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The eye-opening documentary shows how the fizzy ‘American Idol’ concept becomes something profound and unique when set in war-ridden Afghanistan.

By KENNETH TURAN, Film Critic
July 24, 2009

If you believe that bringing the questionable virtues of “American Idol” to Afghanistan would do that beleaguered nation no favors, the remarkable documentary “Afghan Star” will change your mind in an instant.

For this eye-opening film reveals that even systems as dubious as the “Idol” format mean dramatically different things when transferred to radically dissimilar cultures. In the context of Afghanistan, the show’s core idea becomes moving, dramatic and significant in ways it simply isn’t in the West.

In the process of letting us in on all that, “Afghan Star” also tells us considerably more about the current state of that country — where the only known pig is in a zoo and women in burkas rush to take cellphone photographs — than a more sober-minded film could manage.

LA Times for more

Saturday, 27 June 2009

Each revolution softens in the length of time, and gravitates towards a more pragmatic point. Revolutions devour their own children and, after internal settlements, customs of the pre-revolutionary era are implemented as if they were brand new.In any kind of revolution, cadres don’t remain as they were before; more realists and more pragmatists of these cadres stand out in time. In a sense revolutions also normalize and lose their rigidity. The French Revolution, the 1917 Russian Revolution and other different kinds of ideological and national revolutions can be counted as examples.

Despite all of the fixings, the Iranian Revolution is one of the never-normalized-revolutions. Shortly after the revolution, Iran found itself at war with Iraq. The U.S. and the Soviet Union adopted a position against Iran, and powerful foreign enemies forced Iran to feel besieged. Post-revolutionary policies of Iran have always been survival policies, and Iran has continuously renewed itself under the conditions of revolution, war and defense. Revolutionary ideology transformed into the ideology of war without encountering any challenges of ordinary life; and later the ideology manifested a defense ideology against the hard reactions of the U.S. and more generally the West. During the time the attacks of Israel against Lebanon and Palestine have also been one of the factors to keep the revolution fresh. The Cold War ended, however, the U.S. settled in the Persian Gulf with Saddam Hussein’s attack on Kuwait, and threats of the U.S. against Iran increased. When the U.S. was settling in the Middle East it utilized the threat of Saddam Hussein and on the other hand, by frightening Arabs with the Iran threat, it obtained new bases and rights in the region. During the 1990s Iran was represented as a ‘new threat’ to the world and the dynamics for change did not awaken in Iran because of the hardness of foreign threat. Since it was too busy to respond to foreign threats, even in the period of Hatami, Iran didn’t make an insightful critic.

Turkish Weekly for more

By Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News

Could tiny tags replace barcodes?

A replacement for the black and white stripes of the traditional barcode has been outlined by US researchers.

Bokodes, as they are known, can hold thousands of times more information than their striped cousins and can be read by a standard mobile phone camera.

The 3mm-diameter (0.1 inches), powered tags could be used to encode nutrition information on food packaging or create new devices for playing video games.

The work will be shown off at Siggraph, a conference in New Orleans next week.

“We think that our technology will create a new way of tagging,” Dr Ankit Mohan, one of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers behind the work, told BBC News.

Distant reader

The Bokodes currently consist of an LED, covered with a tiny mask and a lens.

Information is encoded in the light shining through the mask, which varies in brightness depending on which angle it is seen from.
“It is either bright or dark depending on how we want to encode the information,” said Dr Mohan, who works for the MIT Media Lab Camera Culture group.

The researchers believe the system has many advantages over conventional barcodes.

For example, they say, the tags are smaller, can be read from different angles and can be interrogated from far away by a standard mobile phone camera.

“For traditional barcodes you need to be a foot away from it at most,” said Dr Mohan.

BBC for more

The Economist

A quiet revolution has begun in the Arab world; it will be complete only when the last failed dictatorship is voted out

Alamy

WHAT ails the Arabs? The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) this week published the fifth in a series of hard-hitting reports on the state of the Arab world. It makes depressing reading. The Arabs are a dynamic and inventive people whose long and proud history includes fabulous contributions to art, culture, science and, of course, religion. The score of modern Arab states, on the other hand, have been impressive mainly for their consistent record of failure.
They have, for a start, failed to make their people free: six Arab countries have an outright ban on political parties and the rest restrict them slyly. They have failed to make their people rich: despite their oil, the UN reports that about two out of five people in the Arab world live on $2 or less a day. They have failed to keep their people safe: the report argues that overpowerful internal security forces often turn the Arab state into a menace to its own people. And they are about to fail their young people. The UNDP reckons the Arab world must create 50m new jobs by 2020 to accommodate a growing, youthful workforce—virtually impossible on present trends.

Arab governments are used to shrugging off criticism. They had to endure a lot of it when George Bush was president and America’s neoconservatives blamed the rise of al-Qaeda on the lack of Arab democracy. Long practice has made Arab rulers expert at explaining their failings away. They point to their culture and say it is unsuited to Western forms of democracy. Or they point to their history, and say that in modern times they would have done much better had they not had to deal with the intrusions of imperialists, Zionists and cold warriors.

Some of this is undeniable. A case can indeed be made that Islam complicates democracy. And, yes, oil, Israel and the rivalry between America and the Soviet Union meant that the Arab world was not left to find its own way after the colonial period ended. More recently the Arabs have been buffeted by the invasion of Iraq. Now they find themselves caught in the middle as America and Iran jostle for regional dominance.

Strangely, your highness, they like voting

Still, as the decades roll by the excuses wear thin. Islam has not prevented democracy from taking root in the Muslim countries of Asia. Even after its recent flawed election, Iran, a supposed theocracy, shows greater democratic vitality than most Arab countries. As for outside intrusion, some of the more robust Arab elections of recent years have been held by Palestinians, under Israeli occupation, and by Iraqis after America’s invasion. When they are given a chance to take part in genuine elections—as, lately, the Lebanese were—Arabs have no difficulty understanding what is at stake and they turn out to vote in large numbers. By and large it is their own leaders who have chosen to prevent, rig or disregard elections, for fear that if Arabs had a say most would vote to throw the rascals out.

For this reason, you can bet that if the regimes have their way, Arabs will not get the chance. Arab rulers hold on to power through a cynical combination of coercion, intimidation and co-option. From time to time they let hollow parties fight bogus elections, which then return them to power. Where genuine opposition exists it tends to be fatally split between Islamist movements on one hand and, on the other, secular parties that fear the Islamists more than they dislike the regimes themselves. Most of the small cosmetic reforms Arab leaders enacted when Mr Bush was pushing his “freedom agenda” on unwilling allies have since been rolled back. If anything, sad to say, the cause of democracy became tainted by association with a president most Arabs despised for invading Iraq.

The illusion of permanence

Economist for more
(Submitted by reader)

By Sonali Kolhatkar and Mariam Rawi

Waging war does not lead to the liberation of women anywhere — even if you call soldiers “peacekeeping forces.”

Years ago, following the initial military success of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the temporary fall of the Taliban, the people of Afghanistan were promised that the occupying armies would rebuild the country and improve life for the Afghan people.

Today, eight years after the U.S. entered Kabul, there are still piles of garbage in the streets. There is no running water. There is only intermittent electricity in the cities, and none in the countryside. Afghans live under the constant threat of military violence.
The U.S. invasion has been a failure, and increasing the U.S. troop presence will not undo the destruction the war has brought to the daily lives of Afghans.

As humanitarians and as feminists, it is the welfare of the civilian population in Afghanistan that concerns us most deeply. That is why it was so discouraging to learn that the Feminist Majority Foundation has lent its good name — and the good name of feminism in general — to advocate for further troop escalation and war.

On its foundation Web site, the first stated objective of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s “Campaign for Afghan Women and Girls” is to “expand peacekeeping forces.”

First of all, coalition troops are combat forces and are there to fight a war, not to preserve peace. Not even the Pentagon uses that language to describe U.S. forces there. More importantly, the tired claim that one of the chief objectives of the military occupation of Afghanistan is to liberate Afghan women is not only absurd, it is offensive.

Waging war does not lead to the liberation of women anywhere. Women always disproportionately suffer the effects of war, and to think that women’s rights can be won with bullets and bloodshed is a position dangerous in its naïveté. The Feminist Majority should know this instinctively.

Here are the facts: After the invasion, Americans received reports that newly liberated women had cast off their burquas and gone back to work. Those reports were mythmaking and propaganda. Aside from a small number of women in Kabul, life for Afghan women since the fall of the Taliban has remained the same or become much worse.
Under the Taliban, women were confined to their homes. They were not allowed to work or attend school. They were poor and without rights. They had no access to clean water or medical care, and they were forced into marriages, often as children.

Today, women in the vast majority of Afghanistan live in precisely the same conditions, with one notable difference: they are surrounded by war. The conflict outside their doorsteps endangers their lives and those of their families. It does not bring them rights in the household or in public, and it confines them even further to the prison of their own homes. Military escalation is just going to bring more tragedy to the women of Afghanistan.

Alternet for more

November 14-15, 2009
Honoring Hari Sharma at 75

Organizing Committee, Hari Sharma at 75:
Abi Ghimire, Amarjit Chahal, Bhanu Poudyal, Chinmoy Banerjee, Harinder Mahil, Raj Chouhan, Sarabjit Hundal, Shinder Brar

Dear Friends,

We are friends of Hari Sharma who have come together to celebrate Hari’s 75th birthday in a manner that is appropriate for a person whose life and work have impacted on and been connected with so many of us in the Vancouver area, nationally and internationally. We invite you to participate in the activities we are planning to celebrate not only Hari’s life but the lives that we have all lived in struggle in his company. Some of us have been with Hari since the early 1970’s when he was organizing international support for political prisoners in India, some joined him when he took lead in organizing resistance to the imposition of fascist dictatorship in India by Indira Gandhi in 1975 through the formation of Indian People’s Association in North America (IPANA) (for which his Indian passport was impounded in 1976), and some came into his orbit with his organization of resistance to the ongoing attempt to impose a Hindu-chauvinist, fascistic polity in India through the formation of Non-Resident Indians for Secular Democracy (NRISAD) in 1993 that later developed a wider focus and became South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD).

Hari Sharma taught in the Department of Sociology in Simon Fraser University till his retirement in 1999 as professor emeritus. As a teacher he taught on Marxism and revolutionary struggles inspiring many students, and as a professional he vigorously defended academic freedom and the right of faculty to teach according to their political beliefs without persecution (including the valiant fight he put up to get his own tenure). However, he spent the major part of his enormous energy in the last forty years as an activist in the South Asian and the left community in Vancouver.

The primary focus of Hari’s activities has been the opposition to imperialism at the global level with a particular concern for the impact of imperialism and the struggle against it in India. These have engaged him in anti-war work locally and in the international campaign against nuclear weapons. But at the same time, Hari’s defense of people’s right of self-determination, national liberation, and livelihood has led him to a wide range of activities in support of wars of national liberation and people’s struggles for land, livelihood, social justice, and dignity. Hari has been vigorous in opposition to state repression in the service of Capital and an energetic champion of the rights of political prisoners in India and elsewhere. For the last twenty-five years he has been a passionate defender of the rights of minorities in India, particularly the Sikhs who came under attack from the state and state-sponsored mobs in 1984 and Muslims who came under similar attack beginning with the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992. For these activities he was twice denied visa to enter India on his Canadian passport. Recently he has been denied Overseas Indian Citizensihip.

Locally, Hari has been a leader in the struggle against racism in Vancouver through the formation of the British Columbia Organization to Fight Racism (BCOFR) and an inspiration behind the organization of farm workers in British Columbia into the Canadian Farmworkers’ Union (CFU), the first president of which is a part of this organizing committee. Hari has also been a leader in organizing the South Asian community to seek acknowledgement from the Canadian government of the injustice done to our community by the racist policies of the government that turned away the immigrant ship Komagata Maru from the shores of Vancouver in 1914.

As a mobilizing force in support of people’s struggles, a champion of human rights and social justice, and a voice of conscience against the oppression of people everywhere but particularly minorities in India, Hari has brought many people to engage in struggle with him in Canada and the USA and connected with many people internationally. He has been a teacher and guide-and gadfly–of two generations of progressive South Asians in the Vancouver area of BC.

We invite you to celebrate the struggles we have engaged in as a community of faith in human rights, human dignity and social justice in fellowship with Hari Sharma. We plan to hold a conference on topics included under the broad rubric, “Imperialism, Socialism, and People’s Struggles Today” on November 14, to be followed by a celebratory party on November 15. We also plan to produce a publication for the occasion as a gift to Hari. The publication will have three parts: the first will be a set of articles on topics related to Imperialism, socialism and people’s struggles today conceived as a guide to action, the second will be a set of contributions of memories of struggle, which we hope will inform and inspire others, and the third will include a selection of Hari’s photographs of the people of India engaged in the struggle of everyday living.

We invite you to contribute your memories of struggle to this collection. The essay should be no more than three pages. It should be sent to us no later than September 30. Please let us know as soon as possible if we can expect a contribution from you.

We will send you further information regarding the conference on November 14 and the party on November 15 on hearing from you. We earnestly hope that you can join us for these events. We will arrange billeting for all out of town guests.

In solidarity,

Chinmoy Banerjee, for Organizing Committee, Hari Sharma at 75.
July 16, 2009

9155 Wiltshire Place, Burnaby, BC, V3N 4L6. 604-421-6752. cbanerjee@shaw.ca

By Mandisi Majavu

(Contribution to the Reimagining Society Project hosted by ZCommunications…)

Malcolm X (1968) once argued that white activists who join black movements which fight against the oppression and dehumanisation of blacks are taking an escapist route to salve their guilty consciences. He opined that white activists would be more useful, and their involvement in the struggle for change most effective, if it began within their communities, instead of them ‘hovering’ near black movements. Some people might dismiss Malcolm X’s argument as nothing more than a nationalistic rant; however, I think Malcolm X was raising deeply insightful questions around solidarity and diversity within movements.

Most people of colour on the left have had to grapple with these kinds of questions at some point in their lives. Referring to South Africa’s anti-apartheid political organisations, Biko (2004) observed that, ideologically speaking, most black organisations were under white direction because white liberals always knew what was good for blacks and told them so. Talking about feminist movements in the U.S., bell hooks (2000) argues that racist socialisation teaches middle class white feminists to believe that they are most capable of leading feminists movements. And, it is due to institutionalised racism that white feminists have access to mainstream institutions such as universities, publishing houses and mass media, which reinforce the racist notion that only white feminists are capable of writing, researching and theorising women’s movements.

Educated black women who dare to point this out are normally marginalised, silenced and ostracised, argues hooks. This becomes an easy project to carry out in a racist society that constructs real blackness to mean ‘speaking the patois of poor black people, being uneducated, streetwise and a variety of other stereotypes’. Educated blacks who are given visibility and who are taken seriously within movements are blacks who echo the sentiments of the dominant discourse, writes hooks.

This essay argues that to build strong movements that are not prone to fracture, that embrace diversity, that really threaten the establishment, firstly, our movements have to be built on the logic of anti-racism. Secondly, organisational structures of movements ought to be designed in a manner that does not fast-track into leadership roles activists who have class privilege and other social privileges on their side. Movements ought to be the reflection of the social change we want. We certainly do not want dogmatic or parochial movements. As has been observed by Alinsky (1969), ‘movements founded on a limited programme covering a limited community will live a limited life’. What we want more than anything else is a constantly growing movement; a movement with an international outlook, yet based on the people’s experiences and aspirations. Anything other than this is ‘self-defeating, frustrating and hopeless’.

Movements can only be the reflection of the social change we want when they are based on the values that are consistent with our goals. The ultimate goal is to attain a classless society; an egalitarian society based on solidarity, diversity, and self management. What we want is a non-hierarchical society in which members can freely participate in decision-making that directly affects their lives. Furthermore, we want a society that encourages dissent, a society that fosters a healthy attitude towards questioning authority.

The section that follows explores each of these values indepth and, moreover, shows how these values can help movements grow in numbers and political strength.

Anti-racist logic and Diversity

ZNet for more

Written by Newsroom Saturday, 25 July 2009

The leaders of Argentina and Brazil speaking during the Mercosur summit in Paraguay, suggested Friday, July 25, that developing countries should be allowed to lift patent rights so they can produce more vaccines to battle the swine flu, the A/H1N1 virus flu pandemic.
“It would be very advantageous to propitiate a kind of lifting or suspension of the patents law because the World Health Organization has recognized that we’re dealing with an epidemic,” Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said in her main speech to Mercosur leaders.

Failing to act could mean “condemning millions of people to death” while “suspending” the patents law could save millions of lives, added the Argentine president.

“I hope this won’t be misconstrued because I’m not talking about disavowing patent law,” underlined Mrs. Kirchner adding that ” I’m saying that given this unprecedented pandemic recognized by the WHO, many times some laboratories cannot keep up with world demand for vaccines.”

However according to Brazilian news agency reports, the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was more direct and proposed that leaders discuss breaking the patents law to help contain the swine flu pandemic.

The official Brazilian government news agency said Health Minister José Gomes Temporão is negotiating with all vaccine producers to boost the vaccine’s availability. “Brazil is willing to defend the health security of its population,” the minister was quoted.

Brazil has been successful in recent years in convincing pharmaceutical companies to offer discounts on HIV medication. In 2007 the Brazilian government issued a compulsory license to break the patent on an antiretroviral AIDS drug made by US pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co.

Mrs. Kirchner said Argentina and Brazil both have highly developed pharmaceutical industries and should be able to produce vaccine “that wouldn’t be free,” Argentina’s state news agency, Telam, reported.
“But,” Telam quoted the president as saying, “it’s beyond question that we’re confronting a situation in which the needs of millions of people cannot be subordinated to economic interests.”
This week it was announced in Buenos Aires that the local Malbran Institute research laboratory had been successful in discovering the dominant flu strain genome in Argentina, which does not have significant differences with the one detected in other parts of the world, which was described as a “very important revelation” because it will help laboratories to advance in the manufacturing of drugs to fight the disease.

Brazzil for more

By Sudha Ramachandran

With the launch of its first indigenously built nuclear-powered submarine for sea trials, India has become the sixth country in the world after the United States, Russia
, France, the United Kingdom and China to develop its own nuclear submarine.

Named INS Arihant (Sanskrit for “destroyer of enemies”), the nuclear submarine will provide India with the capability to launch nuclear weapons from sea, adding to its land and air abilities to complete New Delhi’s nuclear weapons triad. What is more, it brings India a step closer to achieving second-strike capability.

Arihant’s launch on July 26 coincided with the 10th anniversary celebrations of India’s victory over Pakistan at Kargil.

“We do not have any aggressive designs nor do we seek to threaten anyone,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at the launching ceremony. “We seek an external environment in our region and beyond that is conducive to our peaceful development and the protection of our value systems.”

A 6,000-ton vessel, Arihant will be armed with 12 K-15 missiles, each capable of carrying a five-ton nuclear warhead to a target 750 kilometers away. Then, 3,500km-range K-X missiles will subsequently replace the K-15s. The submarine is powered by an 85-megawatt capacity nuclear reactor and can acquire surface speeds of 22 to 28 km/hour (12-15 knots) and a submerged speed of up to 44 km/hour (24 knots).

Asia Times for more

By MICHAEL COOPER
Published: July 27, 2009

LINDEN, Tenn. — Critics elsewhere may be questioning how many jobs the stimulus program has created, but here in central Tennessee, hundreds of workers are again drawing paychecks after many months out of work, thanks to a novel use of federal stimulus money by Tennessee officials to help one of the state’s hardest-hit areas.
There, on a recent morning, some workers were cutting down pine trees with chainsaws and clearing undergrowth, just past the auto parts factory that laid them off last year when it moved to Mexico. Others were taking applications for unemployment benefits at the very center where they themselves had applied not long ago. A few were making turnovers at the Armstrong Pie Company (“The South’s Finest Since 1946”).

The state decided to spend some of its money to try to reduce unemployment by up to 40 percent here in Perry County, a small, rural county 90 miles southwest of Nashville where the unemployment rate had risen to above 25 percent after its biggest plant, the auto parts factory, closed.

Rather than waiting for big projects to be planned and awarded to construction companies, or for tax cuts to trickle through the economy, state officials hit upon a New Deal model of trying to put people directly to work as quickly as possible.

They are using welfare money from the stimulus package to subsidize 300 new jobs across Perry County, with employers ranging from the state Transportation Department to the milkshake place near the high school.

As a result, the June unemployment rate, which does not yet include all the new jobs, dropped to 22.1 percent.

New York Times for more