My teacher is no more. Professor Michael Gurevitch passed away this morning.

As I fight my tears in disbelief, I am also smiling at my various imaginings. In my little world of unbridled imaginations, Prof Gurevitch was Woody Allen’s Side Effects and head of McLuhan’s Global Village. He was the moderator of the noise in my world of blogs. He was the caricaturist of the planet myspace. Prof Gurevitch was the professor without the difficult words. He was the guide with the greatest wits. He was a scholar who knew his roots. A teacher ever willing to learn. He was the one who I always wanted to emulate. And I shall always do.

So what if he is no more in this world? Certainly, he will be missed terribly by his most loving family; he is going to be missed on the corridors of the College in Maryland by his colleagues. He is also going to be missed at the committee meetings and classrooms by the graduate students, no doubt.

But more importantly, it is his presence that will be felt forever as media studies will continue to be researched upon. It is his contributions to global comparative analysis that will help shape future perceptions as the world shrinks even further. It is Professor Gurevitch’s staunch refusal to limit to the dichotomies that will pave the way for eliminations of schools of thoughts in a deeply divided world of media theories.

And personally for me, he shall reside in my mind and heart, in my pen and keyboard, in my thoughts and actions, than he will ever likely to be missed.

Before I attended the very first class with him, it was my beloved professor, Dr John W Cordes who offered me an introduction. So deeply in love with Prof Cordes’ class that I was, I was slightly apprehensive of leaving the room for the next. Prof Cordes asked me, “Whose class is next?” I said, “Dr Gurevitch’s”. I remember very vividly the reply given by Prof Cordes: “Oh is it? I am so jealous and you are all so fortunate that you shall now be attending to a lecture by Michael!”.

Prof Cordes is always a man of very few words. Although intensely philosophical at heart, he is always concise, and although deeply theoretical, he spoke s a little. And yet, when he offered such a rich tribute to a living professor that one usually reserves for the legends and myths, I could not wait any longer to meet with Prof Gurevitch.

The professor at the Media Theory class was not visibly impressive. He was not dressed in a suit. He was not articulate in his words. He was not polite enough to be the quintessential gentleman. He was not elite enough to be a full professor of a research university. On the contrary, he was the most casual presence in the classroom. He was extremely sarcastic when it came to most thoughts. He was the one who would turn the student’s question upside down and then ask the student what is meant by turning a question upside down.

For Prof Gurevitch, asking the question was not enough. Asking the right questions was crucial. Watching the TV was not inducing violence. Getting afraid of the televised cops was. Presidential elections were not important enough to be in the media. Media were more important for the presidential candidates to continue the fanfare. Would violence stop if there were no video games? Would everyone be so obsessed with their presidents if the television attended to more important issues?

Is it the driver or the bus that’s saying hello to you when you step inside? Why are people so polite in their interactions? Is it because the society is so highly segmented so as to lead to instrumental relationships? Are we gossiping more about the celebrities than our neighbors? No, gossiping is not bad. We have just been overlooking the scene outside the windows, if at all we open it once in a while.

Prof Gurevitch was equally sarcastic of the ideologies. And no, the ideologies were not in the communist countries. When media focus on President Bush, they are doing the duty of presidential coverage. Why are media considered unfree when they focus on the presidents in a totalitarian regime in those countries?

If media are supposed to make us informed citizens, we can ask how well do they perform their role. Perhaps we can test the people if they are well informed, and the professor would chuckle to himself. Then he would be generous to the ambitious freethinking scholars and say that the level of information and level of informed people perhaps do not provide the required comparative scale, but they merely show there is a disconnect somewhere.

Does the disconnect start at the dining room? Why is it that in the American society, sanctity of privacy is so highly regarded that the public sphere almost goes amiss? Why should people discuss politics over food when they can rather watch television? How different is it in a country like Cuba where people watch televisions in communities? Is it a good thing that people cannot afford individual TV sets? What have we done to community radio? How do we know what the housewives feel as a collective experience? Is there a distinction between citizens and consumers? If the democracy needs citizens, do we have a democracy existing today? Have the media not turned us all into consumers? Why do students remain silent inside the libraries? Why is there a “Do not Talk” signboard at a place where debates must naturally should take place?

Prof Gurevitch was never short of questions. When he asked me what was my blog all about, I asked him to go through it. He stressed that he does not even have any interest to write emails to people. He does not believe cell phones are tools of liberation. And yet, the next time I saw him after that was at an informal gathering of bloggers. I walked upto him to pay him respect and give some company as he was the only old man conspicuous by his presence sitting by the corner leaving few empty benches ahead of him. He said he was there to feel the pulse of the blogs. “Can you lend me the video you took of the blog conference you said you had attended in Washington DC last month?”

Prof Gurevitch decided to remain in my committee. Yes the dissertation is about the blogs, but I shall address the issues of noise, he said. I was absolutely thrilled and remained grateful. I am yet to know if the blogs are the vehicles of some sort of liberation, or some sort of noise, but among many words of wisdom that I have learned from Prof Gurevitch, I ever so closely remember the most is his note of caution to me: “Do everything that you must, but take a pause once in a while in life’s journey and look back. Who knows, you might discover you were wrong in some ways. Then move forward again.”

Prof Gurevitch’s own life was a saga of pause and play. In an academic world of strict schools of thoughts, he had to choose his sides only to later disown them gracefully. Earning a doctoral degree through quantitative empirical analysis only to show merits of theoretical qualitative scholarship later. A Marxist scholar who would on more occasion than one publicly deny the allegation. As the Howard Zinn of the media studies in my view, Prof Gurevitch was deeply saddened by the orthodoxy and elitism pervading the Marxist scholarship today. To the classroom he would often digress from Marx and go beyond to Hegel, and as my good fortune, he would then think for a while and say, “hmm..Saswat would have a clue about Hegel, I am sure”.

He knew throughout of my spiritual and emotional love for Karl Marx and Marxist-Leninist philosophies. He was never the one to dismiss the merits of a system that many in American academia swear has failed. He was more concerned about the collective amnesia regarding the constant failure of the democracy that is being heralded as a success. Democracy was a failure in the US as glaringly as it was in India. Who are the ones researching about it? I brought to him texts that were apolitical in many ways to walk the safe lanes. He instead brought his notepad and wrote down the names of the scholars I had proposed. Gayatri Spivak was one of the many he would subsequently go to read about. Feminism was not the solution, and film studies he would stay clear of, but like the blogs, his initial resistance was not so much a denial of his want, as to test how well committed were the arguments in favor of various schools. Once convinced of the arguments, he would go one step further to provide support. I remember clearly how on the day of defense of my Comprehensive examination he asked me in the end, “I am going to ask you a question that I have not asked anyone before.” I was naturally most curious and very apprehensive. He then went on to say, “Frame a question yourself that you would like to answer because you think the question is important, and then answer it yourself.” I was stunned, and delighted at the same time. Was it not just the greatest compliment I had ever received in my life? Or was it perhaps the most difficult question I had ever faced? Either way, it was a lesson I shall always cherish in life, and a wisdom I shall pass along as I keep growing up.

Prof Gurevitch had a sarcasm towards the so-called free society that never really left him. He knew well that the free society was free depending on how much means of freedom one owns. Closer home, he knew how free he was in the classroom depended on how much was he going to be allowed to be. Even with his public shyness from academic radicalism, he often was branded in political terms. In the entire University of Maryland Systems, he was the most qualified of the professors to be offered the least compensation for his contributions. A couple of years back when I had checked into the public disclosure of annual salaries of the university community, most faculty members who were not even full Professors were being paid three times more the amount than Prof Gurevitch himself. Not that he ever discussed why it was so, but he certainly alluded to the fact that even the professors in the free society needed to buy themselves some grants as well. These are the times when there are way less grants for critical studies research, and lot more funding for administrative researches. In this world of unnecessarily positive fancies, where undergrad students would much rather hear of a beautiful career of television anchoring than learn about media monopolies and exploitations, it was only natural that critical media scholarship was about to slowly go defunct.

A former colleague of the legendary Stuart Hall, Prof Gurevitch relentlessly continued his scathing yet constructive attack on the corporate media and conclusively proved that “Media Studies” was not about studying media alone, it was about ripping apart the media as well. Media have always been active agents of the ruling classes everywhere in the world. It is time to honestly critique their roles and needs. Prof Gurevitch in his inimitable wit suggested a website in the classroom during the time none of us had an idea it existed. Nakednews.com is also a media, in fact it offers the very latest news, except that it is more candid about the fetishism surrounding television news. We laughed, but learned it to be true as well.

Amidst the laughter and learning processes, there are millions of words he spoke, and spoke well. Thousands of examples he offered that brought life to a field yet to be systematized. Evidences he suggested which brought to surface the reality that human beings are not scientific, how can the media be?

And beneath all his teachings, and erudite research, he was forever a simple man who had good words to say about different cultures, a winning way to speak with the students, a collegial comrade to his beloved college. And as I recollect the person who perhaps was closest to him in academia in his later years, Prof Kathy McAdams, saying to me, “Did you just take a class with Michael? Did you not simply love him?” I realize that not only have I been so fortunate as having attended his class, I have always and shall continue to love him as a human being I have been proud to have known in this life.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Academic, Activism

By Saswat Pattanayak

The recent news that the American government reports regarding Iran’s nuclear activities were motivated and based on systematic lies is no news.

Back in September 2006, the UN had condemned the US reports as false, erroneous and misleading. Vilmos Cserveny, a director of International Atomic Energy Agency had written a letter addressed to Chairman, US House of Representatives, in clear terms saying that the US report “Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States” (dated 23rd Aug 2006) contained “erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated information”.

The UN’s responses to US report as blatantly motivated were subsequently ignored by the corporate media at that point. The biggest news monopolies chose not to highlight this factor even as they went on raising apprehensions of Iran as the threat to world security. And the people of the western “democracies” naturally went ahead to parrot their oppressive ruling class stances. During the war against Afghan people, they had not raised voice because most of their media told them it was just and appropriate. During the war against Iraqi people, the first world citizens indeed voted their war mongering leaders back to power because they again believed in their militarist war reports. And now, when the tirade turned against Iran, they blindly allowed their corporate media to project Iran as the threat to the world security by consuming overwhelming proportions of anti-Iran coverage.

Following UN objections, not taking chances, the western media imperialists combined their joint efforts. AP, Reuters and AFP (the American, British and French media monopolists) circulated a story that was generated by some French racists. Agence France-Presse, whose single point agenda has been to defame the Islamic world reported in March 2007 by reinventing the myths and published a concocted story that a UN inspector had been denied access to Iran. This story found such coinage and credibility that even in his August tour of Columbia University, Iranian president faced questions from the University President, a learned professor, to this regard.

The fact that the Columbia University President not only believed in the news reports published by AFP and circulated through news channels in the US, but also without feeling the need to investigate into the UN responses, decided to harshly question the morality of President of a sovereign country is evidence enough as to what extent the ordinary working class American people are gullible to the so-called news reports distributed by their trusted media. From Fox to CNN channels, from conservative to liberal publications, American media have historically heeded to false reports, at times deliberately to protect their own grounds, and at times incidentally as a matter of “professional” routine.



Before accusing an individual of committing a crime, the law, order, judiciary and media claim to leave no stones unturned. And yet, in cases such as this where a head of a sovereign state was being accused of preventing UN inspection team, no one thought twice before republishing AFP lies.

The very fact that elected representatives of many western demoncracies thrived through the cold war period by implanting devious designs into independent territories, installed atrocious dictators to suppress peoples movements, forcibly colonized half of the world through territorial and economic invasions is enough to raise collective suspicion that the fourth pillar of such malicious structures, the press, must be largely responsible for continuing the legacy of oppression. And yet, the fact that the enlightened western audience, the successors of the renaissance heritage, the alumni of the ivy leagues allow themselves to be vulnerable to their corporate media productions and they become active participants in reproducing the elites of their countries must raise some basic questions:

1. Media Myths: Even after the UN itself denied the US reports alleging violations of UN norms by Iran, hundreds of thousands of American people continued to believe their media editorials as more accurate than the source they were referring to. It is because the myth that media are independent entities (from administrative interference) looms large in western hemisphere. Media outlets be in Communistic countries, or in Capitalistic countries are active agencies of the political system they work within. If under Communism, they propagate the action plans of the Party and raise awareness among people about socialistic policies, under Capitalism, the media propagate the conflicting situation faced by the ruling party in a multiparty competition and raise awareness about the merits of individualistic market economy. The question then is, how long do people have to wait till they can force the hypocritical media agencies to declare their affiliations (financial, political and ideological)?

2. False News: What happens when a world news is distorted entirely and presented in a form that suits the interests of the ruling class, solely to the detriment of the ruled people? It has always happened, but to take instance of the present case, people are well aware that the ordinary lower economic youths were sent to Iraq to be killed in order to serve the financial interests of the ruling elites in Washington. Even as the 9-11 reports manufactured by the US government were proven to be inconsistent with the reality and even as the government itself is accused of having role in the terrorist act, the even used as an excuse to bomb Iraq was propagated as the only recourse by the media outlets. The president was elected twice based on false news reports circulated nationwide under the preposition of Patriotism. In the recent sleight of hand against Iran, the US media designs were once again defeated when the UN also denied the allegations that its inspectors were forbidden by Iran. In such cases, how long do people have to wait till they can demand the ouster of editors from the news outlets they have been subscribing to, which parrot the official lines while claiming to be independent?

3. People Power: The primary goal of having media or bestowing certain privileges upon journalists is to ensure that people have a platform as wide, or wider than the political parties they allow to administer their affairs over. As years pass by, we notice that the contrary appears to be true. People have been losing their right to know the truth, to seek clarifications and to demand actions using the media platforms. Instead, people are meted out with corporate advertisements to allure and seduce them into remaining permanent features of an exploiting market economy that thrives through sweatshop practices, domestic slavery and private monopolies. Media (TV, Radio, Print, and now Internet) in the capitalistic societies have emerged as extremely necessary vehicles for consumeristic voyeurism. Beyond that, the remaining spaces are filled with outright lies, motivated news items and editorial columns that lack historical insights. Peoples’ participation has possibly increased as is evident through emergence of blogs and independent websites, but most of them anyway rely on the available news items to generate a comment. Hence, the conversation largely then remains within those groups of people that create and recreate the myths in various permutations. The question then is, how long will people have to wait till they can force their governments to restrict corporate advertisements and instead promote popular participation through activism journalism—the only way people power can be transmitted and translated?

Some of my concerns are philosophical in nature. Indeed, probably all are. But if we continue to ignore the roots of our collective human thoughts that’s getting increasingly conformist over the years by remaining content within the parameters of what is provided, than questions over what is required, then possibly we shall be leaving a deeply uncritical and acquiescing world for the future.

Tags: Saswat, Iran, UN, Media, News, Activism

By Saswat Pattanayak

As India (and the world) goes to vote for Taj Mahal tomorrow, an ugly form of patriotism and appreciation has surfaced utilizing a monument declared to be most beautiful by some.

The claim for “seven wonders” (and one wonders why they need to have it to be only seven, and not thirteen, or a hundred) has been reduced to a competitive exercise where people representing their countries exhibit some version of solidarity to showcase monuments that have absolutely nothing in relevance to either the present, or the future.

Moreover, the past--related to sites like the Taj Mahal--also needs to be investigated further before the glorifications continue in a world where human beings have less worth than marble stones.



In our world where visual appeal and exhibitionism is so rampant as to have become a required criterion for assessment of objects, events and people, it is no wonder that huge architectures are recalled with how they merely have been standardized to generate individualist awe, and not with any form of collective remorse.

To mark this day with regret, therefore, I have translated one song which was written more than four decades ago by the great progressive Urdu poet Sahir Ludhianvi. The original poem follows the translated version:

Taj Mahal

For you, Taj Mahal is no less a splendor of love
Amidst the eldritch, obsessed are you with its trove

My beloved! Discover for me yet another place where we can meet!

Grandeur of royal palace is deliberately contrasted
For the commoners; it’s a sordid message so crafted
We mortals have no permit to tread the paths so strewn
With baits to allure us into that maze, to dream to its tune!

Before being inveigled into the royal sparks, my beloved!
You should have descried the mammoth trickery and fraud!
You could have felt the roars of your insignificant abode!

Countless peoples in our world have showered love in abundance
Who can claim their heartfelt love ever lacked sincere affections
But they lacked the means of advertisement, of crude exhibitions
After all, they were like you and I: submitted by birth to cruel situations

This monument, this mausoleum, this unmitigated embankment
These are apparition of regal wealth and unmerited enchantment
For the records of the wretched, these disdainfully antique afflictions
Were erected upon the toil, labor and sweat of many a poor generations

O my beloved! They must indeed have been in love forever
Those that could shape such magnificence by their love’s labor
Yet not a candle is lighted in memory of those that were enslaved
Nor a lamp they could plant to cherish the love of their beloved
This opulent yard, this palatial lap of luxury that marks the ruler
Bedizened with gaudy presence of stately, colossal architecture
It’s merely an act of mockery on part of an autocratic monarch
Who usurping wealth, has smudged the poor, with this indelible mark!

My beloved! Discover for me yet another place where we can meet!

(Trans. by: Saswat Pattanayak, The Peoples' Poet)
----


The original poetry by Sahir Ludhianvi follows:

Taja tere lie eka mazahara-e-ulafata hi sahi
tujha ko isa vadi-e-rangina se aqidata hi sahi
mere mehabuba kahim aura mila kara mujha se

bazama-e-sahi mein gharibom ka guzara kiya maini
sabta jisa raha mein hom satuta sahi ke nisana
usa pe ulafata bhari rahazana ka safara kiya maini
meri mehabuba pase parde tasahira vafa

tune satuta ke nisanom ko to dekha hota
murda sahom ke maqabira se behalane vali
apane tarika makanom ko to dekha hota
anaginata laugom ne duniya mem mauhabbata ki hai
kauna kahata hai ke sadiqa na tha una ke jazabe
lekina una ke liye tasahira ka samana nahim
kyonke vaha lauga bhi apani hi tarah mufalisa the

yaha imarata-va-maqabira ye fasilem ye hisara
matalaqa-ula-hukma sahanasahom ki azamata ke sutum
sina-e-dahara ke nasura haim kahate nasura
jajbe hem una mem tere mere ijadada ka khuna

meri mehabuba, inhem bhi to mauhabbata hogi
jina ki sanai ne bakhasi hai use sakla-e-jamila
una ke piyarom ke maqabira rahe be nama namuda
aja taka ina para jalai na kisi ne qandila
ye chamana zara ye jamana ka kinara, ye mahala
ye munakqasa dara-o-divara ye maharaba ye taqa
ika sahanasaha ne daulata ka sahara le kara
hama gharibom ki mauhabbata ka udaya hai mazaqa

mere mehabuba kahim aura mila kara mujha se

Tags: Saswat, Poem, Media, India, Urdu, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak

In what could be the most visibly grotesque appraisal of monopolistic trends of capitalism, Jeffrey Nelson for Verizon Wireless says, the telecom industry of America is highly competitive. Washington Post quotes him as saying that consumers can choose among numerous handset models and four major providers of cellular services: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile. “If you don't like what one company enables,” he said, “find somebody else.”

Perhaps what’s lost on the corporate communicators is the fact that “four major providers” are signs of monopoly, and not of competition. American capitalism is on its path to perfection in the sense of its graduations. In the film production industry, six studios control over 90 percent of theater revenues. The newspaper industry is owned by only six major chains now. Book publishing industry is handled by seven firms and five largest groups account for all major music production in the country.

One may feel nostalgic about the good old days when the situation was not this drastic, and private families were free to own as much as they wanted to since there were communication regulations in place. One may even argue that after the deregulations bills were passed in 1996, things have started looking murkier with consolidations and clustering of firms at the forefront. But I will not debate at that forum.

The fact of the matter is then, and now, we have failed to understand the nature of capitalism to predict its inevitable trends. What the Washington Post article perhaps says could be a tribute to success of cell phone industries elsewhere in the world where more features are available for the users. But again, that’s a matter of relativity in discussion. What is crucial to understand here is neither the features and plans, nor the brand availabilities (although both these factors are attractive on the surface); but the true accessibility of the technology to all concerned.

In the race to have the best of the services limited to the few of us, is there a ceiling on the accessibility of technology? One would perhaps muse that contrary to my apprehensions, technology has become more accessible today than it was few decades back. But that would be to challenge the very nature of the collective course of human actions. Nothing will remain constant and progress is inevitable with collective endeavors at the research, training and development levels. A progress by default is merely a movement in propelled direction. Only a progress that inculcates struggles to uplift common aspirations is of any intrinsic value.

The gifts of technology, by and large have not been shared by the world populace. And in an era of abundant resources at our disposal and accompanying funds to realize many potentials, it should not come as a surprise as to why the distribution of technological assets has failed to earn commendable results.

The answer lies in the pattern of controlled and monopolized territories of technological know-hows and their ownerships. Even where there is an apparent distribution of access, it is owing to the “market demands”, not for human needs. Of course the phrase “market demands” is as elusive as one can get, considering that the market is as real as its proponents make it to be. The demands are “created” out of profit needs riding the waves of accompanying hypes (what they call in more civilized sense as ‘advertising&rsquo.

In this backdrop then it should come as no surprise to us when we see the entire media industry of America are dominated by three understanding, friendly (as long as they don’t consolidate further) mini empires called Time Warner, Disney and NewsCorp. There are scores of other rulers who are defined as new media monopolists by several research scholars and to avoid the academic traps I will not dwell on them. But just as a pointer to the issue than covering it comprehensively, I am deliberating here on the obvious questions we may need to scratch the surface for:

Cooperative economies have produced immense technological benefits. For instance, the erstwhile soviet system did produce the ultimate scientific progresses we have attained thus far: our exploration of the space. And yet we are ever so ready to dismiss the method while reaping the benefits claiming our consumerist society (where getting enslaved to market lures holds the key) as more conducive an environment for technological progress than the socialist society (where minimum standards defined lives of scientists and farmers alike—a notion entirely lost to the imagination of class society pundits).

However, without questioning the merits of competition and fairness --they are different concepts unfortunately, and no matter how soothing it may sound to some liberal economists, there is no such thing as ‘fair competition’ except in their utopian lexicon—one can safely preclude any form of competition from the capitalistic society.

Coming back to the Verizon staff, the four major telecom giants have a history of throttling competitions on their necks and emerging as “giants” than mere fellow traveling companies. The accompanying limitations of power-sharing are also mutually understood notions. The fact that they are monopolists fooling an entire country in a way Lincoln clearly knew-- although he once said briefly you could not fool everyone all the time—is best paraphrased by Verizon’s best friend (in the press of course they are rivals and what-not) AT&T:

“This whole issue is a giant red herring. This is a fiercely competitive industry which has grown almost entirely through the force of competition in the marketplace, more innovative devices and services, and continually lower prices.” (AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel.)

If Verizon and AT&T are right, then the rest of us must be fools for sure. The question is for how long this grand Ayn Randian narrative of capitalism-as-citadel-of-competition will be believed? And for how long our media will report these as problems with “four major providers”, and not as inevitable consequence of capitalism?

Perhaps when our media wont be corporate themselves anymore. Well, that’s the point!

Tags: Saswat, Capitalism, USA, Economics, Media, Technology

By Saswat Pattanayak

New York Times is as liberal as one can get. Dutifully criticizing the intelligence of Bush administration, it venerates the need of White House warnings. Elitism be dead. Long live the elites!

Regarding the much touted North Korean nuclear programs, the most trusted Daily editorializes:

“The North Koreans had and have an illicit nuclear arms program..... If that’s not bad enough, consider some frightening truths. There is no doubt that Iran is moving ever closer to mastering the skills it will need to produce the fuel for a nuclear weapon — and blithely defying the Security Council’s demand that it stop. But even America’s closest European allies have little stomach for a showdown with Tehran, while Russia and China have strong economic incentives to look the other way. Which means that Washington is the only one left out there to warn the world about the dangers of a nuclear-capable Iran. Make no mistake: there are real and present dangers out there. But who still believes warnings from this White House?”

Ooops...did we read that right? Of the liberal press claims about the need for warning from Washington. Yes, there are “real and present dangers” as NYT suggests, but a cursory look at current international relations would suffice to hand over the warrants to “in here” before warning us of dangers “out there”.

Iraq, Iran, North Korea are apparently the insane, mad, barbaric, and dangerous countries because they have a nuclear agenda where they do not seek blessings of the western powers, rendering their programs to be of some unproven sort. So unproven that, when CIA’s lies gets caught. the national media then treat it as a side story of no consequence, performing its role as fourth estate accomplice. And yet, America and the big powers of Europe are clearly the divine lots in the nuclear club since they are the pronounced pundits of nuclearism!

Along with the McDonaldization of hegemonic ideas, other normalizing factors numbing one’s intelligence at this juncture relates to this all-illusive nuclear club. What exactly is this holy alliance all about? What would lead a smart, informed team of editors at newspapers like NYT not to mention for once that, whereas it is highly deplorable that we underestimate the nuclear agenda of potential N-club members, it is equally imperative that the founding members and board members of this club first be warned about their aggrandizing status as unchecked war-mongers. That, there is no such thing as “illicit” nuclear program, and “legal” nuclear program, and the press has a certain sense of responsibility to uphold fairness before reinforcing such stereotypes that apply the western countries in one manner and the uncouth ones in another (illicit) way. Had United Nations given permission to the existing club members to build nuclear weapons, let alone go to war against sovereign countries?

That, the “real and present dangers” are not so much in suspected quarters of ravished Iraq, enraged Iran or taunted North Korea, as they are in evident military business operations of the very country houses New York Times, and that unashamedly continues to harass occupied territories, whose officers are charged with countless rapes on hapless and innocent citizens, and which refuses to even lower its defense budget in view of its utter failure to prove its legality, claims and whose intents to warn countries before invading them is by itself malapropos.

Its not a “Suddenly Convenient Truth” regarding North Korea that rattles NYT. Indeed, quite the contrary. Such criticism of Bush administrations are suddenly convenient perspectives taken for sake of partisan comforts in an opportunistic parliamentary democracy. The inconvenient truth perhaps was uttered by Albert Camus decades back: “I would like to love my country and still love justice”.

Tags: Saswat, Korea, USA, Media, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak




Click on the video above to watch Michael “Kramer” Richards speak on last Friday, as the audience enjoys a hearty laugh. In fact they were so enjoying that Richards was not stoned or kicked out. He went on to get exclusive interviews on television channels, entirely unharmed. No, the interviews were not conducted in some dingy prison cells, but atop celebrity couches for CNN consumption. The great mainstream media melting pot even aired him as he went on continuing with his racist unapologetic mode: “I'm not a racist. That's what's so insane about this.”

What had he said at the first place that he found those objecting to him were actually the insane people?

"Shut up! "Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass."

"You can talk, you can talk, you're brave now motherfucker. Throw his ass out. He's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger! A nigger, look, there's a nigger!"

Politics of apology is a prerogative of the privileged. After all, the essentially underlying presumption is normalization of situation. In fact, apologies are the soothing weapons of the smooth criminals.

Michael Richards aka Kramer of the “Seinfeld” is another one in the line, following the horrible footsteps of Mel Gibson. No, I am not outraged that these celebrities became honest about how utterly inhumanely and disgustingly racists they were. But certainly outraged that these bigots are still at large in the society hogging the fancy of thousands of their young fans clearly as misguided missiles as are the Aryan sisters called “Prussian Blue”, about whom I wrote last year.

I am clearly outraged that the white supremacist society has yet not found a solution to teach itself some decent lesson in human dignity even after its long evolution as it claims, other than letting some liberal middlemen hosting quick subsequent apology shows to forgive evil intentions as some form of accidental lip-slips.

Was I hoping any better than this? Are we all hoping that the Congressmen will suddenly behave better than corrupt jerks preaching moralist pronouncements of the sexist church order? Are we hoping that the Hollywood will eventually make better movies than pathetically dumb discourse called Crash and the television stars will become any better than this sick, deafeningly sick, Michael Richards? Or that our educational institutes will finally stop bullshitting us about how World War II ended with bombing of Japan and that Ronald Reagan “apologized” a bit too late. Or that we shall be treated to some charming Oprah any better than announcing that “Dreamgirls” is the movie she loves because its made for all people irrespective of their economic class! Aha!

No, I am not expecting miracles here. For the most, the way the television culture has depraved us, a movie or a performer only remains to be graded in terms of recognition and awards. Will she win Oscars? An entirely uncritical society resting on laurels of backdoor promotional competitions to shape its yardsticks of appreciation will only be able to reflect in its churned out “talents”, its own true self.

Michael Richards is not some self-made TV star. He is not some celebrity on his own merit. He is just one of us. He is there at that stage, because we put him there to entertain us. Because most of us actually laughed like sick saddists without applying our critical minds to the television culture. Every evening, this country (and following it, most in the rest of the world) telecasts stupid comedy shows that runs late into the late night with special comedy shows, apparently by liberal by names of Stewarts and Lopezs too. There are dedicated channels and prominent companies producing “stand-up comedies” 24/7. The culture of humor in capitalistic marketplace is the most potent ingredient to normalize the otherwise actual tension that prevails in the society.

Humor as capitalistic agent of illusive consensus:

Racial tensions are not some exaggerated fictionalized accounts of hyped media reports. They are for real. In fact, in every racist country from Britain to France, they are the only things that’re real. Denial of privilege and race-blindness is the prerogative of the few elites representing the historically oppressing racial category that manufactures the divisions to distinguish humans on basis of color skin. One would have wished the Apartheid ended. One would have perhaps also imagined that the black issues were resolved following desegregation. But wishes and hopes do not make a society run.

The reality is that the racial tensions are necessary consequence of free trade capitalism. It is capitalism that’s the creator of racism through its patriarchal control of private property by means of subjugating human beings as slaves to further the profit consolidation of the masters class. In fact, for capitalism to grow and further its own interests, racism needs to be furthered too. New forms of racism will take place of old forms of racism, just as credit cards are replacing old cash circulation. But the essential implementation of divide and rule will forever remain the cornerstone for the wealth-grabbers to stay in power over those that earlier used to remain as slaves, and now as freemarket consumers. Earlier they were house slaves, today they are software slaves. Difference is in the degrees.

Likewise, earlier the subjugation of society used to take place through sheer brutal force. As the levels of sophistication increased, the territorial conquests were replaced by imperialistic expansions. And these days, via more implicitly sophisticated means such as words defined by the masters’ dictionaries as soothing: words such as liberty, democracy, family, happiness, elections, television, comedies and organic food.

So what we have is the culture of comedies in the most obnoxious of places. In the most inappropriate settings. During the most pathetic times. Never in the history of humanity, so many people of the world felt so very helpless at their inability to prevent wars of mass destructions launched by the most unqualified of people to assume leaderships. And yet during days like these, the television shows and comedy films are making the biggest of business. During a time when the entertainment industry should have been focusing on agitating the people through critical education about their role in reversing world order, we have all the world television channels owned by five old men and the film industries run by people like Tarantinos (another N-word hyperactivist). And all of them have readymade shows to make people stay relaxed. How will we know if we need to be relaxed? The celebrities tell us when is the time to relax and how to feel relaxed after undergoing body jobs. How we shall know this is the time to laugh? The background clap sequences on comedies will ask us to laugh along the scenes. Such perversity of underestimation of collective human intelligence is a compelling tale of how far have we regressed in our movements.

What to do with Michael Richards?

Nothing. Ideally he should be jailed for "fifty years with a fork up on his ass". That’s the minimum verdict that he deserves. But that’s not even a portion of what we must all undergo if we envisage our future as active agents of humanity, and not some remote controlled passive recipients of messages and bullets.

All of us must daily observe a couple of hours introspecting about our own inactions, apathy, indifference, involvement and withdrawal from the largely racist world that has been a direct creation as a result of our collective indecisiveness. While at it, we must realize that we need to be as honest with ourselves as Richards and Gibson were with themselves, not just when we are angry, but throughout the 24 hours everyday. If overcoming the deep love for our own dominant supremacist race at the cost of degrading those we oppressed becomes too difficult, we must be prepared to die the way that abominable creature and our racist epitome called Hitler ended his life. We don’t need another television show which the neo-nazis like Michael Richards pay to apologize. We need Richards and his likes to be forced to introspect and change. And if they do not “amend”…..Well, they better amend.

I wish I could say all that I wanted to. But unlike some elite white folks in this country and their counterparts in much of Europe, I certainly do not enjoy "Hate Speech" privilege anyway. And neither do I want to enjoy any of this. Good for them.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Racism, USA, Technology, Capitalism

Got this from Dr TSB of the media blog Drums in the Global Village.


Hey, Folks -

Yup, the first 6 hours of EYES ON THE PRIZE will, finally, be re-broadcast nationally on PBS’ “The American Experience” on the first three Mondays in October (Oct. 2, 9, 16) at 9:00 pm (check local listings). They’ll air 2 hours each Monday.

Hour 1 - “Awakenings” (1954-1965) — Emmett Till and Montgomery Bus Boycott

Hour 2 - “Fighting Back” (1957-62) — School Desegregation, including Little Rock and ‘Ol Miss.

Hour 3 - “Ain’t Scared of Your Jails” (1960-61) — Sit-ins and Freedom Rides

Hour 4 - “No Easy Walk” (1961-63) — Albany, Ga; March on Wash.; Birmingham

Hour 5 - “Mississippi: Is This America? (1962-64) — Medgar Evers and Miss. Freed. Summer

Hour 6 - “Bridge to Freedom” ( 1965) - Selma March

**Important - PBS is waiting to see the audience response to the first series before it commits to air the 2nd EYES series(8 hours). Though the first series is really inspirational, it is the 2nd series that is most relevant to the issues we’re dealing with today: the war; growing gap between rich and poor, etc. (It’s in the 2nd series that you see footage of the Dr. King speech in which he calls for “a radical redistribution of economic power.&rdquo It’s also in the 2nd series that you get the murder of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago, the establishment of COINTELPRO, and the Attica Rebellion.

So, it would be great if folks would call their PBS station and let them know you: a) appreciate seeing the first series again and b) hope they’ll also air the second series.

Both the first AND second series will be available on VHS and DVD through PBS Video — but ONLY as institutional sales — no home video.

Thanks!
- judy
(Judy Richardson)

Tags: Saswat, History, Black Power, Racism, USA, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

I am unsure if Shakespeare had such premonitions engulfing his worst tragedies, but the Hindu superpower India with its proud “economic growth rates” has been forcing me to wonder if we are missing the coming signs of the times. The tell-tales are here, the hints of misfortune are looming large, the sustained oppression by the Indian state on its peoples with “foreign aids” is rampant. And yet somewhere since last couple of years a major chunk of world’s geographical region is dancing away at a maddening pace, drinking the drink of its blood and dancing the dance of its death.

The world’s largest democracy is also the biggest booming free market economy. With exception to no other land today, the enthusiasm of the urban youths of India has emerged pure, and unbridled. The mass popular culture of subservient bollywood films, inferior diaspora literatures and profit hungry mainstream media have a projection of jubilance, of multifarious vibrancy in social lives that’s almost instantaneously appealing. In no contrast, the elite high class societal circles are doing their Manhunts, race courses and business parties, relatively different in degrees since they were upto the social mischiefs even decades before the educated mass had its date with ‘freedom’.

Far too often this comfortable dichotomy of mass/class paradigm finds entry into the social consciousness. Whether the cart drives the horse or the horse does it becomes a redundant issue so long as the movements occur for both. In economics, its called a trickling down effect of the riches of the rich which the rest have a privilege to enjoy depending on which ladder of the hierarchy are they located at the time of the rain.

What’s super ironic at such junctures of “progress” in any society based on the premise of those who define the progress is that the ladder is usually placed upon a pedestal to begin with. That is, the hierarchy of profiteers does not begin with the ground, but with the elevated first step that misses the dirt and the wretched entirely before the stepping up can take place.

These dirt of India, entirely absent from global long-term memory are the peasants of the country who hold the ground, but who do not feel the trickles falling on them. Remember how during the natural disasters, helicopters throw relief goods targeted at some places which are usually devoid of women and children. And even when the women and children are present, somehow they don’t succeed at running for the food packets because they are busy holding the grounds under thatched roof, doubly oppressed by the central governments and their oppressive patriarchal custodians. Case against the peasants is almost similar. In a predominantly agrarian economy like India, ever since its “independence”, the ruling class has acted like patriarchs while overstepping and conveniently ignoring them on its way to new heights of power.

Not that, anything else was expected of the ruling elites class characters. Systematically suppressing every peasant rebellion in India during the British rule, the rulers (kings, british, and Indian elites) promised non-violent glories in place of revolutionary emancipation. Although the different strands of national struggle for liberation against the colonialists needed to find support among the larger revolutionary masses, the people were half sensitized about the nature of the national struggles engaged in by a faction of elites who surely fought the foreign power, but also because they wanted to hold onto their own.

Five year plans in India were formerly known to be based on a socialistic desire to industrialize the country soon after the British were shown the door. But instead, the plans with every phase systematically were fine-tuned to improve the lot of the secondary and tertiary sectors at the cost of the primary. This suited the class characters of the ruling elites of course, but what’s more distressing is that it was accepted almost unequivocally as a “progress” for the country which housed more than 80% peasants, that constituted as much percentage of below poverty line populace for the whole country.

Agrarian Crisis Continues:

Agrarian crisis in India are nothing new. Indeed, without any effort to bring the peasantry back to cultural fold, the homegrown capitalists of India have only heightened the crisis with every passing phase. As a result, what we have today is indiscriminate murders of peasants of India. Forcing them to lead lives without a sense of human dignity or basic standards of life, they have been forced to take extreme steps. While some have invariably joined the naxal movements to raise up arms against the Indian state, many are killed by the state power structure.

The media, the maneuvered toy of the Indian capitalists plays the corporate tune at such mass genocide committed by Indian state. More than 800 peasants have been killed in this kharif season alone. The Indian media not only portray these heroic submission to state atrocities as “suicides”, it also pities the deaths. The world must remember that the peasants who are dying every day in India are not committing “suicides”. Indeed, suicides are reactionary steps taken voluntarily by people weak by their willpower. Indian peasants have been among the most brave lot of all peoples of the world when one considers the British oppressions and Indian government atrocities upon them. Despite that, the peasants have carried on with unmatched courage to face the “man-made” disasters perpetrated upon them by the ruling class. If now there have been deaths subsequent to this, just as there are everytime following artificial famines, its not because of their inability to pay off debts, its because of the state power machine inflicting deadly repressive measures against them in particular.

Suicide Pathology of the Elites:

Indian intelligentsia, pathetically devoid of critical reflections have been allowing the corporate media to thrive on assumptions about the citizens. Firstly, there have been no suicides in Vidarbha. Suicides are caused by people themselves. These deaths of peasants are state-aided murders.

Ramu Bhagwat’s report in an unforgivable mistake of Indian fourth estate called, The Times of India, is headlined “3 farmers kill selves; toll 200 in 2 months”. Even after an effete shame of a prime minister by the name of Manmohan Singh visited Dhamangaon village with empty rhetoric which made him famous at Oxford last year, these farmers died because they were unable to repay Rs 13,000 to State Bank of India. That’s how much for two farmers lives? Remember its less than $300. Or in Indian urban class value today, less than half of what a first IT job gets a teenager in a month.

The government of India gleefully enjoying its power trip has not resigned following hundreds of murders it commits on its poor by forcing them to death, because it clearly has no morality. Its opposition, the absolutely brazen right wing coalitions, who at the first place assisted their private business funders to cause price hikes is also unabashed in its hypocrisy. But the worse, the Indian media and the watchdogs of so-called democracy are continually harping on their masters’ tunes by calling deaths as suicides, as though it were the fault of the farmers, and lulling the rest of India into web of ignorance.

That, people have expressed disgust at Manmohan Singh’s promises which has not even helped them to gather little money to sow seeds after saplings were washed away by rain, has been completely lost on the mainstream perception. That if one contextualizes the background of peasant crisis in India, one will realize that this is no sudden aberration on part of teeming millions of peasants but a continuation of systematic exploitation unleashed upon them specifically during the days of the British and during anti-people regimes of Indian state which decidedly started favoring private industries at cost of public cooperatives. And most importantly, that the Indian journalists and researchers are not entirely ignorant of the agrarian crisis and the stoic silence around the issue which is a great socio-political crisis of neo-liberal India.

Despite the social significance of the struggle of the peasants against the Indian state, the self-professed enlightened young and old analysts have decided to treat the deaths as some personal deviance. Indeed, since suicide is a cognizable offence under the law, perhaps the peasants have been declared as criminals by the media experts.

Pathetic pity of indifferent experts:

Take a look at NDTV. Just like Times of India, this mainstream grapevine has a report by Supriya Sharma who proposes that the “suicide epidemic of this scale should be seen and treated as a crisis of mental health”. Indeed she goes on to interview a psychiatrist to trace the etiology. Whereas psychiatry is not such a despicable path to solutions, after all, that the media have a habit of finding problems elsewhere than where it is most obvious is something worth reflecting over. Dr Patil, the subject of Sharma’s study says of a farmer “patient”: “He lost his crop due to the rains. Last year he lost his crop because there were no rains. So for the last 2-3 years he consecutively lost money. So he got depressed.”

She goes on to report:

"When a farmer is in distress, if we could call doctors from Akola or a government official, he feels someone is there to listen to him. And if no one listens, he may feel ignored and contemplate suicide," said a local.

All the cases are a grim encounter that reinforces the fact that the sprt in suicide cases in the region should be seen and treated as a crisis of mental health.

Journalists like Sharma are no simplicists, indeed no reductionists either. They are even literate to the point that they find a need to complicate the situation further to understand it better, in a perfectly academic fashion. But what happens in the process is that their limitations guide their intuition than their grounding in social history of the people they survey. As a result, the superficial flourishes, the blame-game continues at the most trivial manner and the headlines surge them to promotions since they systematically let the system go do its own brutalization even as people are “treated” for mental illnesses.

Oppressors’ aids for the brutalized people:

I will not delve into the other pathetic media stances where the need for peasant revolution for today’s India has been dismissed abjectly to the extent that there is no such mention to begin with. The kinds of questions that are being raised are only sufficiently complimenting the kinds of answers the corporate nation of India today seeks. For example, the conscientious journalists like Rajdeep Sardesai through their media request donations to help farmers by using heart-rending pictures. Tax-exemptions for the rich are obviously on the offing. Sardesai and his likes receive huge accolades for their so-called social concern, to “help the needy”. And the guilt-free doners go back to business of furthering their oppressions.

The cyclic amnesia of the Indian elites while it comes to dealing with their own crimes, (which they translate as peasant suicides) is beyond mere reproach. These are punishable offences that the elites must be taken to task for. Equitable distribution of wealth is not a role of some politicians sitting high on an elected platform. This takes place only through organized revolution by the oppressed classes against the feudal lords of India (who by mistake presume they are some advanced capitalist class, even as they continue to practice the most extreme form of casteism,—Karan Thapar was pronouncedly against the Dalits when it came to reservation issue, for example—sexism,--corporate houses washed their hands off for the murder of HP female employee at the dead of the night, and class society—the division between the rich and the poor has never been so widely marked ever before in the history of India—some people talking of donation of crores of rupees, and most other sell their children for paltry sums on astonishingly regular rate as in states like Orissa.

What we need at the moment is to organize the farmers to demand not aid, but reparation. The peasants of India in the past have upstaged the royal families, they have forced the colonialists out through mass uprisings, and now they need to get rid of the new feudal class of India, the class of oppressors who have been systematically making way for capitalism in India, to make gains for their own class interests, and detrimentally working against the farmers who have been rendered without food, housing and education, far too much, far too long. The feudal ruling elites of India did not demand reparations from the British and facilitated their comfortable exits so that they would continue from where their masters had left. But the peasants and farmers and working class of India must gather up all their might to ensure reparation for the exploitation they have been unleashed upon. And nothing less than an organized revolution by the most oppressed will replace the course of history.

Do not call their sacrifices suicides as yet. They are the martyrs of a feudal India in protest against the elitist rule in their name carried on by confessed agents of imperialism. And these ruling class of liberal politicians, conservative religious cults, their police, military, nuclear regime, and media stooges will be forced to tremble.

Watch out for the wrath of the wretched!

Tags: Saswat, Economics, India, Capitalism, Communism, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

In a large-scale human tragedy today, a series of bomb blasts in Mumbai has taken lives of more than 150 people. However, these blasts are no aberrations for the financial capital of India. Mumbai—a city governed by Hindu right-wing fanatics of India—has faced such calamities several times in the recent past.

What’s unique about the blasts in the western India –Gujarat and Maharashtra—is their etiology. Invariably all the blasts have been religious in nature, targeted to create heightened communal tension in the region. And today was no different.

So, if communal violences have such a pattern of occurrence and regularity in frequency, how is it that the administrations turn conveniently indifferent towards their recurrence? Who are benefited in the process?

The usual suspects:
“Terrorists” is one-word explanation given as being the perpetrators for every systematic violence these days. Of course, this word has gained coinage and credibility through the usage by the ruling class. What is important to note here is that the more one uses this word, the more one tends to align with the interests of the ruling class.

A violation to the law and order necessarily is handiwork of the people who desire instability. Without going into the logistics regarding needs of instability (which could be desirable for various reasons too), one can assume that the ruling power draws sympathy wave from people by projecting an ‘external’ element to be cause of innocent peoples’ deaths. Interestingly, the structural instability actually happens only with killing of the politicians, whereas their structural “stability” takes place when innocent lives are lost!

Of course, it usually happens during the days when the ruling powers are apparently most unstable themselves. By every account, any war in the world is also caused at times of uncertainty for the ruling powers. Think of any cold war interventions by the US (spread of communism was the factor), or later on Clinton in Yugoslovia (Monica Lewinsky) or Bush in Iraq (September 11 orchestration). Or take for account, India’s own trysts with regional instability resulting in massive operations in Assam, Punjab, and Kashmir.

More often than not, these take shape of communal violence (just as every war has been fought by religious fanatics). In India, bomb blasts in Maharashtra or genocide in Gujarat are cases of Hindu fanatics attacking Muslim minorities in the name of their own misplaced insecurities.

Misplaced Insecurities:
In the past, the allegations by Hindu Mafia of India against the Muslims were based on myths such as: “Muslim population is increasing in rapid pace to overtake Hindu majority”, “Muslims of India are Pakistani loyalists, and since Pakistan is an enemy state, Muslims must be declared so too” etc. Practicing neo-nazi tactics of training Hindu youths to take up violent means to eliminate Muslims from India, the Hindu militant groups have traditionally enjoyed quite a presence. From propagandizing religions in school education (Saraswati Vidya Mandir) to promote Hindu businesses (Swadeshi Jagran Manch), the right-wingers of India have stopped at nothing in overcoming their insecurities.

Clearly all these insecurities of Hindus fundamentalists have led to loss in lives and property of Muslims (Gujarati Muslims are usually attacked more, because of their prosperous business) and fellow Hindus (who clearly in majority reject these fanatics except for once when they elected BJP to a considerable tenure). But of course, these tactics are carried out most surreptitiously, and at times with blatant disregard to actual circumstances.

Why Mumbai? Why now?
In continuance with this power ploy, the recent tragedies in Mumbai started since last three days.

First, someone defaced the statue of one woman in Mumbai. But this woman was not BR Ambedkar or for that matter, Mahatma Gandhi. Because in Mumbai, and elsewhere in India, on a regular basis, statues of these two giants of Indian freedom struggle are subjected to desecration.

Ironically, this woman was way more powerful. As the late wife of the Hindu supremacist Bal Thackeray, the figure in statue commanded respect. Hence all political parties instead of looking into maintaining law and order of the state so that no publicly installed statues are defaced, and the ‘actual’ culprits are caught, they came forward to apologize for the shameful incident.

The sainiks, allegedly representing the majority religion of India, decided to react in their traditional manner: in a purely Hindu supremacist way. So none less that the executive president of the party (whose mother’s statue this was) decided to take law into his own hands. He declared proudly: “If derogatory cartoons appearing in a newspaper in far-off Denmark can have repercussions in India, this incident is bound to provoke reactions from Shiv Sainiks.”

What a shame!

First off, no one knows who defaced the statue. In all possibility, it might have been a handiwork by the right wing plotters themselves. The desecration took place in wee hours of early morning. The police in Mumbai say the incident took place when there was no activity on the street. In other words, it was not an organized effort by motivated party. To further incite tensions, an empty tourist bus from Gujarat was burnt down in front of the Hindu bosses’ office. It was also found out that this could have been a result of short-circuit, and not done by any motivated party.

Mumbai Joint Commissioner (Police) Arup Patnaik said, “Video footage suggests that the flames started inside, so we are also probing whether it could have been caused by a short circuit. Our priority is to quell the disturbances and maintain order.” The police said they had no leads on the incident that sparked off the day’s disturbances.

So basically, there was no reason to suspect that any Muslim groups or “terrorists” or Pakistan might have been behind such incidents. On the contrary, going by the way, the statue was chosen (to rouse sentiments), the bus came from Gujarat (Hindu violent prone state) and the location (Shiv Sena office), one could investigate the hands of the Sainiks in these events.

But, even as the state police clearly said they had absolutely “no lead”, the leader of the fanatic party declared a war. Throughout the state, widespread violence was let loose. Thackeray, after visiting the spot, told reporters that there was likely to be “ramifications”.
The dark humor
When the majority religions take stock of the situation, the communal racism just takes over. Because of the sheer majority of people that lead the war, they confidently go on attacking like mad dogs. Such rampage has been going in India since decades now.

Just three days back when on July 9, Thackeray warned the country that severe reactions from Shiv Sainks was inevitable, one was apprehending the attacks. Unfortunately it turned out to be even more serious. Closely on the heels of the attacks in Kashmir, where American interests lie, the attack in Mumbai has been planned in premeditated fashion so as to draw international condemnation: against Islam.

To appease American obsession with anti-Islam movements throughout the world, the Indian group of loyal foot soldiers have indeed given fuel to the fire. There was no international coverage of the violence let loose by Shiv Sainiks which had paralyzed the city of Mumbai since last three days. And to draw further attention, innocent lives had to be sacrificed.

This is an old political trick that has always helped Indian communal leaders. When the government at center has been doing absolutely nothing to agitate Pakistan into a war, the war mongering Hindu fundamentalists had no better excuse than looking towards Kashmir and Mumbai.

What needs to be done?
First and foremost, none of the persons on that local train deserved to die this way. Enemies could be well within the same people who are staging a drama of violent protests. There must be through investigations to that effect. Not biased investigations. The Indian intelligence sources need to be smarter than they are now.

Corporate leaflets pretending to be newspapers, like Times of India have already created headlines regarding the perpetrators even before the investigations have begun! One report already says, “LeT, SIMI hand in Mumbai blasts”. Highest form of irresponsible journalism can only result in such news stories. The report without naming any sources, says in the first paragraph itself that the “terror attack on Mumbai trains was carried out by Lashkar-e-Toiba and local Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) activists and was designed to trigger communal conflagration in the country’s financial capital.”

And in the body, it says, “While still waiting for clues to emerge, top intelligence sources in New Delhi seem pretty sure the blasts on the trains were plotted by Lashkar modules which are increasingly collaborating with activists of SIMI, which boasts of strong pockets of influence across Maharashtra.”

For such serious violence that causes hundreds of valuable lives, the press, the government and the so-called intelligence sources are highly irresponsible, and criminal in their misconducts. Times of India owes a public apology for displaying such highest form of carelessness. It’s entirely lost on me as to how someone can be “pretty sure” of the blasts while “waiting for clues to emerge”! As in the past, this time also, the official propaganda machine of India might prove successful and they may even go and nab some people with Muslim surnames (a recent popular Bollywood cinema "Khakee" (2004) dealt with this tragic issue).

History revisited?
In the past, everytime there have been communal violences in India, the administrations have found easy scapegoats in a) Pakistan, b) Pakistani-funded terrorists. Alas, they have never provided any evidence to support these claims. (while on the contrary, independent findings by filmmakers and judicial bodies have always found the homegrown communal parties to be the root causes). These blame-games are perfectly orchestrated tricks by the Government of India to maintain its supremacy in the subcontinent. And in the process the communal politicians have never cared to think of the lives lost.

At times, facts of life are too obvious to be missed. One of them tells me about the complete absence of deaths of lives of the politicians who are ‘protesting’ the most. It’s always usually the innocent commoners who lay down their lives. The people who are responsible for maintaining law and order (the politicians themselves) fail to own up to their responsibilities (barring perhaps Lal Bahadur Shastri in case of a rail accident). They never seem to resign from their powerful positions for not having been able to provide their people any sense of security. On the contrary, while adamantly glued to their seats of power (or of opposition power in the parliaments), they keep blaming some or the other external factors, so that in times like this, they can scare enough people to get united for their own sake.

This time, it should be enough.
Well, this time….
No more reasons to call mayhem
Not one more life in your name
Not another death to uphold your religion
No more such violent catch 22 situation
Not to secure your mother’s dormant statues
Nor to pay back for your father’s power abuse
No more thought controls by government bureaucrats
Not once more will we believe in your tactics of attacks
No time to agitate, its time to step down from power
No press conferences, no indomitable statues or tower
In such times, politicians of the world must unite
You have everything to lose, including your might
For once, walk with the people, feel their agonies
Set examples of selves, write accords for peace
Stop the blame-games with Pakistan and Muslims
Or against one’s poor, the backward, and their miseries
Now is the time to act, to promise just one thing:
Stop playing communal, ‘tis just one life for rejoicing.
(Saswat Pattanayak, Peoples’ Poet, 2006)

Tags: Saswat, Islam, Hinduism, India, Pakistan, Media

The following article is authored by two of my dearest comrades.

In the quest for What Needs to be Done!

Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Media, Capitalism, Racism, USA

By Saswat Pattanayak

Vikram Buddhi could be anyone. He could be the mindful mathematician, eloquently solving world riddles. He could be the calculative genius on behalf of pacifist Einstein. He could have been framed as his family is pleading . He could have himself posted the messages as he is admitting.

I see two dimensions to it: one, the action itself (online participation) and two, the ideology, if any (the politics of it).

The question is what are the circumstances that might have led to his erratic and clearly unjustified postings? As an example, in a chatroom, any frequent visitor will notice the oh-so-frequent postings of hate lines all the time. Clueless people on both sides of political spectrum spit venoms at each other, initially beginning with racist comments like “you Indians always smell curry” or nationalist comments like “why do you all land up in my country” to personal assaults like “get the hell out of here, else we’ll bomb you like we do”.

None of the lines above are manufactured. As a researcher in digital media interactions, I frequent public chatrooms to sense the happenings and all the time face such ballistics. Considering my lifetime trysts with misdirected wraths from the conservatives and casteists, Hindu fanatics and average theists in India, I never ‘confront’ or ‘counter’ such irrational and outlandish racist comments. I fully empathize that the atomized people living in secluded apartment houses as individualistic wholes, without any interaction with neighbors, whom they do not know incidentally (since they speak different languages) or intentionally (since many are immigrants); where behaviors from both issues of immigration and language have been made suspect (how many television shows or films are produced to depict normal behavior from foreign language immigrants?), people then turn to online interactions as a good outlet. There, isolated individuals find others in a community. In America, the community that should be existing in the real neighborhoods actually exists in virtual world.

As an oasis in human society, people flock into bulletin boards to at least find people who can ‘talk’ to them, and not merely put up smileys on the roads. The chatrooms and bulletin boards are of course all moderated. And moderated by people who are political beings themselves. Where it’s the machine, there are words which are censored. Of course the words that are censored are themselves a limited list, and that list consists only of some English words that are recognized as offensive to one culture and omits all the hundreds of words that could be otherwise offensive to other cultures. Cultures here mean, not just countries, but also religions, non-religions, sexual orientation, gender issues in foreign countries, and political philosophies etc. Although everyone is allowed free entry into the boards, their freedom is clearly demarcated.

This is what makes the case of online interactions less interesting. A hegemonic set of rules determine what’s called a hate speech. Where ACLU might have got it right and the pro-rule advocates wrong is this fine line. Incidentally today’s world is not one singular nation. With several different cultural codes and the freedom for interaction among all cultures (anyone from Finland can be part of a chatroom of Seattle), that’s been provided by online forums, it’s virtually impossible to deconstruct every insults. And the rules will only help suppress the voices of the minorities whose words and intentions are more susceptible for charges.

Free speech has always worked in favor of those who are free to exercise them. That said, it has also been used to preclude the minority voices. Preclude them on several grounds. And there are several minorities in this country. This case pertains to political diversity.

Clearly, Buddhi is not a liberal or a guy on the left. His views have no consonance with the progressives. No person of any amount of critical thinking skill can even lend support to his words. Basic elementary understanding of the left is that sporadic violence does not lead to any solution. Elected presidents of any country or their party people are truly innocent. The guilty in an electoral democracy where ignorance about general knowledge of cultural history and political geography of the world is rife, are the larger gamut of voters who vote without slightest knowledge of their role in perpetuating an unjust political environment. What Buddhi announced on bulletin board shows either he was provoked into doing so (considering that he had apparently no criminal background), or he was having being completely naïve, stupid, and perhaps idiotic. People may also consider him anything else, and I shall not stand in the way.

However, I have been asked by some friends to take a stand on him. And I shall take one. Clearly I am not in favor of anything that he has said. If his act be considered political, then this is my view. People who want to change the world for the better do the basic minimum homeworks: they need to know a lot of history of all kinds of peoples, they need to organize people on common progressive causes, they need to educate others who could not afford to spend all that time on understanding differences. These steps need not be guided by principles of violence or non-violence. They need to be guided by purposes. And the purpose needs to be for overall betterment of the world, starting with the world’s poorest, the ones who have been historically deprived, the working class and the hungry mass. None of these involve any thoughts around mindless postings of a privileged nutcracker.

All that being said, I could be reading too much into Buddhi’s politics. He may not be a political guy at all. As Mahablog responds to a right-winger, “Hey, buddy, welcome to my world! Do you really think “your” side doesn’t send threats and obscenities to us?” The point is Buddhi episode is an excuse for the folks on the right to make merry and rejoice, by unnecessarily pulling the left into the discourse.

I do not agree that he had anything to do with politics, let alone American party politics. Buddhi has neither done anything which amounts to online political activism, or grassroots political activism or anything that’s worth considering when one looks at what political activism denotes. So I cannot support him on any political ground.

On principle, however, I will support ACLU if freedom of an individual to express something is concerned. This is a shady area, I know. There are all these people who are using homophobic languages and indeed murdering people merely based on their sexual orientations. When ACLU defends the gay activists, it is branded as supporting hate crimes (where speaking in favor of LGBT is considered as hate-speech…ouch!). The fine line between who propagates hate is just that: a fine line. Especially after 9/11, it is more so. And I am not sure if we can tolerate all hate-speeches and protect them under first amendment. Buddhi's talks are cheap and hateful. He must face consequences. But let him not be singled out because he is a foreign national. For, before him, in recent many times, scores of hate speakers have been getting standing ovations. One in a responsible position of authority even went ahead to call for assassination of another elected leader. Many neo-nazi websites are daily preaching hates. And they are fine and running and getting great google ranks! On educational campuses including University of Maryland, one can see preachers all over. I have been stopped by in the campus and my apartment, where preachers come in fake identities to proclaim love and then soon say how all other religions are evil and there is no such thing as a God from other religion.

Buddhi is not an exception in the pool of hate-preachers. Indeed, he is only the most recent (well...almost). And possibly the most inconsequential. And possibly, the most rightist among them.

Tags: Saswat, Capitalism, India, Colonialism, Media, Technology

By Saswat Pattanayak

“This is our function. Our Founding Fathers understood that government by its nature tends to oppress those it has power over. Our Founding Fathers decided that there must be, there had to be, there should be and there is, an institution that keeps an eye on government. That is what we do. There is nothing in the Constitution about the freedom to practice law. There is nothing in the Constitution about the freedom to practice medicine. There is nothing in the Constitution about the freedom to engage in commerce. There is nothing in the Constitution about teaching or learning. But there is something in the Constitution about the freedom of the press. Our Founding Fathers understood that it would be necessary to have a watchdog on government, and that is our role: to keep a watch out.”
--Jack Anderson (1922-2005) in a speech at Utah State University six years ago.

Even the legendary Anderson was under the illusion!

And as the documents of one of the greatest investigative journalists, are now being accessed by FBI for editing, his thundering words of trust in the freedom of press falls short of vindication.

Anderson’s family wants to donate his papers to George Washington University. And NPR reports that the FBI wants to review the archive and remove items it deems confidential.

Question is not about the onus of ownership. It’s certainly neither about the authenticity of what should be considered ‘confidential’. It’s not even about respecting the right of Anderson’s family to put forth the request.

What’s at stake is what’s being excavated. What’s at stake is the nature of materials that Anderson had access to, both as the friend of McCarthy, and subsequently as his nemesis. As being member of the then American President’s notorious list. As arch-enemy of the then FBI’s director, possibly the most illustrious director of all time. As someone constantly distancing himself from the powerful and always aligning himself with the working class sources. As an example, today completely lacking among mediocre media showbiz.

Anderson attested how the so-called ‘cold war’ has been fraught with several hot-blooded wars that have caused millions of deaths. And Anderson’s contribution to exposing at least parts of that cannot be undermined. Recently official documents released by White House showed America’s active role in destabilizing Indian subcontinent. It confirmed the Nobel Prize for Peace winner Henry Kissinger’s actual Warmongering motives. It showed how misunderstandings were being deliberately created between Vietnam, China and USSR, for gains that would cause genocides in Bangladesh.

And coming into light of these knowledge is no mean achievement. For one, it clearly demonstrate that so-called democratic regimes are not governed either by its peoples (most Americans are peace-loving working class people), or for its peoples (most Americans suffer the burdens of international terrorism). And most importantly, Anderson’s documents clearly deconstruct the larger narrative of North-South, First World-Third World dichotomies, where traditionally, even according to primary textbooks, people from the “underdeveloped” economies are mean-minded savages. Anderson’s documents prove quite an upset to that.

Anderson also exposed CIA conspiracy to assassinate Fidel Castro. He too exposed threadbare the FBI Hoover’s various dubious, and often monstrous links. He traced to core the position of Mafia in American political circles. As the longest running and widest read political commentator of the country, his readers believed he and his team investigated daily, what Woodward and Bernstein did just once in Watergate.

And many of the papers, apart from their gory portrayals of sinister cold war period, could actually educate the entire country on more authentic history of the peoples, from the lens someone who stood in the circle of the people, than basked in the glories of the official press lobby. And for these acts of conviction, during his lifetime, his murder was attempted by top political agents. And today, after his death, its way ironic, that he would even to this day haunted by the people in power for his documents.

For in his lifetime, he would not have let anyone take possession of the papers, in order to hide them. For an investigative journalist, the entity lies in “exposing” the findings to the public and “concealing” the source. Not, exposing the sources, and concealing the findings. No matter, the intentions of the founding fathers, as Anderson quotes, the foundation understanding of press functions lack authenticity today.

Tags: Saswat, Media, USA, Academic, Communism, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak

The “liberal-bias” of the media has again come to light. In the recent Los Angeles Times report “Doubts About Taking On Tehran”, the bias is evident. Clearly it’s a headline that works for the liberals. The headline exhumes that “About half those polled support military action if Iran continues its nuclear activity but don't trust President Bush to make the call.”

Throughout the widely circulated article, the substantiated assumption is that half of Americans doubt President Bush’s decision making potential and sense of good judgment when it comes to Iran.

For all the findings, please click the larger story here.

The article clearly posits a sense of comfort among the liberals that the President does not have support of even more than a half of people in this country. Good for the Democrats and other opposition blocs, if any. And in my view, bad for the world.

Media are the agents of sustainable interpretations in any western democratic regime. By that I mean, they play the role of the necessary critic. The necessary criticism of the existing political power is a necessary ingredient to promote the existing system; and media houses (which are essentially big corporate ventures) are the best bets.

Just as in a majoritarian democratic model, everything appears to be ruled by the “freely” elected representatives, their fourth estate, the Press, also make it appear that the news selection, placement and interpretations are done almost as democratically. Hence the press, just like the government, never hesitate to proclaim that they provide the whole truth in an objective fashion, because they know what’s good for the society to know (just as the state knows what’s good for the society to be governed by).

And so all that we know about how we are being governed is conveniently decided by the governors of our lives (the government) by letting the knowledge providers (the media) be the disseminators.

The only catch here, is that unlike in an “authoritarian”/peoples’ regime, where the press has the sole role of working as the official agent for dissemination of governmental news (and hence people are aware of the role already and make up their minds accordingly regarding the news source as clear “party propaganda”—and rise up against it in case it disbelieves in anything), in western democratic model, the press plays the subverted role of a propagator. To the extent, that the government in such democracies refuse to have their own propaganda Media. Because only then, the power structure cannot be challenged upfront. It needs to be challenged only through a comfortable space it has created between it and the people: the press. And this press, in return creates an illusion that it is actually with the people, not with the government. So it acts as a platform for “buffer opposition”.

LA Times provides no surprise through such articles. And the modern-day press system in any democratic regimes also knows how to eliminate any doubt factor that may creep in when it comes to evaluate their strategies. So the smart way is to involve some of the people to validate what they have been trying to say. So the press then go ahead and involve some people’s voices! In this article, there were 1,357 people who were polled! So by interviewing less than 1500 people “nationwide”, the paper has come to a conclusion that half of the people do not trust Bush.

Serious Issues:
1. The method of deriving at such finding is notoriously wrong. The sample needs to be way bigger. At least 50% people need to be asked the questions about “Iran War”, before coming to a conclusion. Secondly, if a national newspaper has branches all over, they need to interview people from all the centers, representing people from all geographical regions and specify the details. Clearly a person in the east-coast is more liberal than the person from the rural America, simply because of the quality of interaction people have with multicultural environment. The Republican states are thus ignorant because of the phobia of Muslims they live by. The liberal state residents are more enlightened because of the reality of Muslim friendships they preserve. These reflect on the findings. We need to be told about the disparities and of the suggested remedies. Thirdly, telephone polls are always tricky. With all the collaborations with polling agencies, they need to hire more interviewers who can go door to door in diverse areas (white, black and immigrant settings) and “talk with” people—conduct in-depth interviews if needed, and not merely quiz them.

2. The investigations into how much one knew about a topic before answering on the topic needs also to be taken into account. There are people in this country who still think Canada is a smaller neighborhood country, let alone knowing where Iran actually is on the map. One of these people on a chat with me once asked me where I was from. I said Maryland. She says, “You sound so funny. Where exactly are you from?” Because she refused to believe there was a place called “Mary”land. In such an environment, it will help to “know”, if not to explain (that education cannot happen without a propagandist tool, you see!), how much the people knew about Iran before responding. After all, we don’t waste time asking a 5-year child about effectiveness of Durex condoms and publish a finding. Why to ask people who don’t know anything about why Shah of Iran fled in 1979 despite American support, regarding why American needs to bomb the country today?

3. The News factor: I remember in my journalism school, how I was also taught about the news factor. When a “dog bites man”, its no news, the professor used to say. When the “man bites dog”, it’s the news. I always wonder why it needs to be so. Why should we look for sensations/exceptions and portray them as news, all the while ignoring the everyday life journeys. Mundane as they are, issues like poverty, ignorance and helplessness of people in democratic regimes are not considered news, as they are not sensational. What sells for corporate media are the shock value, and they will go any extent to even produce some of them. The current news in my view, SHOULD HAVE BEEN, that Majority of those polled Americans actually are war-mongers, shameful chapters in the world history. Come to think of it, half of Americans actually want war! Wow…I think that’s news in every sense. The headline should have read: “We interviewed sick warmongers who want to kill innocent civilians through airstrikes”. Yes, one question asked if people would support military action, if Iran continued to produce materials that could be used to develop nuclear weapons. 48% said, yes they would want military action, and only 40% opposed it. That’s news for me. Because hey, we all know India has even tested nuclear. And all western European countries have the same material resources. Canada is vast. France is winner. America leads. Now the common excuse even does not work. That the elite countries don’t use the materials for weapons is also false. And that nuclear energy can be used constructively is also a reality. To assume that western countries are the responsible carriers of energy (considering the bombing of Japan, and history of interventions of conventional warfare nature—ALL initiated by these countries, and also considering the hoax excuse called WMD to wipe out Iraqi civilization), and the rest of the world are irresponsible, amounts to blatant racism. Yet, the news of the LA Times indicates the good, (that Americans doubt Bush), but omits the bad (that Americans want the war).

4. Fact checking and priority of news: I think news is in the question when it’s asked: “Suppose George W. Bush decides to order military action against Iran, which action would you support”? And the choices were a) Airstrikes/no ground troops, b) Combination of airstrikes and ground troops, c) Ground troops, d) No military action and e) Don't know. The responses. Only 20% say “No military action”. 44% want to see action in the air! 19% want both ground and air strikes. Sick and more sick. Come to think of it: 80% of people did not want a peaceful dialogue, a change in stance, a removal of bias--all these are facts…The American media clearly choose to ignore these.

What’s important is not if people trust Bush. Clearly it’s a misnomer. Because it hardly matters. He cannot contest another time anyway. His tenure will be done with. So, will they trust someone else with the weapons. Of course yes. Because what’s at stake should not be which political party should come to power in order to annihilate Iran, the question ought to be: should we allow such a draconic thought even to pass our mind. The question is why the poll didn’t ask some vital questions as they come to mind..: Do you love to kill fellow human beings whose flesh you cannot eat? Or do you love to kill humans who have never damaged your life in any way (Iranians don’t impose taxes, they don’t even impose health insurances). If the answer is NO (which is the most logical answer), then the next questions should be: Do you then need to support the idea of a war as a solution? Do you want your tax money to be spent on killing innocent civilians in a foreign country? Do you want to lay down your children’s lives fighting for an ideal they have no idea about? Do you want to live lives in misery in memories of your children who died while killing someone else’s children on the front of the war? Do you believe that war is natural and human beings are natural murderers? Do you know if only way less than one percent of population in the world has ever committed murder in order to be called naturally violent and on many occasions they have killed for a personal reason? Do you have a personal reason in murdering any Iranian citizen? If not, then go have a good meal and we will spread the good word on your behalf: love others.

Its not that we don’t know the answers…its just that we need to know the right questions. It’s high time we asked the questions that matter to us, not respond to questions that help the power structure continue to use our responses to further its ends.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Capitalism, War, Bush, Iran

By Saswat Pattanayak

The most read books today are the best examples of books we do not need to read.

The state of the world today is dismal, impoverished and regressive. At least, this is how the majority of the world feels. For once if we consider that state as a valid reflection, then we do not have a single major work today of any relevance that gets into the bestseller’s list anywhere in the world.

An exhibitionist technological progress is running parallel with widespread poverty, sometimes the former thriving at the cost of the latter. Defense industry everywhere is continuing to grow despite its negative-return investments. Individual aggressiveness is the mainstay today replacing a collective will for social progress.

In times like these, a writer has a role to play. A side to choose. A writer must feel stifled, and hence must express the sentiments of the underrepresented. Utilizing the uniquely powerful medium of writing, writers have the potential indeed to change the world for the better. This could be a highly underrated opinion, but the reality is that the people who read books, do so selectively, with all voluntary knowledge and they exercise their choice to spend money of their own sweet will (much unlike any television programs, which are often adjudged by researches regarding their effectiveness in perception-making).

If among the literate circle, book (active choice) is more powerful medium than even the television (passive reception), then what are the books of the day preaching to the world?

To begin with, books come in all shapes, sizes and matters. They come from different publishers, cater to specific segments, are rated differently by a heterogeneous populace. And yet amidst all this apparent diversity of bibliophiles, there is a surprisingly staggering amount of cohesiveness when it comes to reading books. To vulgarize a phrase, book readers think alike. For example, there is a genre of book called Classics (of course no one says they are just the Western Classics) that includes books about Moby Dick, Tom Sawyer, Robin Hood, Three Musketeers, etc. None of us ever missed any of these during childhood. The stories were good. David Copperfield or the Man Friday. It used to be the most happening thing for us to read the classics in their original, abridged or translated form.

Fast-forward few decades and what we see is a flood from a different genre: the modern classics for the troubled times. The Chicken Soup series, the Deepak Chopras, the 7 Habits of Effective People, the Da Vinci Code, The World is Flat, The Alchemist, The Monk who sold his Ferrari, The Fountainhead.

Much like the old classics which glorified a colonial world by never questioning the status quo of the most horrendous periods of human history, the modern classics on the bestsellers list also help maintain the current world order by emphasizing continuity. The old guards White writers of the past century never wrote anything to condemn the slavery, to revolutionize the minds about the vast inequalities brought forth by feudal society that they helped build up in the third world. They even refused to imagine that the world divide was being perpetuated by their reactionary pens. East is East and West is West and never they were to meet. Not just Kipling, most of the European writers should have felt burdened by this guilt of carrying such bias, instead what they thought they were doing was bearing the White-man’s burden to civilize the savages.

The modern times have seen further downfall of intellectual capacities. Instead of effortlessly indicating the gross disparities and weaving ideas around bettering the existing conditions by challenging a self-fulfilling system, the ‘acclaimed’ writers have indulged themselves in preaching individualism and spiritual illusions.

For example, leading New York Times columnist and multiple Pulitzer winner Thomas Friedman’s exploratory history of the modern world has been the number one bestseller since it was released last year. The book of course declares the world as being flat, but does not indicate how badly vertical is the surface. Devoting a substantial section on India, Friedman is highly impressed by the cyber cities like Bangalore. The exoticisation is achieved in India not only by people like Friedman who fail to note that the IT industries have helped sky-rocket the rent prices of rooms for people who are not working in that sector, have forced people to give up Kannada in favor of America English if they want to survive the race, have made people accept the rape and murder of a call center executive of HP as though it was some professional hazard with an unapologetic HP still letting people take drunk cabbies back home.

With a conspicuous lack of critical reasoning which should help writers frame arguments against mindless displacement of mental means of productions, what we have instead is intellectual frauds like the Deepak Chopras. Reducing the matters to mind and calling the luxurious emotional upsurges as some aspect of spiritualism, these writers have made money out of innocence of the gullible. These so-called gurus have no inkling of the foundations of old Indian materialistic philosophies, the atheistic orientation of the East, which is far more ancient and critical than the enlightenment or rationalism of the modern Europe. Instead what they harp on is the easy path. The path of superstitions, the path of blind belief, the path of hero-worship, the path of sacred texts, the path of submissiveness. And we have The Alchemists and the Monks. The objectivism of Ayn Rand. The celebration of blatant individualism, the refusal to look like a member of community, the aversion towards uniformity, the love of the ego-centrism, the victory of the lone survivor (who of course enjoys defeating others in the race).

Social issues of significance never get discussed in these bestseller books of today. Only the quickest ways to solve individual dilemmas of careers or spiritualism, self-centred happiness or recovery from anguish resulting from selfish love triangles. And the book publishers along with the television channel owners, the big media conglomerates, the famous five white companies of the world that control everything we know every passing day, that converts news into entertainment and then says entertainment is the news—they constitute what we need to know and what writers need to write in order to sell.

Its not like there is a dearth of writers we need to read. Its just that they are not highlighted by the mainstream media. Purposively, it serves their interest of staying together. Else they would sink. Why else I never found a book written by Howard Zinn anywhere in Bangalore on my recent trip? Because its still the age of the Ayn Rand or the Alchemist. The age of the individual success, not of a collective revolutionary rage.

To continue with the example, let’s contrast mainstream Friedman with alternative Neruda and find out why the cultural czars had to send Neruda to exile and why they needed to glorify Friedman. If Neruda was the oppressed people’s representative, Friedman does sound like an agent for Microsoft and Infosys.

Naturally enough, Neruda who never served the elite interests could torch the flame, while Friedman, a child of the conglomerates still can’t see the light.


And therefore, I so much long that Friedman, the most famous writer of America today, author even a wee bit similar to what Chile’s most famous poet of yesteryears wrote more than three decades ago. Especially, since the times, with due apologies to Bob Dylan, have still not changed for a large part.
“I Begin by Invoking Walt Whitman” by Pablo Neruda:

Because I love my country
I claim you, essential brother,
old Walt Whitman with your gray hands,

so that, with your special help
line by line, we will tear out by the roots
this bloodthirsty President Nixon.

There can be no happy man on earth,
no one can work well on this planet
while that nose continues to breathe in Washington.

Asking the old bard to confer with me
I assume the duties of a poet
armed with a terrorist’s sonnet

because I must carry out with no regrets
this sentence, never before witnessed,
of shooting a criminal under siege,

who in spite of his trips to the moon
has killed so many here on earth
that the paper flies up and the pen is unsheathed

to set down the name of this villain
who practices genocide from the White House.

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Media, Capitalism, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

Hyderabad is always as good as one could get. Hustle bustle of a rural life felt across the atomized civic livelihoods, Hyderabad is the classic paradox in many senses. The celluloid dreams of the star-struck ones come into virtual slides through the millions of auto-rickshaws; the amazement of the erected few buildings get diluted via the hundreds of human scavengers amidst rubbles of abandoned dust bowls.

In my last visit to the city, under the dynamic leadership of a leader bent upon to convert the ancient city to Cyberabad, CM Naidu was busy ordering for the evacuation of street beggars from the city. Garibi Hatao (‘eradicate poverty&rsquo had started sounding stale. Maybe ‘Garib Hatao’ (eliminate the poor) sounded more promising since Mr Gates was scheduled to arrive!

Four years had passed in between and this time when I went to attend an international conference on technology and society, the whole gamut of social dimensions of technology could find no better platform of continued contradictions. The detachment of society from technology is never a natural outgrowth. It’s on the contrary a manufactured disconnect. Just like the life-saving drugs exuberantly priced, the IT avenues are also kept elitistically above reach. The technology is used to produce more technology. One program leads to another, one language needs the other. The whole spectrum of IT then becomes conditional upon success of IT itself. And with the growth of IT outpacing itself, as a self-serving panacea, focus on the usability of IT to further human causes gets diminished.

Amidst the angst that characterizes the world of capitalism today, I found two amazing friends with unbridled hopes—Vivek and Shaheen. Whereas Vivek could well teach the geek squads a few things or two as a software professional, Shaheen is a liberal arts student hoping to educate the needy someday soon. What struck me the most was their unequivocal pledges for social responsibility—neither of them adhering to the standards of neo-fascist order of selfish well-being nor growing ambitions of the individualistic Roarks.

After my brief stays in Delhi and Hyderabad, this is Bhubaneswar, my hometown. In many ways, the trip to India this winter will show some lights throughout the tunnel and I will shed some of that here.

Now, over to Tookie’s murder. Subseqent to some comments in the previous post, I got this message from a female reader:

Well I guess both David and Miguel are white guys….if not it is surprising and not a good surprise.

Tookie Williams was murdered by a system democratically elected by less than 25% of the country’s population. He had asked for forgiveness for the crimes he admitted to have committed and had turned his life around and given back to the society more than most law abiding citizens have (including David and Miguel I am sure). Correction facilities are meant for repentance and becoming a good citizen and Williams was a blazing example of that. And when it came to the matter of life and death don’t you think he would have accepted the alleged crime of killing four men, since that is what Governor Schwarzenegger wanted in order to grant him clemency?

If the four men had not been white, Williams would have had some chance of getting clemency……..just a thought. His defiance to admit to the alleged crime till the end proves that he was wrongly convicted. Conscientious citizens and young people around the world will suffer his loss.

Capital punishment, a.k.a. state sponsored murder, seems so fair when people in designer suits and professional attire decide that someone needs to be killed, it’s so class. Then we have well dressed people being witnesses to an execution and coming on live TV to express their feelings about an unfortunate yet just event. And then we have those people who enjoy the twisted vicarious pleasure of murdering people, who worship capital punishment.

Most poeple in the civilized world, the ones with the resources to live life as planned by the system have the liberty to judge others, who are less fortunate, for the crimes they do (or allegedly commit). Such people do not once take into consideration the prevailing conditions, sustained by the socio-politico-economic system of a given country, which foster youths to join gangs, do drugs, or commit so called crimes. If anyone is to be blamed for most of the crimes it is the system; a system that is unable to provide its youth the resources, opportunities, and hope in abundance to ensure they become responsible and productive individuals.

And please don't talk about Gandhi, King and Mandela...it does not suit guys who are in favor of capital punishment to use icons of peace to prove their despicable view points. And moreover no one is born great, prevailing conditions trigger the passion of some people to do things extraordinarily and then some gain the support of the masses in order to be revered as great.

Despite the fact that US has the largest prison system and highest number of inmates (mostly people of color), it still has a competitive crime rate compared to any other country. David and Miguel like people can best explain this situation I guess…….and I will not be surprised again if one reason they might give is the increase in the number of minorities and poor people in the country.

It is not always about ‘don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time’, because most often even if one does the time and turn his/her life around, one has a minimal chances of living a normal life if he/she is not white, rich and politically ignorant/right.

When we read history and call people in the bygone ears barbaric for the way they treated the culprits or fought war. Hopefully things will change for better in the next 200 or so years and our forthcoming generations will learn what opinions guys like David and Miguel held regarding capital punishment. Oh! Won’t they be proud of you guys?

For the rest of us who are experiencing the loss of Williams and likes will have little parts of us executed for the rest of our lives until things don’t change for better, socially, politically, and economically.

Tags: Saswat, Racism, Media, USA, Capitalism, India

Did CIA create Osama bin Laden & fostered fanaticism? For those who never knew it already, Chomsky says, yes.

"A sensible person would try to ascertain Bin Laden’s views, and the sentiments of the large reservoir of supporters he has throughout the region. Bin Laden became a militant Islamic leader in the war to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan. He was one of the many religious fundamentalist extremists recruited, armed, and financed by the CIA and their allies in Pakistani intelligence to cause maximal harm to the Russians-quite possibly delaying their withdrawal-though whether he personally happened to have direct contact with the CIA is unclear, and not particularly important. Not surprisingly, the CIA preferred the most fanatic and cruel fighters they could mobilize. The end result was to “destroy a moderate regime and create a fanatical one, from groups recklessly financed by the Americans” (according to London Times correspondent Simon Jenkins).

Source: Interview on Radio B92, Belgrade Sep 18, 2001

Well, of course there are huge amount of apparent human beings just so opposed to everything Chomsky says! And equally sad, the way the secret operatives have been normalized, instead of being questioned.

So, I thought in the age of Fox TV and all accompanying television shortcuts, let's watch this short video of the secretive CIA.

Tags: Saswat, War, Terrorism, Media, USA

Rolling Stone remains the leading magazine worth quoting. This is one that never ceases to provide food for critical thought. One of finest pieces of journalism that is there today. Or there was ever.
This week, Matt Taibbi writes about Kashmiri earthquake and says:

Even the most godless among us has to tremble before the biblical scale of the past twelve months' headlines: the tsunami that swallowed south Asia, the deadly lady named Katrina (also known as America Not Immune) and now this. We do not seem to be going forward very much, but every few months we lose, somewhere, a big piece of the world map, a mysterious and enervating process that is becoming like an ominously steady drip that can be heard all over the planet.

And this, the massive earthquake that rocked Kashmir on October 8th, is the worst by far of the troika. It is a calamity the dimensions of which the world so far has completely failed to appreciate or understand. Coupled with the geopolitical nature of the misfortune -- testing the nerve of two antsy nuclear antagonists and the political health of a somewhat notorious but also critically important American ally regime -- the continuing disaster known as the Kashmiri earthquake threatens to be a world-shaping event as important as the Iraq War itself.”

A very humanist, and a very critical examination of the disaster, not stopping at the 80,000 toll, but actually predicating the aftermath of it as the bigger cataclysm yet to appear. This winter, he knows Pakistan will bleed. And the world, like in the past, may remain largely indifferent. An ally of the United States not since Bin Laden, but since well before the Bangaldesh War, Pakistan stands to count on the world leaders’ contributions to rehabilitate its people. Pakistan government and its people have done all that they could in times of adversity. Now is the time for the world to respond. Albeit lately. Taibbi says:

It just so happens that this process is taking place at a time when, in the wake of the tsunami and Katrina, giving from the West is unusually phlegmatic; to date, only about $131 million of a U.N. target $550 million has been raised, an embarrassment that has prompted U.N. officials to issue statements actually chiding tight-fisted Western donors.

The U.S. Army was active in Muzaffarabad and other places, making nearly thirty helicopters available. But while it gives aid with a grunt at the end of a stick, or out the bay door of a chopper, fundamentalist Muslim organizations and Pakistani political parties are traveling high in the mountains by foot to give it by hand, with a kind word and a few more in the mother tongue.”

Matt Taibbi, often compared with the Gonzo, is a phenomenon all by himself. Hunter S. Thompson indeed had a different style of writing than Matt. But where they intersect well are the level of honesty, the uncanny sense of dark humor and vivid critical imagination. Just as an example of his well meaning cultural locations, Taibbi in an interview said recently why he would not be called a journalist anymore (he said this referring to his editorial position in a paper in Russia). Why the demise had to be there, and why mainstream media is so fucked up:

I really loved Russia and I thought it was a great place. Unspoiled and different from America in such a great way, it’s so different. Everything in America is so uniform. In Russia everywhere you go is completely insane. In Russia, if you wake up in the morning to go do something you’re supposed to do for your job and end up 100 miles away stone drunk with a bunch of strangers it’s totally OK. In America we’re so efficient. When the Americans came into Russia en masse in the mid 90’s they all had this crusading missionary attitude – like we have to change this place and turn it more into America. We have to take all these dingy old buildings and replace them with our gleaming corporate storefronts. We have to replace all these interesting idiosyncratic people and replace them with middle class managers who all want to buy IKEA furniture and go on vacations in Ibiza. They had a real missionary zeal about it.

And the reporters were worse than everybody. A lot of them didn’t speak Russian too, and that infuriated me. They would hang out with each other. They would go only to Western-style bars, live in their compounds and write all these stories. That the plot of the story was always the same: If this politician spoke English and was pro-American than he was the good guy and whoever the Russian guy was the bad guy. And they were really ruthless about it. I got really upset about it.”

• Tags: Saswat, Racism, USA, Media, News

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Do you believe President Bush talked about bombing the HQ of Arabic-language TV network al-Jazeera?
CNN asks this question in its Quickvote online survey.
Total of 127645 online readers vote. Overwhelming majority of 70% of all voters (88372 votes) say yes they believe that President Bush talked about bombing the al-Jazeera network.

Wanted to find out what did Fox readers have to say. Unfortunately, Fox is asking questions to its readers if they would buy a product if a celebrity endorses it (some journalists will never change..they will always remain public relations professionals!)

The surveys are some of the most unscientific tools ever devised. But how scientific are the claims of White House that the bomb story is 'outlandish'? At least such a huge majority of centrist people don't think much of White House assertions. Add to that the working class population of America who don't come online because they can't afford to (who darn well have an opinion nevertheless), and you got the country's verdict on this matter. At times, one has to use the master's tools to break the master's house. I mean, use mainstream media to understand popular conscience!

Tags: Saswat, Media, Bush, Capitalism, USA

And just to follow up on the previous post:

Organized students of the University of Maryland did not protest against any police department.
Students instead protested against systematic institutions of prejudices, bias and excessive violence. The three-points approach involved students to bring awareness about racial injustice within power structure of the school; to expose underlying racial tensions existing among community, student bodies and the country; to prevent future incidents of police brutality and further abuse of power and authority.

Listen to student protests live— and to the funkinest journalist Jared Ball sensitizing minds about what people should do when they are approached by the police. What are your rights? What are your stakes?

From the streets of College Park, the FreeMix Radio – out there to cover the systematic racism and violence at nation’s one of the top research institutions. Listen to it here, for the CNN will never bother.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Racism

One can use a page on Forbes Online to email oneself to the future.
I found it interesting. And so I mailed myself just to see if the world will still be a safe place 20 Years After! Check it out!

Tags: Saswat, Technology, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

Take heart.
Opinions of two Indian Muslim Women have actually rocked the mainland India. First, it was Tamil actress Khushboo who told the Tamil edition of India Today that pre-marital sex is okay “provided safety measures are followed to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases”. And now, it is the Tennis star Sania Mirza who said the size of the dress she wants to wear is her prerogative.

And what’s so criminal in holding these views? Views regarding women sexuality and men sexuality in the first case. And the dress code for teenage girls in the second case. I guess, it is the politics that’s criminal. The crude politics of conservatism and the media.

Conservatism:
The politicians and volunteers of the Dalit Panthers of India (DPI) and the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) who are working under the banner of a Tamil Protection Movement in their crusade against Khushboo are brothers-in-arms of the Mumbai-based staunch Hindu outfit Shiv Sena. They have a natural ally in Sunni Ulema Board, a self-proclaimed Muslim moral group. Four of them together have found some more interesting bedfellows: the mainstream media.

The interesting thing about these moral police forces in India is none of the above actually represent any Indian population of worth. Far from that, they do not even represent the groups they claim to be leading.
DPI at work!

DPI is interested only in publicity, like its political counterpart Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is greedy for power. The BSP showing its true colors has partnered even with the right-wing BJP (which is predominantly Brahmin party) in political seat-sharing. Naturally enough, since their formation the so-called representatives of the Dalits have no support among the “backward” peoples of India, despite their national party status, BSP has hardly have any success except in just one state. A national party claiming to have base all over the country has won 0 seats in 24 out of 25 states where it fielded its candidates. Out of 435 of its contestants, only 19 won in the 14th Lok Sabha Election. All of them only in Utter Pradesh, where it lost 61 seats!

PMK, another new nationalist wing like DPI, is also a case in point. Since it has condemned both Dravidian parties of the South, DMK and AIADMK, one would assume it would not join hands with either of them. Or at least, never with the right-winger Hindu nationalists like BJP. Well, not exactly. It was part of the BJP combine when Vajpayee was in power. And now, it lends support to the Congress combine at the center with DMK as a partner. And it has 0.55% voteshare in India in 2004 down from 0.65% voteshare in 1999. So one can imagine its support base even in the South where it has won in total 6 seats (and zero in rest of India).

The lesser said about Shiv Sena, the better. Even with more than 80% of Indian population in India professing a Hindu way of life, this self-proclaimed protector of Hindu interest has hardly ever made its presence felt outside only one state: Maharashtra (that too, more in the name of Marathi nationalism). It rose to power after murdering Krishna Desai, the immensely popular communist leader of Maharashtra who was an invincible symbol among textile workers. Ever since, Shiv Sena has espoused right-wing views and led to communal riots one after another.

Sunni Ulema Board: I am sorry, but I had never heard of this name before. Neither have many of my Muslim friends. Not even those who stay in Hyderabad. Wonder where they came from? They certainly are not the Muslim clerics nor are the national arbitrators of religion-related issues for the country’s more than 160 million Muslims.

If Dalit Panthers, the Shiv Sena, the Sunni Ulema Board, the BSP and the PMK are not worth anything in India, since they all combined together do not gain support of even one percent of Indian population, how come they (just three of them this time—DPI, PMK and Sunni Ulema) are the forces that led to the crisis of Khushboo and Sania.

All of us know that Khushboo is such a heartthrob of South India cinema that people have even worshipped her (literally, yes!). Only a decade ago a temple was built in Tiruchirapalli town for Khushboo despite the fact that she is a Muslim. She is a national award winning actress of India (that’s the highest accolade an actor receives, by the way).

And for the still uninitiated (is anyone there?), Sania Mirza is one of the current leaders of India in every sense. She has very rightly overpowered the national obsession with Cricket and has rose to prominence first as a woman, then as a Muslim, and then as a tennis champion to have entered Grand Slam events. The 18-year-old is the first Indian woman to break into the top 50 WTA rankings too.

In other words, as contrasted with the political outfits who are not known outside the boundaries of their own sycophancy (how many had even honestly heard of DPI or PMK or SUB), these two women are nationally (and even internationally) renowned and respected.

And yet, both of them have tendered public apologies recently. Khushboo for saying the right things, and Sania for not even having said anything as reported.

...and the Media:
All thanks to the mainstream media. The corporate, controversy-hungry media. Nothing happened to India Today magazine for having run the surveys and the stories and for inviting Khushboo to write about gender issues. Nothing happened to Hindustan Times for having asked Sania questions to respond regarding dress code.

Vir Sanghvi today has written an excellent piece in support of Sania. Sanghvi wrote:

“On Friday evening, my jaw dropped as TV channel after TV channel reported that Sania’s remarks about the Khushboo controversy at the HT Summit had angered clerics. On Saturday, the newspapers reported this story. The problem was: Sania had said nothing about Khushboo or about pre-marital sex during our session. I should know. I was the moderator. Could it be, I wondered, that some enterprising reporter had grabbed Sania (and Narain and Natalie, who were quoted as agreeing with her) as the session ended, and asked a few leading questions?
Possibly. But the reports were quite specific. Sania was supposed to have made these remarks during our session at the HT Summit. Which, I knew, she had not.”

Thus Mr Sanghvi has managed to steer clear of the controversy. After all, she did not say that at his Summit. What he conveniently does not mention is the intent of HT coverage of Sania. Was it to showcase just a success? Well, we had a miss universe and a formula one champion on the same panel. Then how come, Sania got all the coverage on the reported story of the day?

The story headline: Sania breaks silence on dress fatwa against her.

Wow! Was that not sensational enough a headline? Was Sania at the summit for that purpose? To provide that headline? So that her life threat will be revisited? It was meant to be a leadership summit and Sania was to be presented as a role model for Indian youths, along with two other achievers. This story by HT correspondent Namita Bhandare has hardly any mention of other two panelists and 90% of the story covers Sania only (and only about her skirt issues about which she had voluntarily chosen not to comment earlier). The savvy editor got the question right. The event was powerful enough (what with all the celebrities –from Sonia Gandhi to Manmohan Singh). And Sania gave in to the hungry journalists.

So, that does not take away the grim reality which still is to be posed as a question. India Today got its sales. Hindustan Times got a breaking story that it got the words off the mouth of Sania for the first time etc. And other media publications linked both of them together and came up with a theory that suggested Sania supporting Khusboo. Natural, ain’t it? I have worked as a journalist of small repute too. I should be knowing.

For a ‘crime’ that led Khushboo to surrender at court, any misrepresentation of Sania’s statements with Khusboo’s attitudes was going to be dangerous. No, not from the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which is the arbitrator of religion based cases in India. In fact, Khalid Rashid of the Law Board had said way back in September, “What Sania wears in (the) tennis court is the demand of the game. Perhaps, the fatwa (edict) was issued to gain cheap publicity.” Dangerous it was to prove, through the mainstream press. After the Muslim Board and Sania had both dismissed the so-called fatwa two months back, what led a responsible editor to pose the question that he did (regarding the dress code), if not to expect a headline worthy controversial story (which he eventually got!).

Khushboo should not have apologized. After all, they are her opinions. She never mentioned them under any pressure. Yet she broke down, because of the way the media blew up the entire issue and gleed at the prospect of photographing a dozen of angry Dalit Senas. She is in trouble now. Real judicial trouble with half a dozen cases piling against her! So much for the freedom of speech that the media enjoy, but not the people. Or the women.

Sania must not have apologized either. After all, she never even said that she supported Khushboo. For statements she never made, her effigies are now being burnt down by the same southern conservatives who are taking turns to protest against her and Khushboo. Sania, well aware of the mud, wants to now get out of it. And like all of us, she does not wish to go to jail. And so she even had to go to the extent of condemning pre-marital sex, a topic she had nothing to do about. Why should a celebrated tennis star need to condemn pre-marital sex for whatever reason? But she is forced to do all these, thanks to the impoverished mainstream media. She knows, her silence will be taken as a support. And this implicit support will lead to explicit media coverage.

What a shame! What hypocrisy! Do we not talk about sex and wear short clothes? When the majority Indians have other real issues to worry about, why even give one inch space to these publicity hungry organizations that are after the blood of two immensely praiseworthy Indian women?

There is certain correctness in speaking out what is apt. Basically, why should men expect virgin wives to begin with? And why should someone play tennis with trousers? Considering also the contrary stock: do men take a virginity test? Or are soccer players banned or even male tennis players wear trousers? Only the real sick minds could think the way these dangerous outfits are preaching or viewing players on field.

As Rasheeda Bhagat says, “The Khushboo episode will blow over sooner than later, but what about the double standards practiced in our society?”

Throwing tomatoes, rotten eggs and slippers or calling actresses prostitutes (as a Dalit actor-director Thangar Bachan did in August this year, leading to his outrage with Khushboo) are signs of degraded mentality. And the vast majority of us have actually failed to get rid of those conservative mindsets despite their scant presence among the outfits. We did not send Bachan to court for something that outrageous. Because the news is when the man bites the dog, remember? If the woman says something contrary to male norms, then its news!

But hey, this is a wake-up call. Now is the time not to support the sensational media into forcing these two very courageous Indian Muslim Women to come forth with statements of apology for anything they said and done. We must show our pride over what they have said, and what they have done. What we need is more of them: More Khushboos. More Sanias.

Tags: Saswat, Sports, Film, Feminism, India, Islam, Media

National Communication Association conference at Boston this week.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf that he expected Pakistan to honor its promise to end cross-border terrorism.

And this comes at a time when both countries are decidedly allowing not just the line of control to be deregulated, but also the manufactured cultural division across borders be illegitimated. Any impediments to that will only result in suspension of the planned facilitation. There is no good reason why such a movement needs to be postponed at this point.



Crucial to remember here is that such intense acts at promoting mutual friendships have come not out of some vacuum, rather with concerted efforts by people across borders to challenge the status quo. People of Pakistan have clearly seen through the empty barrels of Benazir Bhuttos and Nawaj Sharrifs. Indian population has also collectively rejected the right wingers like Vajpayee and Advani. Empty rhetoric aimed at insulating people of shared cultural past (and political heritage too in their drives against colonial powers) have finally been attacked widely. Artistes have exchanged places despite threats from fanatics like Shiv Senas’. Editors have expressed solidarities despite barriers on such freedoms of speech. Leaders on both fronts have realized the growing public pressure to end the invented differences. And recent peace talks are culminations of such a hopeful past.

Suddenly New Delhi has been attacked. Of course it is strategically symbolic in that the cowards chose Sarojini Nagar, among all the places because of the density of working/middle class population there. But the bigger question is who might have been involved. Only that section of people who have a stake in the gains. And who would gain from the process?

The only theory doing the rounds in the Indian press is that Pakistan is involved. A certain journalist from BBC, Sanjoy Majumder who regularly opines carelessly, says India feels groups based in Pakistan or linked to them may have been involved.

There is a danger in such theorizing. Unlike in the past, the attack this time was not targeted at people in power or governmental institutions (Parliament etc.). Unlike in the past, neither Lashkar-e-Toiba nor the Jaish-e-Mohammad has claimed the attack. Instead a rather unknown group Inqilabi has claimed anything of worth. Moreover, even Kashmiri analysts are unaware of existence of this group.

In that case, where does the needle of suspicion point to? For once, just for once, if we absolve the ghost of Pakistan masterminding, then can we look within and see patterns of similar attacks on civilians? In India by Indians?

What about recent riots in Mumbai? In Gujarat? These led to deaths of thousands of people and we still cannot blame any group in Pakistan for perpetuating either. Delhi has been the domain of political groups who have been known to have incited hatred among people since decades now, for their own political gains. Why first look across the border for clues? How about looking at home front for possible explanations? Only after we have exhausted all possible logic for attacking civilians to disturb the initiated peace process that might have germinated from a certain section of Indian public, should we look beyond.

Let India not choose a pathetic model that American way of theorizing terror has created. Oklahoma bombing did not teach us a lesson. Recently as an empty threat in New York Subways came about, theory was already afloat that fundamentalists (of course from ‘their’ religion, not ours) were after us.

The riddle is not a Gordian knot. We must find out a good motive. There is a bloody good one. And it’s not Diwali. Please! Media is doing a disservice by giving coverage to irresponsible comments by leaders (a la Rice) who feel bad that it was days before Diwali. The attacks have nothing to do with Diwali. For the religious lot, no God teaches to annihilate people of other faiths. And for the irreligious lot, who have done the act, let’s say hypothetically in the name of religion, they would care less about Diwali as a point of reference. The only thing that has changed since last attack on Indian Parliament and this attack on Sarojini Nagar is not a new festival called Diwali. It’s the initiation of a peace process that would have made line of control a point of friendship.

After the serious examination of this motive, intelligence agencies must look into the genealogy of people who would otherwise be harmed if India were to aid Pakistan at such a time of grave danger for the latter with more than 80,000 of its people dead due to earthquakes. And at a time when Pakistan is in need much in excess of what is being offered worldwide. At such a time, India has come forward with immense goodwill gesture and just the way the British had tarnished every hope of a united India and Pakistan during their times of crisis, at this time, there is every hope of a unity to resurface. At this point, who would be most persistent at refusing such a thing from happening?

Nay, I just don’t believe it is Pakistan. The people out there, in our neighborhood are suffering at the moment. 80,000 dead in an economically impoverished nation. That’s burden upon cataclysm. They can’t be it. Come on now, Mr Indian Prime Minister. We have had enough of these hocus-pocus oratory every time any attack takes place. The easiest way to fool India’s masses has been to direct their frustration at a neighboring country. Instead of lecturing Pakistan about your expectations, start introspecting on the levels of expectations that you meet when peoples across the borders want no more of Indian army, no more of Pakistani unrest. All that folks want is a united South Asia. And the further you delay in understanding this, the merrier would be the forces of disharmony.

Tags: Saswat, Media, News, Pakistan, India, Hinduism, Islam

By Saswat Pattanayak

I was afraid of the hypodermic bullet effects of the Time magazine’s story on Hiroshima. In an earlier post I was apprehensive that people may not have reasons not to believe the myth that bombings on “Japan led to end of war”, since the magazine had orchestrated the story so well (with a Japanese victim-model actually heralding the bomb on the cover and “eyewitnesses” inside thanking the bombs)!

For me, the reading was a macabre humor. So I was wondering how would readers react. Just hope against hope. M-pyre had a brave story. Apart from them, I did not discover much on the blogosphere either on the issue. Finally, the Aug 22nd issue of Time has published the readers’ views. And my worst fears have come true. Unlike other issues where readers are at least partially divided on a cover story perspective, this time, not a single letter writer feels disgusted! And everyone (all 8 of the published letters talk about Hiroshima and all of them are happy that the bombing was done) has congratulated and thanked Time for the efforts to educate us about why bombing was a good thing. Here are a couple of reactions (statutory apology: If you feel slighted, insulted, hurt, hold Time responsible for publishing them. I do not personally agree with the views on the letters):

I hope the US servicemen know they are heroes. They helped end WWII and ensured that my grandpa and millions of other grandpas would go home instead of invading Japan. It was estimated that an invasion might have caused 1 million Allied casualties. There would have a lot fewer dads and grandpas of ours around today had that taken place.

–says one officer candidate of Illinois Army National Guard.

How much longer do Americans have to feel guilty about Hiroshima? By dropping the atom bombs, the US delivered millions of people from the jaws of the Japanese war machines.

-- says a reader from Hong Kong.

As a young Marine who would probably have played a role in the scheduled invasion of Japan, I cheered when I heard the news about the bombing. Since then, 60 years of reflection have tempered my enthusiasm

-- says a reader from California.

Sounds incredible, but each letter is a reflection of the war-mongering selves of the highly educated yet such ignorant minds. As one observed that he believes that bombing saved “our dads and grandpas”. OUR? Our people’s lives have worth and not theirs? The undercurrent is there has been no war since then to have claimed a large number of lives. The other advocacy suggests that we did not have to invade Japan since bomb helped us committing from the act. One other letter even thanks the Japanese for living the horrible effects of bombs, which helped us never to use the bomb again.

Each of these is not mere opinion emanating from innocent observations. These are well cultivated attitudinal issues. I don’t blame Time for having planted these propaganda in popular minds. Indeed no form of mass media is capable of carrying out propaganda. We are socialized in fashions (along with family, peers, teachers) that make us vulnerable to thinking in a way that gets reinforced by the mass media we choose to play the role of mediators. So whereas the needle theory may have been misplaced, the effects cannot be completely overlooked.

For a fact, war was not ended because of the bombs. The so-called World-War II had ended well before that. Secondly, there is no difference between Our Dad and the Japanese Dad. When human lives are lost such recklessly because one political leader wants to have a good time, then only ignorant fools seek nationalities of the dead (after deaths anyway the body does not belong to a country anymore. Then why kill because someone is Japanese?) Thirdly, Japan was definitely the evil country. But to blame its innocent civilians for it would be to suggest the most fallacious assumption. The bombs were never aimed at the evil ruling class of Japan, it was aimed as an experiment of mass destruction (which caused generations of deaths of people who were themselves oppressed under authoritarian rule). There is absolutely no logic behind an assumption that because “x” country is evil (which is so grossly wrongly phrased and overplayed by our cautious media, that it’s pathetic), its citizens need to be taught a lesson.

What happens in effect is for everyone to note. The dictatorial rulers ably supported by the ruling class of America including to name just a few, Batista of Cuba, Bolkiah of Brunei, Botha of South Africa, Diem of South Viet Nam, Franco of Spain, Hitler of Germany, Marcos of the Philippines, Pinochet of Chile, or Videla of Argentina have all lived well. Its another matter, even their lands were not attacked. But when it was, in case of former allies like Saddam or Bin Laden (Afghanistan is one of his playing fields) they were never sent to gas chamber anyway. Actually none of these dictators were ever punished. Only the people of the countries they ruled were subjected to unnecessary deaths.

The end of war was a myth. The world was in fact divided up in blocs soon after the bombs. And in name of cold-war, millions were annihilated systematically. American invasions never ended. In fact, it quadrupled. Vietnam continued for 11 years. Several countries went for nuclear bombs to “safeguard” their interests. The world is much more dangerous a place today because of the misuse of bombs. Just because an atomic bomb has not been used for the second time does not prove a thing. 60 years in the history of world is a short chapter. Too short to conclude predictions.

Moreover the lives lost last century (continuing draconically this century too, as if it were a logic) because of wars after the 1940’s should serve reminders of the evil of wars and those who perpetuate them. Not feel glad that we killed them, when in effect all that people have done is play the cards of the motivated politicians (who never send their kids to war front ever—and even if they were—still it would not make any sense for the child to play by the dad’s whims), and kill fellow human beings who have had no role in creating the prejudices.



The fact is that Hiroshima bombing was the most dastardly act ever committed. And not all Americans need to feel guilty about it. Only those must feel guilty irrespective of the countries they come from, who think American leadership made the right decision by going ahead with the bombs. Those who support the people who do business with these military-corporate nexus should feel guilty too. Those who think harboring bombs is a effective tool for whatever reason should feel guilty too. Those who kill people in the name of faiths and nationalities should feel guilty. And those who support these people on principle must feel guilty too. In conclusion, that’s not many people, if you count. Spare the rest of us the pain. Guilt is the last thing on the minds of the peace-loving citizenry of the world. They must work towards rewriting the history of the world so that the future generations are not misled anymore into the web of misinformation, lies, and anti-people propaganda.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Japan, Cold War, War, History

By Saswat Pattanayak

Maureen Dowd comments on the father-son saga.

Not that the monarchy works any differently. But what is unforeseen are the kind of media coverage and the generated public attachment.

Mugs, t-shirts, books, dvds, calendar, greeting cards, cartoons, slogans, billboards, and op-ed columns. Bush family is the singularly most desisted in the history. Despite the junior’s thumping victory for the second term.

Who enjoys the mud the most? Ones who love getting dirty. And apparently the political system’s internal contradictions of having an elected president who is so much abhorred publicly (for no direct fault of his, he is being blamed for Iraq war to the unemployment problems at domestic scene) is being mistaken for a victory of the system!

No wonder, the Prez is happy as ever (as the story goes, as jubilant as his Dad). After all, the system that masquerades as democracy and in actual, functions as a governing body of the rich is winning the applauds of the day.

Two events come to mind immediately: media covers on Natalee Holloway and lack of media attention on gas price hike. So long as it affects a rich family, the media as we know have gone far overboard with Holloway (with 297,000 google search finds—this blog makes it one more). The gloss and the luster of it attracts so much attention that for some uncritical thinkers (ah, thanks to Fox, their numbers are multiplying by the minutes) the news becomes legitimate. Similarly, the gloss attached to the freedom-loving presidents who go on vacation and play golf in times of crisis that they create for news value is accepted by many as legitimate democratic exercise of good humor.

Three days back, I noticed the despair largely writ on the face of a fellow passenger who was trying to tell me that we should do something about the price rise of gas. After all, the night before it was 2.36 and now it was 2.61. I could sense his frustrations and I agreed that unless people organizedly protest against the monopolistic rises in price, one will not see the end of it (I have seen the prices exactly more than double within the last two years). And when I got off, I knew neither of us was kidding. But neither of us was being effective either. The issue we were deliberating was being seen as non-issue, not meant for editorial tables of the day. After all Iraq war is interesting, not its aftermaths (one of the excuses for price rises). That was not one of the stories to be written by the columnists or staff writers.

The happy-go-lucky political systems are like the celebs themselves. Walking on the red carpet is so alluring that they must need to overlook the people who put together that carpet for them. And for now, democracy talk allows the golfers-presidents to reign.

Tags: Saswat, Capitalism, USA, Economics, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

So, Internet is the cause behind the widening wealth gap?

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) says it is. In a study published by BBC, it is concerned about websites providing househunters with data on neighborhood income levels and ethnicity.

Similar process has already surfaced in the US, the report says, where segregation is more and social cohesion is less. In effect, the Britain, known for class divisions, has accused US (which refuses to believe there is any) of class divisions. And the pundits opine that Internet may be the reason behind the widening wealth gap in both societies.

They may not be out of their wits entirely. Yes, Internet sites offer specialized searches for neighborhoods, categorize them into economic interests and helps people choose communities.

But this theory has two dangerous deductions: one, that people are solely affected by external sources of information (that is, conversely speaking, they do not use their own conscientious judgment), and secondly that, human beings always prefer to live with their likes (in terms of class, gender, ethnicity, nationality) and in effect, abhor diversity.

Oftentimes studies like this as they get prominence in mainstream media are nothing more than mere spaces. The nature of mainstream media to absorb any sensationalism has reached a point, where journalists/editors no more critically screen through a copy before using them for x number of columns/pages/minutes.

Its not merely important to talk about findings (Time magazine’s article on Sleep was another of the kind). That job can be done by the research assistant at the lab. What we as mediapersons need to do is to understand that we are addressing such issues of wide implications to a larger gamut of people and we need to incorporate at least some of the differing perspectives to check if there are some loopholes in the theories of the “experts”. The respect for experts as the “gatekeepers” of today’s news contents need questioning not to undermine their significance, but to critically update their contributions.

Hence in the aforesaid story we could also talk about another parameter: that is, who determine the neighborhoods?

1.Government as the agent 2. People as actors 3. Others as mediators (media, advertorials). Government has a responsibility to enforce desegregation. It’s not just a duty of human beings to morally think of it as a virtue and not practice (we know the colossal difference between preaching of virtues and practice of them). And the mediators are actually the second layer information channels. They are the points of references, not instigators for actions for an informed citizenry.

To claim that certain websites lead to wealth gap is like missing the whole point altogether. The issue of wealth gap itself. The people we elect as representatives simply are not accounted for except for the part of election themselves. Which is self-serving anyway. It’s like people feed them with their doses of electoral bliss and perpetuate the system. What should rather be the focus of stories on widening wealth gap is the lack of accountability on part of the administrators who carry out the oaths of public causes and simply shun them according to their whims.

If the government cannot on any pretext educate people about the need to live in a diverse community, it’s quite easy to blame some websites for mischief. But it also absolves the government (that is the people whom we elect—even in case of non-western democracies the people who we allow to rule over us) of its primary responsibilities—to bridge inequality gaps. Banning certain websites, if any, will not serve any purpose.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Economics, Capitalism

“Beyond the Frame-Alternative perspectives on the war on terrorism” is a compilation of interviews with Seth Ackerman, Belquis Ahmadi, Joan Blades, Maliha Chishti, Noam Chomsky, Jo Commerford, Kevin Danaher, Cynthia Enloe, Henry Giroux, Janine Jackson, Robert Jensen, Sut Jhally, Darryl Kimball, Michael Kimmel, Mhahsa Khanbabai, Naomi Klein, Manning Marable, Mark Crispin Miller, Bernie Sanders, Ritu Sharma, Vandana Shiva, and Alisa Solomon.

The video brought out by Media Education Foundation deals with issues such as media’s role, women & the Afghan war, homeland security, war resistance, democracy and war, the Iraq war & growing militarism. The only down-side: the price. Too expensive. Gives me reasons for wondering why certain progressive materials need to be so expensively priced? One of the answers I conceive is it works in two ways: either because they don’t own it, and because owing to paucity of funds, they are eventually owned by 20th Century Fox and the others! Heads we lose, tails they win.

Tags: Saswat, Film, Terrorism, Media

The only events open to women at this year's annual summer X Games held in Los Angeles were: Wakeboarding and skateboarding,
The organizers of the X Games claim that "female athletes in many extreme-sports categories have not reached a high-enough level to add arenas for women."

And the necessary ranting from the blog community MediaGirl can be found here.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Feminism, Blog

Cost of cardboard, paint, duct tape and wire: Pennies.
10,000 commuters reading what you have to say: Priceless.

That’s precisely what Freewayblogger.com is all about. A priceless insignia of alternative media. And our choice of Site for the Day.

Tags: Saswat, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

Welcome to the world of History-telling. American ishtyle.

Time on its cover story (anniversary special) educates the readers about Hiroshima, with a Japanese witness on its cover holding a picture postcard.

The essay by Michael Elliott says:

The atom bombs dropped over Japan ended a terrible war and persuaded the world never to use nuclear weapons again. Time quotes Van Kirk on the B-29 remembering that "somebody said—and I thought so too--'This war is over.'"

Eight days later, Elliot says, it was over. According to him, if the first bomb was not enough justification to call it over, the second must have been, since Nagasaki was attacked on August 9.

Ever since, there has been controversy over when the war would have ended had the bomb not been dropped on Hiroshima--a second was detonated over the city of Nagasaki on Aug. 9—and how many Japanese and Americans would have died before it did.

Not only the war was presumably over, the act of throwing the bomb was a beautiful act also. As Elliot has a Japanese eyewitness describe the greatest disaster to have ever caused as something, “like a burst of light from an unearthly photo shoot, big enough to cover the sky, "blue-yellow and very beautiful."

Time goes on:

But, plainly, the most terrible war ever known ended earlier than it would have because of the Enola Gay's mission. The bombs cost tens of thousands of lives—perhaps 120,000 were killed immediately in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with many more dying later from the effects of radiation—but they saved lives too.

More celebrations!

When he heard the news of Hiroshima, writer Paul Fussell, then a 21-year-old second lieutenant leading a rifle platoon in France and mentally preparing for the hell that an invasion of Japan was bound to be, thought, "We were going to live. We were going to grow up to adulthood after all."

And the aftermath, according to Time:

An awful weapon had saved lives; a terrible instrument of war had brought peace…..

Buried in silos in the wheat fields of North Dakota, tucked into the torpedo tubes of Soviet submarines parked in the North Atlantic, slung in the bomb bays of B-52s, the American and Soviet nuclear arsenals mutually assured the destruction of both sides if hostilities commenced. The cold war turned into a long peace.

Sounds sick to my stomach. Such narrative that proclaims that the world war was over because Japan was bombed (nay, even more sophisticatedly, detonated, not attacked!). For, some of us who are among the rest of those who don’t subscribe to this narrative know for sure when and how the war was ended. And if we still wondered why US had to bomb Japan even after the war was over, now we know the news: that the war was not actually over. It needed one Hiroshima and then again, one Nagasaki to call it over!

What logic does Elliot has in saying Hiroshima was not enough to call it over, if at all in his weirdest philosophy, all we need is some bombings to end wars? Why did we need another bomb after 8 days? No logic, just plain statement: “An awful weapon had saved lives; a terrible instrument of war had brought peace…..”

Brought peace? For whom? For the generations of Japanese who lived with the scar and became numb enough to traverse from royal monarchies to economic imperialists without an utter?

The underlying theme of the Anniversary Special (see the celebratory tone! Calling it an anniversary special than maybe a Guilt-ridden Summer Remembrance) of the magazine is to say that we needed to bomb Japan so that we shall have peace. Moreover, it was not a bad thing to bomb after all. Hey, we got an eyewitness to say that the after-effects of the bombing was “blue-yellow and very beautiful”!

Such sick!

And finally Time declares that the bombs (which are bad in the hands of the “terrorists”, it concludes too) led to nuclear arsenal competitions leading to cold war which brought long lasting peace!

Notice the web of lies: First, that the war got over because of the bomb (whereas in actual, the war had long ended after which US surprised everyone by bombing Japan mercilessly, first Hiroshima and then again Nagasaki), second, that the after-effects of bombing was beautiful experience (whereas the gruesome truth is that all of us know what happened to generations of people, even as Time could manage to get an old man stand with a picture of the bombing as to show how beautiful event it was to celebrate), third, that the bombings saved lives (whereas we know that millions have died for no good reason at all), fourth, that the people after all grew up to live well (whereas we know the systematic tortures on Japanese-Americans which go largely untold for several suppressive reasons), fifth, that cold war brought peace (whereas nothing could be further from the truth).

Cold war was not that cold. We know millions of innocent civilians who have been systematically annihilated in the name of protecting them from Communism (even within the country, McCarthyism was such a reality) with active interventions in third-world countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa. That was the hottest war series ever continued. And thanks to the whole suspicion trail of nuclear arsenal acquisitions of rivaling blocs.

And today, after the end of so-called Cold War, we know that the same bomb greed has led many countries to feel insecure, join the arms race, whereas they could involve in developmental works they have drained out resources to build arsenals to join the club, we know of the numerous nuclear plant leaks and disasters--most of which are so embarrassing that they are not discussed, we also know that many misguided youth and deliberately led religious fanatics are in quest of the formula too, not to be left out of the race.

And the world is most unsafe than ever before. We are having televised wars and children are bombing neighbors on their video games. More bombs don’t make the world safer place. I am sure the readers of Time know of this. Or I doubt. I am still waiting to read few letters to the editor.

Tags: Saswat, Cold War, Imperialism, USA, Communism, War, Media, History

...My heart's in Accra : Ethan's Weblog - My blog is in Cambridge ...

In 1994, I dropped out of graduate school and joined a couple of friends in Williamstown, MA in building one of the first "pure" dot.com companies - Tripod. As the only person on the team who knew HTML, I got to be "tech guy" - outclassed by guys who could program circles around me, I became bizdev guy, legal guy, customer service guy and R&D guy before settling, briefly, on "retired guy".

That’s Ethan Zuckerman who blogs on Africa, Technology and Media. What I most like about Ethan is his efforts to put African bloggers on the network of the first world. And by that alone, he has added a lot to a divergent discussion already.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Blog, Africa, Technology

http://www.rinf.com/ is the Alternative Media & Underground News, Conspiracy Theory & Multimedia Portal.

Site of the Day!

Tags: Saswat, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

Histories can be telling. Especially when they are told by the mainstream American media.

The country of concentrated wealth also has the knowledge distribution centralized and no wonder from John Stewart to Michael Moore, the public humorists often cite how many Americans think Canada is another Hawaii (but now since they are required to carry passports to Niagara Falls, some among them have started believing Canada is a separate country)! Indeed, in a recent chat conversation, a woman from California asked me where I was chatting from? “Maryland”, I said. “You are funny. Mary-land? Ok now, tell me which state?” She of course took offence when I asked if she knew where Washington DC was. She knew where DC was….so ok, now gotcha.

Next incident may sound even more incredible. While buying fresh fish at Whole Foods in Silver Spring, our man at the counter asked me, “So are you from Argentina?” No, I said. I am from India. “Yeah but where are you originally from?” I wondered about that, since from experience I knew it’s difficult for some Americans to believe “immigrant-looking” people to be Americans. Hence I did not say him that I was from a nearby city called Adelphi, but that I had actually come from India to do the shopping. “You know although I stay in Maryland, I am originally from India,” I reiterated. He was not buying that. “Oh, Indiana! You look so much different”. No, not Indiana. I am from India—India as in a country. In Asia. India—the computers, the elephants.

He was looking at me puzzled. He had never heard of India (luckily, he had heard of Indiana State.) I was accompanied by my office boss. She did not believe this. “Where has he been hiding all these years, for not to know about India?” I nodded.

Often times one encounters ignorance of mass proportions in the country of concentrated wealth. People still believe that Columbus actually discovered America, that Russians were a bunch of murderers out there to kill every American and that Bush did not lie about Iraq and the WMD.

This week, yet another of the great lies have been incorporated by the most read, most cited mainstream media. Another leaf from the American history-telling. In the next blog.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Immigrant, USA, Racism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Women are the face of the business today. If that’s some claim the West is making to advance capitalism ethos, folks better watch out. The internal contradiction is here to stay: women stay as the face, whereas the men rule as the rest (muscle and the money).

One of the popular and reformatory feminist arguments made against the Third World nations and the former socialist block was that women are relegated to non-existence in matters of decision-making, unlike in the West where women have known to have posed for Playboy and have decided whom to go out with on an evening date.

The cultural contrasts have always been made whenever any other justification has failed. For example, if the religious fanaticism has matched (Islam Afghan, Christian Europe, Hindu India), then the proverbial burden on the white man has shifted towards cultural differences and the normative contrasts in terms of “women development”. Despite being religious, and at times because of the difference in their religions, the women have suffered so much (look at all stories on Iranian women suffering), the mainstream argument has run.

I though of looking at women in capitalism and the myth of women progress, just to see if the world at another hemisphere was indeed such fair to the fifty percent of population in terms of gender. Although there can be no comparison among the countries on basis of economic parity (remember the world is divided in two parts economically: self-proclaimed wealth accumulator group of 8 versus destined to doom group of rest 185), we need to see the attitudes of wealthy societies just to measure the yardstick. US as the citadel of capitalism tops the list, of course.

Only in August last year an assistant warehouse manager filed a class-action (yes classes do exist!!!) suit against Costco Wholesale Corp (that chain of warehouses from which Americans take pride in purchasing bulk after becoming elite members). Costco operates approximately 324 warehouses in the United States employing over less than 1 in 6 women as its senior store managers)! Yet all those faces at the counters in Costco who make us celebrate diversity at workplace are incidentally women, because the corporation employs more than 50% women! Women are 50% cheap labor and only 16% of them work at managerial positions!

Just for information, if that’s the case with United States, how does Costco employ women in the UK, Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Puerto Rico, where it has businesses?

The worse news is Costco claims proudly that it metes better treatment than its rivals Wal-mart (yes that company whose owners are four of the ten richest billionaires of the planet), Sam’s or BJ’s. So where does the largest retail store in the world, the Wal-Mart, stand? Wal-Mart representing 1.6 million women, is facing the largest class-action sexual discrimination suit in history. The faces of Wal-Mart, its beautiful women, some of whom were picked by Playboy to pose nude recently, comprise more than 70% of its total workforce! That’s the parameter of feminist success, some claim, because what is overlooked is that Wal-Mart hires them for hourly jobs, only less than a third of them being in any store management position! Wal-Mart has more than 3,500 stores in US alone, having sales of more than $250 billion dollars annually!

Sex discrimination cases are also filed against most other giant companies, including Merrill Lynch and Home Depot. Among few cases that have been settled yet, aircraft manufacturer Boeing Co. paid off $72.5 million to settle its case. Major investment bank Morgan Stanley paid off $54 million to settle claims that it underpaid and did not promote women.

Of course majority cases never get to see the trial and the systematic patterns of discriminations are never discussed in favor of individual cases.

The issue at hand is the problem. The continuing saga of discrimination that goes on even to the year 2005. If the cracks are evident with the biggest firms that hold the torch of capitalism, then one can only imagine the plights at the numerous sweatshops that have been opened at the behest of free market expansions. The myth has to be revisited, only if it will mean that we will eventually end up condemning the system that perpetuates the gaps and calls for class-actions. The least folks can do is not to get solely fascinated by the neon lights and pretend not to live the heat of oppression that the workers experience while building the lights and the buildings, the roads, the locomotives. It’s not enough to see the pretty women anchors on the television channels in order to assume advancements, its needed for us to see if they call the shots of their visual representations and decision making abilities as news editors.

Capitalism thrives on the show business. Massive consumptions, huge productions, giant media houses, lavish use of glamour, red carpets and the women, profit indexes and billionaires lists, the supermalls and blockbuster movies.

What it leaves out systematically is a narrative about the countless workers who make these take shape, and the systematic oppression they inflict on the working class in terms of wages, treatments and attitudes.

Tags: Saswat, Feminism, USA, Media, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Part of fighting terrorism, the British realize, is refusing to change a way of life, writes Andrew Sullivan, and he calls it the “Quiet Power of the Stoic” in the Time Magazine this week.

Well, one will wonder why I stoop to quote Sullivan on the same page where I quote Neruda. Not quite unreasonable considering that today’s media provide the sort of inspirations like Sullivan’s pieces, for a scribe like me to think as deep as Neruda to ruminate over problems which have only proliferated since. Hence instead of the painstaking love ballads, I have to create the apt rebuttal for the reactionary stoicisms.

How do I react to the reactionaries? To the politically correct? To the timely interventionists? To the anti-terrorism conscience keepers? To the crusaders against illegal aliens? To the wise interpreters of Islam?

To begin with, one of the most popular bloggers of all time, Sullivan sure knows the vulnerabilities of the print media like Time. First, in times of crises like the London Blasts, its easier to express popular sentiments, and two, in places like Time, he cannot expect immediate responses. Its another matter that with all the trumpets being blown by bloggers about the grassroots media being one where there is a scope for the readers to correct the blogger via comments, Sullivan is out of comments on his site!

In any case who expects contrary comments when the bomb blasts in London is the only political incident today in the world and standing by the aggrieved is the only politically correct thing to do. So Sullivan writes:

The English, as Orwell once observed, celebrate their freedom in small ways: gardening, sports, pets, pubs, stamps, crossword puzzles. Part of this is now patriotic mythology. But part is also the enculturated national DNA to see these things not as trivial but as integral to the life of a free people. These things didn't stop, even during the Blitz, when thousands lived through night after night with the prospect of being incinerated by bombs from the sky. Part of fighting the war, the Brits realized, was military. But part was also a refusal to change a way of life, however small its detail, however petty its peeves.

---

As long as some maniac wants to kill himself and others in a subway or supermarket, we will not be able to stop him. And so stoicism matters. Getting on with our lives matters. Spelling bees, college football, celebrity gossip, high school proms: the simple continuance of these things is integral to the meaning of freedom.

Or so the British have long proved. Their small-c conservatism can lead to errors of complacency--like appeasing Hitler in the 1930s. But it is also a deep strength, as self-effacing as it is unmovable.

I am rendered speechless and I do not know where to post comments. But here is what I thought Sullivan said and half meant.

Basically, do anything. Support Hitler. Gossip celebrity. Prom high schools. Invade Iraq. Stay conservatives. Let Tony Blair comment on how some Muslims got Islam wrong. Allow him to pass a stricter law now so that illegals can be filtered out. Call people maniacs, systems perfect and the celebrate indifference. Don’t reflect on actions, don’t contextualize. Just get going with life, as usual. Stay stoic. Don’t change yourself.

What Orwell forgot to mention was that the English celebrated their freedom in other small ways too: invaded the natives, raped their women, killed their ables, subjugated their economies, dried their resources, came back home peacefully without any damage, when they needed cheap workforce they got the natives to work as cobblers and slaves, treated them as dogs disallowing them to enter into restaurants, promoted racism, and when the natives forgot their language and became Englicised, refused them equal pay. After keeping them illiterate in their own cultures, got the natives to pay tuitions to study in English traditions, and when the students applied for jobs, asked them to go back home with a debt, and when few natives played by their rules and ran their industries and wrote their stories, they got them knighted so that they became to be known as English, not natives anymore.

If these are not exercise of unbridled freedom on part of the English, then I do not know what these are. And now what again so conveniently was forgotten by Sullivan was that alongwith the college football, the Brit ruling class has been perfectly innocently content about their sense of superior freedom when it comes to the debt trap they lead Africa into (some countries there have paid thrice the original debt only to suffer for the rest of the civilization trying to pay the guilt-ridden interests), about their realization of peace at inflicting deaths by the hundreds to the civilians in the middle east, over the Palestine crisis and the Iraq fiasco. When British personnel were exposed for prison torture, the English were at peace with themselves over such “small issues” too.

Who can afford to stay stoic? I cannot. I am enraged at the bombings. I am enraged at the bombings, yes prime minister, over the same bombings which killed Muslims too. I am enraged at the stoic take on the heinous bombings that killed ordinary lives, the British working class lives which never agreed with the Queen’s stance on Diana and Blair’s stance on Iraq. I am enraged at this whole thing about “Pakistani descent”, when all of the alleged bombers were British citizens. I am enraged at the whole lectures of the PM about Islamic extremism when it is partly a case of British security failure. I am enraged about the way its being dismissed as individual acts of terrorism, whereas the main bomb makers are largely amiss, their motives overtly unknown. Instead of looking at it as a social byproduct of modern capitalism, I am enraged at the way the narrative speaks only of the religious bigotry (itself a product of modern capitalism). I am enraged about the way distinction is being done among people of faiths basing on this incident which has to do more than religious sentiment.
Clearly no religion preaches violence. Why should the Muslims be singled out? When a Christian lobbyist cheats the Congress, does one blame Christianity and tries to dig its textual interpretations? Or when Mandela suffered for 27 years in the islands, was Christianity revisited?

Stoicism, my dear Andrew, is the opium of the British. And the ruling class of Britain wants it to stay. So that they can now tighten the immigrations a little more and claim to have solved the case with four dead men as providing evidence. And in the process the bigger questions will be purged: Who harbored the criminal intents? Who encouraged the situation? Whose education called for social distrust among promising youths? Who were they born and brought up amidst the British neighborhoods?

From nationalists in the 1850s, to being called patriots in the 1920s, to announced radicals in the 1960s, to call terrorists in the Bush era, individuals have been branded. Sullivan dismisses them as maniac individuals this time. The issues have changed, the enemies have changed, the causes have been reversed. Yet the violence persists. When the state machineries have gone violent, we have called them war, when individuals have chosen violence they are now suicide bombers. We do not know why these people have behaved this cowardly as they did now. One thing for sure, we know that many people all over the world have been converted into suicide bombers since at least three decades now. To dismiss their acts as manic acts of random nature would be to stay stoic and fail to bridge the gaps that exist between us humans. For one, going by the massive protests at all the meetings of world leaders (and we do not see many Muslims at all, remember!), we know that the rulers are not very much welcome by the ruled and their principles or lack of them are being vehemently opposed. What we need is a deep appreciation of contrary interests and constructive dialogues to understand the oppositional chords rather than being violent (which is easy for a police state anywhere to cause and generate), being stoic (which is easy for the i-pod generations and Disney theme park visitors in the developed world to enjoy and mock with), being dismissive and accusatory (which is easy considering the might and the wealth of the developed economies which never hears of the bombs in the quarrelling poor nations but goes deafeningly reactionary when any singular incident takes place and attributes religious and international tones to it to vitiate the atmosphere further).

With time, we shall know what circumstances we have created in a world we no more love, which have led many youths astray—from being socially productive, and individually progressive, to emerge as self-obsessed reflections of a warring imperialistic individualistic world divided by flags, religions and countries.

Between the mad people and the scared people (and scared people don’t remain stoic, remember), the situation may not be managed well. But by taking pride in a stoic citizenry instead of encouraging them to become alert international human beings, we are taking steps backwards.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Terrorism, War, Christianity, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

So who is a journalist? One who is ideal or who is pragmatic?

I guess there is the dilemma which has caused the storm in the teacup. At least that’s what has distinguished the actions of NYT and Time.

Two major mainstream media publishing houses acted contradictorily when it came to their reporters. And brought up the core structures and functions of journalism to question.

What Judith Miller did was what the profession is founded on. Journalists, unlike lawyers and doctors, have never been subjected to a state administered admission test or course or affiliation or accreditation, at least in the United States. One of the principles this country has prided on is its First Amendment which allows for the freedom of the press to be exercised, to such an extent that journalists themselves decide the rules regarding who should be awarded credentials. In other words, the sovereignty and autonomy inherent by the media in the US is unparalleled. So the foundation of the profession, as understood by Miller was based on certain principles—independence of choice, freedom from interference. Hence the sources may not be disclosed. For two reasons: because journalists need to have independence from any pressure to disclose any sources they might think improper to reveal, and secondly, because practically it will become impossible for potential sources to confide in journalists if they are to be named later on by the scribe breaking the basic minimum human trust.

Hence, Miller must have these ideals in mind when she pleaded:

"Your Honor, in this case I cannot break my word just to stay out of jail. The right of civil disobedience based on personal conscience is fundamental to our system and honored throughout our history…. The freest and fairest societies are not only those with independent judiciaries, but those with an independent press that works every day to keep government accountable by publishing what the government might not want the public to know."

Now lets move on to the pragmatics. I have three contentions. One, where do these “freest and fairest societies” exist? It’s a dark humor if we consider the current situations working against the majority people everywhere without daily access to their share of freedom they are supposed to be born with. Two, as some journalists have chosen not to support Miller , we need to understand their final verdict: reporters are not above law. Three, as we move from public sphere to being a profit sphere, any illusions regarding the notion that journalists by their independence make for a better world need to be done away with. Media, far from being a social service sector, today are at the mercy of few profit-hungry (redundant expression) capitalists. Any anticipation that they will stand by their reporter as a social activist, is a wishful thinking. Far from it, in fact in journalism schools, detachment to events is one of the prime lessons being taught so that the future media professionals behave no differently than the marketing executives—selling news, at any cost.

When the profession itself has been sold out, journalists abide by contract laws than organizing themselves to draft their own future, stand by their profiteer managements than their sources and interests; to expect anything from judiciary or executive or legislature or the general public is expecting in vain.

Judith Miller joins Jim Taricani, Vanessa Leggett, Timothy Crews, David Kidwell, Bruce Anderson, Lisa Abraham, Tim Roche, Brian Karem, Myron Farber etc as one of the many journalists who have served prison in the United States while on duty, for refusing to disclose sources. Yet to what extent people are willing to fight for their conscience-keepers is one to watch out for. And which people are we talking about here to stand for causes? The same people who have been subjugated to a corporate individualist culture by the media professional themselves!

Tags: Saswat, Media, Capitalism, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

Upon request from a few friends, I took off the post about the “Jersey Guys”. Since they had already apologized, what use was the post anyway, any more, the winning argument went.

To refresh memory, these were the same radio personalities who called the “Orientals and Indians” un-Americans. In fact in a "ching chong" mocking Asian dialect, Carton and Rossi had declared that Asian Americans were outsiders.

"No specific minority group or foreign group should ever, ever dictate the outcome of an American election," Carton said. "I don't care if the Chinese population in Edison has quadrupled in the last year, Chinese should never dictate the outcome of an election. Americans should. In Edison, this is just another example of us losing our own country. Ray and I represent the average guy in New Jersey, blue-collar white people."

To counter it, West Windsor Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh joined in with protest: “We are all immigrants or children of immigrants, whether we came here 300 years ago or yesterday. We all have to stand up and say this is un-American. Freedom of speech must have a sense of responsibility."

In fact, especially when freedom of speech is enjoyed by the ruling class, it does not amount to intrinsic freedom any longer. Click here to find the Tsunami Song and the Friends racism as found in the local paper.

What is missed in the entire context is the institutionalized racism that exists in the United States. The radio host commentators of course knew well that only a citizen of this country is allowed to vote, and everyone else is barred from electoral process (even if a permanent resident works for the country for more than four decades). Despite that, to assume that “Chinese should never dictate the outcome of election—Americans should” shows grossly misplaced knowledge.

My objection was not so much to discover how come the racist duo had not apologized yet, but how come these people have not yet been persecuted for such racist comments on public airtime. Not that I am surprised, considering the old boys clouts: following show the Jersey Guys flanked by two eminent ones: the Governor, the US Attorney General.




Apparently the Asian-American NJ Mayor candidate Jun Choi was allowed to the studio of the hosts and was granted a chance to talk about his political platform. He brought with him a six-pack of beer and some Korean soju, a liquor similar to vodka.

Carton said that “the few politicians that had a legitimate gripe with us always come in with booze.” After the beer talk, Carton started in with the apology.

“All right, a lot of what we do — the majority of what we do — is satire,” Carton said. “We poke fun at ourselves. We poke fun at a lot of people, and the intent of that is to never hurt any one specific person or a specific group. So I will tell you man to man, if you were personally offended by the comments we made a month ago today, man to man I’m sorry, and you have my apology for that, because the intent was to never to specifically hurt you personally, or hurt your political campaign in the upcoming mayoral election.”

According to Sentinel at Edison, Choi accepted the apology and gave advice that the Korean soju liquor goes really well with Korean barbecued beef.

Few questions emerge: Was such an apology a mockery? What did the hosts mean by "man-to-man" apology? The comments were originally made towards all Orientals/Indians/Chinese (and not to specifically a Korean-American like Choi) anyway. When it was not a man-to-man slur, why a man-to-man apology? Moreover, Choi’s liquor trip just trivialized the issue in an insulting fashion. Instead of directing the misguided missiles like the Jersey Guys to where they should belong, Choi, in order not to segregate the votes of the fellow racists who so religiously follow the radio show and come out in public to show solidarity with the sentiments of the hosts, just was so pathetic in demeanor. In contrast, the Asian Media Watchdog’s appeal seems ridiculously philosophical following such unquestioning submission by Choi.

The problem, though, is that apology is no answer. Only the ones who don’t care as much to act upon the issue, try to get rid of the issue by apologizing. Look at Ronald Reagan apologizing to Japanese Americans for the American torture, Clinton visiting Africa and apologizing for American slavery, and recently, senators apologizing for American lynching.

Did any of them mean anything other than to skirt future questions on the same embarrassing issues (and not criminal issues, for if they were criminal issues, why not a fair trial?).

Seems like apologizing has become a prerogative for some, and forgiving an accommodation for others. And history, very cruelly, is allowed to repeat itself.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Racism, USA, Activism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Smart Mobs, is how Howard Rheingold calls the present and future users of hi-tech world. Whereas I totally agree with his theory that, “real impact of mobile communications will come not from the technology itself, but from how people use it”, for me, the question is not so much of how people use the technology as it is about how much autonomy are they seeking and in control of while using it.

In other words, its not really crucial to know how to use a technology (which can directly come with the user-friendly manuals), but to know how to know of the various ways technology can be used and not used, and to exercise an informed decision.

Technology itself comes with the how-tos. The how-tos are intended to limit the uses and suppress the alternative options of misuses. And this is where the danger lies. The technological medium makes the platform so “user-friendly” to navigate and utilize that the “users” technically never go beyond the child-like exploratory stage. In the second level of interaction of course, it is the one-way horizontal communication with the users at the receiving end. Call them couch potatoes or just smart mobs.

Using a technology is actually the dumbest thing. Not the smartest. It definitely puts an end to the process of questioning the deliberate limitations of technology, the political economy of technology (who owns it, why do we pay for it), and whose ends does the technology serve.

A content gang of technology-happy crowd is for sure a mob. But to assume they are smart has an agenda. The users in the technology world are akin to the have-nots of the class-based society. A smart mob theory assumes that a Consumer is indeed a King (like Walmart would like us to believe). This theory would suppose that its not shopping experience which has the impact, what is important is how a consumer shops at our stores to dress up smart.

But then of course we know the pitfalls of a consumerist economy and its so-called smart mobs who use it by merely contributing to the monopolists’ wealth. The consumer as a king would never allow the Waltons to rule over them, as much as the smart mobs would never allow the five telecom cos to control their devices. And we know, these are mere wishful thinkings presently.

On top of these economic divides, talk about the implications of mere “use” and there comes flying raised eyebrows and political trials. Smart mobs will need more to apply their own minds to challenge technological slavery and liberate it from the monopolists than to revel in the abilities to use the devices in various different ways within the existing framework.

I believe examples are instruments of the weak to supplement the voids in arguments. But for the humor of it, let's assume we can at any point sitting at the coffee shop, move our digital cameras in a way that it can show us what deals are being made on our behalf between the ruling politicians and ruling businessmen in their corporate boardrooms (through wi-fi digital image transfers?) And we can accomplish such amazing things with their knowledge that we master such technology. And at the site of the coffee shop, with so many people discussing the barbaric and corrupt officials we have trusted so far in business and politics (although they go synonymous these days), we then decide basing on what we discover (and not via on CNN or Fox cameramen recording boorish default press conferences) that we must question the authorities and can provide supportive evidences.

Now that is smart. But the point is its not some covert Watergate or Tehelka operation. The government must know that the citizenry has the right to use the technology to witness any deals being discussed even at the penthouse of Hefner (that’s an interesting deviation too, to watch the bunnies apart from the frustrated powered men) at any moment. It need not result in hero-worshipping (like Watergate) or interrogating (like Tehelka) people who do this tech takes. Because the mob, the mass, gets involved entirely, to use the technology to their advantage, not to be awed by its superlatives and reserve it for some goddamn award winning front page stories, we know that are catering to one interest or the other (logically anyway, since they are done without involving the people, they are not mass acts anyway).

Remember Gandhi did not make the deals at the round table conferences; he struck them at the salt marches. The use of the technology has to go alongside the use of the masses. And the use of technology must be FULLY harnessed (come on, I know we could have seen that Monica-Bill flicks live). Then it's smart mob using the technology smart way, so that the mob needs no longer be ruled by a tiny group of profiteers, war-mongers and hypocrites.

Tags: Saswat, Technology, Media

"Radio, when used correctly, can get you killed.

It’s the most powerful, most personal medium. Nothing else on planet Earth can reach more oppressed people-the poorest, the illiterate and semi-illiterate-with the same information at one time. It explains and reflects issues, events, and people. It provides company as well as context. At its best, its mixture and manipulation of supplied sound nourishes the spirit and offers hope for a better tomorrow and, perhaps, even eventual liberation."

--Todd S Burroughs

The Agronomist is due for release this Tuesday. An exclusive review can be found here.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Film, Activism, Haiti

By Saswat Pattanayak

As a continuation of an earlier debate yesterday, I still have the question fresh. Who is a hero? Do we have one? What are the criteria for choosing a hero? How does one distinguish between a leader, a hero, an icon, a legend? Is it possible to make the divisions? Is it desirable?

Are heroes needed in the society? If so, why, at all? Do they fill in the same void for folks as religions do in one way (religions enslave feeble people who can’t articulate for themselves, even to distinguish on their own what is contextually correct and what is not)?

Or are heroes actually needed so that people have something good to look back to? We have had worst phases of our inhuman legacies, of causing war and depression, of deliberate perpetuations of exploitative saga and firm refusal to replace existing systems.
At least we had some heroes also to look back at (you want to talk of Bhagat Singh and Malcolm X…. Netajee Subhas and Patrice Lumumba).

Well not anymore. First there was systematic suppression of heroic feats (like they banned Paul Robeson and Mohammad Ali). Next, there was systematic and legalized infiltration of anti-heroic commodifications (like the Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and all the obvious honors including the bob dylans of the times getting the tastes of market). Then there were mortification of heroes where people were made into legends (suddenly the atheist Buddha was made into a God, and Gandhi was a huge statue and a story to be challenged every now and then for anyone who wanted to sound different). Of course lastly there came a time when all these sounded dated and came a new genre of heroes—the television celebrities.

British accused Americans of their obsession with popular vulgar culture of paris hiltons. Americans accused the Brits of their obsession with elite vulgar cultures of a dormant prince-lover cuckoo love in royal kingdoms. As they all fought with each other, they discovered the common minimum factor: the hero-worshipping driven by media zeal. And yes Paris and Prince Charles continue to be the heroes.

And at most times too, teenage girls aspire to become the heroes even if it means they have to become desperate housewives. For apparently the desperate housewives every Sunday night are about heroes too.

Pathetic culmination of human civilizations.

And if this is civilization, I demand barbarism now!

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Communism, Media

Todd introduced Jared and I to the journalist-activist and a wonderful human being Don Rojas.

Leading an extraordinary life with myriad blend of experiences which I shall detail in near future, doth not come easy. But what keeps him still way up there for all of us to emulate is his undying spirit to listen, articulate and educate us at the crossroads.

Thank you.

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Black Power, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

Check this one out.

Peter Bouckaert was in hell recently. At least that’s what he said. He was in Nepal.

The violence continues between the Maoists and the ruling class military pets, and most people who have better things to do by dying than to take a side in this case, have fallen prey. This is a sure case for Human Rights Watch. And no wonder they have someone now who is world famous activist. With a Canon camera on hand and interviewers around and mainstream press going agog, we got Bouckaert as the celebrity now.

Rolling Stone, that inimitable magazine of the music lefties, has this week featured Bouckart’s hell journey.

What however is missed from the discussion is that despite the knowledge of active American military support, nothing much is being done to STOP the nonsense.

Making a celebrity out of a genuinely interested globe-trotter and writing stories of the Western discoveries of the shocking third world massacres is easier. What is difficult however, is an insightful understanding of the historical reasons behind the ideology formation of hatred in the Third World. This for the uninitiated, means the roles that the dominant countries of the West have played in colonizing and oppressing the peoples’ spirits and at the same time either directly ruled or aided the military of the installed clown rulers of the lands.
This needs to be followed up with all active steps needed to STOP the genocides by an international body of nations, which needs to be respected in real terms. Not a helpless body of the UN whose general secretary cribs because he is not heard enough. This international body needs to go and bloody well stop the massacres. The tragic deaths of millions of innocent lives is not a matter of celebrity photographer becoming a legend. It’s a call for collective action.

Why does the West pretend that it does not know of the atrocities worldwide? Does the elite group of rulers need a photographer always to report to them and let them exclaim in awe at the courage of the camera?

That simply defies logic. Because all of us knew of Nepal long before RS published the story. Did we just need pictures taken by a white camera?

And what is to be done now? Award ceremonies and self-congratulations, I am sure.

Bouckaert says,

"Whenever I leave a place, it is always difficult to say goodbye. I do not want to tell people, I hope to see you soon, because that means that they will still be in trouble the next time that I come."

It's time, for the world community of rulers to realize that maintaining lives on the planet is not the task of the freewheeling scribes, its the responsibility of the defense departments of the respective countries which regulate arms control rules.

Tags: Saswat, Nepal, Capitalism, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

I have been wondering for some time now, about the sudden loss of interest in general discussion about mobile phones and their harmful effects. Around the time I was in my college and grew fascination for mobile phones, well meaning family and friends cautioned me against using them much. It appeared from research then as they appeared in the press that cellular radiations had multiple effects, not any of them especially good.

One could also compare easy notes with the way television screen flickered and radio waves made screeching noises. Usage of phones could actually cause fire at petrol pumps (gas stations) as well.

Over the time, what has consistently happened are the following:

a. The negative reports in the media have either drastically reduced or completely vanished
b. Television screens are made more resilient (or whatever is the term) to be affected by radiations
c. Loss of lives is not any more associated with mobile phones

This has taken place vis-à-vis the following:

a. The consolidation of cellular phone industry, in the hands of monopolies
b. The telecommunications sector emerging as the most powerful branch of economy (also in the name of digitalizing it&hellip
c. Cheaper prices of cell phone, minute usages (in many third world countries, incoming calls are free 24/7 …!) prompting more and more people to use cell phones.

A digital culture is merely an excuse. And I am sure we all shall live to pay the price for this sooner or later. In their quest to maximize profits, the social responsibility role of the telecom firms has gone for a huge toss. It was the same with tobacco and drink till they put a word of caution (injurious or underage signs). Unfortunately even after we know of the harmful effects, the smoke and drink joints get away with just the surgeon’s warning.

And what’s more, the surgeon’s warnings are so generic (with pages of texts) used for each drug, that people hardly take cigarettes as seriously as they should (after all if every over the counter drug carries even larger warnings, what harm can one liner tobacco product do?)
But cell phones do not even carry a warning.

Click here for a related story

Tags: Saswat, Technology, Media, Capitalism

LA Times has a new design starting today. I like it. I know this is gross, but mainstream press at times deserve some praises too

Tags: Saswat, Media, News

Its not funny that I found 122,000 pages under Google by making a search for ["Mother's Day Sale"], 1,740,000 pages under Google by making a search for [Mothers Day Sale]. And 9,280,000 pages by making a search for [Mother's+Day+Sale].
Now thats whats called Consumerism at its peak. And mind you, not just that, its a global disease now too. Don't tell me it too spread from African monkeys. Its from our very own Yankees, this time around.
Well, I should be knowing. I started my mainstream journalistic career in 1999 with a Mother's Day story on the front page of Economic Times, Delhi.
Happy Mother's Day, dear Mamas! Just don't pamper yourselves too much if you haven't taught kids how no education is good enough if it does not teach why joining naval bases targetting innocent civilians is the greatest crime and why supporting profit bases of gift makers for Mother's Day is not gonna solve issues either.

Tags: Saswat, Capitalism, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

What an irony that Adriana Bosch, producer of PBS documentary on Reagan and author of American Experience: Reagan had to write, direct and produce the latest Castro documentary.

I watched it tonight with disbelief as the documentary went on to describe four-decades of Cuba as a one-man show, thereby undermining a huge people’s participation. Moreover, flawed perceptions and lack of in-depth knowledge of Soviet Union's relationship with Cuba were conspicuous in this PBS documentary.

In contrast was last year’s HBO documentary made on Castro (titled Looking for Fidel) by Oliver Stone, which at least attempted at a judicious blend of opinions.
Bosch should not surprise viewers, going by her core beliefs. In June last year in an interview with Washington Post, she had expressed her interest in both Reagan and Castro (in contrasting terms).

“..the idea being that Reagan rocked the world on which dictators such as Castro stood on and to me that captured Reagan's contribution to humanity.”

I wonder what are these public broadcasting efforts directed to: seeking layers of truths or covering up by government mouthpieces?

To a question as to what did Bosch think of the fact that Reagan never referred to “AIDS epidemic”, she had this to say:

“I think by the time that the AIDS epidemic broke, Reagan's mind was primarily focused on the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War. At the same time, he was also dealing with the Iran Contra scandal, so it just didn't register on his radar and that was enough for him at that time…….I don't think it was lack of compassion but it was lack of energy and attention to handle more than just a few major issues in his presidency.”

Sounds like quite an activist-imaginative-journalist. Considering that Bosch never had met with Reagan during his lifetime. And yet she could make all such favorable assumptions.
PBS documentaries are used as primary History documents for school children, I am told. If that is the truth, how many more lies our teachers gonna tell us in future?

Tags: Saswat, Communism, History, Media

May 1 went past. And I hoped for some media coverage of the May 1 celebrations in the US. And why should I not? After all, this is the country where May 1 kicked off for the first time and the class divisions among peoples are most clearly evident here than anywhere else.

But guess what CNN, that liberal contestant of Fox, had to say: May 1 is celebrated in some parts of the world today as International Labor Day. And they went on to show the Soviet (of course), Germans and later on China.

Unless of course the assumption is that US is not part of that International world. Just look at the pending UN proposals...

In any case, Long Live May 1

and Yes, finally got the Whosemedia.com up and running. More to spirits of the peoples' media!

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Media

Words are political: not just by degree of how effectively they can be manipulated, but also by the kind of phrases they are put into by the writers. By the latter I mean, expressions are prerogatives of writers: some need to vent out, some strive to agitate and some find words in reminiscences.

My essay on confessional vs subjectivity.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Media, Academic

Dramatized television just should finish its quota.

Gil Scott Heron was thinking of the powerful visuals of television and their impacts on audience when he was growing definitively skeptical. But he had still not thought that television with its pluralistic marketplace of ideas still had more coming. And soon, we discovered that McLuhan’s “hot” medium no more can match up with the hardline messages of some commentators, who are out to convince viewers that facts as portrayed by them are more engrossing than fictions.

Enough has been said of “The O'Reilly Factor” -- the most-watched program on cable news. In fact “Outfoxed” has grossed millions only by its critic on Bill O'Reilly. As if Fox was not already known to be catering to the conservatives, derived from Pew Researches on audience constitution, we have a frenzy in the nation to prove if O’Reilly is a liberal or a liberal-basher. To end controversies, one just needs to watch Talking Points, any episode, to get it straight from mouth of the horse, as I did last week...


Read the entire story here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

My blog is mine. Therefore yours.

My blogs, then become one of the outlets for both my frustrations and anger, because I need not take things for granted any longer and I want to connect with those who are on the similar path. For, I am not alone in this world where freedom is granted in installments by the ruling class. I am with the groups of people who seek freedom for all, or freedom for none—who believe that the limited freedom, that better than thou freedom in effect, should be reserved for none.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Technology, Academic

By Saswat Pattanayak

December 1791:
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, drafted by James Madison:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

March 2005:
The Washington Post quotes Federal Election Commissioner David M. Mason:
“We are almost certainly going to move from an environment in which the Internet was per se not regulated to where it is going to be regulated in some part. That shift has huge significance because it means that people who are conducting political activity on the Internet are suddenly going to have to worry about or at least be conscious of certain legal distinctions and lines they didn’t used to have to worry about.”

While contrasting Madison and Mason, let’s worry:

We got Presidents famously known to end speeches with “God Bless America”; we got enforcement agencies tapping phones and monitoring chat conversations; and we got an individualistic society committed not to assemble for common good– but grow insanely self-centered to survive battles of job insecurities.

When it has come to ownership of media, FCC has let go of regulations—indeed purged existing regulations, so that only the big fishes remain (after gobbling the smaller ones, of course). So that, monopolies emerge in the garb of competition. When it has come to mergers and acquisitions of media business, there is no such regulations. Indeed the team spirit exhibited by top companies in their quest to end public initiatives in community media, alternative media, radical media, and/or free media, is matchless. And there is no regulation sought for, even as more than three-fourths of community radio stations remain forced-closed. When it comes to prevailing power of the established conglomerates to eliminate all the lesser press, there has been no regulations.

Merely three decades ago, when there were offensives against the underground press and sabotaging staged against the dissident press, no regulations ever were in place to monitor CIA, FBI and the Army. When Ramparts was investigated into for having planned an expose on CIA’s funding of the US National Student Association, there were no call for regulations on the agency’s high-handedness in dealing with press freedom. When FBI persuaded Columbia Records to stop advertising in the underground press such as Berkeley Barb and Free Press, there was no regulations to judge the qualification of a domestic investigation agency to influence press advertisements. The six-paper Kaleidoscope chain, student papers South End, State News, or publications such as Rearguard, Independent Eye, Queen City Express, The Sea Turtle and the Shark and dozens more were all targeted by the establishment, there was no talk of such regulations. And we are not even talking about radical press here, not even about Alternative Press Syndicate news service. Not making a profile of Independent Eye, Off Our Backs, the boycotted publisher Bill Schanen, the White Panthers or the Black Panthers.

In many ways, the historical contexts differed, although social injustices are as rampant as ever and there is an acute need of a vigilant press as mass media aimed to educate the peoples and not end up becoming a fourth estate, an indispensable wing of the White House to publish the voices of the administration.

But in some more fundamentally different ways, Mason’s statements call for alarm. Unlike publications and publishers, the companies who fund and those who do not, this time around, the laws will focus on regulations on individuals like you and I who are reading and blogging our active voices!

I have always been an ardent supporter of regulating media, to begin with. Unless there are regulations on part of the state to monitor free competition, only a handful of people will survive and flourish in any business. This will be to the detriment of majority others since, the monopoly will ensure a profit sphere, not a pubic sphere for media discourse. Historically the grip, as we know, has been let loose and the monopolies, as we know, have been the outcome of the ‘deregularization”. Lack of regulations have only led to media monopoly. Hence the emergence of online media expression, not in form of subsidiary sister concerns of big press but as outrageously challenging individual bloggers running free words on free space. I call this the fifth space.

That is new about Mason—He talks of regularization this time, of the bloggers. Not of the political economy. But of the individual voices. Of the freewheeling thought provokers. Of the alternative thinkers translating thoughts to words that get published without a publisher to be scrutinized.

“People who are conducting political activity on the Internet are suddenly going to have to worry about.” Mason is right. So far, people never conducted political activities except on the day of the poll. These days people blog their journeys and comments on a daily basis. The voice is louder. The hyperlinks have become major organizing tools. Suddenly the “Person” has become political, as against the corporate houses which were political agents forever shielded by political powers.

The personal voice has become significant and a force to reckon with. Community organizations were dreaded so far. Now on, the fear of a virtual community. For a community is not per se. A community needs to be organized. Just when bloggers communicated with each other, expressed their commonalities basing on political frustrations, we knew a community was being formed. When Dailykos, claiming to be progressive amassed maximum hits in face of corporate angst, eyebrows were raised. But a community was being formed nevertheless.

Now on, beware! Read the board. A law is underway. Assemble against it, as the right one can exercise, or be silenced as the unsung martyrs of an era – where freedom could be expressed without resorting to the watchful fourth estate. Indeed it could be felt because it posed a challenge to the fourth estate. For once, lets see whose side is the estate taking. Of freedom of expression or fiefdom of suppression.

Tags: Saswat, Capitalism, USA, Media, Activism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Does freedom mean different things to different people. I would say yes. And which is why, blog freedom is still not worth a dekko for most people at this point.
But if we look before we leap to this conclusion, it will be indeed foolish.
There are at least two resulting conclusions:
One, freedom is necessary
Two, It is not.

I think both ends of the freedom spectrum have some values. How much freedom is “necessary”? I would say, minimum freedom is necessary. Just like the minimum sources of sustenance.
Lets start from the minimum: With basic freedom of speech and expression and of all things necessary, the world can live a happy life. There are oppressed people and suppressed voices world over who need to be heard. Folks burdened with the task of teaching the untamed quite a few lessons need to find a stage and platform. For, the unheard are not voiceless. The unheard are just plenty of noises yet to find a channel. The united voices will emerge sooner or later.

And when the majority will speak, the voice will no more be suffocated under any obligations, will not be marred by moral prospects, will not stay quite for sake of civility. The outcry for freedom from colonialists and imperialists have found its ways of expressions in the past and it will in the future. Difficult is the process, for the majority indeed are the marginalized in the world today.

But the time is not far ahead. I am sure its going to take place during my lifetime. During this lifetime. Institutional norms will be challenged. Classics will be revisited. Values long kept holy will be tarnished with specks of multiple truths only to reject them. Traditional discriminations will meet with radical equalities.

Individuals will have found a society where the freedom will be experienced vis-à-vis the way we all would be connecting, not constantly squabbling over disconnects.


Now, that’s minimum freedom. Enough to generate a life and sufficient to live it with dignity. Unfortunately most are deprived of it since long.

Now the analogy I intend to draw is with the material acquisitions. To what extent can one possess things to be called one’s own. When even one’s life betrays, can the material goods or private property provide the lasting comforts to last as much as one would wish one had. Aren’t accidents caused in luxurious cars and business class flights? In other words, there is never enough of material comforts to grant one a content life. What is needed indeed is, a basic minimum standard of living. For All. So that we don’t fight over each other’s “acquisitions”. That’s community building with a social concern. How to do that is another question, we will attempt at answering in next few writings. But what it is, is this: We need just the basic means. Everything else is superfluous.

Stretch the material acquisitions for a moment to imply that the more one has, the more happy one is, if not content. True. But what gathers momentum is the fact that the gap existing between the haves of the “comforts” and the have-nots of the “comforts” get indeed widened beyond repair unless some drastic and often radical measures are taken to bring economy to homeostasis.

Include freedom: How much freedom is enough was discussed. But what was left out, apart from the mechanism of freedom (like the political economy), the apprehension if the amount of freedom has any normative value.

Here it is: when freedom is unbridled in an unequal society, the class of people who owns the most will also end up owning the most freedom. In other words, the grand narrative will again be repeated by the owners of the freedom in the dominant tongue.

Freedom is a thing one is born with, not something to be granted. Perhaps so. But the fact remains, that freedom is often enough trampled and en masse bought by the ruling class who subsequently grants some of it to us in installments. As long as we do not notice this, we will be turning our back at the most fundamental need.


What do we need to do?

We need to ensure basic freedom to all. This will mean the same “drastic and often radical measures” to take away some extra freedom from some and distribute among all. I am not sure yet if freedom needs to be taken care of before “owned” properties or vice versa, but the only plausible solution at the moment points towards this.

In my opinion, there are excesses of Freedom as there are excesses of Private properties. The prerogative lies with the privileged to not acknowledge this. And with the vast majority of the world’s populace without access either to properties or freedom, unmatched both by degree and type, its time to acknowledge this.

Some of us shall have to sacrifice parts of us we called our own, this part which we thought we could use in any manner possible. At least this was true in case of those who have the power to exercise this excess of freedom. In order to exonerate the power, we have to redefine what constitutes freedom and how much exactly we need.

For if not done, those who own freedom granting authorities will keep on wielding more of the freedom to restrict some of it when it comes to us, and justify the entire gamut of unfair play in the name of “We the people”.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Media, Capitalism, Communism

Between the stories, why does it have to be a big fish?

A powerful underwater earthquake which struck off the west coast of Indonesia may well have been the main news of the 29th March edition of New York Times, but it compares poorly with the Michael Jackson trial story which received almost twice the space in the paper (688 words as compared to 1200 words). Interestingly, the Jackson story (“In Jackson Trial, Jurors Can Hear of Other Cases&rdquo had not much to say apart from what had already been said by the paper on its March 19th edition (“Judge to Hear About 2 Jackson Accusers in 90's&rdquo.

Such is the significance attached to the Jackson trial that despite the nature of the trial (long and persisting, often tiresomely repetitive), it has never been relegated to obscurity. Instead, Jackson stories of “did he? didn’t he?” question has hogged the limelight in the leading press as one of the “top stories” on invariably daily basis.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

No matter if “Who is a journalist” event turned into “What is journalism” debate. The panel still discussed the “rules for who is what” at the National Press Club on Friday.

Mostly the conservative Jeff Gannon faced the cannons as he struggled with answering why he thought it was quite natural for him to get into the White House. He in fact declared that there was nothing wrong either to quote what has already been mouthed by the government. Much to his embarrassment (if at all), the enlightened press booed and gave their verdict that journalism entailed more than that, by the way.

To me, the spirit had little direction. I could see why Gannon could not recollect the number of “weeks or days” he had to wait to get the pass, while answering to Ana Marie Cox. He just did not want to answer that. But what I could not understand was why the folks on the panel (which included Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The Baltimore Sun, Garrett Graff, John Stanton, Matthew Yglesias, Mike Madden) just stressed so much on how Gannon got into the White House press corps.

Admittedly and Wonkette put it bluntly (more to your growth, Ana!), briefing room at White House is such a bland place anyway. And moreover even the small room is not always full. I second. Who is keen on taking the notes for the speakers who know too little of what they speak especially when most of it is pure advertorials.

If one has to report on comments (sorry Jeff, they are not “facts”, as we found out with so-called WMD), come and blog.
I agree with Eric Brewer: “Perhaps the best line of the day came from Ana Marie Cox, who had earlier made the point that one reason Gannon got into the White House briefing room was because lately there have been a lot of empty seats, since mainstream reporters have largely given up on getting anything of substance out of the stone wall that is Scott McClellan. She went on, ”I think it would be awesome if bloggers suddenly stormed the White House briefing room and filled all those seats and started asking questions. Then maybe your reporters would take the briefing more seriously, too."
We’re trying, Ana, we’re trying."

You have said it better, Eric!

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media, Technology, USA

The third coming of blog for me, is here.

If there is just one way to define a blog, I would do it thus: a series of chronologically arranged journal entries available online alongwith several sourced hyperlinks. In terms of type, this one definition does it well. In terms of degree though, if there are to be more definitions than one, which I am sure is the compelling case: there are plenty. And it is amidst this scope of plenty, that some journalists seek their most preferred explanation.

Needless to say, I have found one which is as varied in degrees as possible, to include comments, pictures, external hyperlinks, and poems ranging from mine to Woody Guthrie’s.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media, Technology

Whose opinions count?

In an editorial on April 4, The Weekly Standard came down heavily on the federal judges for citing “evolving standards of decency” to save the life of Christopher Simmons who was earlier sentenced to death by the laws of Missouri, and contrasted the logic with Terri Schiavo’s case, arguing that the standards of decency were not enough to save the latter’s life.

The attempt to draw analogies between two unrelated cases which are contextually distinctive is continuation of a neo-conservative journalism tradition. This is one which the conservative Insight magazine follows in its opinion too, “Is Terri Schiavo's right to not be starved to death less than that of a convicted murderer like Scott Peterson, who gets three square meals a day on death's row?” A critical look as opposed to a surface one, would prevail two fallacies: one, on content, the cases are entirely different in terms of their unique histories, and two, countless anti-life cry against Simmons/Peterson et al, doth not make one pro-life cry for Schiavo right. The neo-rights have not come clear on the policy decisions on life and death; they have merely tried to highlight the show with one single incident.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

I believe Personal is ALWAYS Political anyway...

With the world of things around me, I would not have opted for a life to begin with. What rightful a life is if my happiness is conditional upon some others’ discomforts? Not only was I brought to this world without my expressed permission, but each act of mine subsequently were determined by existing norms of an (in)human society which has resulted in mutual hatred among peoples, a society whose legitimacy I reject wholeheartedly.

This deep anguish of helplessness and implicit submission forms the core of what I call my life. This is a life that’s ceased to be personal for long. Since the time I violated the enforced norms purposively and refused to surrender, I joined ranks with the social misfits—whose life experiences have varied not in types, but in degrees. With that, my personal journey has somewhere down the roads got mingled with the social roads not often taken, but largely despised.

Read the entire article here

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

The standard definition online of GNU/communism is that it's a term used to mock open source activist, and tag them as communists. Communist is used due to the resemblance between open source's philosophy of sharing the code among all humanity and communism's idea to share resources among all continent's population.

I do not have any problem with that. Actually I also think Richard Stallman is a highly progressive thinker and I adore him for that. But I dont quite get why the "open source" people are called activists and on top of that "mocked" as communists. First of all, a standard definition using mock as a word is itself pejorative. Two, open source activists themselves will come forward to denounce communism on their own. Why take extra trouble? For one, I know GNU is not as "open source" as "open source" people claim they are.

Don't these people study any philosophical differences between Stallman (read the GNU) with the rest (read the open source managers like Linus Torvlds, Bruce Perens etc..)?

Tags: Saswat, Technology, Media, Academic, Activism

Revisiting Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report:

The three global magazines Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report, magazines are available in the developing world as widely as any of the more “local” periodicals. Indeed, despite the costs (each of these issues costs more than eight times the price of lets say, India Today or Outlook magazines in India), I have, like many of my friends, grabbed the copies to have perspectives on the actual global news. No wonder we have equated the Americas and their concern as the only globe worth reporting about. Nothing significant has changed even after the global tragedy of September 11.

Although the divisions are made of the magazines for convenience, the similarities are glaring. There is no coverage of Africa, Asia or Australia. And there is no coverage of areas and peoples of the world that are not affecting the US at this time.

Read the full article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

Is there anything new about my blogs?

Amidst hope, there is despair. Nothing astounding. But surely, not a matter of one exercising free will to carve out the hope and purge the despair.

Where I do exercise my free will, is where I blog.

I do not feel vulnerable as I blog. Indeed, I get empowered. There is no feeling as powerful as knowing that one is able to express the voice within. The medium well could be the message, but the message is what counts, after all.

Read the complete article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Technology, Media

My rationale for why I blog:

I blog, therefore I am. Without blogging, I would surely have an essence, but no existence. Not only does existence precede the essence, but I am of the view that, to exist one carves a different path than to live off the essence.

To exist, I need to know that I do. To discover my essence I need only to see the outcomes of my participation in the social production process. My works at home, office or community mark my essence. The purpose that I have created of life, and conveniently amended from time to time in order to suit the societal circumstances, do bring out the essence. But I can have the existence, even sans the manufactured timeline, and without succumbing to the social infrastructure in place.

Read the complete article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Technology, Media

The Economist and The New Yorker revisited:

I see a clear bias of The Economist: a colonial bias. Even as Tony Blair report on Africa suggests that foreigners who pay bribes should be punished, and foreign firms that extract minerals from African soil should be more transparent in their dealings with local governments, The Economist is quick to point out that foreigners do not cause corruption.

Indeed it justifies the international scams as it goes on: “For every shady multinational, slipping a minister a sackful of cash for a contract, there are thousands of African policemen robbing people at roadblocks or African bureaucrats inventing pointless rules so that they can demand bribes not to enforce them.” Indeed, in the post-colonial discourse, the roadmap to police brutality or bureaucratic corruption in Africa could have been carved out more critically, more radically. The articles on Africa remind one of Richburg’s “Out of America”—a tale half-told, poorly told.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media, Capitalism

The following is the abstract of the recent paper Bu and I are working on:

By employing framing theory and content analysis, this study identified the media frames in the leading Chinese and Indian newspapers and Websites in their coverage of 2004 U.S. presidential debates. The major findings include both Chinese and Indian media predominantly disclose preferences for John Kerry over George Bush in their news reports. The U.S. debates also generated media discussions of some other issues the debates did not cover extensively, such as U.S. policy towards Taiwan and North Korea nuclear issue for Chinese media, and Kashmir issue and India’s stand on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for Indian media.

This study also discovers other media frames including media bias, poll prediction, online cynicism, and personality politics. The authors argue that studying these frames may broaden the understanding of the media effects of international reporting, which might be a valuable contribution to research about the construction of reality using media frames, and implicit ideology in political reporting.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, China, India, Media, USA

By Saswat Pattanayak

The arrest of Avnish Bajaj, CEO of US-based auction portal eBay’s Indian subsidiary has caused concerns among high level government officials on India and the US including from US state department spokesman Richard Boucher. I am sure he should be sure of how to treat offenders who could be accused of child pornography in the US. But what I hear is that quite the contrary, he is ‘concerned’ too!
What however, surprises is that it has also caused concern among the largest media operation in India, Times of India network.
In an article –, Rohit Wadhwaney says how “Bajaj gets just about enough space in his cell to curl up and sleep, if at all he manages to get some xxxxx He has to wake up every morning as early as 5.30 am and walk out of the cell, which is more like a dormitory (though extremely unclean and stinky), for head-count of prisoners. xxxxx For lunch, he gets four rotis , one subzi and a little bit of dal. Even if he is still hungry, he can’t get another helping xxxxx At 6.30 pm he is served dinner, as mercilessly as the previous meal. And at 8 pm the lights are switched off. But whether Bajaj manages to get some sleep or not only he knows. xxxxx”
Such use of language clearly denotes an irresponsible form of journalistic tradition that Times of India may now on be identified with. But I am sure that will not be the case. Since, had it been someone else than Bajaj, a US citizen and high profile Harvard graduate with power and influence in high circles, Times' stance would have been very different.
And whose battle is TOI fighting? Someone who was making money out of auctioning MMS clips of 17 yr old kids having oral sex? I would not even venture into the legal age controversy which anyway needs to be challenged. It really does not make sense at least to me how being 18 makes one qualified to do something which being 17 does not. And no saying why child pornography question can be brought up here, because it is clearly not one of that kind. The same issue persists among teens in campus all over in US who wants relaxation on legal age. Not 18, but 17, they say. Now instead of drinking and pornography being the questions, its a matter of numbers now. 17 or 18. Very stupid indulgences..
But what matters here is the blatant absence of any attempts to dig background investigation before auctioning an item. As an online marketplace Bazee dot com has the responsibility to verify the claims of ownership and background of such ownership indeed before flashing anything for auction. In the present case, clearly the sale of the clip was against the wishes of the girl in video.
This may herald a new beginning of the need to investigate the products being auctioned, especially with rise in fraudulence within eBay.com recently.
As for Bajaj, he needs to be treated with equal dignity as being conferred to any other inmates. I do not see why the Press has to suddenly wake up to see the prison conditions just because bajaj is served dinner “mercilessly”.

Tags: Saswat, Media, India, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Bob Dylan in the Spring 1965 documentary “Don’t Look Back” (made by D.A. Pennebaker) is seen to be refusing to give an interview to the Time magazine reporter. After the reporter persists, Dylan finally says that he would not talk to that magazine because its read by the elites, who else?

Exactly 40 years have passed since. On its December 20, 2004 issue, which by no means an unimportant issue-this being one of the year end and ‘best-photos-of-the-year’ issue-Time has come up with the cover story: “The new science of Sleep”.

In its 10-page spread of why sleep is needed, Christine Gorman reveals citing some research (and believe me, I am still looking for that research in her texts) that sleep indeed is needed for the brain, not for body.

Well, lets say that’s alright, but what’s the news? If not news, what’s new? If not new, what’s profound?

Here it is. The larger picture today is that of social unrest following a political system that took charge once again. The larger picture is that of youth apprehensions about the war that’s caused so that it will perpetuate the fear psychoses. The larger picture is that more critical questions are surfacing today than they ever did before in terms of social justice, but fewer are actually being asked due to the fear factor of being termed unpatriotic or even a terrorist.

When the mind is working more than the body (lets say in the process of my blogging at midnight on a computer communicating this to you, my body works less than my mind) there is a problem to the people who wants to replace the larger picture with a myopic vision full of non-issues. Hence, the researchers (whoever they are and again let me state I could not find which researches provided the ‘fresh clues’-as said on the cover) working at such a theory of sleep that says the more we sleep the smarter we become is little exaggerated. Why else would I have the knowledge of Gandhi having maintained a four-hour-sleep-a-night routine? Or all the prolific scholars I have seen in my short life actually being smart, staying smart and staying awake most of the day and the night?

Why Time magazine would want such a cover story is not surprising. It has countless frivolous cover stories in the past in most regular intervals that will surprise just about anyone. But precisely because of that, the regularity of such cover events, it has succeeded in letting such them get past to its readers, some of whom must have more or less got normalized into believing that this is the big issue.

Health is definitely a much bigger concern than what the president has to say over the thanksgivings dinner. Its because health issue affects all, republican or democrat or the rest of us. Its also true that we have really got bored of the political coverages, maybe because they are of a very similar ‘he-said-this-then-he-refuted-that’ types. The second most popular theme, entertainment is another horrible domain. At times political stories are as entertaining as entertainment stories can be political. But entertainment stories in mainstream press are considered for the so-called entertainment value only reducing them to irrelevance.

Look at the Johnny Cash cover on Time recently. No political mention at all. Or even look at Dylan becoming a top 100 entertainer in Time. One can only gauge the extent to which entertainers are forcibly separated from their social stands so that the audience only applauds, not join.

After utterly monotonous political stories and extremely redundant entertainment rumors, one would only look at the health section with some hope. And this is precisely what Time understands well. Since the stakes are high, the health stories are manufactured in a subtle manner to send out a clear message. Subtle insofar as political mentions go amiss, clear insofar as the cover stories proclaim of some researches providing some clues.

Funny but true. A sleeping nation doth not stay awake and liberty can be attained only by a vigilant citizenry. At the juncture of history when we see partisan politics jeopardizing personal decisions based on sexual preferences, and the most number of youths are being sent to fight a war that has absolutely no basis other than false rhetorics and when we face the biggest challenges of unemployment and healthcare in recent times, to lull the country to sleep is the best available method to prevent any form of agitation.

One of the six advices Time offers: “no computers, no TV or arguments before sleep. Soothing music and mysteries are OK.”
Soothing and mysteries. You bet, the world is one peaceful thing for fantasizing in soothing music.

Illusion, like sleep, is a state of mind.

Tags: Saswat, Health, Media, Capitalism

What struck me was the way Pew Charitable Trusts have produced the 2004 fact sheet for The Internet and Daily Life: Many Americans use the Internet in everyday activities, but traditional offline habits still dominate.
A thouroughly documented 34 pages document discusses why Americans use Internet and there are comprehensive tables to indicate findings. You can read it here...
For it to strike me, I went ahead and made a search for the ‘sex’ word on the document. Lo and behold! Zero result!

Tags: Saswat, Media, Technology, USA, Academic

Fox 5 news commentary:
“After much criticism of the US Government for not sending enough troops to Iraq, the President has finally increased the troops number. From 138,000 now, the number will increase to 150,000 coming week.”
Now, who criticized the US for not sending troops?
Just a pointer home: to make sure that the protests around the country to “bring the troops back home” continues: the statistics shows that 150,000 is more than 148,000–number of soldiers who were sent to Iraq at the peak of invasion in May 2003.

Tags: Saswat, Media, USA, Imperialism, War

How do I feel about the business of blogs, now that I am into it?

Famously described as the free forum for virtual communities, blogs have been of late developing the vibrant industry traits of attracting revenues. Despite being acclaimed as an outcry against big media monopoly and providing for scopes of a participatory democracy where the aim is ideally to live life online with fellow members of the community without having to worry about the rents and the lease, some vastly inhibited changes in the economics of blogs have prompted this research.

To read the entire article, click here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Technology, Media, Capitalism

Albeit differences, what Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Mill were indulged in had to do with a component of ‘understanding’. However, said Marx, the problem of the age was that philosophers only interpreted the world whereas the issue, was to change it. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard or Du Bois followed closely with the ‘change’ component too.
What we need now, is changes, with understanding.

My first dissertation committee meets today. I am going to discuss blogs! In a way, it’s also a comeback of my own official blog. I shall, with time, post the archives soon.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Academic, Philosophy

Reuters is planning to increase its Indian base with thrice the recruitment by next year. From 340 now, the firm is planning to be staffed with 1200 employees by the end of 2005.

This will add a newer dimension to the already expanding outsourcing business of India. In effect more media imperialism. Curtly said. Apt, I guess!

Tags: Saswat, Capitalism, India, Media

NYT has a story on the political bloggers by Matthew Klam. Just for the record, the entire text follows.

Fear and Laptops on the Campaign Trail:
Nine blocks north of Madison Square Garden, next door to
the Emerging Artists Theater, where posters
advertised ''The Gay Naked Play'' (''Now With More
Nudity''), the bloggers were up and running. It was
Republican National Convention week in New York City, and
they had taken over a performance space called the Tank. A
homeless guy sat at the entrance with a bag of cans at his
feet, a crocheted cap on his head and his chin in his
hand. To reach the Tank, you had to cross a crummy little
courtyard with white plastic patio furniture and half a
motorcycle strung with lights and strewn with flowers,
beneath a plywood sign that said, ''Ronald Reagan Memorial
Fountain.''
Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Technology, Media

What happens when Oprah Winfrey declares free Pontiac G6 sedans as free giveaways?
comScore Networks, which tracks site traffic, reported that visits to oprah.com jumped 800 percent from Monday to Tuesday as over 600,000 people logged on after seeing 'Oprah.' Plus, visits to pontiac.com jumped 600 percent in the same period as over 140,000 people viewed the site.

What else happens? Pontiac gets huge advertisement base since the news appears in all national media. The return is much more than the investment of Pontiac.

What else? Oprah is the angel once again, her television program gets ratings, more and more emulate her wealth (of course, what else did you think?).

Last, but certainly not the least. The “free” sedans are not so free after all. Lucio Guerrero in Chicago Sun Times reports that each of the 276 recipients of the sedans will have to cough up over thousands of dollars in taxes. Since Pontiac paid for the local charges, the recipients have to report the cars as income once tax time comes.

Tags: Saswat, Capitalism, Media

Chicago Defender Editorial on why Journalism needs more Palmers and Jarretts for the 21st
century:

In the last four months, the Black journalism world, and
Chicago in particular, lost two esteemed colleagues in
Vernon Jarrett and Lu Palmer. The latter died Sunday night
of pneumonia, and it was cancer that took the life of the
former in May. Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Media, Black Power, Racism, History, USA

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Bill Moyers, that inimitable crusader of free press throws some light on why facts are more interesting than fiction, and news are more entertaining than the movies.

Who needs a movie when you have the news?
First, a confession: I haven't seen Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. It's not that
I haven't wanted to; it's just that I have not been able to tear myself away from the
real show – the political theatre playing out in full sight right before our eyes. Who
needs a movie when you have the news?
Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Media, USA, Capitalism

Mail & Guardian, Africa’s first online newspaper, has a story
on how new media will help tell African stories.

When culture meets media, interesting things happen. A provincial premier gets pictured in bed; a bunch of fortysomething journos stage a reunion; and innovative publishing technology gets deployed.

It's festival time in Grahamstown again -- the 30th edition of an event that's always like a first time. It is made possible by, among others, a healthy grant from the Eastern Cape government, whose Premier Nosima Balindlela was previously the province's arts and culture minister.

Tags: Saswat, Indigenous, Media, Technology, Black Power

Following is my critique of an article on Chinese Cultural Sphere.

The Net is the world's only functioning anarchy but it could soon become a major tool for democracy. By allowing anyone, everywhere access to the information and opinions of anyone else, anywhere else, a morsel is being given to mankind with one instruction: "Eat Me, so that we may grow." (Fenchurch, 1994, p. 11)

Goubin Yang assistant professor in sociology at University of Hawaii in Manoa, who authored and presented a paper “The Internet and the rise of a transnational Chinese cultural sphere” at a conference in New York, on China's Environmental Discourse, makes case for two premises: one, that the internet for Chinese population, has facilitated global mass protest movements, and two, inside China, online ‘spaces’ have influenced civil society development. The paper appeared in ‘Media, Culture & Society’ (Vol 25, Issue 4, 2003) with the underlying assumption that online media have given birth to a transnational Chinese cultural sphere.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media, China

My mediocre review/critique of an excellent work of media research:

Kavoori’s work is unique from three standpoints: firstly, this is a comparative media study across five, instead of between two countries, secondly, it revisits the media imperialism theories with a changed premise and last but not the least, the dissertation deals extensively with globalization from an ethnographic perspective.

“Globalization, media audiences and television news: A comparative study of American, British, Israeli, German and French audiences”, is suitably titled, deriving research data from a four year “Global Newsroom” project.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Media

My arguments in favor of Castells:

When Will Durant attempts at making Shakespearean literature a canon in Philosophy, he uses two well known quotes: Of Touchstone asking Corin “Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?” and Hamlet’s “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Durant tells us that if Shakespeare made a guess he kept it to himself, and perhaps thereby proved himself a philosopher.

But the confessed Shakespearean rival George Bernard Shaw refutes Shakespeare’s canonical status in Philosophy by claiming that there was no metaphysics in the latter’s works, no view as to the ultimate nature of reality, no theory of God. Even Shakespeare, according to Shaw, speaks with no reverence of professed philosophers and doubts that any of them ever bore the toothache patiently.

The full article can be found here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Philosophy, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

My proposed syllabus for a class on Radical Alternative Media:

Media have often been depicted as part of the fourth estate in a democracy, the other three wings being the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. Role of the media, their representations of “social reality”, as well as biases in their reflections have often held center stage of public concern.

But, on counts of content and the context, the bouquet and the brickbats, and the cultural as well as political-economic approaches, it is often the mainstream media, which get the attention. Either some television programs are portrayed as too violent, or few mainstream newspapers are cited as truly neutral. In either cases of extremes, the debate surrounds the media that are akin to big corporate organizations. They are the media that represent the focus and are widely circulated. Plausibly, the assumptions being that those media organizations are worth studying which have the reach. No wonder, most critical media theories actually surround the impacts of big business conglomerates in the political-economic tradition or negotiations within dominant messages in the cultural studies tradition. Most administrative researches too, focus on role of mainstream media because they are well documented and appear more convenient for the purpose, at times because of being supportive of the researches themselves.

Check the full syllabus here.

Tags: Saswat, Academic, Communism, Media

Finally, the word is out! NYT endorses Kerry. So much for neutral Press. And if it is partisan, then why the hell were we always dished out the bland salad bowl anyway? Overall good prevailed sense. Only that if done a lot before, we would have had another candidate coming. Maybe someone not from these mainstream parties that suck, either way. Anyway, read the stuff here.

Tags: Saswat, Media, USA

By Saswat Pattanayak

Jayson Blair is the latest disgrace. But the unparalleled publicity he is getting is beyond reason. And the breeding ground for such a claim to defame is incidentally my college.

What should not come as surprising is that we breed journalists to be truthful, and credible, instead of socially relevant and useful.

Hence with much stress on these unattainable traits as truthfulness (unattainable since nowhere does a single truth exist anyway) the first casualty is honesty. And of course if Blair and his types only understood that journalism has a mission to serve the society rather than their own interests as career professionals, things would be different. The social responsibility explains the conducts of people in a way that self-growth syndrome cannot.

Secondly, the schools expecting huge amount of money and commitment from students of course function as big business houses. And they instill a sense of arrogance (like Maryland says “Fear the Turtle&rdquo than a sense of duty. They lead the students to use education for a personal career rise using competitive yardsticks instead of using education as a utilitarian means to promote cooperative understandings.


Anyway, contextually speaking, Baltimore Sun has an extensive report on who created the genius!

Tags: Saswat, Media, Technology

In a national phone survey between March 12 and May 20, 2003, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that more than 53 million American adults or 44% of adult Internet users have used the Internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files and otherwise contribute to the explosion of content available online. 21% of Internet users say they have posted photographs to Web sites. 13% of Internet users maintain their own Web sites. Around 7% have Web cams running on their computers that allow other Internet users to see live pictures of them and their surroundings.

Read all about it here.
As always Interesting stuff, this Pew research. Wondering what they mean by "American adult Internet users". This is funny but I must confess, after reading thousands of opinion polls, I see I am never intereviewed for a poll in life. Just a sheer coincidence or an exalted call to an idea that I am one in a million.

Tags: Saswat, Technology, Media, Academic

In an age of information warfare, its worthwhile to note that propaganda often forms the bedrock for ‘objectivity’ in media. Journalists more often than not rely on secondary sources who possess a narrowed, at times, reactionary world-view, because the ones who are eligible to become sources, have multiple agenda at hand. Do we as journalists merely play into them?

Well I can’t afford to generalize. Although I will agree that all journalists at most times, cannot afford to ignore secondary sources (secondary sources, as opposed to primary experiences). And the real problems arise, as most often is the case with them, when the sources would rather use the journalists, than be used.

Tintin, the famous fictitious reporter, and the most widely read comic-hero ever created in the world, is no exception to this observation. Indeed my research verifies that Tintin was created merely to fight the Bolsheviks in erstwhile Soviet Union. And what better profession was there for him to choose than that of becoming an international scribe to achieve this aim?

As global territorial, religious and consumerist wars shroud vision, and journalists become embedded, blindfolded and commodified, its time to ask, if the best among the reporters in real life today have any semblance with best of the reporters in the world of fiction, Tintin.

I will come back to Tintin soon on this blog.

Tags: Saswat,