| ------------ shaun is set to shem's thoth-horus set is a necessary god as stephen says in the library there cannot be a reconciliation where there has not been a separation shaun is more or less the felix culpa shaun is the unprodigal son, the 'good' boy who has no love for his brother, nor admiration or love for his father's love for his brother shaun is the bad one, to whom the law is a means of suppressing the loveless side of his nature and who therefore thinks that the law is all and the lawless are evil - shaun is the one who cannot conceive, or will not, that some are not in need of the law to suppress their natures because their natures are sweet, their will is good, they are not run by overwhelming needs and hungers, greeds and selfishnesses - the shauns are the ones who assuage a heavy conscience by submission to the law,and who envy/love/hate those who do not need the law and are free within it and without it [st augustine [and buddha]: do not hold on to the raft [the law] when you have crossed the stream] the shauns [rather naturally] hate the fact they are [through no fault of their own really] imprisoned by the law and the shems are not - they partly would love to learn what the shems know and would partly like to murder them - and regularly do - shauns are attracted to the law, the establishment, the hierarchy, because it shackles their dangerous selves and protects them from discovery, and it compensates their imprisonment with privileges - generally, the higher in the higherarchy [sorry, couldnt resist], the more they 1 have to hide, 2 need the help of suppressors 3 lust for privileges - its a perfect system - [and will destroy us oh in about 5 biblical seconds from now - say, 2034AD] every now and then, the opposite will be swept into the establishment eating machine - those who have uncreated consciences, ie, they are selfsufficient , independent in ethics, they are lawmakers, they can administer themselves, are not lost in selfdeception, are functional and dont need splints and calipers of the law, ie they have grown up, are their own parents [have killed god/parent/superego/obedience/submission/law] are authors/authorities, selfmade, gods, demigods, moseses, jacobs, josephs, are masters/mistresses oflove/god/tao, think things out radically from scratch like the fw hen [hen,greek, one], have run away with god's wife [fw ch 11 sailor/tailor tale], have inherited the kingdom of heaven, [ie, god, the old created conscience, has died], are supermen, ubermenschen [in the best sense], ethical geniuses, etc, etc - as authors of the law, they are 'eaten' by those who need the law, they are ripped apart by those who do not have the awareness and sensitivity and objectivity and love [seers, visionaries] to be forgers of uncreated conscience - as the church consumes artists, since the church is wineless without them shem is the one that comes down into the world [the mothers son, water, which goes down and refreshes and gives life], shaun is the many that strives upwards - shaun thinks shem is low because he sees shem going down, which to shaun is everything he is trying to get away from [the world the flesh and the devil, st kevin throwing woman off cliff for loving him - and becoming a saint of the church despite?becauseof? this] so shem is publicans and sinners from the pharisee's point of view - although the pharisees take the moral high ground with the purpose of hiding and suppressing their sins [eg, 2hr video claiming clinton was arkansas mafia, running drugs openly because in control of the law] - as lawbreakers [civil disobedience-thoreau-gandhi] the shems are eaten by the law the sun is a shemshaun image, because it shines on the good and the bad on the one hand and yet destroys and judges on the other [leo is the roaring lion of hottest time of summer, destructive in middleeastern/mediterranean climes, the sharp distinction into shade and light is the judge's black and white, the separation of balbus's walls - suvarn sur 594 ie the sun, sur=city walls, ramparts, hero, warrior etc etc] nig ------------------- *** > trans-parent seas wrote: *** > NIGEL - even j had a shaun side in some senses *** > *** > Riv: Hey, shaun ain't all bad, and Shem is far from all nice (to what *** > extent he is nice at all). For better or worse, the horrid struggle *** > that the Shems must endure in order to bypass the Shauns, and thus *** > share with society those gifts by which societies endure, is to some *** > extent necessary. Most good writers are rejected, but not all rejected *** > writers are good, for an example. *** > *** > A world of all Shems would be pure hell . . . but it would be pure. *** > For some reason, the world requires as well the indefatigable *** > dedication of Shaun to campaign for office. *** *** Shaun carries the promise of dawn. Shemus Joyce was called "Sunny Jim" *** as a child. They both have fine singing voices. I think Shaun and Shem *** are defined more by each other than by themselves. Each is what the *** other isn't. Neither can exist alone. Nor can life -- or any individual *** -- exist by the energy of but one of them. Jamus Joyce, like HCE, set *** both to warring inside him. *** *** Town meeting Tuesday: I'm going to shop for some shite. That's what *** makes the veggies glow. *** *** Yours, *** Eric R - ---------------------- Anti-Davos Gets Up Steam Boris Kagarlitsky - TNI Fellow The Moscow Times, 5 February 2002 The World Social Forum in Porto Alegre was conceived as an alternative to the Davos World Economic Forum. While Davos has become a symbol of the globalization of markets, Porto Alegre was intended as a symbol both of resistance to this and of progressive social reform. Those who demonstrated against the events of the global elite in Seattle, Prague and Quebec came here to have an event of their own. It signals the movement's coming-of-age and grew out of a need to go beyond protest and criticism to offer a vision of a better world - a vision that should be inspiring and at the same time practical. The choice of host city is far from accidental. For years Porto Alegre has been ruled by the Workers' Party of Brazil (PT), notably by representatives of its left wing. The result has been the development of a model of municipal governance famous for its "participatory budget system." Representatives of different neighborhoods including impoverished working class favelas develop their own budget proposals which initially have to face criticism not from financial experts but from the people living in other neighborhoods who are competing for the same money. Consensus-building in these conditions becomes an important feature of daily life. Usually it only takes a few minutes for the city council to vote on the final budget once it has passed the discussion phase in the districts. The first Porto Alegre Forum in 2001 brought together about 10,000 people. This year, it is estimated that 60,000 delegates and guests are in attendance. Ministers, members of parliament, mayors, and trade union officials have flocked to Porto Alegre along with the leaders of popular movements, intellectuals and activists typically seen at the anti-globalization rallies of the past two years. The PT is expected to win the next presidential election in Brazil and leading social democrats from around the world are using the opportunity to take a closer look at the party which will probably soon be ruling the largest country in Latin America. It is no surprise that the radical wing of the movement immediately called the Porto Alegre Forum a reformist event. Bringing together different groups, it has had to work out a minimum, non-revolutionary consensus agenda. The Porto Alegre Forum needs to prove that the left is making a comeback internationally, following the catastrophic decline of the 1990s. The Forum is proof of the growing size and public influence, but social change cannot be effected by enthusiasm alone. Concrete ideas and programs are needed. 2001 was dominated by declarations about "another world being possible." This year, following the crash in Argentina and with the global recession a fact of life, one can expect the Forum to go somewhat further. The key issue this year is capital controls. When the IMF and the World Bank were first established, their task was to protect nations against the anarchy of global markets. But times change and the institutions designed to promote regulation have become tools of financial deregulation. Following the 1998 ruble crash and Argentinian disaster, even in the business community many now think that deregulation and privatization have gone too far. However, it is not possible to simply return to the good old days. The mechanisms for regulation have been dismantled over the past decade and the welfare state eroded. They now need to be reinvented rather than restored -- indeed, radically reinvented. Development priorities must not be formulated by financial elites or by government bureaucracies. Porto Alegre represents the rise of global civil society that is seeking to make its voice heard. Despite the differences and disagreements between radicals and moderates, they need each other. What unites the Porto Alegre crowd is not just the "Another world is possible" slogan, ------------- ---------- ------------------ http://www.indymedia.org/ front.php3?article_id=144998 Reason to fear the left as much as the right. (english) by The Love Revolution 2:40pm Tue Mar 5 '02 (Modified on 7:25pm Tue Mar 5 '02) Anarchists and eco activists are just as ignorant as the Christian coalition. While I read article written by anarchist, all I hear is anti-corporate slogans. It mostly sounds like they are angry at life and blame everything bad on corporations. Then you have the middle class liberal who buys green fabric softener and worries whether to mix plastics with cans in the recycle bin for the good of the children. Both of these groups have never questioned what they really want from a society nor the basic causes of oppression and greed in our society. ==<snip>== --------- Wage Peace Now (english) by Steven James Blake 3:08pm Tue Mar 5 '02 steveb@nspi-inc.com wage peace now. do not let idiots like Dick Chenney and his "carpet of gold or carpet of bombs" foriegn policy and domestic rhetoric steal your thunder. you don't have to believe in God to do good in the world. a Good human is a testament unto themselves. anything else is a lie. feed the starving, shelter the homeless, educate the ignorant, and do not kill people. do this every day, every where, in every way you can. Do not let the Murder for profiteers be the leaders of "civilization" any further. get "them" out, do not give them your hard earned labor, they do not deserve it, they will only kill children for money with it. elect representatives that are commited to not murdering for profit in any way, and if they fail you, get rid of them imeadiately. that is the way. do it now. At the service of True Democracy and all of Humanity, Steven James Blake Proud Citizen of The United States of America P.S. For those who do not know how to start, please contact me at my email and I will find something that you can do in your area at your convience. Contact me immeadiately and I will find someway in which is appropriate for you to contribute, I will help you through discussion to find what is your area of interest and what skills you might have, then I will find something for you to do that is appropriate for you that you can do in your area, or where ever you wish. =========== To Wage Peace Now, contact Me Now, @ steveb@nspi-inc.com I believe that what self-centered humans have torn down, humans other-centered can build up, I know you do to. WAGE PEACE NOW. PLEASE: ENOUGH DERISIVE RHETORIC (english) by SJB 3:10pm Tue Mar 5 '02 YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, BOTH OF YOU. SJB =======--------------------- NPR totally biased against Israel. (english) by Ed 9:55am Tue Mar 5 '02 (Modified on 11:05am Tue Mar 5 '02) NPR totally biased against Israel. - That's why NPR is now being referred to as, National Palestine Radio." NPR continues to slant the news against Israel, truly unlike any other American media. Here are just two examples from today. Remember that NPR carefully selects and edits its news. It covers only a dozen topics In its 3 hrs of "news" a day. Don't believe me - listen with your own ears! 1. NPR has the chutzpah to challenge the legitimacy of the world-reknown Middle East Scholar Bernard Lewis. On NPR¹s The Connection (produced in Boston), the host described Lewis¹ views as ³controversial² and invited listeners to ³challenge² him. This is how NPR described on their website, ³The prolific scholar of Mideast history asks what went wrong in the Arab and Islamic world, why a once-great culture fell from dominance. His controversial answer: They have themselves to blame.² Now, Back to the News, or "Only a Few Things Considered" tonight... 2. All Things Considered's Host Jackie Leyden described kilings of Palestinians "including minors." Please note NPR DOES NOT describe any of the Palestinians killed as "armed men." But Leyden described Israel as having lost 22 people. She DID NOT MENTION THAT 6 of the 22 Jews were CHILDREN and an entire family was murdered (see reference 1). The killings of children by a suicide bomber who deliberately blew himself up among women and children was ignored by NPR. Instead, NPR ran twice (Sunday Morning Edition and Sunday's Weekend Edition) Peter Kenyon's "interview" with Palestinian families whose homes were damaged during the IDF moves into terrorists refuge camps. Note - Peter Kenyon is as bad as it gets. His antipathy toward Israel and his sycophancy toward Palestinians are so evident in his tone of voice. 3. Tonight, Peter Kenyon opens up with Palestinian woman talking about the fighting. And then he provides lengthy airtime for the Hamas (terrorist) leader to talk about his family killed in his car, which the IDF had "identified a vehicle carrying armed Palestinian policemen (J Post)." The IDF apologized for that mistake, if you will in the "fog of war." Has there been any apology or effort by Arafat for the numerous deliberate suicide attacks against Jewish women and children? Has NPR devoted as much time to personalizing the Jewish victims of Arab terror? Have they interviewed the families of Jewish teenagers, who were blown up in discos, Sbarro Pizzeria's, Bar Mitzvah's and dozens of shopping malls, or the families, whose sons and daughters were machine-guned to death on buses by Palestinian terrorists. 4. While downplaying suicide bombers and ambush of an IDF post, Kenyon emphasized the IDF's shooting at an ambulance. Kenyon said that IDF soldiers fired because they felt "threatened" This is the news brief from the Arutz Sheva (probably the most accurate "hard"news provider), "The director of the Red Crescent in Jenin, Halil Suleiman, was killed today while driving what was apparently an ambulance-bomb. The ambulance approached an IDF checkpoint at high speed and under suspicious circumstances. The soldiers signaled it to stop, and when it did not do so, they fired at it; seconds later, it exploded." ?? How does an ambulance explode? It is well known to readers of Israeli news (but not listeners to NPR) the Palestinian terrorists use Red Crescent ambulances to smuggles arms and explosives. This has not been reported by NPR. 5. NPR gave 100% time to Palestinian proagandizing and demonizing against. While NPR gave less time to Israeli spokesmen. Moreover, half of the time was devoted to a left-wing Israeli's criticism of Sharon. 6. Kenyon concluded, " This week has been one of worst with 150 people killed - many of them citizens. Kenyon does not distinguish between carefully executed IDF missions against Palestinian armed terrorists and carefully executed Palestinian terrorists who blow up women and children. Isn't there a difference. Not only does NPR not think so, but rather NPR does not personalize Jewish suffering at the hands of terrorists. Also, NPR has an official policy of prohibiting the use of "terrorist" to describe a Palestinian suicide bomber. To NPR, is he (or she) a freedom fighter? A victim of demonic Jews? NPR has a problem. It holds Israel to a DIFFERENT STANDARD. When Jews are held to a different standard - That's why NPR is now being referred to as, National Palestine Radio." add your own comments NO SUCH THING AS 'ISRAEL' (english) by FREE PALESTINE 10:11am Tue Mar 5 '02 By constantly referring uncritically to the zionazi entity as "Israel" or "State of Israel", NPR is siding with the rest of the media in opposition to Palestine. Time for NPR to catch up with the rest of the human race around the world, most of whom reject the existence of any "State of Israel", as do authentic Jews (not the fake pseudo-race that Herzl invented). Ed, Get your facts straight..just once. (english) by Marat 10:18am Tue Mar 5 '02 Well, Ed, here's what the Israeli press actually had to say about the day's events. So much for the exploding ambulance theory..putz. 5 children among 16 Palestinians killed in fierce IDF raids Army 'apologizes' for harming innocent civilians By Amos Harel and Amira Hass Ha'aretz In a day of intense Israel Defense Forces action throughout the West Bank and Gaza, ordered by the government as part of its plan for a "continuous campaign" against terrorism, at least 16 Palestinians were killed by IDF fire. Among the dead were a Red Crescent doctor riding in an ambulance in Jenin, four members of a family, including a mother and three children, and two brothers. A 55-year-old woman in the Jenin refugee camp was also killed. Some 30 people were wounded. The assault continued last night with IDF air attacks on Palestinian Authority offices in Bethlehem, Ramallah and Gaza. The strikes were ordered by the government on Sunday night in retaliation for a Saturday night suicide bombing that killed 10 in Jerusalem, and a Sunday morning sniper's attack on a West Bank checkpoint that also left 10 dead. Last night F-16s dropped bombs on PA security offices next to Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah, Palestinian security officials said. There were no reports of casualties; the building had been evacuated for several days in expectation of an Israeli attack. The IDF said the attacks were a "response to murderous attacks of the past few days." Witnesses said the warplanes targeted two security buildings, setting them on fire. Palestinian official Ahmed Abdel Rahman condemned the air strike, calling it "dangerous escalation." In Gaza, warships fired two missiles at Arafat's seaside headquarters, setting it on fire, witnesses said. The military did not comment. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told reporters in the Knesset yesterday he expects what he called "a continuous campaign" to go on for two weeks. From the Knesset podium, he warned the public that it must be patient, because "this is a long and difficult war." The operations began shortly after midnight between Sunday and Monday, when IDF armored vehicles and bulldozers plowed into the Rafah refugee camp, capturing positions on five rooftops with commanding views of the area. Residents said that soldiers poured gunfire from those rooftops and from tanks at the edges of the camp. Armed Palestinians responded. According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, two residents who were in their homes were killed during the attack. One National Security officer was killed at his position. Rafah sources said the fire prevented ambulances from entering the area, and at least one 40-year-old man bled to death as a result. Later, around 4 A.M., a large tank group accompanied by armored vehicles gathered at the edges of the Jenin refugee camp, and at 8 A.M. began their bombardment of the camp. According to residents, the camp was shelled almost continuously until 2 P.M., with helicopters taking part. There was a lull until 5 P.M., when the shooting resumed. Armed Palestinians tried returning fire with rifles and at least two of the six people killed in the camp died in battle. The camp was cut off from the city, and the Red Crescent said that its ambulances were unable to get into the camp to evacuate the wounded. At least one 55-year-old woman was killed by helicopter fire at her house, bleeding to death because no ambulance could reach her. Red Crescent officials, working with the Israel-based Physicians for Human Rights, worked frantically to coordinate ambulance arrivals with the army, with no hard information on the number of dead and wounded. Last night, PHR went to the High Court of Justice asking that it order the army to cease its operations, to enable paramedics to reach the wounded. Doctor killed in ambulance Around 12 P.M., Dr. Suleiman Khalil, head of the Red Crescent in Jenin, went to the camp in an ambulance after other paramedic crews said they were afraid to dodge the intense fire. According to reports reaching PHR, Khalil managed to get into the camp, but on his way out of the camp was shot by soldiers. They feared the speeding vehicle was aiming at them. according to the army. The ambulance was hit by massive fire, and blew up when an oxygen balloon was struck. The doctor was immediately killed, and the two paramedics with him were gravely wounded. The army later said the soldiers took appropriate action, considering that some ambulances had been used in Jenin and Balata last weekend to transport armed men as well as wounded. The International Red Cross issued a statement condemning the attack on the ambulance, and calling on both sides to take precautions not to bring harm to appropriately identified paramedic teams from the Red Crescent and Magen David Adom. Six Palestinians were killed and 20 wounded during fierce fighting between gunmen and IDF troops, who had been withdrawn from the Jenin camp only two days earlier, witnesses and hospital officials said. Children hit by tank fire The most tragic incident of the day - for which the IDF was forced to subsequently apologize - took place around 1 P.M. when two tank shells fired from Psagot hit two Palestinian cars in El Bireh. Killed in the family pick-up truck were Bushara Abu Kweik, the 38-year-old wife of a Ramallah-based Hamas activist, Hussein Abu Kweik, and three of their children, 16-year-old Aziza, 14-year-old Bara and 8-year-old Mohammed. Killed in the second car were 16-year-old Arafat al-Masri and his 4-year-old brother, Shaime al-Masri. Hussein Abu Kweik was one of the 400 Hamas activists deported by Israeli to Lebanon in 1992. Palestinian sources charged yesterday that the cannon attack on the cars was an Israeli assassination attempt, but the IDF denied that, saying the tank commander spotted armed men in a car, and took aim. But the IDF was hard pressed to explain why relatively inaccurate tank cannon were used on targets in an area crowded with civilians, and why armed Palestinians inside Area A, who were not engaged in any combat at the time, came under fire. The army apologized for the tragedy, saying it had no intentions of harming innocent civilians. The Hamas activist from Ramallah went on Al Jazeera TV, saying that his wife was driving the children home from school, and that their deaths would be avenged. "I swear to God they (the Israelis) will pay a very high price for this crime," said Hussein Abu Kweik, accompanied by hundreds of mourners outside the Ramallah Hospital. "We will continue our resistance until it's the end of the last (Israeli) soldier on our lands." In another incident, an 18-year-old youth from a village west of Nablus was killed at 8 A.M., by soldiers at a checkpoint who said he was approaching them with a knife drawn, shouting "Allah Akbar." But his family said the youth had been on his way to school at the village of Haja, and had gone home because he did not feel well. They said he was shot at a distance of 50 to 60 meters from the soldiers. http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/ pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=137335&contrass ID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0 PS Ed. You are losing the battle for world public opinion. Spam aint gonna help. Getting the hell out of the West Bank, Gaza, Arab Jerusalem and the Golan might. An ambulance explodes when shot by... (english) by Earnst Miesner 10:22am Tue Mar 5 '02 a tank, or by hitting the oxegen bottles all abulances carry. The fact is NPR is extremely biased towards the Isrealis and US policy in the Middle East. If you were to do your math you would find that they talk about and show far more Isreali civilian victims than Palestinian civilian victims even though the Palestinian civilian deaths outnumber the Isrealis by a wide margin. They also quote Isreali military sources verbatum, if they get the Palestinian side of things they always say things like "Palestinian spokesman claims...". Remember those Isreali soldiers that were caght luking about a Palestinian town out of uniform and killed by an angry mob... NPR gave full creedence to the Isreali side of the story that they were just reservists that lost their way. Even though at least one of them was wearing a kafia. The list of BS by anti-arab NPR is very long. They have the same upper management as Voice of America. you don't listen to NPR, do you? (english) by Earl Grey is Dead 10:37am Tue Mar 5 '02 I find it hard to believe that you actually listen to National Public Radio, for your comments show an extreme ignorance concerning their position on Israel. I listen to NPR's All Things Considered everyday, and find it to be utterly frustrating when the subject of israeli-palestinian violence is addressed. when israel kills palestinians, they call it armed conflict. when a palestinian kills an israeli, it is terrorist bombings. sometimes a report will come out that attempts to be unbiased, but even then, the idea of israeli sovereignty is never questioned. only the most fanatic of zionists and christian conservatives (the two driving forces behind america's unsupportable unconditional alliance with israel) could find fault with NPR, which dutifully reports the official line to maintain their government funding. as an interesting sidenote, anyone who is interested in the "historical" claim to palestine by the jews should check out the main story in january's Harper's magazine, which picks apart all the attempts thousands have made to create a historic jewry who conquered canaan in the name of their god. the archeological record suggests that were only sedentary tribesman (who had NEVER been slaves in Egypt) with a really creative priesthood. It depends on your perception of reality (english) by Canaria 10:39am Tue Mar 5 '02 As most would argue that is the mainstream US media, that is unfairly slanted towards Israel. I consider it a breath of fresh air, that NPR has the courage to report on the Isreali/Palestinian situation for what it is, although some could even take it further. Even whithin the Israeli media, there's more open dialogue, and exposure of critical facts, than in the US. You must have never been to Palestine, if you really believe that what the Israely army is doing in the area, is anything other than State Terrorism. time to catch up...ahuh (english) by cen 10:39am Tue Mar 5 '02 censorthis1@aol.com my education involving national radio began with the last year of ray suarez...and lasted 2 more years with all the daytime programs it had carried plus the minnesota radio version of; which the highlight of that was; the '98 pre election local debates...oh was that sweet... but back to the national version; the leaving of the one; mr. suarez was a sad day to the national version...or atleast its listeners...yes...mr. williams (did) have some shoes to fill; and in a way has filled them; more on an honest level; the honest questions he poses is what i am referring to... but mr. suarez had/maybe still; a talent for shutting down what was seemingly a deceptive thought process by one of the guests...it was pure genius... alright story is over:) your questions to the above article are very good points; and posing them on this forum; is a wise move... the question is; what is next... take me down to the paradise city where the grass is green and the people are ready..:) have a good day peace cen NPR's Linda Gradstein takes cash payments (english) by Faris Odeh 10:40am Tue Mar 5 '02 Ed, Interesting opinion...but definitely not based on facts. check out this story "NPR's Israel Correspondent Linda Gradstein has been accepting money from pro-Israeli groups -- for years, in blatant violation of NPR's policy regarding conflicts of interest" (02/2002) http://www.electronicintifada.net/ actionitems/020225gradstein.html Try posting news backed up by facts and not your personal paranoia...you'll be more respected. Faris Odeh ------------- Israeli Aggressors (english) by De 10:55am Tue Mar 5 '02 Ed, you need to ceck the death tolls. Israeli deaths are slightly over 300, while Palestinian deaths are over 1000. Tell us, Ed, who the aggressors are. ----------------- fair did a study of this very topic.. (english) by juan 11:05am Tue Mar 5 '02 you can read it here http://www.fair.org/extra/0111/npr-mideast.html ---------------------------------- 144783 NPR's coverage of Mideast deaths doesn't match reality By Seth Ackerman National Public Radio's coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has been the target of criticism from all sides, especially since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000. One common complaint from both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian critics is that NPR and other outlets downplay or ignore acts of violence by the “other side.” For example, a press release (8/12/01) from CAMERA, a conservative pro-Israel media watch group, accused NPR of skimming over the killing of a Jewish settler in a news report that focused on the funeral of a Palestinian Hamas activist killed by Israeli security forces. Similarly, Arab-American media critic Ali Abuminah (8/20/01) has criticized NPR for "cursory, inconsistent and wholly inadequate" coverage of Israeli attacks on Palestinians. To examine these competing claims, FAIR studied NPR's coverage of Israeli-Palestinian violence, examining how often NPR reported fatal attacks on Israelis and Palestinians. The study looked at all NPR News coverage in the first six months of 2001 (1/1/01-6/30/01). For a description of FAIR's methodology as well as our complete data, see www.fair.org/research/npr-israel.html. During the six-month period studied, NPR reported the deaths of 62 Israelis and 51 Palestinians. While on the surface that may not appear to be hugely lopsided, during the same time period 77 Israelis and 148 Palestinians were killed in the conflict. That means there was an 81 percent likelihood that an Israeli death would be reported on NPR, but only a 34 percent likelihood that a Palestinian death would be. Of the 30 Palestinian civilians under the age of 18 that were killed, six were reported on NPR--only 20 percent. By contrast, the network reported on 17 of the 19 Israeli minors who were killed, or 89 percent. While 61 percent of the young people killed in the region during the period studied were Palestinian, only 26 percent of those reported by NPR were. Apparently being a minor makes your death more newsworthy to NPR if you are Israeli, but less newsworthy if you are Palestinian. An Israeli civilian victim was more likely to have his or her death reported on NPR (84 percent were covered) than a member of the Israeli security forces (69 percent). But Palestinians were far more likely to have their deaths reported if they were security personnel (72 percent) than if they were civilians (22 percent). Of the 112 Palestinian civilians killed in the Occupied Territories during the period studied, just 26 were reported on NPR. Of the 28 Israeli civilians killed in the Territories--mostly settlers--21 were reported on NPR. These numbers suggest that NPR may attempt to pair reports of Israeli and Palestinian casualties in an effort to appear balanced. The network's anchors often introduce Mideast stories with a quick summary of recent developments, almost always mentioning one or two recent attacks on Palestinians and one or two against Israelis. After seeing FAIR’s findings, NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin commented that “numerical equivalence is not always a determination of journalistic fairness--in the Middle East or anywhere else.” He added that NPR's reporting on the Middle East “regularly takes care to mention the imbalance in death tolls” between Israelis and Palestinians. But it is easy to see the potential appeal for NPR of reporting individual Israeli and Palestinian deaths in roughly equal numbers. The network is under attack from critics who accuse it of playing down violence by one side or exaggerating violence by the other. It would be useful for NPR to be able to respond to complaints by pointing to stories that report Israeli and Palestinian casualties in more or less equal proportions. That way NPR can claim it is simply “reporting both sides.” While that kind of coverage may appease critics, it fails to give the audience an accurate impression of what's going on in the Middle East. According to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, a total of 576 Palestinians and 164 Israelis have been killed, a ratio of about 3.5 to 1. Given that disparity, the fact that NPR has reported the same numbers of Israeli as Palestinian deaths would seem to reflect fear of appearing anti-Israel more than it reflects reality. ---------------- 144705 LION PRESS thingy; here is about a tenth of it: THE MONEY MONOPOLY In every system of class exploitation, a ruling class controls access to the means of production in order to extract tribute from labor. Under capitalism, access to capital is restricted by the money monopoly, by which the state or banking system is given a monopoly on the medium of exchange, and alternative media of exchange are prohibited. The money monopoly also includes entry barriers against cooperative banks and prohibitions against private issuance of banknotes, by which access to finance capital is restricted and interest rates are kept artificially high. Just in passing, we might mention the monumental hypocricy of the regulation of credit unions in the United States, which require that their membership must share some common bond, like working for the same employer. Imagine the outrage if IGA and Safeway lobbied for a national law to prohibit grocery co-ops unless the members all worked for the same company! One of the most notable supporters of these laws is Phil Gramm, that renowned "free marketeer" and economics professor--and foremost among the banking industry's whores in Congress. Individualist and mutualist anarchists like William Greene [Mutual Banking], Benjamin Tucker [Instead of a Book), and J. B. Robertson [The Economics of Liberty] viewed the money monopoly as central to the capitalist system of privilege. In a genuinely free banking market, any group of individuals could form a mutual bank and issue monetized credit in the form of bank notes against any form of collateral they chose, with acceptance of these notes as tender being a condition of membership. Greene speculated that a mutual bank might choose to honor not only marketable property as collateral, but the "pledging ... [of] future production." [p. 73]. The result would be a reduction in interest rates, through competition, to the cost of administrative overhead--less than one percent. Abundant cheap credit would drastically alter the balance of power between capital and labor, and returns on labor would replace returns on capital as the dominant form of economic activity. According to Robinson, Upon the monopoly rate of interest for money that is... forced upon us by law, is based the whole system of interest upon capital, that permeates all modern business. With free banking, interest upon bonds of all kinds and dividends upon stock would fall to the minimum bank interest charge. The so-called rent of houses... would fall to the cost of maintenance and replacement. All that part of the product which is now taken by interest would belong to the producer. Capital, however... defined, would practically cease to exist as an income producing fund, for the simple reason that if money, wherewith to buy capital, could be obtained for one-half of one per cent, capital itself could command no higher price [pp. 80-81]. And the result would be a drastically improved bargaining position for tenants and workers against the owners of land and capital. According to Gary Elkin, Tucker's free market anarchism carried certain inherent libertarian socialist implications: It's important to note that because of Tucker's proposal to increase the bargaining power of workers through access to mutual credit, his so-called Individualist anarchism is not only compatible with workers' control but would in fact promote it. For if access to mutual credit were to increase the bargaining power of workers to the extent that Tucker claimed it would, they would then be able to (1) demand and get workplace democracy, and (2) pool their credit buy and own companies collectively. The banking monopoly was not only the "lynchpin of capitalism," but also the seed from which the landlord's monopoly grew. Without a money monopoly, the price of land would be much lower, and promote "the process of reducing rents toward zero." [Gary Elkin, "Benjamin Tucker--Anarchist or Capitalist"]. Given the worker's improved bargaining position, "capitalists' ability to extract surplus value from the labor of employees would be eliminated or at least greatly reduced." [Gary Elkin, Mutual Banking]. As compensation for labor approached value-added, returns on capital were driven down by market competition, and the value of corporate stock consequently plummeted, the worker would become a de facto co-owner of his workplace, even if the company remained nominally stockholder-owned. Near-zero interest rates would increase the independence of labor in all sorts of interesting ways. For one thing, anyone with a twenty-year mortgage at 8% now could, in the absence of usury, pay it off in ten years. Most people in their 30S would have their houses paid off. Between this and the nonexistence of high-interest credit card debt, two of the greatest sources of anxiety to keep one's job at any cost would disappear. In addition, many workers would have large savings ("go to hell money"). Significant numbers would retire in their forties or fifties, cut back to part-time, or start businesses; with jobs competing for workers, the effect on bargaining power would be revolutionary. Our hypothetical world of free credit in many ways resembles the situation in colonial societies. E. G. Wakefield, in View of the Art of Colonization, wrote of the unacceptably weak position of the employing class when self-employment with one's own property was readily available. In colonies, there was a tight labor market and poor labor discipline because of the abundance of cheap land. "Not only does the degree of exploitation of the wage-labourer remain indecently low. The wage-labourer loses into the bargain, along with the relation of dependence, also the sentiment of dependence on the abstemious capitalist." Where land is cheap and all men are free, where every one who so pleases can obtain a piece of land for himself, not only is labour very dear, as respects the labourers' share of the product, but the difficulty is to obtain combined labour at any price. This environment also prevented the concentration of wealth, as Wakefield commented: "Few, even of those whose lives are unusually long, can accumulate great masses of wealth." As a result, colonial elites petitioned the mother country for imported labor and for restrictions on land for settlement. According to Wakefield's disciple Herman Merivale, there was an "urgent desire for cheaper and more subservient labourers--for a class to whom the capitalist might dictate | terms, instead of being dictated to by them." [Maurice Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism; Marx, Chapter 33: "The New Theory of Colonialism," in Capital Vol. 1]. In addition to all this, central banking systems perform additional service to the interests of capital. First of all, the chief requirement of finance capitalists is to avoid inflation, in order to allow predictable returns on investment. This is ostensibly the primary purpose of the Federal Reserve and other central banks. But at least as important is the role of the central banks in promoting what they consider a "natural" level of unemployment--until the 1990s around six per cent. The reason is that when unemployment goes much below this figure, labor becomes increasingly uppity and presses for better pay and working conditions and more autonomy. Workers are willing to take a lot less crap off the boss when they know they can find a job at least as good the next day. On the other hand, nothing is so effective in "getting your mind right" as the knowledge that people are lined up to take your job. The Clinton "prosperity" is a seeming exception to this principle. As unemployment threatened to drop below the four per cent mark, some members of the Federal Reserve agitated to raise interest rates and take off the "inflationary" pressure by throwing a few million workers on the street. But as Greenspan [Testimony of Chairman Alan Greenspan] testified before the Senate Banking Committee, the situation was unique. Given the degree of job insecurity in the high-tech economy, there was "[a]typical restraint on compensation increases." In 1996, even with a tight labor market, 46% of workers at large firms were fearful of layoffs--compared to only 25% in 1991, when unemplojment was much higher. The reluctance of workers to leave their jobs to seek other employment as the labor market tightened has provided further evidence of such concern, as has the tendency toward longer labor union contracts. For many decades, contracts rarely exceeded three years. Today, one can point to five and six-year contracts--contracts that are commonly characterized by an emphasis on job security and that involve only modest wage increases. The low level of work stoppages of recent years also attests to concern about job security. Thus the willingness of workers in recent years to trade off smaller increases in wages for greater job security seems to be reasonably well documented. For the bosses, the high-tech economy is the next best thing to high unemployment for keeping our minds right. "Fighting inflation" translates operationally to increasing job insecurity and making workers less likely to strike or to look for new jobs. -------------------- BS: You describe the internal structure of anarchist groups as being >authoritarian. Yet, the model popular with younger activists today is >explicitly anti-hierarchical and consensus-oriented. Do you think >there's something furtively authoritarian about such apparently >freewheeling structures? >Zizek: Absolutely. And I'm not bluffing here; I'm talking from >personal experience. Maybe my experience is too narrow, but it's not >limited to some mysterious Balkan region. I have contacts in England, >France, Germany, and more - and all the time, beneath the mask of >this consensus, there was one person accepted by some unwritten rules >as the secret master. The totalitarianism was absolute in the sense >that people pretended that they were equal, but they all obeyed him. >The catch was that it was prohibited to state clearly that he was the >boss. You had to fake some kind of equality. The real state of >affairs couldn't be articulated. Which is why I'm deeply distrustful >of this "let's just coordinate this in an egalitarian fashion." I'm >more of a pessimist. In order to safeguard this equality, you have a >more sinister figure of the master, who puts pressure on the others >to safeguard the purity of the non-hierarchic principle. This is not >just theory. I would be happy to hear of groups that are not caught >in this strange dialectic. *Hey, I've got one of those. http://www.viridiandesign.org *An online, feudal-theocratic organization since 1998. bruces, Viridian Pope-Emperor ---------------------------- Peer-to-peer Pump Priming for Progress: a business proposition Good day sir/madam/network administrator: Can you be surprised to receive this letter? No, I thought not. Your establishment is well known, and I received your email and contact information from your embassy and the domain registrar. My name is Frances Kellyng, and I was oversight officer for Global Crossing and Enron companies in the area of network services. As you know, both companies have declared bankruptcy, but in November, 2001, before all of the bad news was public, CEO's John Legere and Kenneth Lay, began re-allocating various resources into safe areas, off-shore banks, and storage media away from company properties. I know most of the subsequent publicity concerned the flow of money, yet Lay instructed his lieutenants to charge up more than 2 million NiMH batteries and shipped these to a storage depot in an abandoned salt mine in Kansas. This electricity is still unaccounted for. Were it recovered, it could supply more than one million PDA users with electricity for two days, or personal vibrator owners with hundreds of thousands of hours of pleasure. Secretly, Legere, on the other hand, commandeered two container loads of fiber-optic cable and siphoned off more than 83 terabits which are flowing in a loop but off the Internet backbone of Global Crossing. These semi-trailers are running off of diesel generators in the Nevada desert near Black Rock Desert. Luckily, I have network topology charts for both Enron and Global Crossing, and I have located more than 224 terabits of bandwidth hidden in supposedly dark fiber. For instance, Michael Eisner (CEO of Disney, Inc) has a house in Aspen, Colorado with 24 miles (about 40 km) of fiber, but he just spends two weeks in December at the residence, and so I have been able to store a great deal of bandwidth there for the time being. Lamentably, I know of the problems of Internet access and constrained data flow in places where the market and regulations have not kept up with the demand by citizens and businesses for better connectivity. Even though this bandwidth will benefit your business and other organizations located in countries where connectivity is scarce, your help is essential. Because the bandwidth caches are in such large quantities, I need the assistance of places where there is a shortage. As you know, nature abhors a vacuum, but in this case, nature needs a little push. Sort of a peer-to-peer pump priming to start the flow. The disequillibrium between the bandwidth excess here and the relative void in your network can be negated if you send me 50 Gigabytes of data (no spam please) for every terabit that you can use. While I realize this is a sizable chunk for a country such as yours, the benefits will be substantial. The data can include digitized cultural patrimony, personal data of citizens and companies, GIS and cartographic information, geologic and soil surveys, newspaper data banks, and consumer spending habits for your country. Realistically, the best procedure is to send me your network servers and routers access information, as well as your personal cellular and fixed phone numbers. I will then provide a trace route between your site and one of the banks of bits. Once you have primed the terabit pump with your contribution, your personal terabit transfer will take place. It is best to keep this extremely confidential, and you must act quickly because the topology maps I have may be out-of-date as the company resources are re-deployed or sold. Let us work together to put this bandwidth to good use, Frances Kellyng ------------------------- http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/ dispatch/2002-03-01/screens_feature2.html SXSW interactive and the post post-boom landscape Information Wants to Be Worthless BY BRUCE STERLING March 1, 2002: Bruce Sterling takes stock of the situation. photo by Kenny Braun I can't wait for this next South by Southwest Interactive. I don't know why they still call it that, though. They used to call it "Multimedia." Now even "Interactive" sounds corny. If I were them, I'd rename the event every year. This year in particular demands a major image rethink. How about "SXSW Cyberspace Terrorist Paranoia"? "SXSW Axis of Evil Global InfoWar"? Might we arrange open-house tours of Enron and Global Crossing, perhaps using chartered buses? Why, there's just so much to discuss! SXSW Interactive has suffered surprisingly little from the collapse of dot-communism. The core demographic at SXSW is the woolly-eyed digital creative, a species of creature from way before the Boom. Those characters were never anywhere near the big IPOs. They were all fueled by sheer subcultural coolness. Back in the Neolithic dawn of the Internet, you see, the academics who built it used to beat the living crap out of a businessman the very moment they saw him. One peep of commercial spam on their stainless not-for-profit network, and the net-gods would reach right into your router and just throttle you, like an egg-sucking dog. Businessmen would take one look at that impossible Internet code, and they'd pick up their gray flannels and flee headlong to CompuServe and Prodigy. You young folks these days, you probably don't even remember "CompuServe." They croaked from being way too compu-servile. Graying cyberpunk that I am ... all carpal-tunnel and bifocals ... I can well remember some weirdo pals in the Information-Wants-to-Be-Free contingent, idly wondering what would happen if the business world ever "discovered the Internet." Obviously they would buy up every machine in sight and try to make a profit at it. That much was dead obvious, for that was the period's Reagan-Thatcherite modus operandi. Clearly all us artsy cybergoofballs would have to find some other place to chatter and swap our lies, like, say, faxes or CB radio. But one scenario was way too far-fetched and idealistic, even for the likes of us. What if it turned out that the Net was just plain too much for business to handle? That it was downright toxic to free enterprise? But look what happened. When was the last time that you saw commerce, global capitalism, competition, the profit motive, the real deal ... choking on advanced technology as if they'd swallowed a jalapeÒo? What a spectacle! It ranks with the beached gasping of Marxism-Leninism in 1989. Unworkable business models, the squalid collapse of e-commerce plans and b-to-b markets. Hundreds of dead corporations, with e-biz magazines gone thinner than Kate Moss. And those overachievers from Enron, my God! Thinking so far outside the box that they're in the witness box. I could well go on, but you don't want to hear this story from me. You want to hear this from Lawrence Lessig, noted author of Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace and The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. Lawrence Lessig will be keynoting SXSW on the cogent subject of "The Creative Commons." Lawrence Lessig is a Stanford law professor and Lessig is one heavy cyber-dude, he is heavier than depleted uranium. He despises copyright abuse, and he also knows who, how, and why they stole our broadband. I love that Lessig guy. Just knowing the truth is out there, it cheers me all up. Okay, so the Net has proved toxic to business and nobody's making any money there. That stopped the profiteering, except for the spammers of course ... hucksters who are methodically bringing net.commerce into such putrid disrepute that it may well never recover. Lack of money, though, is not stopping the innovation. It never did. The Internet now reaches half the population of the USA. It is starting big seismic rumblings in China, Iran, and India, societies that lack their own AOL Time Warner and therefore have some dead-serious uses for cheap global network communication. Worldwide, people use the Net for e-mail. E-mail never had a real business model, but it was one feature everybody always wanted. The Net is becoming the planet's water cooler. It's all about the schmoozing and the gossip. If you think the business scene at this year's Austin 360 was morbid, and demoralized, and pitiful, and I was there, and boy was it ever -- well, you should have seen the Davos World Economic Forum up in New York City. Which I also witnessed, for reasons I don't much care to explain. Okay, I'm topic-drifting here, but don't flame me just yet. You see, everybody at Davos was scolding, not the computer-crazy Americans, but the Japanese. They expect the Japanese banks to crater just any minute now. And get this: The Japanese never swallowed any New Economy Kool-Aid. The Japanese bend metal, they make Sony Walkmans and cars. They're still royally screwed. Try explaining that. It's sure more than Fortune or The Economist are able to manage. Houston is supposed to be a solid, non-nonsense, oil-bidness town. Houston doesn't have any SXSW. Poor Houston is the snakebitten home of Enron, while Austin's feckless cyberslackers are still grinning and hitting the Return key. Yeah, Dell fired some people here, so maybe local rents will drop and all the potters and tapestry weavers will return from Wimberley. Man, anything's possible these days. The good folks of SXSW Interactive have a whole lotta blogging in the schedule. You may have never heard of "weblogging," because it never yet made anyone rich, but blogging is a way cool deal, man. Metafilter, Memepool, Boingboing.net, I'm on those blogs all the time. Blogdex, Daypop, those sites rock. SXSW Interactive is totally awash in the cream of blogger royalty. They've got Meg of Megnut, and Derek of Powazek, and Jason of Kottke, and Jeffrey of Alistapart, and a very Mongol host of other bloggers. If this recital means nothing to you, you are probably old and near death now. Unlike those stellar bloggers, I was way too lazy to build any software, but I myself have a blog these days. This is a sure symptom of a major social contagion. It's much like my teenage daughter's AOL Instant Message mania. Her Mom and I, we were kinda worried about her 90% digital social life, until we realized that we don't have to buy her a car or any gasoline. Net types like to catfight about whether blogging is the Way Forward or utter self-indulgence. Since it is almost certainly both at once, blogging is quite the hot topic. So there will be some bloggery debate, with scowling, and finger-wagging, and pepper-gassing. Yes, blogging has its limitations. There isn't much in the way of original content, for instance. Weblogging consists mostly of logging one's websurfing activities, then making sardonic comments about whatever you see. An activity one's admirers find hilarious. Yet admirers rarely pay for this. Except in their admiration. Fame, glamour, gold ... so funny how that works! Camgirls, for instance. The trials and tribulations of girls with Web cameras, those are issues one might well broach with a SXSW expert, like say, Amanda from Amandacam. Sometimes, as a camgirl ... no, I am not a camgirl myself, but I maintain a chilly, detached, surgical interest in their doings. As a camgirl, you might post some lovely and somewhat indiscreet pictures of yourself on the Internet. Or a picture of your boyfriend. For instance, your sweet, geeky boyfriend that you stole from some other camgirl, who is somewhat less attractive than you, and therefore gets fewer expensive toys from her admirers, purchased and shipped from her handy Amazon wish list. Margaret Mead could get three or four hot anthropological monographs out of this behavior, easily. At least you'll be better off than poor Chu Mei Feng in Taiwan, who is a female politician who got cammed against her will by a jealous woman. Chu Mei Feng had a highly unprivate romp with a married Internet entrepreneur. That footage got spread to every horny Chinese guy on the Net. Today, all around the Pacific Rim, poor Chu Mei Feng is bigger than Monica Lewinsky. Everybody's Googling for her downloads. Chu Mei Feng is not attending SXSW, so presumably that means the rest of us get to discuss her and her remarkable, uh, issues. Chu Mei Feng is one of those entirely noncommercial, communitarian Net phenomena, of such intense interest to activists, intellectuals, and academics. And to science fiction novelists. Man, 21st-century life is rich and full! Got some gamers showing up. Harvey Smith from ION Storm, for instance. I'm glad to see gamers on the SXSW scene, as when it comes to commercial Net entertainment, online gamers have the golden touch. Massive multiplayer online games: They're ticking like clockwork. People are in those game environments whacking at virtual dragons with imaginary swords and man, do these game guys coin the cash. Players of Everquest even sell their Everquest gear on eBay. To judge by the auction traffic, Everquest players, who are not even human but virtual characters, have a higher per capita income than Russians. Meanwhile, Slate and Salon and Feed and Plastic, and all these supposed professional communicators, man, do they ever suffer. I'd like to see one political organizer, even Begala or Carville, who could put together an online crowd that can match those clamoring masses of Ultima or Everquest. When will the mainstream catch on to this? It's so baffling. Lotta Web designers. They're always there. They travel in clumps. Because they speak their own unique languages, these people. Specifically, they speak ActiveX, ASP, CGI, HTML, Flash, and Java. It's a wonderful thing to see a profession so young, yet already so arcane. Furniture designers had to work for hundreds of years before they ever used terms like "ischial tuberosity." Even magazine designers, the closest relatives of Web designers, well, they still kinda speak English, at least until you get them started on typography. photo by Kenny Braun This would be a very good time to hang out with the Open Source people, before they get formally reclassified as a national security threat. Have you noticed that Microsoft is declaring that "security" is their brand-new, No. 1 reason to live? And how about that alphabet soup of new American cyber-security agencies? Like, for instance, the "Information Awareness Office" at DARPA, which is being run by Admiral John Poindexter, of Iran-Contra fame? I'm not trying to wax all Noam Chomsky here, but those Open Source people ... they are, like, a multinational, leaderless, heavily networked outfit with little-known agents and sympathizers in dozens of countries. Countries like Finland. And Norway. It's definitely the Axis of something, I dunno what, but something Scandinavian and fishy. You wouldn't believe how many active Linux zealots there are in India. India is right next door to a place, which is right next door to a place, that had some terrorists. Sulekha.org is a Web site for Indian expatriates that is run out of Austin. Sulekha is the most sophisticated ethnic community Web site I've ever seen. I just webclicked a movie ticket for the Austin showing of Haan Maine Bhi Pyaar Kiya, starring Karisma Kapoor. Somebody should pass the word to the SXSW Film Festival that Bollywood is slithering into town via the Internet. If Napster and its P2P clones ever get loose, nobody in the music business will make any money ever again. And if 802.11b ever works, nobody will sell Internet access and AOL will go broke. And if Linux had a decent graphic user interface, Bill Gates would have no business model. Bill would have to spend all his time giving vaccinations to little kids. You tell me what we're supposed to do about this menace. There are a few highly interactive groups that I don't see at SXSW Interactive. They would be cops, terrorists, and the military. It hasn't escaped the notice of authorities that Shoe-Bombing Boy was very into Yahoo and Hotmail. The hounds of infowar are poring over captured al Qaeda hard disks as you read this. The computer cops have a new top-level cybersecurity office. As for the military, they were Internet from day one. If you websurf for the Pentagon's "Joint Vision 2020" on "network-centric warfare," you'll see a digital cluetrain like you wouldn't believe. We'll be seeing a lot more out of these people on the Net, we're gonna get all cheek-by-jowl and cozy with 'em. And you know what? They're so noncommercial, too! --------------------- Bruce Sterling, one of the premier names in near future fiction, is a Hugo Award-winning writer, and the author of Heavy Weather, Holy Fire, and Zeitgeist. Bruce Sterling and Cory Doctorow will discuss "The Death of Scarcity" in a SXSW Interactive keynote conversation at 2:15pm, Tuesday, March 12. See www.sxsw.com for full conference schedule and more information. ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request@reservoir.com" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' -------------------- chickenfish.cc/fwf/ Fun with Fluids [Archive Version] The Organic Gallery - Body systems based art - Microscopic and conceptual 57th Growth Cycle began at 12/03/98 Your selection A web gallery of digital artworks centred on organic/inorganic body metaphors, fluids, memory and imaging. This involves visualisation of the body and exploring the performative dimensions of representations of the body. Recurring themes are the role of biology in the fluid construction of identity and catharsis. Exploring the boundaries between individual conceptual art works and the process and activity based works that are required for the information mass market. Some things to think about... There are more pathogenic and commensal (helpful) bacteria living on a 2.5cms square area of the human intestine than there are humans on the entire planet. There are more microbes colonizing a human body than there are human tissue cells. There is more of the 'others' in us, than there is of us. When we are 'noticeably' unbalanced or 'sick' we experience our environment in heightened ways; usually in what seem threatening ways. Often we have altered states of perception. I am interested in the relationship I have developed with technology. It makes me sick. [literally]I have problems in various organs and parts of my body that I can directly attribute to using computers in some way. The air quality has caused irritations in my nose and air exchange passages, the time spent with it and the general lifestyle has created changes in my diet and consequently my internal organs, and the position of my body has caused overuse injuries in my arms, eyes and ears. This is what I call a cyberculture: the fight for a balance in obsessive behaviours. An attempt to explore the meaning in what my body and mind experiences. ...and the 'others' that are living in me. [or are me] Often we see cyberculture as us accessing a disembodied space. But we access that space with real bodies. When you get an xray of a broken bone, or a CAT scan of your head, or an ultrasound of your internal organs, images and impressions are made of structures and systems that are virtually you. They use sound and light and invisible rays to create these shadows and forms that represent you. I have been looking at ways to represent other more complex things. I thought the next step was to try to use these methods to represent things like memory, growth, a conversation, a smell. Think about the smell of fresh mown grass. Think about the colour yellow. What does it feel like? what does it sound like? what does it taste like? What if your idea of yellow was the soft feeling of the fruiting body of bread mould? The digital environment allows such a wide range of ways to show and experience scale and scope and therefore is, I think, ideal for this type of expedition. ------------------------ 145342 Arundhati Roy sent to prison today (english) by ? via nettime 6:24am Wed Mar 6 '02 (Modified on 6:44am Wed Mar 6 '02) wtf are our brown aryan bro's thinkin to get away with now? a prfr (print resource friendly read) of her work can be found via google 'poetpiet Arundhati roy' Subject: [Nettime-bold] Arundhati Roy sent to prison today From: Shuddhabrata Sengupta Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 16:25:48 +0530 Cc: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Organization: Sarai : The New Media Initiative Reply-to: nettime-bold@nettime.org Dear All, (apologies for cross posting to those on both Nettime and the Reader List) Contempt and Magnanimity - Preliminary Observations on the Conviction of Arundhati Roy This morning the Supreme Court of India sentanced Arundhati Roy to symbolic imprisonment for one day and also asked her to pay a fine, for the offense of criminal contempt of the Supreme Court of India. While delivering the judgement, the bench, comrising of Justice G B Pattanaik and Justice R P Sethi said "Arundhati Roy is found to have committed criminal contempt of court by scandalising and lowering its dignity through her statements made in her affidavit" Justice Sethi, writing the judgement for the Bench, said "the court is magnanimous and hoped that better sense would prevail on Roy to serve the cause of art and literatrue, from which path she has wavered by making these statements against the dignity of the court" Perhaps the path of art and literature that Justice Sethi recommends is one that leads to stage managed literary festivals in medieval fortresses in which geriatric mediocrities hang out their pet Nobel peeves to dry. Truly a case of the "Writers must write, but they must write this much and no more" syndrome, that afflicts, the state, a glassy eyed media circus, and the chattering classes who want their books signed by writers and want them to toe the line while they sign . The Indian state is a past master at masquerading as a cultural octopus, simultaneously cajoling, seducing and pampering writers and cultural practitioners with many tentacles even as it imprisons others with one of its arms - an overblown and arrogant judicial apparatus. Arundhati Roy was whisked straight from the court to the womens prison at Tihar Central Jail, Delhi, without an opportunity to meet the press or members of the public, activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan and others who had assembled outside the court premises. I was present in the court and saw a cordon of police constables and officers take Arundhati down the corridors and steps of the court and into the waiting police vehicle. Incidentally, this is the first and only hearing of the case in which members of the public, and friends and well wishers of Arundhati Roy have been permitted to attend. Uptil now, the proceedings, for want of a better word, have been virtually "in camera". In a statement read out on Arundhati Roy's behalf by Prashant Bhushan, advocate of the Supreme Court, she (Roy) asserted that she "continued to stand by what she had said earlier in her affidavit, and that the dignity of the court lay in the quality of the judgements that it delivered." This verdict represents an important setback for free speech in India. While it is debatable as to whether the 'magnanimity' of the court in delivering a 'symbolic' judgement of one days imprisonment, 'because she is a woman' is anything short of plainly patronising, the verdict, by the severity with which it characterizes the task of drawing connections between several decisions of the supreme court (which is what Roy had done in her affidavit) as a criminal offense, underscores that we are not living in a free society. What is the path of art and literature from which the court, the highest judicial authority in India, asks Roy not to waver from? The verdict is not a warning to Roy alone. In effect it represents a clear signal to all those who write, report, create works with images, sounds, data and text, that some things will not be tolerated in India. Clearly, drawing attention to the class interests represented by the state and its institutions, such as the judiciary is a criminal offense. In delivering this verdict, the court has only exposed the specific class character of the institutions of governance and the judiciary. This clarifies a great deal of issues. It will no longer do to suffer under the illusion that there is such a thing as natural, objective justice that prevails in this Republic, and those who actively engage in struggles for justice must now re-consider the paths that they must take. Some of these paths will clearly have to stray from the straight and narrow of constitutional propriety and the miasma of republican jurisprudence. If anyone should choose not to see the courts any longer as the sources of remedy in instances of gross injustice, they will be justified in their convictions. The whole language of activism is open to re-negotiation and creative renewal. However, there are definitely unfortunate immediate aspects to the judgement and its consequences. Tomorrow, if a person, who is not as well known as Arundhati Roy is critical of the complete lack of accountability of the Supreme Court, they had better be prepared for half a year in prison. Needless to say this path is one down which one walks at the risk of imposing the severest form of self censorship. It is a path that represents the shortest distance between repression and silence, sanctified by the authority of the supreme court. Roy had done what writers should do more often in any society, which is to point out the equations that underwrite the arithmetic of power and powerlessenes, which determine how many millions can be displaced at the whim of the state and corporate interests, and who can profit from their displacement, and also who can say what, to whom, and when abotu the consequences of this displacement. If the supreme court in its wisdom chooses to attend to the criminalisation of free speech, even as it delivers judgements that wreak havoc and bring violence to the lives of millions of ordinary people in this country, then clearly we must understand that the court and the custodians of law and order have a great deal to fear from free speech in India. It requires nothing other than common sense, and the ability to say that "two plus two make four" to see that there is a pattern in the judgements. That there is a relationship between the muzzling of free speech, and the sanctioning of the raising of the height of the narmada dam. The enemies of free speech are clearly those who have a great deal to profit from the displacement of human beings. This is all that Arundhati Roy has done. Interestingly, the "truth" of a statement made by any person in a case of criminal contempt of court is not an 'adequate defence' in law. Which means, that it matters little as to whether or not it can be demonstrated that the 'motives' which Roy has imputed against the court can stand the test of truth. They are criminal, even if, and perhaps, especially if, they are true. In the days to come, as conflicts sharpen, as the nakedness of the violence of the powerful becomes all the more transparent, there will be more verdicts, more real and symbolic punishments, and more opportunities for the powerful to prove how magnanimous they are in their punitive actions. Clearly there needs to be a public campaign to expose all the dangers to free speech in India. We could do, for starters with a campaign to change the repressive measures of the law pertaining to criminal contempt. We could also do with a vigourous public and open debate about censorship, lack of transparency, free speech and the politics of information and expression. The veridct on Arundhati Roy must not be seen in isolation from a general climate of increased repression, of stringent laws like the IT act and the Convergence Bill, and the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, all of which mandate a situation of 'undeclared' emergency and pervasive censorship by a paranoid state that seems to have a great deal to fear from a free and open cultural climate in India. This morning, standing in the corridors of the Supreme Court, waiting for Roy to come out of the registrars office, after she had been sentanced, I could find nothing else but this contempt when I looked for a reasonable, human response to this petty courtroom drama, this little vendetta of censorship over free speech, that was played out in the chambers of the highest courts of the land. I realised that contempt is the only reasonable response one can make to the magnanimity of power. ____ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://amsterdam.nettime.org/ cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold add your own comments india.indymedia.org item 839 (english) by piet 6:37am Wed Mar 6 '02 India's Supreme Court convicts Arundhati Roy by News papers Report (forwrded by South Asia Ci 2:05am Wed Mar 6 '02 aiindex@mnet.fr The Supreme Court on Wednesday convicted booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy on charges of contempt of court and sentenced her to one-day symbolic improsionment and a fine of Rs 2000. This has serious implications for the Freedom of Speech in India The Times of India WEDNESDAY, MARCH 06, 2002 Arundhati Roy sentenced on contempt charges PTI [ WEDNESDAY, MARCH 06, 2002 10:55:03 AM ] NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday convicted booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy on charges of contempt of court and sentenced her to one-day symbolic improsionment and a fine of Rs 2000. The bench comprising Justice G B Pattanaik and Justice R P Sethi said, Arundhati Roy "is found to have committed criminal contempt of court by scandalising it and lowering its dignity through her statements made in her affidavit." The court while convicting her said, in case of non-payment of the fine of RS 2,000, she will have to undergo an imprisonment of three months. The court had issued suo motu contempt notice to Roy taking exception to a few paragrahphs in an affidavit filed by her in reply to a petition seeking initiation of contempt proceedings against her for allegedly raising slogans against the Apex Court during a demonstration held at its gate in December 2000. The Court had discharged Roy from the proceedings in that petition but issued notice to her on the basis of some of the paragraphs of her reply affidavit, which it found "prima facie" to be contemptuous. The Court had reserved its verdict on January 15. Referring to the proceedings prior to reserving of the verdict, the court said, "Arundhati Roy has not shown any remorse or repentence over the contemptuous remarks and hence no lenient view can be taken in this case." Justice Sethi, writing the judgement for the Bench, however, said the court is magnanimous and hoped that better sense would prevail on Roy to serve the cause of art and literature from which path she has wavered by making these statements against the dignity of the court. Freedom of Speech did not give any licence to any person to scandalise the court and lower its dignity and if such things were allowed, comman man's faith in the judiciary, which is an important pillar of democracy, would be eroded. Immediately after the pronouncement of judgement in Court number three, which adjoins the Chief Justice's court, Narmada Bachao Andolan activists shouted slogans outside the courtroom saying "anyay nahi nyay chahiye (We want justice not injustice)". Rejecting the plea of Roy's counsel Shanti Bhushan to drop the proceedings against her, the court said conduct of judge and court judgements if criticised in good faith would not amount to contempt. "All citizens cannot be permitted to attribute motive to the court or the judges if public faith in judiciary has to be preserved," Justice Sethi said. Turning their attention to the media reports, Justice Sethi said press enjoys no separate freedom of speech. "Their freedom of speech is same as that guaranteed to the common man under Article 19 of the Constitution which also provides for reasonable restrictions." Saying that judiciary in the recent times was under a constant threat "from within and outside", the Bench said to restore the confidence of people in judiciary, contempt of court provision should be invoked if anybody was found to flout the dignity of the court or its mandate. No citizen howsoever mighty, powerful or popular could escape the contempt laws if he or she lowers the dignity of the court or scandalises office. logbriefer for poetpiet's netperusals ... with the aid of a landminefragment as counter weight ----- An Arundhati Roy search on google got me here: luminarium.org/contemporary/arundhati/ where ... poetpiet.tripod.com/2001/nov.htm - 91k - Cached - Similar pages Roy article from salon.com/sept97/00roy.html at link below, a 55K file with other stuff as well: Contains:Arundhati Roy (Jorn Barger 'new' cyber heroine) salon.com/sept97/00roy.html ------ Salman speaks (WashPost + Indy comments) --- NYT full page ad by ex marine ------ some of 9 comments on indy's longevity ----- Michael Kelly in the WashPost on 'phony pacifists' poetpiet.tripod.com/2001/oct-third-prfr.... this is 841 (english) by piet 6:40am Wed Mar 6 '02 Supreme Court judgement and freedom of conscience by Freedomofspeech 2:21am Wed Mar 6 '02 Contempt proceedings against Arundhati Roi for speaking out over the Supreme Court Judgement on Sardor Sarovar Dam Dear Friends, I was outside the Supreme Court this morning, to express solidarity with Arundhati Roy, writer-activist, who is facing contempt proceedings for her article on the Supreme Court judgements on Sardar Sarovar. The gathering outside the Court was deeply shocked and dismayed, when the news filtered out that the SC has sentenced her to one day's imprisonment,Rs.2000 fine and 3 months in jail if she does not pay. It is a grave attack on conscience and free speech in our country. I appeal for solidarity in whatever way you and your partners can muster. Warm regards, more prfr with and by roy (english) by piet 6:44am Wed Mar 6 '02 https://poetpiet.tripod.com/ 2001/8-11-reads.htm 112K contains: Indyitem 84653 on Indy policy ------ Arundathi Roy -------- Bin Laden (posted at the BBC) ------ 84130 Shuman (author of Going Local) -------- 84056 on Pacifism ----- oct 2000 post by Richard Kay (Lets software developer) on mojonation a year ago ------ Pilger ---------- UN and Osama (Indy item) -------- Jakob Nielsen on how Apple blew it, how Linux will blow it, and the Next Big Thing By Andrew Orlowski ------ The Independent's leading Middle East correspondant. CK Robert Fisk: Hypocrisy, hatred and the war on terror https://poetpiet.tripod.com/ 2001/Anundhati-Roy.htm 126K her exclusively https://poetpiet.tripod.com/ 2001/readsat.htm 196K A nice fat ready here: 4 indy items; the first one is an article by arundhati roy The algebra of infinite justice As the US prepares to wage a new kind of war, Arundhati Roy challenges the instinct for vengance from the Guardian MAlbert and NChomsky converse next 2 items (the first excerpted and the second completely) in the bleu table below too |