by Professor Sarojini Sahoo

“Slumdog Millionaire” scooped up eight Oscars on Sunday, the most of any movie this year, including best motion picture, best cinematography, sound mixing, film editing, original score for composer A.R. Rahman and best song, “Jai Ho” for Rahman and lyricist Gulzar.Among the “Slumdog” honors, Briton Danny Boyle was named best director for the often dark but ultimately hopeful, a Dickensian-style tale set in an Indian city. Similar to the way Charles Dickens used Victorian London, Danny Boyle wanted to portray the dark side of Indian city , where a slum dweller poor boy Jamal Malik (Patel), an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai who competes on a TV game show : “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” But when the show breaks for the night, police arrest him on suspicion of cheating; how could a street kid know so much? Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells the story of his life in the slum where he and his brother grew up, of their adventures together on the road, of vicious encounters with local gangs, and of Latika (Pinto), the girl he loved and lost. Each chapter of his story reveals the key to the answer to one of the game show¹s questions. Each chapter of Jamal¹s increasingly layered story reveals where he learned the answers to the show¹s seemingly impossible quizzes. But one question remains a mystery: what is this young man with no apparent desire for riches really doing on the game show? When the new day dawns and Jamal returns to answer the final question, the Inspector and sixty million viewers are about to find out.

The film has raised a controversy over the country whether the western world is only interested in tales of poverty or at the most snake charmers and Kings and Queens .Some has raised the question that when India has 5600 newspapers… magazines in over twenty-one different Ianguages., with a combined readership of over 120 million ,when the country has reached the moon and back and when the third largest pool in the word of doctors, engineers and scientists are from India ,and also our country has the third largest army in the world ; how it is justified to glamourise those people who just to earn money, make movies which portray India as slum and poor Indians as Slum Dogs!! (See : http://furobike.blogspot.com/2009/02/indians-aint-slum-dogs.html)

But I differ from that blogger .My first point is ,with all the success we have achieved , is n’t it true that we couldn’t check widespread use of child labour and still the millions of abandoned street children who live on its railway platforms, or amputees and mangled polio victims who beg for small change at road junctions ? Why don’t we solemnly try to eradicate this social disease?

My second point is , it is a total misconception in our mind that only India or South Asian countries have the slums .Readers can access the description and conditions of slum in France, United Kingdom and USA from the following links :

http://www.nysun.com/comments/358

http://www.city-data.com/forum/general-u-s/107733-cities-worst-slums-36.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E06E1D71739E533A25756C2A9639C94649FD7CF

http://www.tampabay.com/multimedia/archive/00034/FLO_phil081708a_34281c.jpeg

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/05SY8xx4zl5vR/610x.jpg

http://www.ratsound.com/tours/peppers/images/by_the_way/l_IMG_4078.jpg

There is again a misconception about the slums , which I think media is responsible to create such fallacies. I have seen refrigerators,televison sets,modern domestic accessories ,two wheelers and even if four wheelers are also the common assets of the houses of Dharavi slums of Mumbai and Makarapura of Vadodara . The average city based Indian slum dwellers family can earn approximately 15,000 INR , which I think is sufficient for a standard living in India . What they lack are the education, cleanliness, pure water facility and good roads .We have to accept the challenges It is more required to make them educate rather than to provide any financial help .The government officials are more responsible in creating such slum areas .If city maintenance department of the municipal corporations have a strong will, we can make them proper habitation before they start to create any new slum area.

In last few years, the Indian films like “Lagan” and “Tare Zameen Pe” were also listed in the failure group for Oscar. so, it is also an unavoidable question that what made Oscar to see more in Danny Boyle rather than these movie makers?

Professor Sarojini Sahoo is an author and a feminist and can be reached at sarojinisahoo2003@yahoo.co.in. Her blog and website are http://sarojinisahoo.blogspot.com/ and
http://sarojinisahoo.com/
http://anaindia.blogspot.com/

By Ingrid B. Mork

I have three “beefs” right now..

One: I read recently of Clinton`s anger with Israel over their hinderance of the delivery of reconstruction materials for Gaza. Where were the woman`s expressions of anger over the Israeli slaughter of civilians, men, women and children in Gaza??

Two: What right do the Israelis have to any say in the reconstruction of Gaza? What right do they have to anything at all to do with Gaza? What, or who, gives them the right? First it was “divide and rule,” now it is “destroy and rebuild.” What next, I wonder.

Three: I`m sick to death of the finger pointing, the constant demonizing of Hamas by so-called “civilized” dignitaries, who do not have the right to point a finger at anyone. If they took the time, and had the guts, to speak to Hamas, they might learn a thing or two, providing they opened their minds and left their own sense of self importance at home for once. Do they never stop to wonder why Hamas is so revered by their people. If I can see it, why can`t they. Their oppressors build walls to contain them, so they break down the wall. Their oppressors make it impossible for them to break down the walls, so they dig tunnels. They should be lauded instead of being demonised.

So many people everywhere are suffering. No one talks about problems anymore, everyone just reaches for guns and weapons. State terrorists labelling those who resist them as terrorists. Is it just in the years since Bush took office that the world has gone crazy or has it allways been that way? My own theory is: it began with the advent of Zionism.

Ingrid B. Mork
Norway.

Ingrid B. Mork can be reached at ingridbm.mrk279@gmail.com

A film from Tunisia

See the pictures of the nautch girls of 1850s onwards.

By John Noble Wilford

Footprints uncovered in Kenya show that as early as 1.5 million years ago an ancestral species, almost certainly Homo erectus, had already evolved the feet and walking gait of modern humans.

An international team of scientists, in a report on Friday in the journal Science, said the well-defined prints in an eroding bluff east of Lake Turkana “provided the oldest evidence of an essentially modern humanlike foot anatomy.” They said the find also added to evidence that painted a picture of Homo erectus as the prehumans who took long evolutionary strides — figuratively and, now it seems, also literally.

Where the individuals who made the tracks were going, or why, is beyond knowing by the cleverest scientist. The variability of the separation between some steps, researchers said, suggests that they were picking their way over an uneven surface, muddy enough to leave a mark — an unintended message from an extinct species for the contemplation of its descendants.

Until now, no footprint trails had ever been associated with early members of our long-legged genus Homo. Preserved ancient footprints of any kind are rare. The only earlier prints of a protohuman species were found in 1978 at Laetoli, in Tanzania. Dated at 3.7 million years ago, they were made by Australopithecus afarensis, the diminutive species to which the famous Lucy skeleton belonged. The prints showed that the species already walked upright, but its short legs and long arms and its feet were in many ways apelike.

Studying the more than a dozen prints, scientists determined that the individuals had heels, insteps and toes almost identical to those in humans, and that they walked with a long stride similar to human locomotion.

Read More.

By Cohen, Jeff

I have a plan to get NBC out of last place in the ratings. I’m promising blockbuster audience and international buzz. As a once disgruntled ex-employee, I now just want to be positive and help NBC, which needs all the free advice it can get.

Here’s my idea: A series of NBC News primetime specials featuring spectacular ambushes of big-time criminals lured into what they expect to be pleasurable surroundings. But, with hidden cameras whirring, the startled villain is dramatically confronted with the evidence of his massive crimes as millions of viewers look on in scorn and righteous amusement.

If it sounds familiar, it’s because NBC News has scored huge ratings with its “To Catch a Predator” sleaze-fest – in which potential sex offenders by the bushel were lured via the Internet to what they thought would be sex with kids and instead got caught by NBC cameras and cops in hiding.

But my proposal doesn’t involve sex abusers. I’m talking about men who’ve launched illegal war, mass murder, torture, dictatorship. And they’re household names.

Before you laugh off my proposal for “To Catch a War Criminal,” check out last week’s New York Times report by Brian Stelter: “On Trail of War Criminals, NBC News Is Criticized.”

NBC is already at work – “To Catch a Predator”-style – on a two-bit version of my idea, and not surprisingly, they may be screwing it up. For over a year, a camera crew has been on the trail of alleged war criminals; in December, an NBC producer confronted a Maryland foreign language professor who NBC sources accuse of war crimes in Rwanda.

But there are problems – as often happens when you leave the “news” to NBC. Human Rights Watch questions the evidence against the professor, who’s been seeking asylum in the U.S. A journalistic ethicist questions NBC’s close relations with Rwanda’s government.

So here’s my advice: Go big. Go after superstars and only well-documented, slam-dunk cases of war crimes.

Coming to NBC next week: “To Catch a Cheney.” Next month: “To Catch a Kissinger.”

How do you lure such big names to an NBC News lair for their ambush interview? You simply invite them.

Given the soft treatment they’ve received over the years, they’ll come running quicker than a Net perv to Lolita. Trust me: the element of surprise is on NBC’s side – since these uber-officials are confident their crimes will remain eternally off-limits.

To lure Dick Cheney from his undisclosed location, NBC’s “To Catch a War Criminal” producers could pretend to be booking “Meet the Press.” Cheney has been as comfy on that show as Alec Baldwin on “Saturday Night Live.” It came out under oath in the Scooter Libby trial that Vice President Cheney’s office viewed “Meet the Press” as “our best format,” a program in which Cheney could “control the message.” Putting him on that show, testified his communications chief, “was a tactic we used often.”

It was on “Meet the Press” after 9/11 that Cheney warned: “We have to work the dark side, if you will. We’re going to spend time in the shadows.”

So Mr. Dark Side shows up at NBC studios expecting another puff job, and instead is confronted on camera with witnesses, documents, victims of his various war crimes. It’s riveting television and real journalism as his violations of the Geneva Conventions of War in matters of torture and kidnapping are detailed.

The program climaxes big-time with Cheney cross-examined about Iraq and his lead role in committing the ultimate war crime (as described by the Nuremberg tribunal): launching an unprovoked attack upon another country.

And what about Henry Kissinger? His participation in crimes of war, murder, mayhem and military coups is neatly packaged in Eugene Zarecki’s 80-minute documentary (award-winner at Amnesty International Film Festival): “The Trials of Henry Kissinger.”

Think he’s too old to spring into NBC’s trap? Actually, the spry 85-year-old still appears frequently on NBC channels – assured that his criminal past will never come up.

Invite him. Kissinger will come.

And he’s not old news. Just as there’s no statute of limitations on murder, there’s none for Kissinger’s crimes. Remember that military dictator Augusto Pinochet, who ended democracy in Chile thanks to Kissinger’s crucial help, was arrested in England for international crimes many years after leaving office.

Jeff Cohen is an inactive lawyer and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College. In 2002, he was a producer and pundit at MSNBC (overseen by NBC News). His latest book is Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.

Read More

Sat Feb 28, 2009

OUAGADOUGOU (AFP) – About 20,000 people Saturday attended the opening ceremony of Africa’s biggest film festival FESPACO, which fetes its 40th year amid a gloomy backdrop for cinema houses in large swathes of the continent.

For this year’s 21st edition of the bi-annual Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) the open air screenings around the Burkina capital have been abandoned for more upmarket film halls with red carpets for stars and directors to make their grand entrance.

Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako, Guinea’s Cheick Fantamady Camara and Nigeria’s Newton Aduaka attended the glittering opening ceremony, replete with giant puppets, traditional music and a spectacular pyrotechnics display.

Malian actor Sotigui Kouyate who won the top actor award in Berlin this year for his role in “London River” as a Muslim father searching for his son in the wake of the July 2005 public transport bombings in the British capital, also turned up for the event.

While some 300 films will be shown in all this year, 128 works are competing for the festival’s 24 prizes including the top award, the Etalon d’Or de Yennenga (The Golden Stallion of Yennenga).
Some of the 19 films competing for the Etalon d’Or have already won accolades abroad.

Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima has already won a best screen play and special jury prize during last year’s Venice film festival for his film “Teza”.

The movie shows the return of a idealistic Ethiopian intellectual who returns from Europe to his home village under the brutal 1970s-1980s regime of Haile Mengistu Mariam.

“Les Jardins de Samira” (Samira’s Garden) — about a woman who falls for a young man after being disappointed in her elderly husband — by Moroccan director Latif Lahlou won best screenplay at the Montreal World Film Festival in 2007.

A former winner of the Golden Stallion is back this year for another try. Nabil Ayou won in 2001 and is now hoping to become the first director to win the award twice with “Whatever Lola wants”.

In all, the films selected show a varied picture of Africa with films from the Maghreb, southern Africa and West Africa. Conspicuously absent from the competition is Nigeria whose Nollywood is the world’s third biggest movie industry after the United States and India.

Organisers hope that the films in this year’s FESPACO with its theme “African cinema, tourism and cultural heritage” will also show the diversity and beauty of the continent.

The festival has secured 13 screening rooms throughout Ouagadougou to show movies. The open air screenings that marked past editions of FESPACO have scrapped in an attempt to lure the public back to the movie theatres.

For years the African film industry has been ailing with the current global economic downturn expected to deal another blow. In recent years movie theatres on the continent have closed down, pushed out by widely available pirated DVDs.

Read more.

Official festival site.

By B. R. Gowani

There cannot be two opinions regarding the US presence in Afghanistan. It’s clearly an occupying force with imperial objectives, whose central goal is to strengthen the US Global Empire through any means necessary. The US has to leave Afghanistan – or has to be forced out — whether this is done through diplomatic or violent means is the choice left at the discretion of the Afghan people.

The violent resistance against the US and NATO forces is currently coming from the Taliban, but also, from many other Islamic outfits. Included in these are Al Qaeda fighters, on both sides of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, whose fight has gained them immense sympathy and support from local and non-local Muslims. Also, the civilian casualties resulting from the bombardment of the US drones have helped strengthen this opposition enormously. Many moderate and not outwardly practicing Muslims feel threatened regarding their religion, thus strengthening their suspicion that the US is waging a war against Islam.

The militants’ counteroffensive against the US war is one aspect of their struggle. Their aspirations, however, are dual: one is to drive out the US and the other is to take over power. This second aspect is troubling. It would have been different if Osama bin Laden (that is, if he is still alive) and Mullah Omar were of the Fidel Castro and Che Guevara mold; but that is not the case. They are the exact opposites; neither progress nor human rights are their forte. They are just in a haste to impose a barbaric rule in which half of the society — the women — would be confined to the four walls of their houses. Minorities will be outcasts, and the other sects in Islam will be declared infidels in their brand of government. Education will be restricted to the study of just one book, the Qur’an.

One would not have any reason to lose sleep if these militants were a fringe of the population. But that is not so. On the contrary, their number is on the rise. Let us not forget their connected and unconnected offshoots that have sprung up in many Muslim countries. Some of them have joined hands with the local Muslim zealots and have become a problem for many governments; including those of the corrupt US supported dictators. In some parts of Pakistan these militants have become a parallel mainstream, while in places such as Swat they have overshadowed the government. Things are so bad in Pakistan that there is open talk of the country’s disintegration. (The latest development is another ominous sign: Supreme Court has barred the main opposition leader Nawaz Sharif from elected office.)

Although Pakistan has become the Mecca for these Muslim fanatics, one should take note that it is not solely a Pakistan problem. This is the monster that can readily devour all the Muslim countries (and countries with substantial Muslim population). In this urgency, what is needed is for Pakistan’s liberal segment to join hands with counterparts in other Muslim and non-Muslim countries (such as India, England, United States, etc.) and fight the militants with the following arguments:

1. The freedom to pray should mean that nobody stops you from praying, that is, if you want to pray. It does not mean that you force people (not wanting to pray) to pray. The freedom to ‘not pray’ should be respected.
2. The freedom to fast should mean that nobody force-feeds you to break your fast, that is, if you want to fast. It does not mean that you force people (not wanting to fast) to fast. You cannot force restaurants to remain closed from sunrise to sunset (the fasting time). Those people who want to eat in public during Ramadan (the month of fasting) should have the full freedom to do so without any fear of harassment, intimidation, or arrest. Others should not go hungry for your faith.
3. There should be no prayer calls from the mosque minarets five times a day (Muslims are required to offer five prayers at different times of the day) as people could be sleeping or sick or studying or performing intimate acts. There are all sorts of alarm clocks available in the markets, including the ones which have pre-recorded prayer call.
4. All the sects of Islam (Shia and Sunni) should have full freedom to coexist and the followers of those sects should be at liberty to practice their religion in a way they deem fit.
5. Members of minorities (that is non-Muslims) should have the same rights, with total equality, as all other citizens. They should also be permitted to run for the highest office.
6. Women should be granted total equality, not just in the constitution, but also in the realities of every day life. Any veil which covers the face should be banned completely. Women should have freedom to dress the way they want to.
7. There should be no prohibition on alcohol. What is needed instead is the de-glamorization of alcohol and prohibition on its advertisements. (Liquor is banned in Pakistan but you can have as much of it as you want, even delivered at home. This is true in many countries where it is restricted.)
8. Ahmadi Muslims, who were declared non-Muslims in 1974, should be readmitted into Islam. A ban should be announced on such anti Muslim declarations, because no one has a right or authority to make such declarations. The militants today want all Shias to be declared non-Muslims. Tomorrow this can extend to the moderate Sunnis, too.

The former director of the Human Rights Commission Pakistan, Mr. I. A. Rehman, doubts if declaring certain areas of Pakistan as Shariah zone will restrict the Islamic militancy from spreading to other areas. (See the following article.)

If the arguments do not penetrate the thick headed militants then there are a couple of alternatives: either,

1. The moderates of the Muslim world should jointly issue a fatwa against the extremists and declare them to be outside the fold of Islam,
Or,
2. They should declare themselves outside the militants’ version of Islam. They should announce their version of Islam as Islam (LP), i.e., Liberal & Pluralistic Islam; and the militant version as Islam (WT), i.e., Wahhabi Taliban Islam.

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

I. A. Rehman is a leading human rights advocate, a prominent art critic, and a well-known columnist. He is also a founding member of the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy, and a councilmember of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

I.A. Rehman speculates on the challenges which face this country in future years as part of Dawn.com’s launch special ‘Flash Forward Pakistan: where do we go from here?’

The civil war underway in the tribal areas and a large part of the Frontier province, including Swat, presents the biggest challenge Pakistan has ever faced. At stake is not only the integrity of the state but also the nature of its polity. The odds are heavily stacked against Pakistan’s survival as a democracy.

This grave situation has been created by a combination of several factors. The authors of the Pakistan demand may not have wanted to establish a religious state, but their argument was derived wholly from the religious identity of the population of the designated territory. Soon after the new state came into being, enforcement of Shariah rule was demanded. This demand has never been opposed. Instead, the state has been yielding to the clerics throughout its 61 years.

Between 1949, when the Objectives Resolution was adopted, and 1979, when the Federal Shariat Court was established with powers to strike down any law considered to be repugnant to Islamic injunctions, Pakistan repeatedly affirmed its constitutional obligation to enforce the Shariah.

In addition, the armed forces were indoctrinated in a religious context as General Ziaul Haq’s rule to reserve senior posts for genuine Islamists remained in force for a decade. These historical precedents are enough to convince a militant in Swat that he is only asking the state to honour its constitutional pledge.

On another point, the state chose to avoid integrating the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA) with the rest of the country. In 1994, when a movement for enforcing Shariah in place of the archaic Frontier Crimes Regulation began in PATA, the government obliged by setting up Qazi courts. This did not satisfy the clerics and they were accommodated further in 1999. Dissatisfied again, the agitators decided that instead of asking the state to enforce the Shariah, they would do the job themselves.

Meanwhile, world powers failed to ensure the establishment of a government of national unity in Afghanistan after the fall of the Najibullah regime. The vacuum was filled by religions militants who had been trained, among other things, to carry out terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings. Thus, over the last few years, a vast territory comprising Afghanistan, FATA, and the former PATA districts, has become a theatre of a war. US and Nato forces are fighting the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and the Pakistan Army is battling with the tribal militants, the self-styled Pakistani Taliban.

As things stand, the US’s ability to win the new Afghan war in coming years seems doubtful. Neither the US nor Nato has an exit strategy. Only two possibilities emerge: either the messy war will continue for another decade, or the Taliban will be brought into the ruling coalition which they will eventually dominate. In either case, Pakistan will be buffeted by almost irresistible storms.

Read More