Advisor of KU, Syed Rais Ahmed,
suspended Alamdar Hussain of the ISO while also
announcing the constitution of a disciplinary
committee to investigate the matter. After the
demonstration, some ISO members thrashed two
students of international relations department in
the presence of the Rangers in order to clear the
score.

Meanwhile, Vice-Chancellor of the University of
Karachi, Pirzada Qasim Raza Siddique, while
addressing a meeting held at the room of the
beaten professor, said, "We have been taking
action against such people who have been involved
in this kind of incidents for a long time. We
will not tolerate if this is repeated." To a
query regarding the presence of Rangers at the
campus, the VC said, "Rangers are not the
solution, but we have no other option. One thing,
which has been proved by the action of neutral
students today is that if the students follow
principles, such incidences would not take place
again."

Talking about the incident, Professor Mutahir
Ahmed revealed that this was not the first time
he had been subjected to such an attitude. "It
has been happening to me ever since I joined the
department. A number of religio-political
organisations have threatened me, but this way of
threatening is really condemnable." He thanked
all his students who supported him during the
ordeal.

During the meeting, Nargis Rasheed, chairperson
of the general history department, pointed out
that harassing teachers is becoming a common
phenomenon in the university. "Every organisation
does the same when it wants to hold protests. It
has been happening with university teachers for a
long time, but no one has ever raised their voice
against such suppression. A message should be
delivered to such organisations that enough is
enough! No such threats will be tolerated
anymore."

KU Registrar, Syed Sikander Mehdi, said, "These
negative elements can never be called the
students of the University of Karachi. We will
not allow such negative elements to destroy peace
on the campus."

Commenting on the incident, former secretary of
Karachi University Teachers' Society (KUTS),
Professor Riaz Ahmed emphasised the importance of
developing and strengthening student-teacher
relationships. "Elements who destroy peace on
campus can be discouraged if a strong
relationship is nurtured between students and
teachers."

Students, too, expressed their resentment over
the humiliation of their teacher "We will not
allow any religio-political organisation to
disrespect our teachers," said Wali Baber Khan, a
student of IR department. Sajjad Hussain Bhatti,
another student of the department, suggested that
a ban should be imposed on all such
religio-fascist organisations. "Instead social
organisations should be made to facilitate the
students."

Events like the above have been taking place at
the campus for the last several years, but no
action has so far been taken to take the
perpetrators to task. It may be recalled that
only last year, female students of the Visual
Arts Department were beaten up and their
computers were broken by another religio-fascists
organisation.

Violence is not alien to Karachi University, but
of late it is thriving since the perpetrating
elements have no fear of punishment. They have a
favourable past record of authorities to refer
to, who do not go beyond issuing verbal
condemnation of such events once they are
reported in the press.

  (ends)





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What India, Pakistan Won't Talk About

By J. Sri Raman
truthout | Perspective

Wednesday 15 September 2004

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091504I.shtml

      You cannot really describe them as talks to
end talks. A dialogue to dodge the most important
issues - that would better sum up the series of
India-Pakistan parleys since the beginning of the
year.

     The talks go on. The series have moved
rapidly through official-level rounds to talks in
New Delhi on September 5-6 between the two
External Affairs Ministers, India's K. Natwar
Singh and Pakistan's Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri. The
process is to culminate in a meeting of India's
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with Pakistan's
President Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of
the UN General Assembly session later this month.


     Marked by polite smiles and prolonged
handshakes, the process continues without making
the least progress on the two life-and-death
issues for the sub-continent's people.

     The more frightening and fundamental of the
issues has, in fact, been forgotten, with both
side tacitly agreeing to leave it untouched. The
ministers have not wasted time over the minor
problem of nuclear weapons. Their officials had
disposed of it before, while discussing nuclear
"confidence-building measures" (CBMs). These
"measures" - like notification of each other
before tests of nuclear-capable missiles - were
somehow supposed to create confidence that the
people of the two countries were safe even when
such missiles stayed in military deployment and
on hair-trigger alert.

     General Musharraf has added his own
reassurance in this regard. Addressing officers
and soldiers at a garrison in Quetta on September
11, he reiterated his regime's resolve never ever
to roll back its nuclear-weapon program. He
added: "My government has spent more money in the
last three years on enhancing Pakistan's nuclear
capability than (spent for this purpose) in the
previous 30 years."

     The Indian government has not been
forthcoming with a similar figure. There is
little doubt, however, that it swells with the
same pride over its own misuse of taxpayers'
money to build mass-murder weapons. Or that it is
as sternly resolved not to reverse its own
program against South Asian peace. Remember, the
joint document on CBMs desisted from mentioning
regional nuclear disarmament even as a distant
goal. Instead, it recorded the joint resolve of
New Delhi and Islamabad to seek parity with the
nuclear powers - or to join the 'nuclear club'.

     Within months of India and Pakistan's
nuclear-weapon tests in May 1998, then Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee surprised many with
a bus ride to Lahore to meet with his Pakistani
counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. The peace mission
turned out to be a public relations exercise. The
aim was to convince the international community
that India and Pakistan could be counted upon to
conduct themselves as 'responsible'
nuclear-weapon states. The CBMs, too, it would
seem, were meant to serve the same purpose.

     The talks have run an almost identical course
on the other issue, which both sides recognize as
important and intractable.

     An immediately striking parallel is President
Musharraf's equally ringing statement on this
issue in the same speech. "We will not give up
Kashmir," he told the soldiers. "We have fought
wars over it. Pakistan will have to ensure the
interest of the Kashmiris." No such statement has
emanated from New Delhi thus far. No doubt,
however, that Natwar Singh was as uncompromising
on India's 'national interest' as Kasuri was on
Pakistan's. And it appeared incompatible with the
interests of regional peace, in either case.

     The ministers ended their meeting with
emphatic assertions of irreconcilable stands on
the issue. Singh identified the Kashmir problem
with "cross-border terrorism" and Kasuri with
human rights violations. They made no progress on
the one proposal on people-to-people relations in
Kashmir. India and Pakistan had restored a rail
link between Attari and Lahore and a bus route
between Amritsar and Lahore. But neither of these
passed through disputed territory. Political
constraints acted as a brake on the plan for a
bus link between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad,
capitals of India-administered State of Jammu and
Kashmir and Pakistan-controlled Azad Kashmir.

     Differences on the required travel document
proved an insuperable roadblock. India's idea of
passports as such documents was unacceptable to
Pakistan, This, Kasuri and colleagues feared,
would legitimize the Line of Control (LoC) as an
international border. The LoC was a result of the
Bangladesh war of 1971 and, therefore, a painful
reminder of Pakistan's dismemberment and rout by
India.

     Clearly, the talks on Kashmir, on which
neither side was ready to compromise, were also
targeted at an international audience. Days after
the ministers' meeting, both sides widely
publicized a "secret" session of talks in
Amritsar between the National Security Advisers
of India and Pakistan. They were to discuss a
document on Kashmir by UK Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw, and it is anybody's guess if the paper
reflected the views of only the Tony Blair
regime.

     The talks will go on. The participants,
however, cannot hear the voice of the vast
millions who want them to make genuine efforts
for peace in South Asia.

---------------------------------------------
     A freelance journalist and a peace activist
of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of
Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a
regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.





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Dear everyone

wanted to introduce a new book by friend and
colleague Ethan Casey, a Uk-based American
journalist and publisher who was recently in
Lahore for several months - resulting in, among
other things, his book 'Alive and Well in
Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time'.

beena

Book promo note to friends from Ethan:

"Brilliant, incisive and penetrating - a book
that reverberates in the mind long after it is
read. Casey plunges into Pakistan like a knife,
unearthing and unraveling the often unexplainable
and unpredictable contradictions of a country on
the edge. Pakistan just happens to be one of the
most complex and difficult countries to describe,
but Casey does a magnificent job. Casey’s prose
sings, and his portraits are master class. A
conjuror of images and sensations in an
unpredictable land. A travel book that travels
though the mind."
- Ahmed Rashid, author of the #1 bestseller
Taliban

Alive and Well in Pakistan will be published in
the UK in September 2004 and can be purchased in
(or for shipment from) the UK via Amazon.co.uk
(the page for the book is rather incomplete and
unsatisfactory - the corresponding Amazon.com
page is much better):
http://www.amazon.co.uk

Here is the page for pre-ordering Alive and Well
in Pakistan in the US:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1904132480

I'm told one of two regional publishers will
publish an edition for Pakistan and India. It
hasn't yet been decided who the subcontinental
publisher will be, or when the subcontinental
edition will be published.

Ethan Casey

Founding editor, BlueEar.com: A Global Journal of
Our Time: http://www.blueear.com

Author, Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human
Journey in a Dangerous Time (Vision, Sept. 2004):







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Sept 19, 2004

Personal Political

The FM boom

Beena Sarwar

Video has not quite killed the radio star. Not
even private cable television has managed to do
that. In fact in Pakistan, new radio stars are
cropping up daily — thanks to the FM boom. Radio
always had a far greater reach than television in
this country, but the surge in FM stations has
contributed to a new revival, with over 80 such
stations holding licenses.

Everyone seems to want to get in on the act: as
many as 171 private sector companies applied for
licenses in the first half of this year. In May,
PEMRA (Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory
Authority) invited 82 to a bidding in Islamabad,
where 32 licenses (in addition to the existing
50) were granted. There were biddings from around
the country — Karachi, Peshawar, Hyderabad,
Quetta, Faisalabad, Raiwind, Sadiqabad, Gujar
Khan, Bhurban, Toba Tek Singh, Dadu, Kalar Kahar,
and DI Khan.

So what does this mean for Pakistan? After all,
most FM stations just dish out ‘ear candy’ - easy
listening, music hits, recipes, chit chat...
including callers (and their driver, cook, and
neighbour) ringing up to make inane conversation.
Just more commercialisation and encouragement of
‘the burger culture’, right? Maybe, but only to
an extent.

FM is also providing valuable information through
talk shows by experts on legal, psychological and
health matters; one community radio station in
Lakki Marwat near FATA raises awareness on modern
farming practices like drip irrigation. In
Karachi, at a discussion on organ transplant and
organ donation, a caller who identified herself
as a doctor, pointed out that those who denounce
the practice as un-Islamic forget that
technically even blood is defined as an organ.
She was well informed and articulate, and most
importantly, unafraid to air her views publicly.
When people have the chance to do that, it
creates a positive atmosphere, underscoring the
importance of dialogue and rational discussion
over violence. Even the ear candy shows have
their moments — a DJ politely but firmly put in
his place a caller who tried to flirt with her on
a late night show. He is not going to try that
again, and neither will many others who may
mistakenly think that such women are ‘fair game’.

Efforts to introduce a more professional,
journalistic element to FM will also make an
impact. Peshawar University’s Journalism
department has developed the country’s first
university-based community radio station and
broadcast journalism curriculum, helped by the
international media-training organisation
Internews. Internews also trained women
journalists through the women and media NGO Uks,
which produced a syndicated radio series called
"Meri Awaz Suno" ("Hear My Voice"), focusing on
issues such as health and education. Much of this
activity is funded by the American aid
organisation USAID, reflecting Washington’s
post-9/11 anxiety about developing democratic
values in this part of the world - but then, many
of us have been fighting for years for these
values, including a free and fair media.

The FM scene is becoming more interesting with
the introduction of news and current programming
- as in Mast 103 FM, which, besides the usual ear
candy, broadcasts a live five-minute news
bulletin hourly from BBC Urdu in London. Many BBC
Urdu reporters and producers started out with the
English print media in Pakistan - and it’s good
to hear the voices of old friends like Mazhar
Zaidi, Umber Khairi, Arif Shamim, and Haroon
Rashid.

In addition, FM 103 stands out for its locally
developed content, like current affairs talk
shows. This, combined with the BBC news element
has led to the sale of radio sets on Hall Road
shooting up - so says Ayyaz Gull, Mast producer
current affairs in Lahore. When the Pakistan
India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy
(PIPFPD) recently celebrated its tenth
anniversary, attended by about 90 Indian
delegates, Gull roped in a couple of them along
with two Pakistani journalists for a 55-minute
live talk show, hosted by the human rights
activist Wajahat Masood.

The Indian participants - well-known journalist
Gautam Navlakha from Delhi and activist Neera
Adarkar from Mumbai — were amazed that FM radio
in Pakistan was going beyond entertainment and
music. "Our FM stations just dish out the usual
chat masala," they said wistfully. "We could
really learn from this."

The discussion, focusing as it did on
India-Pakistan relations, took up such sensitive
issues as Kashmir and nuclear weapons. Kumail
Bukhari on the sound panel later confessed that
he had kept his finger on the ‘mute’ button, in
case anyone said anything that might get them
into trouble. This did not happen, although no
one minced words either in criticising both
governments for standing in the way of the
people’s aspirations for peace.

By providing such platforms for free and frank
discussion, FM radio will make a valuable
contribution to developing a culture of rational
dialogue - it is this that will give real meaning
to this new window to free expression in
Pakistan.

Personal Political

The FM boom

Beena Sarwar

Video has not quite killed the radio star. Not
even private cable television has managed to do
that. In fact in Pakistan, new radio stars are
cropping up daily — thanks to the FM boom. Radio
always had a far greater reach than television in
this country, but the surge in FM stations has
contributed to a new revival, with over 80 such
stations holding licenses.

Everyone seems to want to get in on the act: as
many as 171 private sector companies applied for
licenses in the first half of this year. In May,
PEMRA (Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory
Authority) invited 82 to a bidding in Islamabad,
where 32 licenses (in addition to the existing
50) were granted. There were biddings from around
the country — Karachi, Peshawar, Hyderabad,
Quetta, Faisalabad, Raiwind, Sadiqabad, Gujar
Khan, Bhurban, Toba Tek Singh, Dadu, Kalar Kahar,
and DI Khan.

So what does this mean for Pakistan? After all,
most FM stations just dish out ‘ear candy’ - easy
listening, music hits, recipes, chit chat...
including callers (and their driver, cook, and
neighbour) ringing up to make inane conversation.
Just more commercialisation and encouragement of
‘the burger culture’, right? Maybe, but only to
an extent.

FM is also providing valuable information through
talk shows by experts on legal, psychological and
health matters; one community radio station in
Lakki Marwat near FATA raises awareness on modern
farming practices like drip irrigation. In
Karachi, at a discussion on organ transplant and
organ donation, a caller who identified herself
as a doctor, pointed out that those who denounce
the practice as un-Islamic forget that
technically even blood is defined as an organ.
She was well informed and articulate, and most
importantly, unafraid to air her views publicly.
When people have the chance to do that, it
creates a positive atmosphere, underscoring the
importance of dialogue and rational discussion
over violence. Even the ear candy shows have
their moments — a DJ politely but firmly put in
his place a caller who tried to flirt with her on
a late night show. He is not going to try that
again, and neither will many others who may
mistakenly think that such women are ‘fair game’.

Efforts to introduce a more professional,
journalistic element to FM will also make an
impact. Peshawar University’s Journalism
department has developed the country’s first
university-based community radio station and
broadcast journalism curriculum, helped by the
international media-training organisation
Internews. Internews also trained women
journalists through the women and media NGO Uks,
which produced a syndicated radio series called
"Meri Awaz Suno" ("Hear My Voice"), focusing on
issues such as health and education. Much of this
activity is funded by the American aid
organisation USAID, reflecting Washington’s
post-9/11 anxiety about developing democratic
values in this part of the world - but then, many
of us have been fighting for years for these
values, including a free and fair media.

The FM scene is becoming more interesting with
the introduction of news and current programming
- as in Mast 103 FM, which, besides the usual ear
candy, broadcasts a live five-minute news
bulletin hourly from BBC Urdu in London. Many BBC
Urdu reporters and producers started out with the
English print media in Pakistan - and it’s good
to hear the voices of old friends like Mazhar
Zaidi, Umber Khairi, Arif Shamim, and Haroon
Rashid.

In addition, FM 103 stands out for its locally
developed content, like current affairs talk
shows. This, combined with the BBC news element
has led to the sale of radio sets on Hall Road
shooting up - so says Ayyaz Gull, Mast producer
current affairs in Lahore. When the Pakistan
India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy
(PIPFPD) recently celebrated its tenth
anniversary, attended by about 90 Indian
delegates, Gull roped in a couple of them along
with two Pakistani journalists for a 55-minute
live talk show, hosted by the human rights
activist Wajahat Masood.

The Indian participants - well-known journalist
Gautam Navlakha from Delhi and activist Neera
Adarkar from Mumbai — were amazed that FM radio
in Pakistan was going beyond entertainment and
music. "Our FM stations just dish out the usual
chat masala," they said wistfully. "We could
really learn from this."

The discussion, focusing as it did on
India-Pakistan relations, took up such sensitive
issues as Kashmir and nuclear weapons. Kumail
Bukhari on the sound panel later confessed that
he had kept his finger on the ‘mute’ button, in
case anyone said anything that might get them
into trouble. This did not happen, although no
one minced words either in criticising both
governments for standing in the way of the
people’s aspirations for peace.

By providing such platforms for free and frank
discussion, FM radio will make a valuable
contribution to developing a culture of rational
dialogue - it is this that will give real meaning
to this new window to free expression in
Pakistan.

(ends)






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Cat Stevens has always been one of my absolute
favourite singers - if he was to be punished for
something, it should be for stopping singing. I
read once that he got angry with his 7-yr old son
who was listening to one of his tapes, and also
that he'd started singing again. Anyway, here's
what happened to him recently. beena

  http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092404Y.shtml

  Cat Stevens Slams U.S. Deportation
   Reuters

   Thursday 23 September 2004

   LONDON - Muslim convert and former pop star Cat
Stevens returned to Britain on Thursday after his
deportation from the U.S. over "potential"
terrorism links sparked an Anglo-American
diplomatic row.

   "The whole thing is totally ridiculous,"
Stevens said on arrival at London's Heathrow
airport. "Half of me wants to smile, half of me
wants to growl."

   UK Muslim leaders were outraged. "The United
States is shutting down its house, building walls
around itself," said Anas Altikriti, spokesman
for the Muslim Association of Britain.

   Stevens, 56, was traveling with his daughter on
a United Airlines flight on Tuesday from London
to Washington when American officials diverted it
600 miles to Bangor, Maine.

   They said he was denied entry to the U.S.
because his activities could be linked to
terrorism.

   The deportation of Stevens, known as Yusuf
Islam since he stopped singing and became a
Muslim almost three decades ago, led Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw to complain personally to
Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United
Nations.

   Straw "expressed concern that this action
should not have been taken," a Foreign Office
spokesman said.

   "It's crazy," Stevens added as he was mobbed by
reporters at Heathrow. "Everybody knows me from
my charitable work and now there has to be
explanations, but I'm glad to be home."

   Asked if he felt victimized, Stevens said:
"Absolutely. But you know, for God's sake people
make mistakes. I just hope they have made a big
mistake.

   "I wasn't handcuffed or anything like that.
They treated me very well. The one positive thing
I can say is that a lot of security officers are
very pleased because they got my autograph."

   Protest to Bush

   U.S. Homeland Security spokesman Brian Doyle
said on Wednesday that Islam was deported after
his name turned up on U.S. "no fly" lists.

   "Why is he on the watch lists? Because of his
activities that could be potentially linked to
terrorism. The intelligence community has come
into possession of additional information that
further raises our concern," Doyle said.

   A law enforcement official said the United
States had information that Islam, who last
visited the United States in May, had donated
money to the militant Islamic group Hamas.

   A leading Arab-American group, the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, has sent letters to
President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary
Tom Ridge asking them to explain why Islam was
barred.

   Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim
Council of Britain, the largest group lobbying
for the country's 1.8 million Muslims, told
Reuters: "This whole saga does not bode well for
other Muslims.

   "It will make them wonder who else, which other
moderate educationalists or community leaders are
on these U.S. watch lists," he told Reuters.

   Islam was denied entry to Israel in 2000 after
the authorities there accused him of supporting
Hamas. He denied the charges then and said his
charitable donations were for humanitarian
causes.

   Among the charities he has supported are
children affected by war in Bosnia and Iraq as
well as victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks
against America, which he condemned.

   Born Steven Demeter Georgiou in July 1947 to a
Swedish mother and a Greek Cypriot father, he
changed his name to Cat Stevens when he entered
the music world.

   He had a string of hits in the early 1970s
including "Peace Train," "Moonshadow," "Morning
has Broken," and "Wild World" before converting
to Islam in 1977.






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September 26, 2004

PERSONAL POLITICAL

Beena Sarwar

The forgotten 54 and more

As tantalising visions of a sustainable peace
between India and Pakistan appear on the horizon,
people one meets in Delhi hope that this time,
the mirage will be real. Particularly elated and
hopeful is 29-year old Siddharth Dave, who has
always been drawn to Pakistan. He made a
‘life-changing visit’ to Lahore during the
cricket test recently and believes that “No
Indian can be completely Indian without a visit
to Pakistan.”

His unusual habit of introducing himself as
‘Sadat from Pakistan’ is a great icebreaker,
besides being a personal contribution towards
peace. “People expect Pakistanis to be a certain
way, but we are all just people,” he says. “Look
at us, can anyone tell we are from different
countries?” Certainly, no one would be able to
guess which of the group he is with is from
Pakistan and which from India, at a music session
recently in Delhi.

A slim, tall woman starts chatting with
Siddharth. Hearing that he is from Pakistan, she
tells him that her father has been a POW there
since 1971. Taken aback, Siddharth introduces us
– she is Simi Waraich, a psychiatrist; her
husband, a bearded young major in the Indian
army, looks on as we talk. Simi tells us that her
father was among 54 POWs believed to be in Attock
Fort (“now perhaps there are 30 left”). Her
father’s name heads the list: Major Sharanjitpal
Singh Waraich of 15 Punjab, also known as the
Patiala Regiment.

The affected families have made many efforts to
recover these forgotten prisoners, whose
existence the Pakistan government continues to
deny. Simi has outlined evidence about their
being in Pakistan in a recent article ‘The
Forgotten 54 - When will the War Finish for
Them?’ (http://tinyurl.com/3mlka) posted to
Chowk, the online interactive magazine,
www.chowk.com.

She believes that Pakistan is unlikely to send
them back, because “that would mean admitting
that they kept them 32 years after the war they
fought in finished. So why fight the impossible!
By some improbable chance if they are sent back,
who knows what they’ll be like- disoriented,
demented perhaps; brainwashed perhaps? They’ll be
followed by RAW for months to see if they are
upto something here.”

But in a poignant comment that also reflects on
relations between the two countries, she
concludes: “These men if still surviving have
little time left for niceties now. They need to
be brought home in whatever state they are. Even
if there were human rights violations, releasing
these men would send a gesture of goodwill and
peace. The two governments could in a way make
amends for the violations of past regimes. What
happened is past, releasing these men could be
the harbinger of a new beginning... I went to the
Wagah border for the candlelight vigil held on
15th August this year. The vigil is held for
peace. I just wonder when the war will finish for
these men. When will they return home?”

Responding to this piece, Veeresh Malik from
Delhi recalls the Agra summit at which President
General Musharraf “said on television something
to the effect that ‘I am a soldier, I am not mad,
why would I keep Indian POWs/soldiers in
captivity for decades?’ A group of Indian
families then visited Pakistan, were taken to a
few jails, and then brought back. Pakistan
continued to claim that it had no Indian soldiers
in its custody… And now, August 2004, suddenly
the Pakistanis ‘discover’ that two Indian
soldiers were with them in Rawalpindi Jail
Barrack No. 4 or 8, all along. And these soldiers
are then exchanged.”

The story of one of these soldiers, Mohammad
Arif, captured during the Kargil ‘war-like
situation’, has caused a furore. Returning to a
hero’s welcome, he found that his family,
presuming him dead, had got his wife Guriya
married to another cousin -- whose child she is
carrying. A local panchayat then decreed her
second marriage invalid, although the baby would
be legitimate, and ordered her to return to Arif.
Guriya has bowed to social pressure and agreed,
but Arif does not want to accept her second
husband’s baby. He initially insisted that after
a few months, the child should be returned to its
father, but now may have agreed to let Guriya
keep it.

None of this would have happened had Pakistan
acknowledged the existence of its Indian POWs.
Simi would not have had to grow up without her
father. If Arif had been allowed to communicate
with his family in India, they would not have
presumed him dead, and got his wife re-married.
As she said in one interview, this is not a game,
but people’s lives.

It is time that Pakistan and India set in place
mechanisms to ensure that such aberrations don’t
happen, causing so much human suffering. It is
time for the forgotten prisoners of the 1971 war
to be sent home.

(ends)









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I met members of the Palestinian rights group Al
Haq (T-shirt slogan: 'Against Collective
Punishment') at the WSF in Bombay, Jan 2004 -
here is their latest press release, with the link
to their website where there is a PDF file of the
detailed paper. Not easy reading. beena

AL-HAQ PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

REF:26.2004E

29 September 2004

  Four Years Since the Beginning of the
Palestinian Intifada- Al Haq Issues Briefing
Paper Highlighting Systematic Violations of Human
Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

On 29 September 2004, the fourth anniversary of
the Palestinian Intifada, Al-Haq reminds members
of the international community that Israeli
authorities are continuing their flagrant
disregard for international human rights and
humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories (OPT).

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to
the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of
War, the Palestinian civilian are entitled to
minimum rules of protection at all times.
Nevertheless, Israeli occupying forces continue
to subject the Palestinian civilians to numerous
measures that violate their fundamental rights
protected therein, such as mass and arbitrary
arrests; denial of due judicial process; torture
and ill-treatment; willful killings; forced
transfer and property destruction

Although a common feature of the 37 year long
Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, Al-Haq’s documentation indicates that
since the beginning of the Intifada, the
perpetration of these human rights violations by
Israeli authorities has increased in both scale
and intensity.

In this briefing paper, Al-Haq goal is not just
to highlight how Israeli policies have
contributed to the emergence of a humanitarian
crisis of such rising proportions. Rather, it
seeks to outline the existence of deliberate and
consistent policies by Israeli authorities and
occupying forces that perpetuate violations of
international law, thereby making them the norm
rather than the exception. The report offers a
brief legal analysis of the main trends of human
rights violations experienced since 2000,
supported by relevant statistics and affidavits
from the organization’s Monitoring and
Documentation Unit. Where violations have not
been comprehensively documented by Al-Haq, it has
relied on data provided by Palestinian partner
organizations.

Since the beginning of the Intifada in 2000,
Al-Haq and other human rights organizations, UN
independent experts, treaty monitoring bodies
have warned that the situation is spinning out of
control. Moreover substantial violations of
international law in the past 4 years have
undermined the social and economic well being of
approximately 3 million Palestinian in the OPT.
More disturbingly is the fact that these
violations have become a feature of Palestinians’
everyday life.

With the Intifada entering its fifth year, the
paper also emphasizes that the cycle of violence
has reached a degree of such magnitude, that
unless the International community takes serious
and concrete measures to uphold its legal
obligations to “respect and ensure respect” for
the Fourth Geneva Convention, there will be no
foreseeable end for this conflict.

The full paper is also available on our website
http://asp.alhaq.org/zalhaq/site/ePublications/PDF/intifada04_report.pdf

  -END-

Al-Haq, PO Box 1413 - Ramallah, West Bank
Tel +972 2 295 4646/9 Fax:  +972 2 295 4903
media@... - http://www.alhaq.org







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Kerry came out unexpectedly well in the debate
with Bush - thanks in no small part to the 'split
screen' that allowed viewers to see how the
President was responding when he wasn't
concentrating speaking. Two incisive reports
below. beena

AsiaTimes - Oct 2, 2004

THE ROVING EYE
That split screen
By Pepe Escobar

"I just know how this world works." - George W
Bush

For all the talk of history being made in Florida
(not again!), the first of three debates between
US presidential contenders George W Bush and John
Kerry may go down in history as "The Attack of
the Split Screen".

complete report at:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FJ02Aa01.html

and from truthout.org:

It Was a Rout
     By William Rivers Pitt
     t r u t h o u t | Perspective

     Friday 01 October 2004

"Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes
Frazier!" - Howard Cosell

     There was a President on that stage in
Florida on Thursday night, and his name was not
George.

complete report at: http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100204Z.shtml





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Two messages - one from Diep in Lahore re: an
India-Pk peace mela, and the other from Akshay
Bakaya re: Call for "Ahimsa Day", International
Day of Non-Violence, on January 30th, initiated
by children in Paris & Bombay. beena
--------
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 20:26:48 -0700 (PDT)
From:  "Diep" <saeedadiep@...>
Subject: indo pak peace mela......
To: beena-issues-owner@yahoogroups.com

Dear friends!

A joint celebration under the banner of
Association of people of Asia(India) and Anjuman
Asiayee Awaam (Pakistan) is taking place in
jalandhar and Lahore.  One thousand peace lovers
from Pakistan will cross the Wahga Border on 23rd
November where they will participate in Indo Pak
peace mela on 27th November at Jalandhar  and
will come  back on 25th November.

Vs. versa on 26th November one thousand  friends
of peace from Indian side  will cross Wahga
Border  and will participate in Indo Pak peace
mela in Lahore.

Peace activists in Pakistan and India have been
actively putting their efforts throughout 57
years and   this  event is going to be the first
of its kind 1000 members from each side-crossing
border in one day.

Although Govts on both sides have promised to
make special arrangements for issuing visa even
though wish us best of luck.

Friends who are interested may contact …

Comradely

diep

----------
From :  Akshay Bakaya <akshay.bakaya@...>
Sent :  Tuesday, September 28, 2004 12:59 PM
To :  "Beena Sarwar"
Subject :  To sign Call for Ahimsa Day, go to
SACW...

Dear Beena,

If you wish to sign the Call for "Ahimsa Day" ,
International Day of Non-Violence, on January
30th, you can go to the South Asia Citizens Web :

www.sacw.net/idnv/  and click on the link "Join
the call" to get to PetitionOnline. Follow
instructions to fill in your name etc. The
petition is not yet publicized, there are only
the first few signatories : Romila Thapar, Noam
Chomsky, Immanuel Wallerstein, etc ...)

More importantly, let's get the word around :
writers, artists, intellectuals..... mothers,
grandmothers, grandchildren...!

Yours,
Akshay

P.S. Translations (read only) will be posted up
on the site, but signatures on one version only.









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Oct 3, 2004

PERSONAL POLITICAL

The dragon’s teeth

Beena Sarwar

Images of terrified, half-naked schoolchildren in
Beslan merge with the wailing father in
blood-splattered shirt kneeling beside his young
son, killed in a suicide car bomb attack in Iraq.
The grief of families in remote Nepali villages,
mourning the loss of men beheaded for trying to
earn something for their poverty-struck homes,
blends with that of Afghan villagers bereaved or
crippled by ‘smart bombs’ intended for a tall,
bearded man who until not so long ago worked
closely with those who now send out these bombs.

In the occupied territories of Palestine, where a
father tried in vain to protect his young son
from Israeli bullets, and where an American-made
bulldozer crushed the life out of young Rachel
Corrie, daily indignities continue to feed
resistance, contributing to a continuing spiral
of violence. Closer to home, the fires in Gujarat
continue to smolder after the carnage of over two
years ago, as entire communities struggle to
survive and maintain their dignity in the face of
local indifference. Enraged women in Manipur
strip off their clothes in a desperate attempt to
draw attention to the rapes and violence by
soldiers operating under the Armed Forces Special
Powers Act. In Kashmir, a landmine kills young
Aasiya Jeelani and cripples Khurram Pervez as
they embark on an election monitoring exercise
for the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil
Society.

And in the picturesque border town of Sialkot,
more famous for footballs than fanaticism, a man
carrying a briefcase walks into a mosque and
blows himself up, killing several others in the
process.

Somehow, somewhere, for me, all these images are
bound by a common thread, fed by short-sighted,
self-serving ‘national’ interests that place
violent, militaristic responses above rule of
law, justice, dialogue and political solutions.

The so-called ‘war on terra’, a knee-jerk
response initiated by the world’s sole superpower
to the horrific attack on its soil on September
11, 2001, has only led to more ‘terra’ the world
over. The attack and the flawed logic of a
‘preemptive attack’ provided Washington with an
excuse to flex its muscles and try out new
weaponry, much of which would classify as weapons
of mass destruction.

Those who were killed in the attacks of 11-9 were
not just “’murcans”. They reflected the
multiplicity that is “’murca”, they belonged to
all faiths – including Judaism (notwithstanding
the preposterous and widespread rumour about 4000
Jews not attending work in the twin towers that
day). Many were migrants or descendents of
migrants from countries around the world,
including Pakistan and India. ‘Not in our name’
was the rallying cry of families bereaved by
these attacks, as they demonstrated against the
impending attack on Afghanistan. The
demonstrations and protests gathered momentum
worldwide as the Bush administration shifted its
attention from Afghanistan to Iraq and its
supposed weapons of mass destruction, but were
met with blind indifference as the war machinery
geared up.

Washington’s attack on Afghanistan rid the
country of the retrogressive Taliban. But it also
gave a cue to other governments on how to deal
with their own internal demons, from Moscow and
New Delhi, to Jerusalem and Islamabad. In this
scheme of things, it was entirely in order for
New Delhi to react to the December 13, 2001
attack on its parliament the way it did – with
rhetoric that echoed Washington’s, blaming
Islamabad, withdrawing embassy staff and cutting
off road, rail and air ties between the two
countries. Pakistan responded in kind and the
threat of a ‘Hindu’ nuclear bomb pitted against
an ‘Islamic’ one loomed large on the horizon. It
is hardly a coincidence that in this atmosphere,
those who had been waiting in the wings in
Gujarat were able to butcher, rape and loot
Muslims with impunity, aided and encouraged by
government functionaries.

Meanwhile, the rhetoric about ‘terrorism’ and the
‘war on terror’ remains just a catchy slogan.
Governments cannot claim the moral high ground
unless they themselves refrain from using what
they would term as ‘terrorist tactics’ if carried
out by ‘others’. For years, the USA and Pakistan
together shortsightedly encouraged and supported
what they call terrorism. Now they are together
attacking the tribesmen in Wana who harbour these
‘terrorist elements’. For years, they turned a
blind eye to clerics fulminating against
‘non-Muslims’ and ignored public incitements to
violence and murder, and wall chalking and
graffiti on public transport decrying Shi’as as
‘kafir’.

There are many more like the man with the
briefcase who walked into the Sialkot Imambargah.
They did not develop their warped mindsets
overnight -- nor will they be wiped out overnight
by military means. Those who justify such actions
sit entrenched in our assemblies. Like the
warriors that sprang out of the dragon’s teeth
that Ulysses sowed, their blood will only yield
more of their ilk. They will be disarmed only
with the rule of law, social justice, education
and employment opportunities for all – and when
governments themselves stop perpetuating
violence.

(ends)






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Nicholas D. Kristof wrote a good followup
recently in NYT about the gangrape of Mukhtaran
Mai - here's the link to another piece by him,
this time on Afghan women - obviously the
situation is little different for women in
Pakistan. Unrelated, but re: the US elections,
the link to a New Republic piece on the
Edwards-Cheney debate. beena

   Beaten Afghan Brides
     By Nicholas D. Kristof
     The New York Times

     Wednesday 06 October 2004

     Kabul - I had an inspiration about where
Osama bin Laden might be hiding. But when I
visited the women's detention center in Kabul,
there was no sign of him.

     I did meet Ellaha, a bold 19-year-old
prisoner who startled me by greeting me in
English. (Like many Afghans, she uses only one
name.) She had been attending college as a
refugee in Iran when her family pulled her out,
alarmed that education might corrupt a young
lady's morals.

complete story:
  http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704V.shtml

October 7, 2004
DAILY EXPRESS
Middle Management
by Andrew Sullivan


Only at TNR Online | Post date 10.06.04

It's hard to read the varied responses to last
night's veep debate without wondering whether the
political polarization in this country hasn't
warped everyone's minds. Here's Will Saletan at
Slate, arguing, in the words of the headline,
that Edwards "cleaned Cheney's clock." Here's
National Review's Jim Geraghty: "My initial
conclusion: This was the single most devastating
one-sided drubbing since Lloyd Bentsen smacked
Dan Quayle all around the stage in 1988." My
first response: "If last Thursday night's debate
was an assisted suicide for president Bush, this
debate--just concluded--was a car wreck. And
Cheney was roadkill. There were times when it was
so overwhelming a debate victory for Edwards that
I had to look away." David Frum called the debate
"manslaughter" and described Edwards as looking
like "a puppy that just has not got the strength
to survive." What gives?

complete story:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=vqOmcvILmRoeULPiujRSVh%3D%3D







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from a friend in Washington. beena

Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2004 12:45 PM
Subject: Interesting patterns

Who leads us to war and who questions it?
>
DEMOCRATS:
Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.
David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72.
Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army
Journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-'47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star,
Vietnam.
Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-1953.
Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.
Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII, receiving the Bronze Star and
seven campaign ribbons.
Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze
Stars,and Soldier's Medal.
Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and
Legion of Merit.
Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.
Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze
Star with Combat V.
Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star.
Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
Chuck Robb: Vietnam
Howell Heflin: Silver Star
George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and Air Medal with 18 Clusters.
>
REPUBLICANS
Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
Tom Delay: did not serve.
Roy Blunt: did not serve.
Bill Frist: did not serve.
Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
Rick Santorum: did not serve.
Trent Lott: did not serve.
Dick Cheney: did not serve.
John Ashcroft: did not serve.
Jeb Bush: did not serve.
Karl Rove: did not serve.
Saxby Chambliss: did not serve.
Vin Weber: did not serve.
Richard Perle: did not serve.
Douglas Feith: did not serve.
Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
Richard Shelby: did not serve.
Jon Kyl: did not serve.
Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
Christopher Cox: did not serve.
Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
Phil Gramm: did not serve.
Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve.
John M. McHugh: did not serve.
J C Watts: did not serve.
Jack Kemp: did not serve.
Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
George Pataki: did not serve.
Spencer Abraham: did not serve.
John Engler: did not serve.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base.
Antonin Scalia: did not serve.
Clarence Thomas: did not serve.
>
PUNDITS & PREACHERS
Sean Hannity: did not serve.
Rush Limbaugh: did not serve
Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
Michael Savage: did not serve.
George Will: did not serve.
Paul Gigot: did not serve.
Bill Bennett: did not serve.
Pat Buchanan: did not serve.
John Wayne: did not serve.
Bill Kristol: did not serve.
Kenneth Starr: did not serve.
Ralph Reed: did not serve.
Michael Medved: did not serve.
Charlie Daniels: did not serve.
Ted Nugent: did not serve.

Oct 10, 2004

PERSONAL POLITICAL

The commonality of ‘fundamentalisms’

Beena Sarwar

When US-based Indian filmmaker Lalit Vachani set
out in 1992 to make a documentary about the
‘shakhas’ (branches) where RSS volunteers train
boys in the martial arts and ideology, he
“expected to see pure evil”. He was surprised to
find normal, even likeable individuals. The
sequel to ‘The Boy in The Branch’ a decade later
is ‘The Men in the Tree’, also a critique of
ideology, rather than individuals.

The relevance of these films to Pakistan and
other societies traumatized by
ideologically-motivated violence, stems from the
insight they offer into the mindset and thinking
of those involved in an organization that claims
to be ‘cultural’ rather than ‘political’ -- and
yet which is basically the ‘mother organization’
of right-wing groups that commit violence.

As Vachani explained at a well-attended screening
in New Delhi recently, he has found that many
leaders of the Hindu right “want a mirror image
of Islam” -- they want to manufacture, “a
religion where a (spiritual) leader will give
fatwas that the faithful will follow blindly.”

His words bring to mind an Australian PhD
candidate who was working on a comparison of
Hindu and Muslim right-wing organizations some
years ago, mainly in Bombay and Lahore. She found
that the Hindu organization actually studied the
tactics of the Islamic organization, including
pamphlets, literature, and video recordings of
their rallies. (She received various threats from
their representatives when she returned to
Australia, and prefers not to be named at this
point).

All this also echoes an observation by Indian
television journalist Rajdeep Sardesai during a
live talk show on Geo TV during the Saarc summit
in Islamabad in January. Seated next to the
Jamat-e-Islami’s Qazi Hussain Ahmed, he and
fellow journalist Seema Mustafa of The Asian Age
were engaged in a heated debate on Kashmir and
religious extremism; one could almost see the
sparks flying as the argument went back and
forth. At one point, Sardesai burst out, “Qazi
sahib, mujhe lagta hai ke aap aur Bal Thakarey
aik hi sikkey ki do sides hain” – it seems to me
that you and Bal Thakarey are just two sides of
the same coin. It took a few seconds for Qazi
sahib to recover from this charge, but he had no
answer.

Sardesai’s brief remark pinpoints a fundamental
and universal truth: the commonality of
‘fundamentalisms’, no matter how much at odds
they appear to be. Unfortunately, they tend not
to stick to the actual ‘fundamentals’ that are
common to all religions – truth, justice, and
compassion. As a result, another commonality is
how their respective ideologies contribute
towards a culture that condones and engages in
violence – a point underscored decisively in
Vachani’s film.

Many like Vachani believe that the right-wing’s
attempts to homogenize its constituency by
developing concept of ‘oneness’ – one god, one
nation bound by one creed, obedient to one leader
– is difficult to engineer in India. Some argue
that Hinduism is not a religion, but a
philosophy, which encompasses within it much
diversity of opinion and belief. However, an
all-encompassing, all-embracing diversity has a
different power than that provided by the concept
of ‘one’ with its dynamics of a unifying force,
impetus and rallying cry. Hence the efforts of
the Hindu right to strategise towards developing
or manufacturing this ‘oneness’.

In general though, there is little acceptance in
India for such homogenisation, that many oppose
because it leads to violence that in turn will
isolate the country. Vachani’s ‘The Men in the
Tree’, in fact, makes the case that this
homogenization also prepares the ground for
incidents like the Babri Masjid demolition, and
beyond, to the horrors of Gujarat. This brings up
another commonality between extremist groups:
their attempts to construct and strengthen their
own identity by demonizing ‘the other’ even if
this means distorting history.

The film follows five main characters (including
two who were once part of the RSS and now oppose
its tactics and ideology). Flashback-like
references from the earlier film show us where
these men are today. In the process, the film
militates disconcertingly against stereotypes.
“But Sandeep is so good-looking,” came one
surprised comment at the end of the viewing, as
if right-wing bigots have no right to be
charismatic.

Another surprise is how Kali, about ten years old
in the earlier film, has developed as a young
man. Vachani expected to find him an integral
part of the RSS structure in his village by now.
Instead, Kali shuns their politics and is more
concerned with running a shop, and with his
girlfriend.  He believes that the demolition of
the Babri Masjid was wrong -- it happened shortly
after Vachani completed the first film (the
Gujarat carnage took place shortly after the
sequel was filmed).

“It is ordinary, innocent people who get killed
in such incidents,” says Kali soberly. That is
certainly true, any way you look at it.

(ends)








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Below, a link and text of article reproduced in
www.countercurrents.org, run by Binu Mathew, a
journalist in Kerala. There's also an appeal from
him for help to help with keeping this newsletter
going "because we can no longer sustain the site
and the news letter on our own. We need your
support urgently to keep us from sinking. You can
visit this  link
http://www.countercurrents.org/donate.htm and pay
by credit card, or if you are thinking of making
a payment by cheque/bank transfer or money order
just write to editor@..., we will
direct you how to do it.

In Solidarity
Binu"

http://www.countercurrents.org/gender-hariharan111004.htm

Blood Thirsty Honour

By Githa Hariharan

11 October, 2004
The Telegraph

Eve teasing. Voluntary sati. And now, honour
killings. These oxymoron-ridden phrases wreak
violence on our language every day. They also
mirror flesh-and-blood violence. Coercion,
assault or murders continue to be exactly that,
no matter how much they are whitewashed with
euphemisms about teasing; no matter how well they
are dressed up with qualifiers like voluntary and
honour.

In the contemporary definition of an honour
killing, a woman or a man, or the couple, are
victimized for marrying outside their caste or
community. It is like a familiar script with the
wrong ending. Every other film made in India has
a couple in love who are not allowed to marry.
Invariably, whether the difference between boy
and girl is class, caste or religion, the end is
happy. The marriage takes place, and the
narrow-minded opponents of the marriage benefit
from a lesson on the equalizing powers of love.

Our transgressing young lovers in real life find
the story often ends quite differently. Their
marriages lead to punishing ostracism, and to
violence in a sickening variety of forms. A
convention against “honour” killings and violence
held in Delhi earlier this year identified some
of the types of punishment the couple may be
subject to. Public lynching. Or murder. Or,
taking a leaf out of the case of “voluntary
sati,” murder camouflaged as suicide — say by
forcing the victim to drink poison. Less drastic
than murder but almost as painful is a long list
of honour-driven violence: sexual assault on the
women members of the accused family, usually
belonging to the lower caste or the “other
community” as “revenge;” public beating,
stripping, blackening of the face; shaving of the
head; forcing the couple or their families to
drink urine or eat excrement; incarceration, huge
fines, social boycott or being driven out of the
village.

What is this terrible “honour” that wreaks such
pain and terror on people simply because two
young people have exercised their right to choose
their partner? It’s an honour that tends to
attach itself to rigid codes, usually caste or
religious codes. It also tends to be a code
formulated by the male elite so their “honour”
can flourish in the patriarchal framework. This
is the sort of honour that celebrates women
committing jawhar or mass sati; I remember an
obnoxious sound and light show I took my children
to years ago in Gwalior which placed the
achievements of Tansen and women committing
“suicide” on an equally glorious footing.

It is a useful thing to perpetuate a tradition of
martyrdom, especially when women’s bodies are
vulnerable to being viewed as the vessels of
national honour. It was this unholy honour that
provided the motive for otherwise “normal” men to
kill their own sisters and wives and mothers
during the Partition — “disappearances” and
murders which have been covered by a conspiracy
of silence, and by the more acceptable belief
that these women were abducted or killed by men
from the other side. In her book The Other Side
of Silence, Urvashi Butalia takes on this myth
that the perpetrators of violence were always
“outsiders”. She writes about a man she
interviewed in Amritsar, Mangal Singh, whose
family killed seventeen of its women and
children. He refuses to use the word killed; he
says they became “martyrs” in keeping with Sikh
pride. The women, he says, were willing to become
martyrs. “The real fear was one of dishonour.”
But, asks Butalia, who had the pride and the
fear? It is not a question Mangal Singh was
willing to examine. Similarly, in Borders and
Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition, Ritu
Menon records the account of a partition
survivor, Durga Rani. In this account, two types
of honour killings occur: one in anticipation of
dishonour; the other as a way to cope with
dishonour. Consider, on the one hand: “In the
villages of Head Junu, Hindus threw their young
daughters into wells, dug trenches and buried
them alive. Some were burnt to death, some were
made to touch electric wires to prevent the
Muslims touching them.” On the other hand, Durga
Rani gives us an idea of what happened to many
women who had been abandoned after being raped
and disfigured. They could not be “kept” any
longer because their “character” was now spoilt.
In some cases, as in that of a girl who was raped
by ten or more men, the only way to deal with the
dishonour was murder; the girl, says Durga Rani,
was burnt by her father.

All these years after Partition, this
dishonourable honour still stalks the land,
wreaking its barbaric violence on both men and
women, but preferably on women. Most cases are
reported from Punjab, Haryana and parts of
western Uttar Pradesh. The statistics are
disturbing; twenty-three such murders were
reported during 2002 and 2003 in Muzaffarnagar
alone. Thirty-five young couples were declared
“missing”. And in Punjab and Haryana, one out of
every ten murders is an honour killing. In most
of the cases where the girl is from an upper
caste, the boy is the target of violence, usually
by the girl’s family. Often, girls who are
murdered for “destroying the honour of the
family” are cremated without any legal
formalities and the deaths concealed.

Behind the statistical wall is a collection of
stories that tell of violence and fear unleashed
on the basis of a shameful rationale. In
Hoshiarpur, Punjab, twenty-two-year old Geeta
Rani, a Rajput woman, married Jasvir, the son of
the only Jat family in the village. Her parents
did not object to the match. But the Rajputs in
Jasvir’s village, including a suspended police
officer, decided to “teach him a lesson” for
marrying one of “their” women.

Within two months of the marriage, he was killed
after his hands and legs were cut off. One hand
was thrown into Jasvir’s aunt’s house. Now, the
widowed Geeta and her widowed mother-in-law live
in fear, struggling to pay security guards to
keep them safe. “Not even the nightmare of the
1984 riots was this bad,” says the mother-in-law.


In Jhajjar, a Jat woman from Talav village
married a Dalit. She was forced to return to her
father’s home, and there both she and her sister
were murdered. So were a Dalit woman and a man
who were accused of helping the girl to elope.
The villagers who recounted the story were clear
about one thing: the administration was careful
to protect the upper castes.

Several of these cases illustrate not only the
violation of the right to choose a marriage
partner, but also the role caste panchayats play
in perpetuating illegal and inhuman social codes.
In other states — Gujarat being a good example —
increased communalization has led to more
intolerance, and more violence in cases of
Hindu-Muslim marriages. In a country that is
blessed with all kinds of communities,
intermarriage is not only a constitutional right
of every adult citizen, but also the inevitable
way to celebrate the bonds among us. There’s very
little point in sending our children to schools
or allowing them to vote — in short, in
pretending they are adults — if they cannot marry
who they choose.







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Hello all - sharing a comment I wrote last month
for Project-Syndicate (apologies to those on this
list for whom some of this may be stating the
obvious). Just want to add that re: the Wana
operation, read a horrific story in Dawn the
other day, about a 10-year old boy whose legs had
to be amputated after his madrassah was bombed
(two of his uncles as well as 10 children were
killed) - not by a foreign power, but by his own
country's armed forces.
http://www.dawn.com/2004/10/08/local25.htm
beena

commentary
Pakistan's War of All Against All

by Beena  Sarwar, September 2004

The alliance in the fight against terrorism
between Pakistani President General Pervez
Musharraf and the United States is imperative not
only for America, but for Pakistan-a
Muslim-majority nation whose social fabric is
being torn apart by militancy and lawlessness.
But will an exclusive focus on military power
ultimately prove to be counter-productive?

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, perhaps
the country's most credible human rights body,
argues that while "the violence now deeply
embedded in society is to be rooted out over the
coming years," that task "presents bigger
challenges than merely picking up, detaining, and
torturing those who authorities claim are
militants."

In opposing how the war against Al-Qaeda and the
Taliban is fought, many in Pakistan's minuscule
middle class find themselves aligned with
people they abhor: extremists whose distorted
religiosity violates the tolerant version of
Islam prevalent in this region. Many upwardly
mobile urbanites thus find themselves caught on
the horns of a dilemma: how to reconcile
aspirations for a better lifestyle, as symbolized
by America, with increasing abhorrence of US
policies.

Those on the religious right have no dilemma:
they just hate America and its policies outright,
and oppose all things "un-Islamic," including
television, films, radio, and even indigenous
forms of dance and music. Interestingly, computer
technology is exempted, as it can be used to
further the extremist cause.

However, while Pakistan's progressives oppose
militarism and violence in principle, religious
fundamentalists have no compunction in resorting
to violence to reinforce their point of view -
thus posing a threat not just to General
Musharraf, who has survived at least two
assassination attempts, but also to human rights
workers. Indeed, the prominent feminist
lawyer Asma Jahangir has 24-hour armed guards.

Militants have also attacked non-governmental
organizations, particularly those located in the
undeveloped tribal Northern Areas that lie beyond

the writ of Pakistani law. Sharing a mountainous
- and porous - border with Afghanistan, this
region includes many Taliban sympathizers among
their fellow Pashtuns. Human rights groups have
long urged the necessity of extending the writ of
Pakistan's Constitution to the tribal belt, where
religion-based parties have wide support.

These religious parties, a coalition of which now
heads the provincial government in the North West
Frontier Province, were politically marginalized
until given a central role by Pakistan's military
dictator of the 1980's, General Zia ul Haq, who
led Pakistan's covert intervention in
the war against the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan. Throughout his rule, religion-based
politics grew along with the number of madrassahs
and fighters trained and equipped by Pakistani
and US intelligence agencies.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and
subsequent pressure from Washington, led to a
U-turn by Pakistan away from pro-jihadi policies.
Today, many former officials associated with
those policies, such as Mushahid Hussain, a
former information minister, concede that
Pakistan
should have contained militancy long ago.

Cautious steps are being taken, like the review
of religion-based laws and curricula that have
contributed to a creeping talibanization of
Pakistani society. For human rights activists, it
is ironic that an elected (but basically
military-led) government that they oppose in
principle should be undertaking reforms they have
long advocated, but that elected civilian
governments ignored.

Despite fierce opposition from religious parties,
there have been minor victories, like a couple of
madrassahs agreeing to include secular subjects
like math, English, and computer studies in their
curricula. There has also been administrative
action against a few religious institutions for
encroaching on public space - practically unheard
of since official patronage of religious parties
began in the 1970's, when their cadres were
needed in the war against the Soviets.

But the "war on terror" has also provided this
government with an excuse to arrest and detain
suspects without charge. More heinous human
rights
violations have also come to light. Qari Noor
Mohammad, a religious activist in Faisalabad in
Punjab province, was arrested recently and
held without charge for several days before his
corpse was dumped in front of his house.

The lack of transparency that surrounds
Pakistan's fight against "terrorism" is
contributing to a growing public sentiment
against the anti-militancy drive, which is
largely perceived to be taking place under
US pressure. Particularly contentious is the
ongoing military operation in Wana district in
the Northern Areas, which the Pakistani army has
entered for the first time ever. The army action
in Wana, aimed against Al Qaeda and Taliban
operatives who are believed to be hiding there,
has led to several civilian casualties, including
women and children, and rendered over 30,000
people homeless.

But human rights groups question how the five to
six hundred Al-Qaeda operatives that the
government claims were holed up in the area came
to be based there in the first place. Locals
interviewed independently say that some of those
captured are in fact innocent local people from
Wana, not foreign militants.

Compared to his military predecessor, Musharraf,
who touts the catch-phrase of "enlightened
moderation," is conveniently progressive.
Whereas the devoutly religious Zia was useful for
boosting religious Islamic sentiments against the
Soviets, Musharraf is needed nowadays to
contain those very forces, which threaten not
just global security but Pakistan itself. It
remains to be seen, however, whether he will be
progressive enough.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, September 2004.

Web Address: http://www.project-syndicate.org






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Thanks to Zubeida Mustafa of Dawn for sending
this piece, with the following note:

"We had carried a picture of the kids in the Sikh
gurdwara but it's not there in the internet
version.

It would be nice if you could add Shabina's email
Shabina Mustafa <shabina@...>

Thanks
Zubeida

http://www.dawn.com/2004/10/04/fea.htm"

Dawn, Oct 04, 2004
Karachi Notebook: Accent on pluralism

By Karachian

In the post-9/11 era, one reads a lot about the
inter-faith dialogue which eminent leaders and
scholars are trying to promote to clear up
misunderstandings and misconceptions about
various religions.

How effective it will be, time alone will tell.
But at the grassroots level an inter-faith
dialogue has been taking place in Karachi for the
past few years. In a garage school set up for
children from low-income families in the heart of
Clifton, there are children from four religions
interacting with one another on a daily basis.

Last week they decided to hold a 'milad' to
honour the Holy Prophet. Of the children who
attended, 13 were Muslim, five were Christian,
two Hindu and two Sikh. Tahira, the school
teacher who organized the ceremony, is Christian
and Balbir Prakash Singh who recited the naats
with great devotion is Sikh.

This was an exemplary display of inter-faith
understanding. But before readers get it wrong,
it should be pointed out that Shabina, who runs
the garage school, takes children to other places
of worship also. On Christmas and Easter they
attend mass at a church.

In November, on Guru Nanak's birthday, a trip to
the Sikh gurdwara in Ranchore Line becomes an
occasion to celebrate. Not many would even know
about the dynamic though small Sikh community in
Karachi which still survives, though most men
shave their beards.

Has this made any impact on the children's
impressionable minds? To show that it has,
Shabina produces an essay written by 12-year-old
Tanveer. He writes: "There are children of four
faiths in our school - Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and
Christian.

But we have never fought. We are all brothers and
sisters inside our school as well as outside.
Nobody in this school has a separate religion. We
are all just human. If we work hard we will
become 'someone' one day."

Relief for women commuters

Over a month old now, the women-only bus service
seems to be gaining popularity with each passing
day. At least two buses ply between Surjani Town
and Mere wether Tower.

Though one is not too sure whether the venture is
financially viable for the company running it,
women commuters are thrilled about the facility.
For many, gone are the days when they had to
listen to tasteless songs, feel uncomfortable
under the constant gaze of fellow passengers,
bear with dusty flowers on the fur-covered
dashboard and be meek and mute while travelling.

"We don't have to hurry to get off or get on a
bus. The foot boards aren't too high. We no
longer have to deal with uncouth conductors
demanding fares rudely. Nor do we have to put up
with verbal and visual assault from men
passengers, who always wanted to sit in the
women's section even if rows of seats were vacant
in the rear of the bus. Also, we now travel in
air- conditioned buses and get to work fresh,"
said a woman commuter who was delighted about the
new service.

One wonders why it took the authorities over five
decades to realize that women commuters have a
horrible time every day in public transport. But
then, better late than never. Women commuters now
have only one request: increase the number of
buses and their routes. And their request seems
to have found favour with the company whose
spokesman recently announced that by mid-October
another women-only bus would be plying on a
different route. He promised that by the end of
the year the fleet would consist of at least four
buses.

City's grievances

A leading fiction writer once said: "Karachi is
everybody's tart." Throwing up her hands in
desperation, she said: "If you have money or
clout, you can squeeze it, torture it and make it
follow your bidding; whether it likes it or not.
Nobody has the time or the inclination to look at
the growing dark patches on its once charming
face and the immobility of its rickety limbs."

There can be no more apt description of this
forlorn city. A jewel in the crown of Sindh,
Karachi is today a haunted place, abandoned and
forgotten. Every month hundreds of thousands of
people arrive here to earn their livelihood. This
generous metropolis welcomes them, gives them
shelter, offers them means of livelihood. But in
a mad rush, nobody thinks about the decaying
state of the city.

The civic agencies, which vie with one another to
claim attention and respectability, have been
ignoring the needs of Karachi. This city did not
have much rain in the past. But now with the
ecological changes, sometimes it not only rains,
it pours.

Has there been any effort to meet the new
challenges? Not at all. Even the new localities
which are being developed at great speed, do not
have arrangements for drainage.

Rains form pools of water which remain there for
months, slowly damaging the roads. The damaged
roads are not repaired for months together. Most
roads, lanes and by lanes are without
streetlights, providing an incentive to robbers
and law breakers to indulge in dacoities and
other criminal activities.

Then there is the chaotic traffic system. In most
cases either signals are not working or traffic
constables are absent. Particularly during peak
hours, the situation turns traumatic.

It is a miracle that not many serious accidents
take place every day and not many lives are lost.
For a city like Karachi, it is essential to have
traffic signals at every major intersection.

If it is not possible, then traffic constables
should be posted to manage the flow of traffic.
The inhabitants of this city have genuine
grievances. But no one seems to be listening?

Journalist honoured

Columnist Sultan Ahmed is one of the few
surviving members of the group of distinguished
journalists who covered the early years of
Pakistan. Last week a group of his friends and
admirers held a get-together to honour him.

Those present were reminded of the time when
professionalism was the main driving force of
journalists. There were people like I.H. Burney,
Jafar Naqvi, Khaleeq Naziri, Tufail Jamali (with
whom Sultan Ahmed seemed always to be engaged in
an exchange of repartee), Saleem Alvi, Zamiruddin
Ahmed and so many others.

They usually managed to have a merry time
together despite their demanding professional
commitments. Sultan Ahmed still maintains his
sense of humour, and continues to hammer away,
twice a week, at the government's economic
policies.

email: karachi_notebook@....






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http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/10/13_patwardhan.shtml

Anand Patwardhan, the 'Michael Moore of India,'
brings his hard-hitting documentary films to
campus

By Kathleen Maclay | 13 October 2004

Anand Patwardhan

BERKELEY – Despite nearly constant efforts to
censor his work, Anand Patwardhan continues his
nearly 30-year career of making hard-hitting and
often controversial documentary films about the
nuclear danger, religious violence and
environmental threats.

The award-winning filmmaker from India will visit
the University of California, Berkeley's Berkeley
Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive (PFA) Oct. 21-24
as part of "Documentary Voices," a project
bringing international documentary-makers to the
PFA as resident artists.

After a Thursday, Oct. 21, screening of his film,
"In the Name of God," and of a short, "We are Not
Your Monkeys," Patwardhan will talk about film
and activism. On Friday, he will address the
audience after the showing of "Father, Son and
Holy War." Patwardhan will talk on Saturday, Oct.
23, after the screening of "War and Peace," and
on Sunday, Oct. 24, after the showing of "Bombay:
Our City" and a short, "Occupation: Mill Worker."


Before he arrives on campus, his films "A Narmada
Diary" and "Fishing: In the Sea of Greed" will be
shown at the PFA on Thursday, Oct. 14.

For more information, call the PFA at (510)
642-1412 or visit the PFA website.

In the question-and-answer session below,
Patwardhan shared with UC Berkeley Media
Relations some of his thoughts about filmmaking
and the current state of the world.

Q: Documentary films have generated increasing
attention of late, at least in the United States.
Is there a similar surge in other parts of the
world, such as India? If so, to what do you
attribute it?

A: Important documentaries were made in the U.S.
even in the 60's. Later films like "Hearts and
Minds" and "Harlan County U.S.A" won Oscars and
by the 80's, several documentaries got theatrical
release. But it was not until the phenomenon of
Michael Moore that documentaries became box
office super hits and actually began to shape
mass opinion.

In India, the early documentary scene was
dominated by government propaganda made by the
Films Division of India, which produced newsreels
and documentaries that were compulsorily shown
before every commercial film. People either
arrived deliberately late or walked out for a
smoke during these films, and the tag of "boring"
became inescapably attached to the documentary.
It has taken several decades of sustained
independent work to break this tag.

Today with the DVD revolution making the means of
production accessible, the documentary has come
of age, and public interest is rising, stoked by
several ham-handed attempts by the state (India)
to curtail the documentary filmmaker's right to
freedom of expression.


Poster for "Father, Son, and Holy War" film, to
be screened at UC Berkeley's PFA on Friday, Oct.
22

Q: You've called yourself "a non-serious person
forced by circumstance to make serious films."
What circumstances drove you into the documentary
business, and what keeps you there?

A: As it turned out, all my films were driven by
political events. I discovered early the joys of
mixing my "art" with the desire to speak out
about issues I was involved with. In the
beginning, I saw filmmaking more in utilitarian
terms, as a means towards an end, as a pamphlet
that would be more exciting than the usual fare
and would overcome the shackles of illiteracy. In
time, I was seduced by the medium itself and
began to take more interest and pay more
attention to the craft of filmmaking and the ways
of storytelling. But I don't think my original
motivation ever left me, nor has the yardstick by
which I judge whether a film has been able to
communicate with people widely or not.

As a "non-serious" person, I would like to have
made more playful films, but there is so little
time left over from making and screening films
about serious issues that I am usually too
mentally exhausted. Sometimes, of course, the
playful peeps through even in films of import.

Q: Do you think you make a difference in terms of
the many issues relating to environmental and
social justice, war and peace?

A: This may be wishful thinking, but the honest
answer is yes, at least at the micro level. If I
didn't think this, it would have been hard to
sustain my own levels of engagement.

Where is the evidence? It comes in small ways,
from individuals who speak out at screenings,
from letters from viewers, from essays written by
school and college kids, from a movie star who
decided to become an activist, from a
fundamentalist who questioned his own belief
system, from an usher at a posh club where the
film was screened who bicycled for miles to track
me down and get a Hindi version of the film.

The list, fortunately, is very long and has
always saved me from sinking into doubt and
despair, no matter how hard the circumstances.
Even the fact that the state and the
fundamentalists have tried to suppress my work
proved to me that they found the work
threatening, i.e., effective.

Q: Your film "War and Peace" explored issues
surrounding the nuclear tests conducted in India
and Pakistan in 1998. Has the situation gotten
better or worse since then?

A: We went through a period for about a year —
after the Indian Parliament was attacked by armed
gunmen allegedly sent by Pakistan — when Indian
and Pakistani troops were eyeball to eyeball on
the "line of control." Anything could have
happened then, fingers were tightened on the
nuclear trigger.

Since that time, there has been a palpable thaw.
Peace talks have taken place, as have cultural
exchanges. Perhaps more importantly for the
masses in both countries, cricket and hockey
matches have been played in an atmosphere of
great cordiality, something we never expected
would happen so fast. It seems clear that people
on both sides want peace, but in both countries,
fundamentalists continue their campaign of hate,
and the balance could easily be tilted with a few
well chosen terror strikes, so one can never
breathe easy.

Q: What do you make of Iran's interest in nuclear
weapons, and North Korea's nuclear capabilities?
Do you have ideas of how these situations might
be resolved peacefully?

A: I see the militarism of the U.S. as the single
biggest threat to world peace. North Korea and
Iran pale in comparison. When was the last time
they invaded a virtually disarmed country? Is
there a single terrorist whom we fear today who
does not have a long history of being trained,
armed or supported in the past by the U.S.?
We have to rethink the words we use, our core
beliefs, if we are to come close to the reality
of what is happening in the world.

Q: You wrote an essay, "How We Came to Love the
Bomb." Can you give a short summary?

A: I wrote that article in despair over the fact
that my country had abandoned the non-violent
legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and embraced the path to
nuclear disaster shown to us by our super power
Big Brother. I also made a film, "War and Peace,"
documenting the mad euphoria that we saw in the
streets as Indians and Pakistanis celebrated
their newfound powers of mass destruction.

A few years later, when my film "War and Peace"
was shown in the U.S., A. Hamrah of the Boston
Globe wrote a perceptive piece comparing the
jingoism seen in "War and Peace" with the
recorded jingoism that greeted the destruction of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and the
development of nukes in the U.S. in the 50's. A
whole bomb culture had evolved then with pop
songs, T-shirts, the works.

Q: You protested the Vietnam War while living in
the U.S. in the '60s. How do you feel about the
Iraq war, and are there similarities between the
two?

A: Both wars were illegitimate, immoral, but I
think the reasons for the Iraq war are even more
transparently venal. If there is less public
protest this time than there was during Vietnam,
I attribute it to the fact that there is no
draft.

A majority of the young Americans being killed in
Iraq are from low income groups and minorities.
Sadly, it is only when rich kids die that America
seems to really wake up. Perhaps only when those
who vote for war are forced to commit a loved one
into battle will wars come to an end.

Q: During your career, you've dealt with attempts
by the Indian government to censor your films,
and with Hindu activists who pressured the
American Museum for Natural History in 2002 to
postpone screening some of your films. Who are
your biggest allies in trying to fight
censorship?

A: Where the enemy has been state censorship, my
biggest ally has been a healthy Indian
Constitution that guarantees "freedom of
expression" and dedicated civil liberties lawyers
like P.A. Sebastian and Nitya Ramakrishnan, who
have successfully defended my films. To date,
despite repeated bans and attempted deletions,
not a single frame of any of my films has been
sacrificed. Although the official release of many
films was delayed, in the end we were always able
to win in court and through public pressure
generated by a sympathetic press.
Where my opponents have been religious
fundamentalists, my allies have been secular
Indians of all faiths, all those who are
marginalized by caste and creed, and the many
Hindus who have always taken pride from the
inclusivity and tolerance of their belief system.

Of the many attempts made by fundamentalists to
shut down our screenings, very few have
succeeded. In Kerala (India) last year, "In the
Name of God" was banned by a district officer who
gave in to threats by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
But a month-long agitation that included street
marches by secular Keralites forced the ban to be
withdrawn. Even the Museum of Natural History in
New York, facing an e-mail barrage by secular
Indians, reversed its ban on the film.
Unfortunately, it did not get up the guts to keep
the screening on its own premises, but relocated
it to New York University.

Q: You've been called the "Indian Michael Moore."
Your thoughts about that description, and about
the work of the American filmmaker?

A: It is an honor to be compared with Michael
Moore. But my own films have never gotten into
the mainstream. So I'm thrilled as much by
Moore's work as the impact he has had. My heart
went out to him on Oscar night. He stood up and
was counted.

With his films, I've loved much of what he has
done, although I'm not sure how exactly his work
is understood by those who do not already agree
with him. There is a nagging doubt about whether
middle-of-the-road Americans take kindly to him.

I do not mean to be critical because I think
those who like Moore see through the lies that
the U.S. and the Bush administration have told
the world, and their morale needs to be lifted.
Moore does this brilliantly, but perhaps a less
personal attack would have served better to bring
out the systemic problems in the U.S.

At times I have also been accused of mocking my
"enemies" and I always defended myself by saying
that one needed a sharp instrument to cut through
the layers of deceit and disguise. I think
Moore's technique is legitimate, but sometimes he
is guilty of striking too many blows even after
his opponent is down for the count. That is what
happened the second time he talked to Charlton
Heston in "Bowling for Columbine." And
"Fahrenheit 9/11" would have been better if it
was less Bush-centric.

But nothing I say takes away from the sheer
chutzpah of Mike. He is the best thing that has
happened to America since (linguist and activist
Noam) Chomsky.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Doing screenings and fighting court cases.
"Father, Son and Holy War" (1995) won two
national awards in 1996 on the basis of which I
approached state-controlled Doordarshan national
TV to broadcast the film. When they, as usual,
refused, l went to court and won. Then they went
to Supreme Court, which is where the matter now
stands.
I do have some half-finished films on the back
burner, but it's too early to talk about them.

Q: What are your plans while at UC Berkeley?

A: Just doing the screenings, meeting with
friends, recharging my batteries.







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Two emails re: Southasian films being screened in
the US. beena
-------
from Christine in Holland:
From: Marc Chery [mailto:mchery@...]
Subject: Malcolm X Library presents film: 'DESI:
South Asians in New York', October 18

Malcolm X Library proudly presents:

DESI: South Asians in New York

Monday, October 18, 2004

6:00 - 8:00 pm

This documentary film is a groundbreaking tribute
to the diversity and dynamism of South Asians
living in New York City and the U.S. A Hindi word
meaning "countryman" or "people of the soil,"
desi refers to a broad, multicultural spectrum of
South Asians - Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis,
Sri Lankans, Nepalese and others - who have
become an integral part of many regions in the
United States including California. Illustrating
the growing sense of shared identity here in
America, Pakistani and Indian cab drivers are
seen uniting in a New York taxi strike as nuclear
tests explode on their native subcontinent,
threatening the outbreak of war.  Directed by
Allen Glazeb & Shebana Coelho, 58 minutes, 2000,
USA

Dr. Huma Ahmed-Ghosh of the Women's Studies Dept
at San Diego State University will facilitate a
post screening discussion after the film.
__________________________

All programs are free and open to the public. For
more information, please call (619) 527-3405.
Malcolm X Library is located at 5148 Market
Street, across from Euclid trolley station.
Parking available.

--------------
2. from Sree in NY (South Asian Journalists
Association).

Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 15:14:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Sreenath Sreenivasan" <ss221@...>

To: "SAJA E-mail Discussion List"
<saja-disc@...>
Subject:  STORY IDEA: Theresa Thanjan's new doc,
"Whose Children Are These?"

From D.A.M.N. - Dissecting American Media Now
SAJA E-mailing Lists: http://www.saja.org/lists
(free signup)
South Asian Journalists Association:
http://www.saja.org

Here's a story idea... Community activist THERESA
THANJAN has a made brand-new film, "Whose
Children Are These?" - a short documentary that
gives an in depth and gripping view into the post
9/11 world of three Muslim youth impacted by the
federal policy of Special Registration and
prejudice.

Among them:
Ø      Navila Ali, Age, 20 an honors student,
originally from Bangladesh, who fought to have
her father released from detention.

Ø      Mohammad Hussain, Age 18, a popular high
school athlete, from Pakistan, who after
“registering” with the US Government, was put
into deportation proceedings.

Ø      Hager Youssef, Age 17, a youth activist,
from Egypt, who finds a new life’s calling to
combat bias crimes in New York City.

Thanjan will be on WBAI Radio's "Rise Up" show
tonight at 9:30 pm in the New York City area
(99.5 FM) or you can listen on the web at
WBAI.org -
http://www.wbai.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=34&Itemid=36

If you wish to contact her at t_thanjan@...






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October 17, 2004

PERSONAL POLITICAL

No compromise on murder

Beena Sarwar

Murder by any other name still smells foul. It is
still murder. Unfortunately, the Criminal Law
(Amendment) Bill 2004 against ‘honour killings’
introduced by the treasury bench in the Pakistan
National Assembly deems this crime compoundable,
allowing for a ‘compromise’ (razinama) between
the parties. Thus the accused in ‘honour killing’
or karo kari cases will continue to be able to
escape punishment.

Most karo kari cases are committed by a close
relative – father, brother, son, or husband of
the woman. Often, the victims are the most
vulnerable members of the family or community. In
either case, if and when the case reaches a court
of law, the victim’s family may ‘pardon’ the
murderer (who may well be one of them), or be
pressurized to accept diyat (‘blood-money’) as
compensation. The murderer then goes free.

The motive is often other than the stated ghairat
or honour, often related to land disputes or old
enmities. Such cases continue to take place
because, very simply, the murderer knows he will
get away with it. The statistics speak for
themselves: according to one estimate, around
1,261 cases of honour killings were reported in
2003 alone -- 938 women and 323 men. That is,
over a hundred such cases a month.

The present bill does nothing to change this
state of affairs, which appears to have worsened
since the promulgation of the Qisas and Diyat
Ordinance of 1990. Like other laws enacted in the
name of religion, this one too has its flaws and
critics, as well as supporters who appear more
interested in preserving the status quo than in
the ground reality of its negative effects.

On the positive side, this law did away with the
concept of ‘grave and sudden provocation’
introduced by the British and incorporated in
Section 300 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). The
‘provocation’ clause allowed someone who had been
‘provoked’ into spontaneous murder, to receive a
lighter sentence if he could justify his act.
Then, as now, a woman’s perceived infidelity was
justification enough.

The Qisas & Diyat Act’s omission of this clause
leaves no room in the law for any concessions.
“But the law and the judiciary are apparently two
different things,” writes the Lahore-based
criminal lawyer Hassam Qadir Shah, in ‘Don’t let
them get away with murder’, a booklet on criminal
procedures (Shirkat Gah Women’s Resource Centre,
2002). “While the law is clear and unforgiving on
this account, some judges of the superior courts
of Pakistan have tried to read between the lines
to apply the earlier concept of justified anger.
Quite a few reported judgements in the form of
case-law have once again mitigated the offence of
murder in the context of so-called ‘honour’
crimes.”

However, as Shah notes, several judgements also
criticize this trend. “Neither the law of the
land nor religion permits so-called ‘honour’
killings and it amounts to intentional murder
(‘qatl-i-amd’),” states one Supreme Court
judgement, noting that “such iniquitious and
vile” acts violate the fundamental rights as
enshrined in Article 9 of the Pakistan
Constitution which provides that no person shall
be deprived of life or liberty except in
accordance with law. “Any custom in that respect
is void under Article 8 (1) of the Constitution”
(PLD 2001 SC 96).

The major flaw in the Qisas and Diyat law, which
covers all offences against the human body, is
that it makes such offenses compoundable (open to
compromise as a private matter between two
parties) by providing for qisas (retribution) or
diyat (blood-money). The heirs of the victim can
forgive the murderer in the name of God without
receiving any compensation or diyat (Section
309), or compromise after receiving diyat
(Section 310).

Most cases result in one or the other compromise,
thus allowing murderers to go free, even though
Pakistani law does not contain any provision
which allows the offence of murder to be
mitigated. Contrary to common belief, Islam also
explicitly forbids such killing in the name of
ghairat or honour.

Prior to this change, the state was a party to
murder cases, which were non-compoundable, in
keeping with the principle that the state must
ensure the right to life of all citizens,
regardless of class, gender or creed. Now the
poor “may be cornered into compromising even for
the most heinous crimes in lieu of a hefty
payoff, for instance. This promotes the practice
of settling murder cases, and especially cases of
karo kari through a compromise or razinama,”
notes Shah.

Many lawyers and human rights activists believe
that there is no need to define ‘honour crimes’
or ‘karo kari’ murders separately, as the
existing provisions of the PPC and the Criminal
Procedure Code (CrPC) are sufficient, provided
that such murders are registered as murder. In
cases where guilt is established, through
confession or trial, the perpetrator must be
convicted at least on paper, even if there is a
razinama, so that the criminal record is
established.

No matter how well-intentioned, the government’s
bill on ‘honour killings’ is a farce as long as
these factors are ignored. And finally, no law
can bring about changes unless it is implemented,
and unless society changes to accept the status
of women as equal human beings.

The News, Pakistan, Oct 17, 2004

(ends)






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http://www.tehelka.com/story_main7.asp?filename=Ne102304doctor_love.asp

Doctor Love, Doctored Hate

A Hindu girl eloped and married her Muslim
neighbour in a poor Delhi colony. Muslim families
have fled after the Shiv Sena and RSS threatened
retaliation. The police offer no protection,
reports Aman Khanna


All the houses look the same in Sonia Vihar in
east Delhi: bare, uneven brick structures held
together more by fate than by cement. Well,
almost all. Huge padlocks hang limply on some of
the hollowed wooden doors. The dwellers have
abandoned their homes of many years. Their
prized, cheap belongings — a charpoy, a trunk
hither or thither, a few utensils — can still be
seen through the cracks in the walls. The
overgrowth outside is steadily thickening.

The abandoned houses belong to Muslims in Sonia
Vihar. Most of them have been forced out of the
colony. Thrown out because a young boy from their
community dared to elope with a Hindu girl. “They
were all involved. It is for the best they have
fled,” says the local Shiv Sena leader, Anand
Trivedi.

Last month, Neetu Verma ran away and married
28-year-old Mohammed Abid. The two families were
living cheek by jowl on the second floor of a
rented house. On the morning of September 20,
2004, Neetu’s parents found her missing; so was
the boy next door.

Her parents claim Neetu is still a minor, of the
age of 14. “Our eldest daughter is barely 19.
Neetu is our third child. How can we allow her to
marry?” says Sushil Kaur, Neetu’s mother.

That was enough for the Shiv Sena and the rss to
get into action. Trivedi held meetings everyday
in the local landlord’s phone booth, calling all
the Muslims — threatening them. His party workers
marched around the neighbourhood, sloganeering.
Trivedi himself boasts, “I declared in front of
the sho (station house officer of the local
police station), if our girl does not come back
in seven days, I will set all your (Muslim)
houses on fire, with you in them.”

“In all of two days I had the investigating
officer changed. Earlier, a Kapil Ahmed was in
charge. You tell me, how can one let a Muslim
handle such a case?” he continues.

Within a day of the two going missing, Abid’s
mother was hauled to the local police station for
questioning. Followed by other members of the
family. At the same time, a first investigation
report (fir) was filed against Abid.

Slowly, with each passing day, Muslims started
fleeing the neighbourhood. First went the boy’s
family; then those who were loosely related to
Abid. Then came the turn of those who hail from
the same district. And now everyone is seeking
safer ground.

A Muslim labourer, who lives close to Neetu’s
house, pleads, “They told us ‘either bring the
girl back or you will have to pay for it’.” “I am
a heart-patient, I have diabetes,” the old man
says, showing the rashes on his arms and legs,
“How can I stand up to their threats? My sons
come back late in the night; Allah knows when
they will be stabbed. The police said, ‘you can
die today for all we care.’ I am thinking of
selling my house and leaving.”

Sonia Vihar is an unauthorised colony, spread
over about 4 sq km, on Delhi’s border with Uttar
Pradesh. The roads here have given way to sludge
and knee-deep potholes. Most of the residents are
poor labourers, who travel more than 20 km
everyday to Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi to find
work. And only 15-20 percent are Muslims.

In such circumstances, it is easy for the Shiv
Sena and Trivedi to throw their weight around.
The right-wing Hindu group’s signboards can be
seen at various points from the approach road.

The chief, Trivedi, is a small-built man who
visibly takes delight in being the troublemaker.
“I have handled 15 such cases in the past. Just
yesterday, another case of a Muslim boy eloping
with a Hindu girl came to me. Though, there the
girl is no more a minor, we cannot let Muslims’
conversion plan go through.”
In Sonia Vihar, he has been spreading rumours
about the Muslim community: “they want to open a
madrasa in the area; and then convert everyone…
After they left, we have come to know one of them
was a criminal.”

He says Neetu’s eloping with Abid is a part of a
deeper conspiracy. “Muslims are running a huge
conversion campaign. If you turn a girl Muslim,
you turn the future generations Muslim. They give
a grant of Rs 40,000 to each boy who whisks away
a Hindu girl. They even offer legal help and a
safe haven,” says Trivedi.

All Hindus in Sonia Vihar have started believing
this absurd theory. Sunder Singh Kanwar, a
general store owner, says, “They put Neetu in a
trance… It was all planned. How else can all the
families disappear so soon?”

The fir filed by Neetu’s parents came up for
hearing in the nearby Karkardooma court. On the
day of the first hearing, Trivedi dropped by with
about 80 goons. “We tore off Neetu’s burqa right
there in the court,” brags Trivedi, “And had it
not been for police intervention, we would have
brought her back forcibly.”

In the two hearings held yet, Neetu has declined
to return to her parents’ house. The judge has
ordered a bone ossification test to determine her
age. She, for now, has been sent to Nari Niketan
by the judge. Yet, her parents and other members
of the community are not convinced. “She is
young; she doesn’t know what is wrong and right,”
says her father, Kishan Kumar, and then, sounding
like Trivedi, goes on to abuse the entire Muslim
community.

Hafizur Rehman, a learned Muslim living in the
area, says, “I was scared for days. I am still
scared. I tell my sons everyday to walk with
their heads down, not because of the fear, but
because it is practical. We are less in number
and we are vulnerable.”

“In fact, there is an old saying in Urdu,” Rehman
concludes:

Kisne loota hai,
Kisne mara hai,
Halaat bataate hain,
Rehbar ka ishaara hai.

(Who ruined you, Who stabbed you, The order tells
all, The leader directs it.)

#





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Posting by Jo Wilding - a young British woman I
admire, who's been working in Iraq as a human
rights monitor. Another project she was involved
was meant to boost Iraqi children's morales, by
making them laugh, or bring a smile to those
who'd forgotten how - she and some of her friends
took a travelling circus out there. This is the
kind of person that the media need to highlight,
but don't.

beena

--- Jo <gurneyernie@...> wrote:
> To: wildfirejo@yahoogroups.com
> From: Jo <gurneyernie@...>
> Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 12:33:41 +0100 (BST)
> Subject: [wildfirejo] An open letter to British
> troops serving in Iraq
>
---------------------------------
www.wildfirejo.org.uk
www.wildfirejo.blogspot.com

  My Groups |wildfirejo Main Page

An Open Letter to British Troops Serving in Iraq

The US has asked the British government to send
you north to free up forces for another offensive
against Falluja. I’m writing to ask you to refuse
any orders to deploy to Baghdad or other areas
currently under US control.

I was an ambulance volunteer in Falluja during
the April siege. I went because my friend Salam,
a doctor, said US troops were stopping medical
supplies getting in, cut off water, food,
electricity and had closed down the main hospital
and controlled the road to the
smaller one with snipers.

Salam was evacuated with bullet wounds; a missile
from a US plane destroyed the ambulance in front
of his. He and his crew were under fire, pinned
inside the vehicle while their colleagues burned
in the other one. He thought the marines wouldn’t
shoot us because we’d look like their brothers
and sisters. He was right: in daylight we moved
medical supplies,
evacuated people from the second hospital and
homes in the firing line, picked up sick and
injured people.

We went to bring two sick women from a house in
US territory. Outside a man of about 60 was lying
face down in the road, shot through the back. You
don’t need me to tell you what it looks or smells
like when a man’s chest isn’t inside his body any
more.

We could see the lines of marines along the tops
of the houses. Only when we got there did the
family dare to come out, the sons screaming that
he was unarmed, he just went out to get the car
to take his wife to the clinic. The daughters
whispered, “Baba, baba” [Daddy] as we walked them
to safety.

Our clinic received countless sniper casualties,
the US’s preferred method of controlling its
areas: a small boy, trousers wet, shot in the
head; an old woman carrying a white flag; a young
woman shot in the jaw, all attempting to flee
their homes in US territory. Aircraft pounded the
town with missiles and
cluster bombs. I think they denied using cluster
bombs but there’s no mistaking the rhythmic sound
of them exploding.

As it got dark we were asked to pick up a woman
in premature labour in a US-held area, giving
birth without light, water or medical attention.
We were not visibly foreign any more and my
ambulance, clearly marked as such in English with
flashing lights and siren, was fired on by US
marine snipers. We never got to her. I don’t know
what happened to her.

Cars packed with families queued at the edge of
town. Marines were firing at the cars. Troops
inside the town had been threatening people to
leave by sunset or they would be killed. As we
left we were taken prisoner by Iraqi gunmen,
afraid that we were spies. They, like the
fighters near the clinic, were local
men, fighting for their homes and families. If
there are foreign fighters (other than US
soldiers) in Falluja now it is because that space
was created for them by the last attack. Another
will only attract more.

An unnamed US official promises a “very bloody
and nasty” fight within what another official
indicated would be “the next few days”
(Washington Post, Sat 16/10/04). Throwaway
platitudes like “War is hell” are not good
enough. There are choices. The choice to be
complicit, to free up US troops to repeat that
attack must be consciously made. Each one of you
has to decide whether you accept that role.

I get quite a few e-mails from soldiers, US and
British, who are angry at what’s happening. They,
and you, didn’t risk your lives to go and make
things worse.

In April, when Falluja was attacked, there were
uprisings across the country, in Shia and Sunni
areas alike. In Shuala, Baghdad, there was
fighting all around the squatter camp where
hundreds of homeless people are living. Even
Iraqi organisations couldn’t help them and
throughout April they got no aid supplies at all.


Even in Thawra, where US troops once had
something like a welcome, there was fighting in
the streets, in Najaf, in Nasariya, in dozens of
towns and villages that never became news.
Another attack on Falluja emphatically won’t make
the country safer for elections.

British troops in Baghdad will sustain higher
casualties than in the south, will take the brunt
of the uprisings caused by US misjudgment and
brutality. The UK government will not be there
for you or your families when you are killed,
maimed or poisoned by depleted uranium weapons.

Please, don’t go. Please don’t make yourselves
complicit with the atrocities which will
undoubtedly be committed against ordinary Iraqi
people in Falluja. Please don’t put yourself
closer to harm for the sake of an ill-advised
attack that will only make things worse.

Yours,

Jo Wilding





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thanks to Sam Swope for this very interesting
piece. beena

Poetry and the Pentagon: Unholy Alliance?

By Eleanor Wilner
<http://www.poetrymagazine.org/wilner_oct04_prose.html>

On April 20 of this year Dana Gioia, Chairman of
the National Endowment for the Arts, in tandem
with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,
announced Operation Homecoming: Writing the War
Experience. The program is described as “an NEA
project to help soldiers write about their
experiences in war,” and it plans to bring
writers to military bases to conduct workshops
for soldiers returning from combat. It will also
publish an anthology which, according to their
website, will be “open to active US military
personnel and their immediate families” and will
be a “nationally promoted anthology of wartime
writing that will be sold in bookstores and will
be distributed free by the Arts Endowment to
military installations, schools, and libraries.”

The project is being carried out in cooperation
with the Armed Forces and Defense Department and
the Southern Arts Federation, and has been funded
($250,000 of its $300,000 cost) by the Boeing
Company, one of the US’s leading defense
contractors, and therefore a major recipient of
our tax dollars and a corporation that profits
from war.

A handsome red, white, and blue booklet—whose
cover bears a moving photo of a helmet holding
flag-stamped letters to a GI—contains the photos,
bios, and book covers of thirteen well-published
authors of fiction and poetry (some veterans of
earlier wars, some from military families, many
whose writing is principally about war) who will
lead the workshops, and another smaller group of
well-known writers who read excerpts from
war-related texts or tips on writing on a
promotional CD.

What we have here is a program that seems
designed to be proof against all criticism, as if
to raise any questions about it is to seem to
target those deserving soldiers and the writers
who have signed on. But what if we look behind
these unassailable shields? Are these returning
troops once again being used as a shield against
the scrutiny of the very policy which put them in
harm’s way in the first place? Will Operation
Homecoming serve them? Will it serve poetry? Or
is it designed to serve quite another purpose?
“The Defense Department,” said the Washington
Post (April 20, 2004), “believes the writing will
reflect positively on military life. ‘I don’t
have any concerns,’ says Principle Deputy
Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and
Readiness Charles S. Abell. ‘We tend to remember
those things which are good.’”

As a thirty-year veteran of the teaching of
poetry, and an observer of the current chasm
between public rhetoric and the language of
experience, as well as the growing carnage, I
read all this with incredulity and dismay. The
sponsors, the context, the timing—how could it be
more wrong? A military base? Soldiers still on
active duty and under orders? Just returned from
the violence and trauma of combat? Asked to write
about those still raw experiences? Was this a
context or a circumstance in which deep
disclosure, or even reportage, could—or should—be
invited? Are these writers qualified to pry open
the doors to what may be scenes of inner
desolation?

Bruce Weigl, a Bronze Star veteran of the Vietnam
war, author of seven books of poetry, and former
director of the MFA Program at Penn State, shares
these concerns:

To expect young men and women who are just
returned from a combat mission where they have
seen and done and had done to them unspeakable
things is to ask far too much of them. . . . As
returning veterans, they are far too close to the
war to trust their own immediate responses; they
all need to come to terms with what they’ve been
through and what they’ve seen, and then they’ll
be ready to tell the stories that no one wants to
hear.

What is it like for a returning veteran to write
under the aegis of the military, where language
necessarily serves a far different purpose than
it does for the poet? Jan Barry, also a poet and
decorated Vietnam veteran, tells of his
experience:

In 1964 I was appointed to West Point from the
ranks after serving ten months in Vietnam. I was
invited by upperclassmen at the military academy
to write about my experiences for a student
publication. I found it impossible to do. The
whole mood at West Point was akin to a football
team preparing for a big game against a rival
team. I was stumped as to how to write, in that
atmosphere, a serious reflection on life in a war
zone of our own making. To find the space I
needed to write more critically, I resigned from
West Point and an intended military career. When
I submitted my resignation, a kindly colonel
called me into his office and told me a story
about his brother, who had also wanted to be a
writer and grew up in a military family. His
father, a general, ordered the brother to stay in
the military and write. “You can stay in the Army
and write official histories,” the colonel said
enthusiastically. He could not conceive of the
critical perspective I had acquired in Vietnam,
in which official statements were often wildly
unrelated to the facts in the field.

I have pulled from my shelf a slim volume of
poems edited by Jan Barry, Larry Rottmann, and
Basil T. Parquet in 1972, which was for me a
touchstone in those war years, a way inside
Vietnam’s reality, as it was for many: Winning
Hearts and Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans.
It was a grassroots veterans volume, put together
on Barry’s kitchen table, dedicated to the
children of Indochina, and published by 1st
Casualty Press, named from the famous quote by
Aeschylus in the fifth century b.c.: “In war,
truth is the first casualty.”

“[O]ne wonders at the shape of this generation’s
returning war narratives,” says Kevin Bowen, also
a poet and Vietnam veteran, and Director of the
William Joiner Center for the Study of War and
Social Consequences at the University of
Massachusetts, which has offered writing
workshops to veterans since 1987. “Will this war
have its own Winning Hearts and Minds? Perhaps
not, if Washington has its say.” In his protest
against Operation Homecoming (which, by the way,
borrows its name from the repatriation of
American POWs at the end of the Vietnam war), he
writes in the veterans online magazine
Intervention: “Beyond the language of self-help
and ‘therapeutic’ aspects of writing, beyond the
back-patting, it is not difficult to see in the
project an effort to establish an official canon
of writing from the century’s first wars, neatly
packaged, ready for mass distribution and
classroom use.”

What’s the rush here? Why doesn’t the NEA help
send discharged veterans to colleges and bona
fide writing programs, investing public arts
money to support their writing in educational
settings, where, as Bowen says, “it will be
fostered over time and not immediately co-opted.”
And give them the chance to develop some
historical insight, and to contextualize
experience in more than the blinding exigencies
of the moment?

Indeed, this project appears to be an attempt to
preempt the immediate (and even archival) record
of this war by its combatants. It is well to
remember here that the NEA is an arm of the
government, its chairman and board political
appointments by the administration. In the
Guardian (April 20, 2004), Dana Gioia was quoted
as saying: “I have noticed a lot of similarities
between the military world and the literary
world. Both are highly specialized and highly
professionalized. And when that happens, you tend
not to see a lot outside your immediate world.”
Perhaps Gioia was counting on this, thinking that
other poets, less canny than he, and lost in a
doze at the shuttered windows of their ivory
towers, wouldn’t notice the political
ramifications of this project. And though he
mentions in his eerily cheerful introduction
every great epic of war from the Iliad to War and
Peace (works written long after the events), we
might question whether it is literature that can
be produced or even encouraged under such
circumstances.

In that same glossy, glamorous booklet, each
writer’s page features a brief, enlarged,
bold-face quotation from one of his or her books.
It doesn’t matter what the name of the author is
since the following quote is lifted out of
context and therefore from the frame of its
meaning in the original narrative, and so can
only be construed in its effect as a sound-bite
in the context of Operation Homecoming. Here is
the very first quotation:

He left a pause. He might have been considering
telling her everything about himself. Then he
said, “Like most military people, I hate war. But
there are tigers in the world, you know.”

The effect and purpose of these words in this
context goes without saying. What does require
pause is those tigers. When promoting a war,
which means authorizing the killing of other
human beings, it is necessary to use a language
which robs them of their humanity. There are
several ways this is done. One is by seeing them
as members of another species—something bestial,
primitive, predatory. Perhaps that is why most
animals do not murder their own kind: they are
not subject to this confusion. Another way, which
is characteristic of military language, is to
denature the enemy by the use of a detached,
Latinate, and bloodless language, so that one
“neutralizes” opposing forces, or the burning,
mutilation, and killing of civilians is masked as
“collateral damage.”

At the same time that the enemy’s reality is
demonized or neutralized (or both), the actions
of one’s own side, in military parlance, are
redescribed in terms which reverse meaning,
disowning the real harm that is being done: the
US missions involving massive dropping of
incendiary bombs over North Vietnam were called
“Sherwood Forest” and “Pink Rose.” Poetry, which
is above all “learning to call things by the
right name,” has, therefore, goals incommensurate
with the use of language by the military in the
conduct of war.

“I just want to remember / the dead piled high
behind the curtain,” writes the contemporary
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. It is the
poet’s task, I too believe, to make us feel the
full weight of the bodies hidden behind the
rhetoric and the falsifying parlance, to embody
truth, to remember the dismembered human form.
“For my enemy is dead,” wrote Walt Whitman, “a
man as divine as myself is dead.” “It is
difficult,” William Carlos Williams famously
wrote, “to get the news from poems / yet men die
miserably every day / for lack / of what is found
there.” And I am taking that miserable dying just
now as a literal and collective fact.

Once again we are at war; in the words of Yeats,
“the nightmare / Rides upon sleep.” We stand at
what has been called by Lionel Trilling “the dark
and bloody crossroads where literature and
politics meet,” not by choice—but by
circumstance. As poets, we do not choose our
subjects; the imagination is a force which can be
invited, but it cannot be commanded. In fact, in
those moments when we are poets (and we live many
more when we are not), we must live, like Cicero
in a poem by Gibbons Ruark, “in that singular
province that was never Caesar’s.”

Returning at last to the first great war epic of
the Western tradition, the Iliad, I remind us all
that it is written from both sides, that the eye
of the poet moves back and forth between the
Greek camp and the city of Troy. There is no
enemy: simply the ambition of Agamemnon, the lust
of Paris, the wrath of Achilles, the laughter of
the gods, the tragedy of war in which are “hurled
in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong
souls / of heroes.” The city of Troy is put to
the torch, its women and children enslaved, and
the epic ends, as all wars end, with a funeral
pyre and a handful of bones.

It should be clear from what has been said that
it is not the conjunction of poetry and soldiers
which is problematic. On the contrary, sustained
exposure to poetry might serve as one antidote to
the violence and divisive language of war, and
become the lifeline it has been for a number of
Vietnam combat veterans who survived the postwar
years, and whose words helped others to do the
same. This project sadly mars this year’s
generous NEA literature grants, essential to so
many small presses and writer’s support groups.
For this particular project arouses suspicion
about its ultimate purpose—doubts fed by its
feel-good rhetoric, its slick packaging, its
inimical setting, its timing, its cozy
insularity, the vested interests of its sponsors:
the Pentagon and Boeing, and its disingenuous
disclaimers that none of this will affect the
selection of materials for the anthology which
the NEA plans to widely disseminate.

“Most alarming to many of us,” writes Kevin
Bowen, “Operation Homecoming threatens to move
the NEA into the business of supporting the
generation of propaganda, a wartime exercise that
is not part of its mission, and does writers,
veterans, and the public a great disservice.” To
which I say Amen.

ELEANOR WILNER's most recent book is the author
of The Girl With Bees in Her Hair (Copper Canyon,
2004). She is currently Writer-in-Residence at
Smith College.

© 2004 by The Poetry Foundation








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October 24, 2004

PERSONAL POLITICAL
To Margaret Hassan, it matters

Beena Sarwar

“They just don’t get it!” The thought jumps out
as one follows the Great Presidential Debate in
the USA, with John Kerry, George Bush and their
respective supporters going on and on about the
“war on terror”. None of them seem to understand
that not only is this a war that is un-winnable
by force alone, but their involvement in it is
actually contributing to the spiralling of
violence around the world.

Brute force and superior military power may
topple regimes, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, but
unless accompanied by political initiatives, they
cannot win wars. President Bush has the gall to
claim that “freedom is on the march in
Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere,” apparently
oblivious to ground realities. Both Afghanistan
and Iraq today are more unsafe places than ever
before, suffering from thousands of civilian
casualties, destroyed infrastructure and no law
and order to speak of. This has consequences not
only for the USA but for the rest of the world.
Around the world, there is an unmistakable link
between the state’s use of force and the rise of
‘private’ violence, with law and order breakdowns
and political vacuums only worsening the
situation.

If there is freedom in Iraq, it appears to be in
the hands of insurgents and criminal gangs,
engaged in what has been described as one of
Iraq's “fastest-growing enterprises”: the
kidnappings-for-ransom that are plaguing ordinary
citizens, although it is only ‘news’ when a
foreigner is kidnapped. This situation is a
direct result of the US-led invasion because, as
a Reuters report notes, “American forces
completely destroyed Iraq's domestic security”
(“Kidnappings-for-Ransom Fear Grips Iraq”, July
31, 2004). And the person responsible for this
breakdown is G.W. Bush, the Commander-in-Chief of
the US Armed Forces, who took the decision to
send them there.

Over 140 foreign workers have been kidnapped
(including the 40 or so male hostages killed,
including Nepalis and Pakistanis) since the spate
of abductions began in April 2003. So far, few
foreign women have been abducted – the most
prominent foreign worker to be kidnapped in Iraq
so far, Margaret Hassan brings their number to
eight. The abducted women have until now been
freed unharmed, although there are rumours of
huge amounts of ransom money having been paid for
their release. Still, this does allow some hope
for the Dublin-born 59-year old Mrs Hassan.

Mrs Hassan, who has British, Irish and Iraqi
nationality, has been living and working in Iraq
for the last 30 years, most recently as the head
of the global poverty relief organization Care.
She was fiercely opposed to the US-imposed
sanctions on Iraq -- which made her work there
even more crucial. She went about her work
relatively freely while the Evil Dictator Saddam
ran the country. Today, she is pleading for her
life in a televised video tape, at the mercy of
her unknown captors.

Her Iraqi husband, Tahseen Ali Hassan, a retired
airline engineer who studied in Britain, appealed
to her abductors on Al-Arabiya satellite
television: “I would like to tell the kidnappers
that we are in the holy month of Ramadan and my
wife has been helping Iraq for 30 years and loved
this country,” he said, stressing that his wife
“had nothing to do with politics”.

The kidnappers in Iraq don’t seem to care about
the politics of their victims. Margaret Hassan
had been a friend of the Iraqis for long before
the invasion, as The Independent’s Robert Fisk
outlines in ‘Kidnapped: The heroine who offered
hope for Iraq’
(http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles433.htm).

Although Mrs Hassan’s kidnappers have made no
demand yet, her situation is made more precarious
by the British government’s acceptance of the US
request to re-deploy Black Watch, the British
troops stationed in the south of Iraq to the more
combative north, in order to free up American
soldiers for an all-out second attack on
Fallujah. There is already fierce opposition to
this in Britain, including by Robin Cook, who
resigned as Foreign Secretary in protest against
Britain’s involvement in what he, along with
millions of protestors around the world, saw as
an unjustified invasion.

Mr Cook now notes that a “large part of the
problem is not that the US does not have enough
troops but that it does not have any troops
trained in peacekeeping. They have brought their
military culture of overwhelming force to Iraq
and have met any resistance with escalation.”
Their “heavy-handed military tactics”, he says,
are actually provoking most of the current
resentment against the occupation. (‘Deeper into
the Iraqi quagmire’, The Guardian, Oct 22, 2004).

This is a simple point, that that the American
leadership seems incapable of appreciating,
either in terms of insurgency in Iraq, or
elsewhere. The rising anti-U.S. sentiment around
the world is fuelled by US high-handedness; if
allowed to continue unchecked, it will only lead
to more ‘terrorism’ and make Westerners in
general more unsafe. Yet, commenting on this
sentiment, high-ranking US national security
officials, like one quoted recently, still make
vacuous statements like: “I don't think it
matters. It's about keeping the country safe, and
I don't think that matters.” (‘Afghanistan, Iraq:
Two Wars Collide’, The Washington Post, Oct 22,
2004).

For Margaret Hassan and the dozens of others
suffering at the hands of their kidnappers, and
for their families, it matters.

(ends)






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From Carol Wolman, MD, in California.
beena

----- Original Message -----
From: David Randle
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 12:55 PM
Subject: Attention Pro-Life Voters

Dear Friends:

The following OP-ED piece on abortion needs to be
circulated through many networks. If you know
someone in your local paper please see if they
will consider as an OP-ED. Please also share with
yoru email networks.

Thanks for your assistance.

Be Well

Dave Randle

---------
Attention Pro-Life Voters

By Gary Krane, PhD and James Armstrong, former
President of the Florida Council of Churches

It is estimated that 45% of the nation’s
undecided voters consider themselves Pro-Life.
President George W. Bush prides himself on being
pro-life. Let’s see where his polices have taken
us. Dr. Glen Stassen, co-author Kingdom Ethics
(of Christianity Today’s Book of the Year) has
analyzed abortion statistics since Bush took
office on January 20th, 2001. Since federal
reports come only to 2000, Stassen reviewed the
more recent data state by state to the degree
that was possible.

During the Clinton decade, 1990 to 2000, the
number of abortions in the U.S. declined from
1,610,000 to 1,330,000, a decrease of 17.4% (1)
Given the anti-abortion rhetoric and policies of
George Bush and his administration one would
expect the downward trend to continue. Not so. In
fact, the very opposite is true.

Four states, Colorado, Kentucky, Michigan and
Pennsylvania, posted statistics from 2000 to
2003. Colorado’s rate of increase skyrocketed
111%, Kentucky’s, 3.2%, Michigan by 11.3%, and
Pennsylvania was up 1.9%, 1999 through 2002

Twelve other states posted abortion statistics
for 2001 and 2002. Seven states saw increases:
Arizona (+26.4%), Idaho (+13.9%), Illinois
(+0.9%), Missouri (+2.5%), South Dakota (+2.1%),
Texas (+3.0%), and Wisconsin (+0.6%). Five states
saw a decrease: Alabama (-9.8%), Florida (-0.7%),
Minnesota (-4.4%), Ohio (-4.4%), and Washington
(-2.1%).

Had the 1990’s record of declining abortions
continued on the same pace there should have been
28,000 fewer abortions on the United States each
year of the Bush era. If the trend reflected in
the sixteen states cited above applied to each of
our states, however, there was an increase of
24,000 each year. That number could easily be
multiplied by three for the 2000-2003 period.
During the third and final Presidential Debate in
Tempe, Arizona, Bush once again proudly affirmed
his anti-abortion stance. The sad facts insist
that his Administration has dramatically reversed
the downward trend of the 1990’s.

Why? Why this sharp increase in abortions during
the years of George W. Bush? Do you remember the
clarion call of the mid-90-’s presidential
election? “It’s the economy, stupid!” Bear two
things in mind.

1) Two thirds of women who have abortions cite
“inability to afford a child” as their primary
reason (2) With the record job losses under this
Presidency and a decrease in average real
incomes, women (and their male husbands or
partners,) feel they cannot afford to have a
child

2) During the Bush Presidency 5.2 million people
lost their health insurance, with women of
childbearing age over-represented in those
numbers. Hospital costs are staggering and, for
many women, abortion seems the only way out.

Please understand - economic policies and
abortion are not separate issues. They form one
moral imperative, Without jobs, health care, a
living wage, health insurance and child care, all
of this pious talk about family values and
abortion rings hollow. It is empty. It is
hypocritical

A healthy economy and the fair treatment of women
are basic reasons why we will support and vote
for a Roman Catholic, pro-choice Democrat on
November 2, John Kerry believes that achieving
health care is the right of every American,
regardless of his or her income. It is said that
35% of Democrats consider themselves pro-life.
More and more pro-lifers are rallying to the side
of this Party each day. The moral as well as the
economic health of the nation is at issue.

Gary Krane is an independent investigative
journalist who resides in Philadelphia
151 Tulpehocken, Philadelphia 19144
215 248 5985 or 1 888 667 3969 cell

Rev. Dr. James Armstrong is past President of the
Florida Council of Churches.
1560 Almond Court
Casselberry, FL

Note: Prof Glen Harold Stassen has published
statistical analysis articles, one of which was
reprinted as a model for political science
research. His PhD is in Christian Ethics. and he
is a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary

(1) Allan Guttmacher Institute (AGI))

(2) (AGI).

http://www.Kerrysharesourvalues.org





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