Saswat Blog
All that's Left!
Technology
Corporate Perceptions of Telecom Monopolists
By Saswat Pattanayak
In what could be the most visibly grotesque appraisal of monopolistic trends of capitalism, Jeffrey Nelson for Verizon Wireless says, the telecom industry of America is highly competitive. Washington Post quotes him as saying that consumers can choose among numerous handset models and four major providers of cellular services: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile. “If you don't like what one company enables,” he said, “find somebody else.”
Perhaps what’s lost on the corporate communicators is the fact that “four major providers” are signs of monopoly, and not of competition. American capitalism is on its path to perfection in the sense of its graduations. In the film production industry, six studios control over 90 percent of theater revenues. The newspaper industry is owned by only six major chains now. Book publishing industry is handled by seven firms and five largest groups account for all major music production in the country.
One may feel nostalgic about the good old days when the situation was not this drastic, and private families were free to own as much as they wanted to since there were communication regulations in place. One may even argue that after the deregulations bills were passed in 1996, things have started looking murkier with consolidations and clustering of firms at the forefront. But I will not debate at that forum.
The fact of the matter is then, and now, we have failed to understand the nature of capitalism to predict its inevitable trends. What the Washington Post article perhaps says could be a tribute to success of cell phone industries elsewhere in the world where more features are available for the users. But again, that’s a matter of relativity in discussion. What is crucial to understand here is neither the features and plans, nor the brand availabilities (although both these factors are attractive on the surface); but the true accessibility of the technology to all concerned.
In the race to have the best of the services limited to the few of us, is there a ceiling on the accessibility of technology? One would perhaps muse that contrary to my apprehensions, technology has become more accessible today than it was few decades back. But that would be to challenge the very nature of the collective course of human actions. Nothing will remain constant and progress is inevitable with collective endeavors at the research, training and development levels. A progress by default is merely a movement in propelled direction. Only a progress that inculcates struggles to uplift common aspirations is of any intrinsic value.
The gifts of technology, by and large have not been shared by the world populace. And in an era of abundant resources at our disposal and accompanying funds to realize many potentials, it should not come as a surprise as to why the distribution of technological assets has failed to earn commendable results.
The answer lies in the pattern of controlled and monopolized territories of technological know-hows and their ownerships. Even where there is an apparent distribution of access, it is owing to the “market demands”, not for human needs. Of course the phrase “market demands” is as elusive as one can get, considering that the market is as real as its proponents make it to be. The demands are “created” out of profit needs riding the waves of accompanying hypes (what they call in more civilized sense as ‘advertising&rsquo
.
In this backdrop then it should come as no surprise to us when we see the entire media industry of America are dominated by three understanding, friendly (as long as they don’t consolidate further) mini empires called Time Warner, Disney and NewsCorp. There are scores of other rulers who are defined as new media monopolists by several research scholars and to avoid the academic traps I will not dwell on them. But just as a pointer to the issue than covering it comprehensively, I am deliberating here on the obvious questions we may need to scratch the surface for:
Cooperative economies have produced immense technological benefits. For instance, the erstwhile soviet system did produce the ultimate scientific progresses we have attained thus far: our exploration of the space. And yet we are ever so ready to dismiss the method while reaping the benefits claiming our consumerist society (where getting enslaved to market lures holds the key) as more conducive an environment for technological progress than the socialist society (where minimum standards defined lives of scientists and farmers alike—a notion entirely lost to the imagination of class society pundits).
However, without questioning the merits of competition and fairness --they are different concepts unfortunately, and no matter how soothing it may sound to some liberal economists, there is no such thing as ‘fair competition’ except in their utopian lexicon—one can safely preclude any form of competition from the capitalistic society.
Coming back to the Verizon staff, the four major telecom giants have a history of throttling competitions on their necks and emerging as “giants” than mere fellow traveling companies. The accompanying limitations of power-sharing are also mutually understood notions. The fact that they are monopolists fooling an entire country in a way Lincoln clearly knew-- although he once said briefly you could not fool everyone all the time—is best paraphrased by Verizon’s best friend (in the press of course they are rivals and what-not) AT&T:
“This whole issue is a giant red herring. This is a fiercely competitive industry which has grown almost entirely through the force of competition in the marketplace, more innovative devices and services, and continually lower prices.” (AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel.)
If Verizon and AT&T are right, then the rest of us must be fools for sure. The question is for how long this grand Ayn Randian narrative of capitalism-as-citadel-of-competition will be believed? And for how long our media will report these as problems with “four major providers”, and not as inevitable consequence of capitalism?
Perhaps when our media wont be corporate themselves anymore. Well, that’s the point!
In what could be the most visibly grotesque appraisal of monopolistic trends of capitalism, Jeffrey Nelson for Verizon Wireless says, the telecom industry of America is highly competitive. Washington Post quotes him as saying that consumers can choose among numerous handset models and four major providers of cellular services: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile. “If you don't like what one company enables,” he said, “find somebody else.”
Perhaps what’s lost on the corporate communicators is the fact that “four major providers” are signs of monopoly, and not of competition. American capitalism is on its path to perfection in the sense of its graduations. In the film production industry, six studios control over 90 percent of theater revenues. The newspaper industry is owned by only six major chains now. Book publishing industry is handled by seven firms and five largest groups account for all major music production in the country.
One may feel nostalgic about the good old days when the situation was not this drastic, and private families were free to own as much as they wanted to since there were communication regulations in place. One may even argue that after the deregulations bills were passed in 1996, things have started looking murkier with consolidations and clustering of firms at the forefront. But I will not debate at that forum.
The fact of the matter is then, and now, we have failed to understand the nature of capitalism to predict its inevitable trends. What the Washington Post article perhaps says could be a tribute to success of cell phone industries elsewhere in the world where more features are available for the users. But again, that’s a matter of relativity in discussion. What is crucial to understand here is neither the features and plans, nor the brand availabilities (although both these factors are attractive on the surface); but the true accessibility of the technology to all concerned.
In the race to have the best of the services limited to the few of us, is there a ceiling on the accessibility of technology? One would perhaps muse that contrary to my apprehensions, technology has become more accessible today than it was few decades back. But that would be to challenge the very nature of the collective course of human actions. Nothing will remain constant and progress is inevitable with collective endeavors at the research, training and development levels. A progress by default is merely a movement in propelled direction. Only a progress that inculcates struggles to uplift common aspirations is of any intrinsic value.
The gifts of technology, by and large have not been shared by the world populace. And in an era of abundant resources at our disposal and accompanying funds to realize many potentials, it should not come as a surprise as to why the distribution of technological assets has failed to earn commendable results.
The answer lies in the pattern of controlled and monopolized territories of technological know-hows and their ownerships. Even where there is an apparent distribution of access, it is owing to the “market demands”, not for human needs. Of course the phrase “market demands” is as elusive as one can get, considering that the market is as real as its proponents make it to be. The demands are “created” out of profit needs riding the waves of accompanying hypes (what they call in more civilized sense as ‘advertising&rsquo
.
In this backdrop then it should come as no surprise to us when we see the entire media industry of America are dominated by three understanding, friendly (as long as they don’t consolidate further) mini empires called Time Warner, Disney and NewsCorp. There are scores of other rulers who are defined as new media monopolists by several research scholars and to avoid the academic traps I will not dwell on them. But just as a pointer to the issue than covering it comprehensively, I am deliberating here on the obvious questions we may need to scratch the surface for:
Cooperative economies have produced immense technological benefits. For instance, the erstwhile soviet system did produce the ultimate scientific progresses we have attained thus far: our exploration of the space. And yet we are ever so ready to dismiss the method while reaping the benefits claiming our consumerist society (where getting enslaved to market lures holds the key) as more conducive an environment for technological progress than the socialist society (where minimum standards defined lives of scientists and farmers alike—a notion entirely lost to the imagination of class society pundits).
However, without questioning the merits of competition and fairness --they are different concepts unfortunately, and no matter how soothing it may sound to some liberal economists, there is no such thing as ‘fair competition’ except in their utopian lexicon—one can safely preclude any form of competition from the capitalistic society.
Coming back to the Verizon staff, the four major telecom giants have a history of throttling competitions on their necks and emerging as “giants” than mere fellow traveling companies. The accompanying limitations of power-sharing are also mutually understood notions. The fact that they are monopolists fooling an entire country in a way Lincoln clearly knew-- although he once said briefly you could not fool everyone all the time—is best paraphrased by Verizon’s best friend (in the press of course they are rivals and what-not) AT&T:
“This whole issue is a giant red herring. This is a fiercely competitive industry which has grown almost entirely through the force of competition in the marketplace, more innovative devices and services, and continually lower prices.” (AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel.)
If Verizon and AT&T are right, then the rest of us must be fools for sure. The question is for how long this grand Ayn Randian narrative of capitalism-as-citadel-of-competition will be believed? And for how long our media will report these as problems with “four major providers”, and not as inevitable consequence of capitalism?
Perhaps when our media wont be corporate themselves anymore. Well, that’s the point!
|
Of our racist tolerance of the Kramers..
By Saswat Pattanayak
Click on the video above to watch Michael “Kramer” Richards speak on last Friday, as the audience enjoys a hearty laugh. In fact they were so enjoying that Richards was not stoned or kicked out. He went on to get exclusive interviews on television channels, entirely unharmed. No, the interviews were not conducted in some dingy prison cells, but atop celebrity couches for CNN consumption. The great mainstream media melting pot even aired him as he went on continuing with his racist unapologetic mode: “I'm not a racist. That's what's so insane about this.”
What had he said at the first place that he found those objecting to him were actually the insane people?
Politics of apology is a prerogative of the privileged. After all, the essentially underlying presumption is normalization of situation. In fact, apologies are the soothing weapons of the smooth criminals.
Michael Richards aka Kramer of the “Seinfeld” is another one in the line, following the horrible footsteps of Mel Gibson. No, I am not outraged that these celebrities became honest about how utterly inhumanely and disgustingly racists they were. But certainly outraged that these bigots are still at large in the society hogging the fancy of thousands of their young fans clearly as misguided missiles as are the Aryan sisters called “Prussian Blue”, about whom I wrote last year.
I am clearly outraged that the white supremacist society has yet not found a solution to teach itself some decent lesson in human dignity even after its long evolution as it claims, other than letting some liberal middlemen hosting quick subsequent apology shows to forgive evil intentions as some form of accidental lip-slips.
Was I hoping any better than this? Are we all hoping that the Congressmen will suddenly behave better than corrupt jerks preaching moralist pronouncements of the sexist church order? Are we hoping that the Hollywood will eventually make better movies than pathetically dumb discourse called Crash and the television stars will become any better than this sick, deafeningly sick, Michael Richards? Or that our educational institutes will finally stop bullshitting us about how World War II ended with bombing of Japan and that Ronald Reagan “apologized” a bit too late. Or that we shall be treated to some charming Oprah any better than announcing that “Dreamgirls” is the movie she loves because its made for all people irrespective of their economic class! Aha!
No, I am not expecting miracles here. For the most, the way the television culture has depraved us, a movie or a performer only remains to be graded in terms of recognition and awards. Will she win Oscars? An entirely uncritical society resting on laurels of backdoor promotional competitions to shape its yardsticks of appreciation will only be able to reflect in its churned out “talents”, its own true self.
Michael Richards is not some self-made TV star. He is not some celebrity on his own merit. He is just one of us. He is there at that stage, because we put him there to entertain us. Because most of us actually laughed like sick saddists without applying our critical minds to the television culture. Every evening, this country (and following it, most in the rest of the world) telecasts stupid comedy shows that runs late into the late night with special comedy shows, apparently by liberal by names of Stewarts and Lopezs too. There are dedicated channels and prominent companies producing “stand-up comedies” 24/7. The culture of humor in capitalistic marketplace is the most potent ingredient to normalize the otherwise actual tension that prevails in the society.
Humor as capitalistic agent of illusive consensus:
Racial tensions are not some exaggerated fictionalized accounts of hyped media reports. They are for real. In fact, in every racist country from Britain to France, they are the only things that’re real. Denial of privilege and race-blindness is the prerogative of the few elites representing the historically oppressing racial category that manufactures the divisions to distinguish humans on basis of color skin. One would have wished the Apartheid ended. One would have perhaps also imagined that the black issues were resolved following desegregation. But wishes and hopes do not make a society run.
The reality is that the racial tensions are necessary consequence of free trade capitalism. It is capitalism that’s the creator of racism through its patriarchal control of private property by means of subjugating human beings as slaves to further the profit consolidation of the masters class. In fact, for capitalism to grow and further its own interests, racism needs to be furthered too. New forms of racism will take place of old forms of racism, just as credit cards are replacing old cash circulation. But the essential implementation of divide and rule will forever remain the cornerstone for the wealth-grabbers to stay in power over those that earlier used to remain as slaves, and now as freemarket consumers. Earlier they were house slaves, today they are software slaves. Difference is in the degrees.
Likewise, earlier the subjugation of society used to take place through sheer brutal force. As the levels of sophistication increased, the territorial conquests were replaced by imperialistic expansions. And these days, via more implicitly sophisticated means such as words defined by the masters’ dictionaries as soothing: words such as liberty, democracy, family, happiness, elections, television, comedies and organic food.
So what we have is the culture of comedies in the most obnoxious of places. In the most inappropriate settings. During the most pathetic times. Never in the history of humanity, so many people of the world felt so very helpless at their inability to prevent wars of mass destructions launched by the most unqualified of people to assume leaderships. And yet during days like these, the television shows and comedy films are making the biggest of business. During a time when the entertainment industry should have been focusing on agitating the people through critical education about their role in reversing world order, we have all the world television channels owned by five old men and the film industries run by people like Tarantinos (another N-word hyperactivist). And all of them have readymade shows to make people stay relaxed. How will we know if we need to be relaxed? The celebrities tell us when is the time to relax and how to feel relaxed after undergoing body jobs. How we shall know this is the time to laugh? The background clap sequences on comedies will ask us to laugh along the scenes. Such perversity of underestimation of collective human intelligence is a compelling tale of how far have we regressed in our movements.
What to do with Michael Richards?
Nothing. Ideally he should be jailed for "fifty years with a fork up on his ass". That’s the minimum verdict that he deserves. But that’s not even a portion of what we must all undergo if we envisage our future as active agents of humanity, and not some remote controlled passive recipients of messages and bullets.
All of us must daily observe a couple of hours introspecting about our own inactions, apathy, indifference, involvement and withdrawal from the largely racist world that has been a direct creation as a result of our collective indecisiveness. While at it, we must realize that we need to be as honest with ourselves as Richards and Gibson were with themselves, not just when we are angry, but throughout the 24 hours everyday. If overcoming the deep love for our own dominant supremacist race at the cost of degrading those we oppressed becomes too difficult, we must be prepared to die the way that abominable creature and our racist epitome called Hitler ended his life. We don’t need another television show which the neo-nazis like Michael Richards pay to apologize. We need Richards and his likes to be forced to introspect and change. And if they do not “amend”…..Well, they better amend.
I wish I could say all that I wanted to. But unlike some elite white folks in this country and their counterparts in much of Europe, I certainly do not enjoy "Hate Speech" privilege anyway. And neither do I want to enjoy any of this. Good for them.
Click on the video above to watch Michael “Kramer” Richards speak on last Friday, as the audience enjoys a hearty laugh. In fact they were so enjoying that Richards was not stoned or kicked out. He went on to get exclusive interviews on television channels, entirely unharmed. No, the interviews were not conducted in some dingy prison cells, but atop celebrity couches for CNN consumption. The great mainstream media melting pot even aired him as he went on continuing with his racist unapologetic mode: “I'm not a racist. That's what's so insane about this.”
What had he said at the first place that he found those objecting to him were actually the insane people?
"Shut up! "Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass."
"You can talk, you can talk, you're brave now motherfucker. Throw his ass out. He's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger! A nigger, look, there's a nigger!"
Politics of apology is a prerogative of the privileged. After all, the essentially underlying presumption is normalization of situation. In fact, apologies are the soothing weapons of the smooth criminals.
Michael Richards aka Kramer of the “Seinfeld” is another one in the line, following the horrible footsteps of Mel Gibson. No, I am not outraged that these celebrities became honest about how utterly inhumanely and disgustingly racists they were. But certainly outraged that these bigots are still at large in the society hogging the fancy of thousands of their young fans clearly as misguided missiles as are the Aryan sisters called “Prussian Blue”, about whom I wrote last year.
I am clearly outraged that the white supremacist society has yet not found a solution to teach itself some decent lesson in human dignity even after its long evolution as it claims, other than letting some liberal middlemen hosting quick subsequent apology shows to forgive evil intentions as some form of accidental lip-slips.
Was I hoping any better than this? Are we all hoping that the Congressmen will suddenly behave better than corrupt jerks preaching moralist pronouncements of the sexist church order? Are we hoping that the Hollywood will eventually make better movies than pathetically dumb discourse called Crash and the television stars will become any better than this sick, deafeningly sick, Michael Richards? Or that our educational institutes will finally stop bullshitting us about how World War II ended with bombing of Japan and that Ronald Reagan “apologized” a bit too late. Or that we shall be treated to some charming Oprah any better than announcing that “Dreamgirls” is the movie she loves because its made for all people irrespective of their economic class! Aha!
No, I am not expecting miracles here. For the most, the way the television culture has depraved us, a movie or a performer only remains to be graded in terms of recognition and awards. Will she win Oscars? An entirely uncritical society resting on laurels of backdoor promotional competitions to shape its yardsticks of appreciation will only be able to reflect in its churned out “talents”, its own true self.
Michael Richards is not some self-made TV star. He is not some celebrity on his own merit. He is just one of us. He is there at that stage, because we put him there to entertain us. Because most of us actually laughed like sick saddists without applying our critical minds to the television culture. Every evening, this country (and following it, most in the rest of the world) telecasts stupid comedy shows that runs late into the late night with special comedy shows, apparently by liberal by names of Stewarts and Lopezs too. There are dedicated channels and prominent companies producing “stand-up comedies” 24/7. The culture of humor in capitalistic marketplace is the most potent ingredient to normalize the otherwise actual tension that prevails in the society.
Humor as capitalistic agent of illusive consensus:
Racial tensions are not some exaggerated fictionalized accounts of hyped media reports. They are for real. In fact, in every racist country from Britain to France, they are the only things that’re real. Denial of privilege and race-blindness is the prerogative of the few elites representing the historically oppressing racial category that manufactures the divisions to distinguish humans on basis of color skin. One would have wished the Apartheid ended. One would have perhaps also imagined that the black issues were resolved following desegregation. But wishes and hopes do not make a society run.
The reality is that the racial tensions are necessary consequence of free trade capitalism. It is capitalism that’s the creator of racism through its patriarchal control of private property by means of subjugating human beings as slaves to further the profit consolidation of the masters class. In fact, for capitalism to grow and further its own interests, racism needs to be furthered too. New forms of racism will take place of old forms of racism, just as credit cards are replacing old cash circulation. But the essential implementation of divide and rule will forever remain the cornerstone for the wealth-grabbers to stay in power over those that earlier used to remain as slaves, and now as freemarket consumers. Earlier they were house slaves, today they are software slaves. Difference is in the degrees.
Likewise, earlier the subjugation of society used to take place through sheer brutal force. As the levels of sophistication increased, the territorial conquests were replaced by imperialistic expansions. And these days, via more implicitly sophisticated means such as words defined by the masters’ dictionaries as soothing: words such as liberty, democracy, family, happiness, elections, television, comedies and organic food.
So what we have is the culture of comedies in the most obnoxious of places. In the most inappropriate settings. During the most pathetic times. Never in the history of humanity, so many people of the world felt so very helpless at their inability to prevent wars of mass destructions launched by the most unqualified of people to assume leaderships. And yet during days like these, the television shows and comedy films are making the biggest of business. During a time when the entertainment industry should have been focusing on agitating the people through critical education about their role in reversing world order, we have all the world television channels owned by five old men and the film industries run by people like Tarantinos (another N-word hyperactivist). And all of them have readymade shows to make people stay relaxed. How will we know if we need to be relaxed? The celebrities tell us when is the time to relax and how to feel relaxed after undergoing body jobs. How we shall know this is the time to laugh? The background clap sequences on comedies will ask us to laugh along the scenes. Such perversity of underestimation of collective human intelligence is a compelling tale of how far have we regressed in our movements.
What to do with Michael Richards?
Nothing. Ideally he should be jailed for "fifty years with a fork up on his ass". That’s the minimum verdict that he deserves. But that’s not even a portion of what we must all undergo if we envisage our future as active agents of humanity, and not some remote controlled passive recipients of messages and bullets.
All of us must daily observe a couple of hours introspecting about our own inactions, apathy, indifference, involvement and withdrawal from the largely racist world that has been a direct creation as a result of our collective indecisiveness. While at it, we must realize that we need to be as honest with ourselves as Richards and Gibson were with themselves, not just when we are angry, but throughout the 24 hours everyday. If overcoming the deep love for our own dominant supremacist race at the cost of degrading those we oppressed becomes too difficult, we must be prepared to die the way that abominable creature and our racist epitome called Hitler ended his life. We don’t need another television show which the neo-nazis like Michael Richards pay to apologize. We need Richards and his likes to be forced to introspect and change. And if they do not “amend”…..Well, they better amend.
I wish I could say all that I wanted to. But unlike some elite white folks in this country and their counterparts in much of Europe, I certainly do not enjoy "Hate Speech" privilege anyway. And neither do I want to enjoy any of this. Good for them.
Rightist Rants of Vikram Buddhi
By Saswat Pattanayak
Vikram Buddhi could be anyone. He could be the mindful mathematician, eloquently solving world riddles. He could be the calculative genius on behalf of pacifist Einstein. He could have been framed as his family is pleading . He could have himself posted the messages as he is admitting.
I see two dimensions to it: one, the action itself (online participation) and two, the ideology, if any (the politics of it).
The question is what are the circumstances that might have led to his erratic and clearly unjustified postings? As an example, in a chatroom, any frequent visitor will notice the oh-so-frequent postings of hate lines all the time. Clueless people on both sides of political spectrum spit venoms at each other, initially beginning with racist comments like “you Indians always smell curry” or nationalist comments like “why do you all land up in my country” to personal assaults like “get the hell out of here, else we’ll bomb you like we do”.
None of the lines above are manufactured. As a researcher in digital media interactions, I frequent public chatrooms to sense the happenings and all the time face such ballistics. Considering my lifetime trysts with misdirected wraths from the conservatives and casteists, Hindu fanatics and average theists in India, I never ‘confront’ or ‘counter’ such irrational and outlandish racist comments. I fully empathize that the atomized people living in secluded apartment houses as individualistic wholes, without any interaction with neighbors, whom they do not know incidentally (since they speak different languages) or intentionally (since many are immigrants); where behaviors from both issues of immigration and language have been made suspect (how many television shows or films are produced to depict normal behavior from foreign language immigrants?), people then turn to online interactions as a good outlet. There, isolated individuals find others in a community. In America, the community that should be existing in the real neighborhoods actually exists in virtual world.
As an oasis in human society, people flock into bulletin boards to at least find people who can ‘talk’ to them, and not merely put up smileys on the roads. The chatrooms and bulletin boards are of course all moderated. And moderated by people who are political beings themselves. Where it’s the machine, there are words which are censored. Of course the words that are censored are themselves a limited list, and that list consists only of some English words that are recognized as offensive to one culture and omits all the hundreds of words that could be otherwise offensive to other cultures. Cultures here mean, not just countries, but also religions, non-religions, sexual orientation, gender issues in foreign countries, and political philosophies etc. Although everyone is allowed free entry into the boards, their freedom is clearly demarcated.
This is what makes the case of online interactions less interesting. A hegemonic set of rules determine what’s called a hate speech. Where ACLU might have got it right and the pro-rule advocates wrong is this fine line. Incidentally today’s world is not one singular nation. With several different cultural codes and the freedom for interaction among all cultures (anyone from Finland can be part of a chatroom of Seattle), that’s been provided by online forums, it’s virtually impossible to deconstruct every insults. And the rules will only help suppress the voices of the minorities whose words and intentions are more susceptible for charges.
Free speech has always worked in favor of those who are free to exercise them. That said, it has also been used to preclude the minority voices. Preclude them on several grounds. And there are several minorities in this country. This case pertains to political diversity.
Clearly, Buddhi is not a liberal or a guy on the left. His views have no consonance with the progressives. No person of any amount of critical thinking skill can even lend support to his words. Basic elementary understanding of the left is that sporadic violence does not lead to any solution. Elected presidents of any country or their party people are truly innocent. The guilty in an electoral democracy where ignorance about general knowledge of cultural history and political geography of the world is rife, are the larger gamut of voters who vote without slightest knowledge of their role in perpetuating an unjust political environment. What Buddhi announced on bulletin board shows either he was provoked into doing so (considering that he had apparently no criminal background), or he was having being completely naïve, stupid, and perhaps idiotic. People may also consider him anything else, and I shall not stand in the way.
However, I have been asked by some friends to take a stand on him. And I shall take one. Clearly I am not in favor of anything that he has said. If his act be considered political, then this is my view. People who want to change the world for the better do the basic minimum homeworks: they need to know a lot of history of all kinds of peoples, they need to organize people on common progressive causes, they need to educate others who could not afford to spend all that time on understanding differences. These steps need not be guided by principles of violence or non-violence. They need to be guided by purposes. And the purpose needs to be for overall betterment of the world, starting with the world’s poorest, the ones who have been historically deprived, the working class and the hungry mass. None of these involve any thoughts around mindless postings of a privileged nutcracker.
All that being said, I could be reading too much into Buddhi’s politics. He may not be a political guy at all. As Mahablog responds to a right-winger, “Hey, buddy, welcome to my world! Do you really think “your” side doesn’t send threats and obscenities to us?” The point is Buddhi episode is an excuse for the folks on the right to make merry and rejoice, by unnecessarily pulling the left into the discourse.
I do not agree that he had anything to do with politics, let alone American party politics. Buddhi has neither done anything which amounts to online political activism, or grassroots political activism or anything that’s worth considering when one looks at what political activism denotes. So I cannot support him on any political ground.
On principle, however, I will support ACLU if freedom of an individual to express something is concerned. This is a shady area, I know. There are all these people who are using homophobic languages and indeed murdering people merely based on their sexual orientations. When ACLU defends the gay activists, it is branded as supporting hate crimes (where speaking in favor of LGBT is considered as hate-speech…ouch!). The fine line between who propagates hate is just that: a fine line. Especially after 9/11, it is more so. And I am not sure if we can tolerate all hate-speeches and protect them under first amendment. Buddhi's talks are cheap and hateful. He must face consequences. But let him not be singled out because he is a foreign national. For, before him, in recent many times, scores of hate speakers have been getting standing ovations. One in a responsible position of authority even went ahead to call for assassination of another elected leader. Many neo-nazi websites are daily preaching hates. And they are fine and running and getting great google ranks! On educational campuses including University of Maryland, one can see preachers all over. I have been stopped by in the campus and my apartment, where preachers come in fake identities to proclaim love and then soon say how all other religions are evil and there is no such thing as a God from other religion.
Buddhi is not an exception in the pool of hate-preachers. Indeed, he is only the most recent (well...almost). And possibly the most inconsequential. And possibly, the most rightist among them.
Vikram Buddhi could be anyone. He could be the mindful mathematician, eloquently solving world riddles. He could be the calculative genius on behalf of pacifist Einstein. He could have been framed as his family is pleading . He could have himself posted the messages as he is admitting.
I see two dimensions to it: one, the action itself (online participation) and two, the ideology, if any (the politics of it).
The question is what are the circumstances that might have led to his erratic and clearly unjustified postings? As an example, in a chatroom, any frequent visitor will notice the oh-so-frequent postings of hate lines all the time. Clueless people on both sides of political spectrum spit venoms at each other, initially beginning with racist comments like “you Indians always smell curry” or nationalist comments like “why do you all land up in my country” to personal assaults like “get the hell out of here, else we’ll bomb you like we do”.
None of the lines above are manufactured. As a researcher in digital media interactions, I frequent public chatrooms to sense the happenings and all the time face such ballistics. Considering my lifetime trysts with misdirected wraths from the conservatives and casteists, Hindu fanatics and average theists in India, I never ‘confront’ or ‘counter’ such irrational and outlandish racist comments. I fully empathize that the atomized people living in secluded apartment houses as individualistic wholes, without any interaction with neighbors, whom they do not know incidentally (since they speak different languages) or intentionally (since many are immigrants); where behaviors from both issues of immigration and language have been made suspect (how many television shows or films are produced to depict normal behavior from foreign language immigrants?), people then turn to online interactions as a good outlet. There, isolated individuals find others in a community. In America, the community that should be existing in the real neighborhoods actually exists in virtual world.
As an oasis in human society, people flock into bulletin boards to at least find people who can ‘talk’ to them, and not merely put up smileys on the roads. The chatrooms and bulletin boards are of course all moderated. And moderated by people who are political beings themselves. Where it’s the machine, there are words which are censored. Of course the words that are censored are themselves a limited list, and that list consists only of some English words that are recognized as offensive to one culture and omits all the hundreds of words that could be otherwise offensive to other cultures. Cultures here mean, not just countries, but also religions, non-religions, sexual orientation, gender issues in foreign countries, and political philosophies etc. Although everyone is allowed free entry into the boards, their freedom is clearly demarcated.
This is what makes the case of online interactions less interesting. A hegemonic set of rules determine what’s called a hate speech. Where ACLU might have got it right and the pro-rule advocates wrong is this fine line. Incidentally today’s world is not one singular nation. With several different cultural codes and the freedom for interaction among all cultures (anyone from Finland can be part of a chatroom of Seattle), that’s been provided by online forums, it’s virtually impossible to deconstruct every insults. And the rules will only help suppress the voices of the minorities whose words and intentions are more susceptible for charges.
Free speech has always worked in favor of those who are free to exercise them. That said, it has also been used to preclude the minority voices. Preclude them on several grounds. And there are several minorities in this country. This case pertains to political diversity.
Clearly, Buddhi is not a liberal or a guy on the left. His views have no consonance with the progressives. No person of any amount of critical thinking skill can even lend support to his words. Basic elementary understanding of the left is that sporadic violence does not lead to any solution. Elected presidents of any country or their party people are truly innocent. The guilty in an electoral democracy where ignorance about general knowledge of cultural history and political geography of the world is rife, are the larger gamut of voters who vote without slightest knowledge of their role in perpetuating an unjust political environment. What Buddhi announced on bulletin board shows either he was provoked into doing so (considering that he had apparently no criminal background), or he was having being completely naïve, stupid, and perhaps idiotic. People may also consider him anything else, and I shall not stand in the way.
However, I have been asked by some friends to take a stand on him. And I shall take one. Clearly I am not in favor of anything that he has said. If his act be considered political, then this is my view. People who want to change the world for the better do the basic minimum homeworks: they need to know a lot of history of all kinds of peoples, they need to organize people on common progressive causes, they need to educate others who could not afford to spend all that time on understanding differences. These steps need not be guided by principles of violence or non-violence. They need to be guided by purposes. And the purpose needs to be for overall betterment of the world, starting with the world’s poorest, the ones who have been historically deprived, the working class and the hungry mass. None of these involve any thoughts around mindless postings of a privileged nutcracker.
All that being said, I could be reading too much into Buddhi’s politics. He may not be a political guy at all. As Mahablog responds to a right-winger, “Hey, buddy, welcome to my world! Do you really think “your” side doesn’t send threats and obscenities to us?” The point is Buddhi episode is an excuse for the folks on the right to make merry and rejoice, by unnecessarily pulling the left into the discourse.
I do not agree that he had anything to do with politics, let alone American party politics. Buddhi has neither done anything which amounts to online political activism, or grassroots political activism or anything that’s worth considering when one looks at what political activism denotes. So I cannot support him on any political ground.
On principle, however, I will support ACLU if freedom of an individual to express something is concerned. This is a shady area, I know. There are all these people who are using homophobic languages and indeed murdering people merely based on their sexual orientations. When ACLU defends the gay activists, it is branded as supporting hate crimes (where speaking in favor of LGBT is considered as hate-speech…ouch!). The fine line between who propagates hate is just that: a fine line. Especially after 9/11, it is more so. And I am not sure if we can tolerate all hate-speeches and protect them under first amendment. Buddhi's talks are cheap and hateful. He must face consequences. But let him not be singled out because he is a foreign national. For, before him, in recent many times, scores of hate speakers have been getting standing ovations. One in a responsible position of authority even went ahead to call for assassination of another elected leader. Many neo-nazi websites are daily preaching hates. And they are fine and running and getting great google ranks! On educational campuses including University of Maryland, one can see preachers all over. I have been stopped by in the campus and my apartment, where preachers come in fake identities to proclaim love and then soon say how all other religions are evil and there is no such thing as a God from other religion.
Buddhi is not an exception in the pool of hate-preachers. Indeed, he is only the most recent (well...almost). And possibly the most inconsequential. And possibly, the most rightist among them.
Oprah Winfrey, Tommy Hilfiger and Subtle Racism
By Saswat Pattanayak
Feel the power even of the anarchic online media? Let’s remind ourselves of the Pepsi-Kanye West chain mail. It claimed that the relationship had gone sour following his political rant and Pepsi had fired him. After a few weeks of online activisms, Pepsi declared that it was not the case at all. That Kanye West and the people of color should continue the support to Pepsi.
Recently the Oprah Winfrey and Tommy Hilfiger mail has started doing the rounds again. So once again, I received a mail that carries a subject line hailing Oprah in order to condemn racism. To substantiate it, there is a chain email which narrates her “interview” with Tommy Hilfiger.
But this time, it was from a friend in India. Clearly people in the Other World also got affected by racism. The accompanying text to condemn racism was the same: that a black man was discriminated against on a BA flight. Popularly known as “BA Flight anti racism” mail, you can read the entire content here:
And here. This piece has become sort of a joke to be appearing on even the humor sites! In fact the same narrative is offered on another page where it says it was not a black man, but a Hispanic man…
Since such attempts to “stop racism” has become so fashionable online, I wanted to offer a perspective. Also to correct bloggers like Adorable, who think Oprah said the same statements in a recent show (December 2005) although Oprah had denied it way back in 1999 (a fact which is never discussed since such emails are meant to be forever relevant…!)
Here follows the email conversation, slightly abridged.
“Let me offer an explanation. First off, you have not quoted the point of reference, as to where did you get this mail from. That way, the readers could have investigated the source for themselves. Secondly you should have yourself investigated the source too before sending such mails out, lest they end up misinforming.
Tommy Hilfiger is no social activist. He is in fact an elite designer serving only the capitalistic cause of wealth celebration. But clearly he never had such a show with Oprah and he has never given any such comments, let alone such blatantly racist ones. Oprah has in fact never met with him and had never him on her show.
This is part of the same junk mail chain letters that you receive increasingly about almost everything (from refinancing your house, to pay off credits, to get Viagra for cheap). It is well evidenced by Oprah’s own refutation of the incident. On a live "The Oprah Winfrey Show" taped on January 11, 1999, she had already clarified the same:
"So I want to just set the record straight once and for all. The rumor claims that clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger came on this show and made racist remarks, and that I then kicked him out. I just want to say that is not true because it just never happened.
Tommy Hilfiger has never appeared on this show. READ MY LIPS, TOMMY HILFIGER HAS NEVER APPEARED ON THIS SHOW. And all of [the] people who claim that they saw it, they heard it -- it never happened. I've never even met Tommy Hilfiger." Her own magazine cites this show.
And for the knowledge, Oprah is a big loyal fan of Tommy. She adores Hilfiger and personally gives testimonials to the public so that they can go buy them. There are countless examples.
On the online front, there have been disclaimers to reinstate Tommy’s lost image too:
So now that we know that Tommy is actually innocent and a “poor victim”, what do we learn from this recurring mail (which was already refuted way back in 1999!). Surely someone like me would have quite easily read between the obvious lines and sent proofs to the contrary, as they have done. Just like I read the exchange among the people on a BA flight. Was it 1934? Was it 1962? Or was it 2005? No one knows. But that chain mail about British Airways incident is also very unlikely. And no airhostess would make such comments: “However, given the circumstances, that it would be scandalous to make someone sit next to someone so disgusting.” At least not in today’s world as we know it. Not because the white airhostesses are not racists. Then why not? I am explaining.
If those two chain emails are so grossly wrong, what good do they achieve? What is the motive of the people who are originating such mails? To fight racism? Nah…actually to perpetuate it. You see, after the Tommy incident was deconstructed, people started celebrating his designer lines. “Oh you see, he is not a racist. He never said. So we folks should buy his clothes.” The negative publicity actually did quite good to Tommy. Tommy was known to be making white clothes, but was in need of the black market (just like Kellogg’s needs an Indian market for its corn flakes). It did quite good to Oprah too in promoting her television show (in 1999, more people were watching dumb Disney shows than they were watching her). Today, both Tommy and Oprah are big superstars without any merit. They have used numerous cheap publicity stunts like this to become the symbols of success.
Likewise everyone who lives in the US or western world (since these mails were primarily meant for the first world—not many in the Other World actually buy original Tommy lines in India and flies first class of BA) know that no one makes such racist comments and get away with it. So there is a celebration also to the point that we are not a racist world any more. If someone asks “Do you hear such racist thing anymore?” The honest answer is “Of course not. You must be kidding. Look at all those black people in the first class. They have bought those tickets. Look at the diamonds on the hip hop stars. They are not rented. Blacks are successes.” Even look at Oprah Winfrey.
Precisely, that is the whole point. A first class seat need not be considered so dignified as to create a class barrier among people. Quite the contrary folks should not feel happy or lobby for a black man to get into the first class. Or should not cheer for Oprah Winfrey for any matter. The reason is both smack of downright celebration of undeserved opulence. Oprah is no different from Tommy Hilfiger, in that she wears million dollars jewelries herself and walks with pride on those red carpets of elite Hollywood. Top line designers are her close buddies and the club of suckers make pathetic acting sessions on those shows on how people should have freedom to do what they want to do. They even offer personal examples of their past lives and how gloriously they have left them behind (in other words, left behind the poverty and the poor people).
You know the reason why they chose Tommy to be the point of scandal with Oprah? Precisely because both of them had never met (Oprah had other designers to her show before….). So they knew this myth will be broken and the public will sympathize with both businesses well. This is what the spin makers do for the capitalists.
Racism is not frivolous. It’s not counted in terms of who gave what slurs. Most black ignorant people sing “nigger” today and call their women “bitch”. That does not make them racists/sexists. But if the white racist folks will say the same terms, they will be sent to jails. That’s because the white supremacists have created a yardstick to judge what racism should constitute. They claim it has to be ‘uttered’ by the privileged class. Now there is a popular argument that if the blacks can say nigger (and that’s because they have been conditioned to speak like black folks—in order to star in a movie you should talk like “black people” using an accent), then the whites should be allowed to. But yet it finds no taker. They are no fools. They will not utter such words in public. Because they don’t talk. The white privilege is acted out. They practice racism in the way it was meant to be.
Part of the reason why racism has become so implicit. It’s very subtle in nature. How many people in India will come out and say that because they are Brahmins, they are superior than the “lower castes” (sic) or they believe in untouchability? Yet the Brahmins in India will make friend circle largely with Brahmins, they will protest against reservations (not in terms of caste, but in terms of ‘merit’—a word whose parameters they themselves define), they will certainly not invite a non-brahmin person to preside their religious functions. Are all non-brahmins actually uneducated about citation of Vedic hymns? Think of our own discriminations and how it works in India to understand the basic nature of racism.
Racism has to be so subtle, so illusory that it has to be normalized. It has to be normalized into our fabric without revulsions. Just like the ‘majority’ democracy or the ‘free’ market economy. Do you really think majority governs or the market is free? No, just like their social counterpart, racism also does not become visible.
If it becomes pronounced, racism becomes easy to be checked. All of us will get really angry if Tommy actually said that! Or if a tribal girl is actually raped. After taking action to an ‘event’ we are lulled to silence. And then we thank ourselves that “lo! We imprisoned that guy. Now, don’t call me a racist”!
What we don’t recognize is that we often lend our help to the racism that prevails by implicitly supporting it. Race is a social construct. A construct that emerged out of a class society. A construct just like religion, became instrumental in helping the wealth usurper class to subjugate people throughout the ages. India’s Hindu kings, Mughal rulers, Brahmin Prime Ministers—all used the same class/caste dynamic to continue the rule to their favor. They integrated in us a need to adhere to their laws, which were based on dominant religion of the time which were in turn, founded on clear superstitions aimed at keeping the mass helpless/predestined/oppressed.
Today’s universal companion to all religious power is capitalism. Just like it was feudalism or monarchism in the past. It was easy to revolt against the kings and the landlords because their exploitations were so obviously apparent. Very shocking. But the bourgeois capitalist ruling class partners which actually led many of such anti-feudal and anti-colonial and anti-monarchy battles (by claiming leadership and sacrificing poor peasants in the struggles) emerged as the power holder this time in the most sophisticated fashion. Indian mainstream (and thus the power hungry) freedom struggle shows the clear direction too. It was led by industrialists (like Birla’s money), Hindu supremacists (like Patel’s crusades) and Hindi Aryans (like Rajendra Prasad). Of course they were all so well mannered that we engage in a north Indian dominant culture without even questioning it (the respect for capital, power and fame in line with Mumbai and Delhi, as opposed to respect for communities, matriarchy and indigenous cultures of Orissa and Kerala).
The progress of humankind has always been in this direction. From crude to sophistication (not uncivilized to civilized). For another example, the ruling class had women in harems, then in brothels and now they have them objectified on peep shows and webcams. And this has a lot to do with the calm, compassionate, sympathetic approach that we have been imbibed to learn through religious discourses of the ruling agents. Because of which we clearly overlook the negativities of Oprah’s billion plus undeserved wealth, and pick on an uneducated poor street youth who robs a wallet for survival, and send him/her to jail and subsequently for ‘spiritual rehabilitation’. Because the white privilege structure has put a “model minority” section to legitimize its supremacy by claiming that everyone can become like Oprah if they went to church and believed in the power of religion (and hence the God blesses America, just like in the east the politicians have godmen frauds like Sai Baba and Chandraswami, if not a thousand other symbols of faith systems).
Clearly, we know that not everyone can become a billionaire. We don’t even have that kind of wealth in the world! And this elite club hardly changes much over the period to let others have a share. They control more than 95% of world’s resources…and they are a club of less than 200 people.
It’s a shame that we have to cheer for Oprah instead of questioning her for the privileges she enjoys by towing the white power line which has just succeeded in making her loyal to the free market economic structure, maybe to oppose it at times so that democracy can contain with a proxy pepsi vs coke war. But never to challenge its orders, for if she did that she would have had to let go of her expensive wardrobes and tickets to the elite fame.
This is a just crash course on racism. For more, we should question our own privileges and check if we were having more in life (and hence can check out internet deals), not because some God gifted us the favors, not because we are inherently superior, or “more intelligent” (sic), but because we supported our families in everything they did to convince us that there is nothing wrong with the privileges we had. The privileges we enjoyed while walking the streets when no one judged us because we were Brahmins, but definitely a “lower caste”(sic) person was judged because she or he was one.
The first step is then, to educate our own families to get rid of their “holier than thou” beliefs. If the basic units of our everyday interactions such as families do not recognize their unjustified privileges, we need to get rid of them from our worldviews; instead of passing those racist heritages to subsequent generations to perpetuate racism for longer periods.
Yes, what appears to be a political decision is actually always result of a personal struggle.
Feel the power even of the anarchic online media? Let’s remind ourselves of the Pepsi-Kanye West chain mail. It claimed that the relationship had gone sour following his political rant and Pepsi had fired him. After a few weeks of online activisms, Pepsi declared that it was not the case at all. That Kanye West and the people of color should continue the support to Pepsi.
Recently the Oprah Winfrey and Tommy Hilfiger mail has started doing the rounds again. So once again, I received a mail that carries a subject line hailing Oprah in order to condemn racism. To substantiate it, there is a chain email which narrates her “interview” with Tommy Hilfiger.
But this time, it was from a friend in India. Clearly people in the Other World also got affected by racism. The accompanying text to condemn racism was the same: that a black man was discriminated against on a BA flight. Popularly known as “BA Flight anti racism” mail, you can read the entire content here:
And here. This piece has become sort of a joke to be appearing on even the humor sites! In fact the same narrative is offered on another page where it says it was not a black man, but a Hispanic man…
Since such attempts to “stop racism” has become so fashionable online, I wanted to offer a perspective. Also to correct bloggers like Adorable, who think Oprah said the same statements in a recent show (December 2005) although Oprah had denied it way back in 1999 (a fact which is never discussed since such emails are meant to be forever relevant…!)
Here follows the email conversation, slightly abridged.
“Let me offer an explanation. First off, you have not quoted the point of reference, as to where did you get this mail from. That way, the readers could have investigated the source for themselves. Secondly you should have yourself investigated the source too before sending such mails out, lest they end up misinforming.
Tommy Hilfiger is no social activist. He is in fact an elite designer serving only the capitalistic cause of wealth celebration. But clearly he never had such a show with Oprah and he has never given any such comments, let alone such blatantly racist ones. Oprah has in fact never met with him and had never him on her show.
This is part of the same junk mail chain letters that you receive increasingly about almost everything (from refinancing your house, to pay off credits, to get Viagra for cheap). It is well evidenced by Oprah’s own refutation of the incident. On a live "The Oprah Winfrey Show" taped on January 11, 1999, she had already clarified the same:
"So I want to just set the record straight once and for all. The rumor claims that clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger came on this show and made racist remarks, and that I then kicked him out. I just want to say that is not true because it just never happened.
Tommy Hilfiger has never appeared on this show. READ MY LIPS, TOMMY HILFIGER HAS NEVER APPEARED ON THIS SHOW. And all of [the] people who claim that they saw it, they heard it -- it never happened. I've never even met Tommy Hilfiger." Her own magazine cites this show.
And for the knowledge, Oprah is a big loyal fan of Tommy. She adores Hilfiger and personally gives testimonials to the public so that they can go buy them. There are countless examples.
On the online front, there have been disclaimers to reinstate Tommy’s lost image too:
So now that we know that Tommy is actually innocent and a “poor victim”, what do we learn from this recurring mail (which was already refuted way back in 1999!). Surely someone like me would have quite easily read between the obvious lines and sent proofs to the contrary, as they have done. Just like I read the exchange among the people on a BA flight. Was it 1934? Was it 1962? Or was it 2005? No one knows. But that chain mail about British Airways incident is also very unlikely. And no airhostess would make such comments: “However, given the circumstances, that it would be scandalous to make someone sit next to someone so disgusting.” At least not in today’s world as we know it. Not because the white airhostesses are not racists. Then why not? I am explaining.
If those two chain emails are so grossly wrong, what good do they achieve? What is the motive of the people who are originating such mails? To fight racism? Nah…actually to perpetuate it. You see, after the Tommy incident was deconstructed, people started celebrating his designer lines. “Oh you see, he is not a racist. He never said. So we folks should buy his clothes.” The negative publicity actually did quite good to Tommy. Tommy was known to be making white clothes, but was in need of the black market (just like Kellogg’s needs an Indian market for its corn flakes). It did quite good to Oprah too in promoting her television show (in 1999, more people were watching dumb Disney shows than they were watching her). Today, both Tommy and Oprah are big superstars without any merit. They have used numerous cheap publicity stunts like this to become the symbols of success.
Likewise everyone who lives in the US or western world (since these mails were primarily meant for the first world—not many in the Other World actually buy original Tommy lines in India and flies first class of BA) know that no one makes such racist comments and get away with it. So there is a celebration also to the point that we are not a racist world any more. If someone asks “Do you hear such racist thing anymore?” The honest answer is “Of course not. You must be kidding. Look at all those black people in the first class. They have bought those tickets. Look at the diamonds on the hip hop stars. They are not rented. Blacks are successes.” Even look at Oprah Winfrey.
Precisely, that is the whole point. A first class seat need not be considered so dignified as to create a class barrier among people. Quite the contrary folks should not feel happy or lobby for a black man to get into the first class. Or should not cheer for Oprah Winfrey for any matter. The reason is both smack of downright celebration of undeserved opulence. Oprah is no different from Tommy Hilfiger, in that she wears million dollars jewelries herself and walks with pride on those red carpets of elite Hollywood. Top line designers are her close buddies and the club of suckers make pathetic acting sessions on those shows on how people should have freedom to do what they want to do. They even offer personal examples of their past lives and how gloriously they have left them behind (in other words, left behind the poverty and the poor people).
You know the reason why they chose Tommy to be the point of scandal with Oprah? Precisely because both of them had never met (Oprah had other designers to her show before….). So they knew this myth will be broken and the public will sympathize with both businesses well. This is what the spin makers do for the capitalists.
Racism is not frivolous. It’s not counted in terms of who gave what slurs. Most black ignorant people sing “nigger” today and call their women “bitch”. That does not make them racists/sexists. But if the white racist folks will say the same terms, they will be sent to jails. That’s because the white supremacists have created a yardstick to judge what racism should constitute. They claim it has to be ‘uttered’ by the privileged class. Now there is a popular argument that if the blacks can say nigger (and that’s because they have been conditioned to speak like black folks—in order to star in a movie you should talk like “black people” using an accent), then the whites should be allowed to. But yet it finds no taker. They are no fools. They will not utter such words in public. Because they don’t talk. The white privilege is acted out. They practice racism in the way it was meant to be.
Part of the reason why racism has become so implicit. It’s very subtle in nature. How many people in India will come out and say that because they are Brahmins, they are superior than the “lower castes” (sic) or they believe in untouchability? Yet the Brahmins in India will make friend circle largely with Brahmins, they will protest against reservations (not in terms of caste, but in terms of ‘merit’—a word whose parameters they themselves define), they will certainly not invite a non-brahmin person to preside their religious functions. Are all non-brahmins actually uneducated about citation of Vedic hymns? Think of our own discriminations and how it works in India to understand the basic nature of racism.
Racism has to be so subtle, so illusory that it has to be normalized. It has to be normalized into our fabric without revulsions. Just like the ‘majority’ democracy or the ‘free’ market economy. Do you really think majority governs or the market is free? No, just like their social counterpart, racism also does not become visible.
If it becomes pronounced, racism becomes easy to be checked. All of us will get really angry if Tommy actually said that! Or if a tribal girl is actually raped. After taking action to an ‘event’ we are lulled to silence. And then we thank ourselves that “lo! We imprisoned that guy. Now, don’t call me a racist”!
What we don’t recognize is that we often lend our help to the racism that prevails by implicitly supporting it. Race is a social construct. A construct that emerged out of a class society. A construct just like religion, became instrumental in helping the wealth usurper class to subjugate people throughout the ages. India’s Hindu kings, Mughal rulers, Brahmin Prime Ministers—all used the same class/caste dynamic to continue the rule to their favor. They integrated in us a need to adhere to their laws, which were based on dominant religion of the time which were in turn, founded on clear superstitions aimed at keeping the mass helpless/predestined/oppressed.
Today’s universal companion to all religious power is capitalism. Just like it was feudalism or monarchism in the past. It was easy to revolt against the kings and the landlords because their exploitations were so obviously apparent. Very shocking. But the bourgeois capitalist ruling class partners which actually led many of such anti-feudal and anti-colonial and anti-monarchy battles (by claiming leadership and sacrificing poor peasants in the struggles) emerged as the power holder this time in the most sophisticated fashion. Indian mainstream (and thus the power hungry) freedom struggle shows the clear direction too. It was led by industrialists (like Birla’s money), Hindu supremacists (like Patel’s crusades) and Hindi Aryans (like Rajendra Prasad). Of course they were all so well mannered that we engage in a north Indian dominant culture without even questioning it (the respect for capital, power and fame in line with Mumbai and Delhi, as opposed to respect for communities, matriarchy and indigenous cultures of Orissa and Kerala).
The progress of humankind has always been in this direction. From crude to sophistication (not uncivilized to civilized). For another example, the ruling class had women in harems, then in brothels and now they have them objectified on peep shows and webcams. And this has a lot to do with the calm, compassionate, sympathetic approach that we have been imbibed to learn through religious discourses of the ruling agents. Because of which we clearly overlook the negativities of Oprah’s billion plus undeserved wealth, and pick on an uneducated poor street youth who robs a wallet for survival, and send him/her to jail and subsequently for ‘spiritual rehabilitation’. Because the white privilege structure has put a “model minority” section to legitimize its supremacy by claiming that everyone can become like Oprah if they went to church and believed in the power of religion (and hence the God blesses America, just like in the east the politicians have godmen frauds like Sai Baba and Chandraswami, if not a thousand other symbols of faith systems).
Clearly, we know that not everyone can become a billionaire. We don’t even have that kind of wealth in the world! And this elite club hardly changes much over the period to let others have a share. They control more than 95% of world’s resources…and they are a club of less than 200 people.
It’s a shame that we have to cheer for Oprah instead of questioning her for the privileges she enjoys by towing the white power line which has just succeeded in making her loyal to the free market economic structure, maybe to oppose it at times so that democracy can contain with a proxy pepsi vs coke war. But never to challenge its orders, for if she did that she would have had to let go of her expensive wardrobes and tickets to the elite fame.
This is a just crash course on racism. For more, we should question our own privileges and check if we were having more in life (and hence can check out internet deals), not because some God gifted us the favors, not because we are inherently superior, or “more intelligent” (sic), but because we supported our families in everything they did to convince us that there is nothing wrong with the privileges we had. The privileges we enjoyed while walking the streets when no one judged us because we were Brahmins, but definitely a “lower caste”(sic) person was judged because she or he was one.
The first step is then, to educate our own families to get rid of their “holier than thou” beliefs. If the basic units of our everyday interactions such as families do not recognize their unjustified privileges, we need to get rid of them from our worldviews; instead of passing those racist heritages to subsequent generations to perpetuate racism for longer periods.
Yes, what appears to be a political decision is actually always result of a personal struggle.
The E-Mail Time Capsule
21/11/05 17:01 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Reference
One can
use a page on Forbes Online to email oneself to the
future.
I found it interesting. And so I mailed myself just to see if the world will still be a safe place 20 Years After! Check it out!
I found it interesting. And so I mailed myself just to see if the world will still be a safe place 20 Years After! Check it out!
Google 1984
10/10/05 05:10 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Reference
Blog of the Day: Ethan Zuckerman's heart in Accra
03/08/05 17:21 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Reference
...My
heart's in Accra : Ethan's Weblog - My blog is in
Cambridge ...
That’s Ethan Zuckerman who blogs on Africa, Technology and Media. What I most like about Ethan is his efforts to put African bloggers on the network of the first world. And by that alone, he has added a lot to a divergent discussion already.
In 1994, I dropped out of graduate school and joined a couple of friends in Williamstown, MA in building one of the first "pure" dot.com companies - Tripod. As the only person on the team who knew HTML, I got to be "tech guy" - outclassed by guys who could program circles around me, I became bizdev guy, legal guy, customer service guy and R&D guy before settling, briefly, on "retired guy".
That’s Ethan Zuckerman who blogs on Africa, Technology and Media. What I most like about Ethan is his efforts to put African bloggers on the network of the first world. And by that alone, he has added a lot to a divergent discussion already.
Smart Mobs?
By Saswat Pattanayak
Smart Mobs, is how Howard Rheingold calls the present and future users of hi-tech world. Whereas I totally agree with his theory that, “real impact of mobile communications will come not from the technology itself, but from how people use it”, for me, the question is not so much of how people use the technology as it is about how much autonomy are they seeking and in control of while using it.
In other words, its not really crucial to know how to use a technology (which can directly come with the user-friendly manuals), but to know how to know of the various ways technology can be used and not used, and to exercise an informed decision.
Technology itself comes with the how-tos. The how-tos are intended to limit the uses and suppress the alternative options of misuses. And this is where the danger lies. The technological medium makes the platform so “user-friendly” to navigate and utilize that the “users” technically never go beyond the child-like exploratory stage. In the second level of interaction of course, it is the one-way horizontal communication with the users at the receiving end. Call them couch potatoes or just smart mobs.
Using a technology is actually the dumbest thing. Not the smartest. It definitely puts an end to the process of questioning the deliberate limitations of technology, the political economy of technology (who owns it, why do we pay for it), and whose ends does the technology serve.
A content gang of technology-happy crowd is for sure a mob. But to assume they are smart has an agenda. The users in the technology world are akin to the have-nots of the class-based society. A smart mob theory assumes that a Consumer is indeed a King (like Walmart would like us to believe). This theory would suppose that its not shopping experience which has the impact, what is important is how a consumer shops at our stores to dress up smart.
But then of course we know the pitfalls of a consumerist economy and its so-called smart mobs who use it by merely contributing to the monopolists’ wealth. The consumer as a king would never allow the Waltons to rule over them, as much as the smart mobs would never allow the five telecom cos to control their devices. And we know, these are mere wishful thinkings presently.
On top of these economic divides, talk about the implications of mere “use” and there comes flying raised eyebrows and political trials. Smart mobs will need more to apply their own minds to challenge technological slavery and liberate it from the monopolists than to revel in the abilities to use the devices in various different ways within the existing framework.
I believe examples are instruments of the weak to supplement the voids in arguments. But for the humor of it, let's assume we can at any point sitting at the coffee shop, move our digital cameras in a way that it can show us what deals are being made on our behalf between the ruling politicians and ruling businessmen in their corporate boardrooms (through wi-fi digital image transfers?) And we can accomplish such amazing things with their knowledge that we master such technology. And at the site of the coffee shop, with so many people discussing the barbaric and corrupt officials we have trusted so far in business and politics (although they go synonymous these days), we then decide basing on what we discover (and not via on CNN or Fox cameramen recording boorish default press conferences) that we must question the authorities and can provide supportive evidences.
Now that is smart. But the point is its not some covert Watergate or Tehelka operation. The government must know that the citizenry has the right to use the technology to witness any deals being discussed even at the penthouse of Hefner (that’s an interesting deviation too, to watch the bunnies apart from the frustrated powered men) at any moment. It need not result in hero-worshipping (like Watergate) or interrogating (like Tehelka) people who do this tech takes. Because the mob, the mass, gets involved entirely, to use the technology to their advantage, not to be awed by its superlatives and reserve it for some goddamn award winning front page stories, we know that are catering to one interest or the other (logically anyway, since they are done without involving the people, they are not mass acts anyway).
Remember Gandhi did not make the deals at the round table conferences; he struck them at the salt marches. The use of the technology has to go alongside the use of the masses. And the use of technology must be FULLY harnessed (come on, I know we could have seen that Monica-Bill flicks live). Then it's smart mob using the technology smart way, so that the mob needs no longer be ruled by a tiny group of profiteers, war-mongers and hypocrites.
Smart Mobs, is how Howard Rheingold calls the present and future users of hi-tech world. Whereas I totally agree with his theory that, “real impact of mobile communications will come not from the technology itself, but from how people use it”, for me, the question is not so much of how people use the technology as it is about how much autonomy are they seeking and in control of while using it.
In other words, its not really crucial to know how to use a technology (which can directly come with the user-friendly manuals), but to know how to know of the various ways technology can be used and not used, and to exercise an informed decision.
Technology itself comes with the how-tos. The how-tos are intended to limit the uses and suppress the alternative options of misuses. And this is where the danger lies. The technological medium makes the platform so “user-friendly” to navigate and utilize that the “users” technically never go beyond the child-like exploratory stage. In the second level of interaction of course, it is the one-way horizontal communication with the users at the receiving end. Call them couch potatoes or just smart mobs.
Using a technology is actually the dumbest thing. Not the smartest. It definitely puts an end to the process of questioning the deliberate limitations of technology, the political economy of technology (who owns it, why do we pay for it), and whose ends does the technology serve.
A content gang of technology-happy crowd is for sure a mob. But to assume they are smart has an agenda. The users in the technology world are akin to the have-nots of the class-based society. A smart mob theory assumes that a Consumer is indeed a King (like Walmart would like us to believe). This theory would suppose that its not shopping experience which has the impact, what is important is how a consumer shops at our stores to dress up smart.
But then of course we know the pitfalls of a consumerist economy and its so-called smart mobs who use it by merely contributing to the monopolists’ wealth. The consumer as a king would never allow the Waltons to rule over them, as much as the smart mobs would never allow the five telecom cos to control their devices. And we know, these are mere wishful thinkings presently.
On top of these economic divides, talk about the implications of mere “use” and there comes flying raised eyebrows and political trials. Smart mobs will need more to apply their own minds to challenge technological slavery and liberate it from the monopolists than to revel in the abilities to use the devices in various different ways within the existing framework.
I believe examples are instruments of the weak to supplement the voids in arguments. But for the humor of it, let's assume we can at any point sitting at the coffee shop, move our digital cameras in a way that it can show us what deals are being made on our behalf between the ruling politicians and ruling businessmen in their corporate boardrooms (through wi-fi digital image transfers?) And we can accomplish such amazing things with their knowledge that we master such technology. And at the site of the coffee shop, with so many people discussing the barbaric and corrupt officials we have trusted so far in business and politics (although they go synonymous these days), we then decide basing on what we discover (and not via on CNN or Fox cameramen recording boorish default press conferences) that we must question the authorities and can provide supportive evidences.
Now that is smart. But the point is its not some covert Watergate or Tehelka operation. The government must know that the citizenry has the right to use the technology to witness any deals being discussed even at the penthouse of Hefner (that’s an interesting deviation too, to watch the bunnies apart from the frustrated powered men) at any moment. It need not result in hero-worshipping (like Watergate) or interrogating (like Tehelka) people who do this tech takes. Because the mob, the mass, gets involved entirely, to use the technology to their advantage, not to be awed by its superlatives and reserve it for some goddamn award winning front page stories, we know that are catering to one interest or the other (logically anyway, since they are done without involving the people, they are not mass acts anyway).
Remember Gandhi did not make the deals at the round table conferences; he struck them at the salt marches. The use of the technology has to go alongside the use of the masses. And the use of technology must be FULLY harnessed (come on, I know we could have seen that Monica-Bill flicks live). Then it's smart mob using the technology smart way, so that the mob needs no longer be ruled by a tiny group of profiteers, war-mongers and hypocrites.
Who's afraid of the Cell Phones?
By Saswat Pattanayak
I have been wondering for some time now, about the sudden loss of interest in general discussion about mobile phones and their harmful effects. Around the time I was in my college and grew fascination for mobile phones, well meaning family and friends cautioned me against using them much. It appeared from research then as they appeared in the press that cellular radiations had multiple effects, not any of them especially good.
One could also compare easy notes with the way television screen flickered and radio waves made screeching noises. Usage of phones could actually cause fire at petrol pumps (gas stations) as well.
Over the time, what has consistently happened are the following:
This has taken place vis-à-vis the following:
A digital culture is merely an excuse. And I am sure we all shall live to pay the price for this sooner or later. In their quest to maximize profits, the social responsibility role of the telecom firms has gone for a huge toss. It was the same with tobacco and drink till they put a word of caution (injurious or underage signs). Unfortunately even after we know of the harmful effects, the smoke and drink joints get away with just the surgeon’s warning.
And what’s more, the surgeon’s warnings are so generic (with pages of texts) used for each drug, that people hardly take cigarettes as seriously as they should (after all if every over the counter drug carries even larger warnings, what harm can one liner tobacco product do?)
But cell phones do not even carry a warning.
Click here for a related story
I have been wondering for some time now, about the sudden loss of interest in general discussion about mobile phones and their harmful effects. Around the time I was in my college and grew fascination for mobile phones, well meaning family and friends cautioned me against using them much. It appeared from research then as they appeared in the press that cellular radiations had multiple effects, not any of them especially good.
One could also compare easy notes with the way television screen flickered and radio waves made screeching noises. Usage of phones could actually cause fire at petrol pumps (gas stations) as well.
Over the time, what has consistently happened are the following:
a. The negative reports in the media have either drastically reduced or completely vanished
b. Television screens are made more resilient (or whatever is the term) to be affected by radiations
c. Loss of lives is not any more associated with mobile phones
This has taken place vis-à-vis the following:
a. The consolidation of cellular phone industry, in the hands of monopolies
b. The telecommunications sector emerging as the most powerful branch of economy (also in the name of digitalizing it&hellip
c. Cheaper prices of cell phone, minute usages (in many third world countries, incoming calls are free 24/7 …!) prompting more and more people to use cell phones.
A digital culture is merely an excuse. And I am sure we all shall live to pay the price for this sooner or later. In their quest to maximize profits, the social responsibility role of the telecom firms has gone for a huge toss. It was the same with tobacco and drink till they put a word of caution (injurious or underage signs). Unfortunately even after we know of the harmful effects, the smoke and drink joints get away with just the surgeon’s warning.
And what’s more, the surgeon’s warnings are so generic (with pages of texts) used for each drug, that people hardly take cigarettes as seriously as they should (after all if every over the counter drug carries even larger warnings, what harm can one liner tobacco product do?)
But cell phones do not even carry a warning.
Click here for a related story
Where do I feature in my personal blogs?
My
blog is mine. Therefore yours.
My blogs, then become one of the outlets for both my frustrations and anger, because I need not take things for granted any longer and I want to connect with those who are on the similar path. For, I am not alone in this world where freedom is granted in installments by the ruling class. I am with the groups of people who seek freedom for all, or freedom for none—who believe that the limited freedom, that better than thou freedom in effect, should be reserved for none.
Read the entire article here.
My blogs, then become one of the outlets for both my frustrations and anger, because I need not take things for granted any longer and I want to connect with those who are on the similar path. For, I am not alone in this world where freedom is granted in installments by the ruling class. I am with the groups of people who seek freedom for all, or freedom for none—who believe that the limited freedom, that better than thou freedom in effect, should be reserved for none.
Read the entire article here.
Who is a journalist?
No matter if “Who is a journalist” event turned into
“What is journalism” debate. The panel still
discussed the “rules for who is what” at the National
Press Club on Friday.
Mostly the conservative Jeff Gannon faced the cannons as he struggled with answering why he thought it was quite natural for him to get into the White House. He in fact declared that there was nothing wrong either to quote what has already been mouthed by the government. Much to his embarrassment (if at all), the enlightened press booed and gave their verdict that journalism entailed more than that, by the way.
To me, the spirit had little direction. I could see why Gannon could not recollect the number of “weeks or days” he had to wait to get the pass, while answering to Ana Marie Cox. He just did not want to answer that. But what I could not understand was why the folks on the panel (which included Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The Baltimore Sun, Garrett Graff, John Stanton, Matthew Yglesias, Mike Madden) just stressed so much on how Gannon got into the White House press corps.
Admittedly and Wonkette put it bluntly (more to your growth, Ana!), briefing room at White House is such a bland place anyway. And moreover even the small room is not always full. I second. Who is keen on taking the notes for the speakers who know too little of what they speak especially when most of it is pure advertorials.
If one has to report on comments (sorry Jeff, they are not “facts”, as we found out with so-called WMD), come and blog.
I agree with Eric Brewer: “Perhaps the best line of the day came from Ana Marie Cox, who had earlier made the point that one reason Gannon got into the White House briefing room was because lately there have been a lot of empty seats, since mainstream reporters have largely given up on getting anything of substance out of the stone wall that is Scott McClellan. She went on, ”I think it would be awesome if bloggers suddenly stormed the White House briefing room and filled all those seats and started asking questions. Then maybe your reporters would take the briefing more seriously, too."
We’re trying, Ana, we’re trying."
You have said it better, Eric!
Mostly the conservative Jeff Gannon faced the cannons as he struggled with answering why he thought it was quite natural for him to get into the White House. He in fact declared that there was nothing wrong either to quote what has already been mouthed by the government. Much to his embarrassment (if at all), the enlightened press booed and gave their verdict that journalism entailed more than that, by the way.
To me, the spirit had little direction. I could see why Gannon could not recollect the number of “weeks or days” he had to wait to get the pass, while answering to Ana Marie Cox. He just did not want to answer that. But what I could not understand was why the folks on the panel (which included Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The Baltimore Sun, Garrett Graff, John Stanton, Matthew Yglesias, Mike Madden) just stressed so much on how Gannon got into the White House press corps.
Admittedly and Wonkette put it bluntly (more to your growth, Ana!), briefing room at White House is such a bland place anyway. And moreover even the small room is not always full. I second. Who is keen on taking the notes for the speakers who know too little of what they speak especially when most of it is pure advertorials.
If one has to report on comments (sorry Jeff, they are not “facts”, as we found out with so-called WMD), come and blog.
I agree with Eric Brewer: “Perhaps the best line of the day came from Ana Marie Cox, who had earlier made the point that one reason Gannon got into the White House briefing room was because lately there have been a lot of empty seats, since mainstream reporters have largely given up on getting anything of substance out of the stone wall that is Scott McClellan. She went on, ”I think it would be awesome if bloggers suddenly stormed the White House briefing room and filled all those seats and started asking questions. Then maybe your reporters would take the briefing more seriously, too."
We’re trying, Ana, we’re trying."
You have said it better, Eric!
Who's afraid of this thing called Blog?
The
third coming of blog for me, is here.
If there is just one way to define a blog, I would do it thus: a series of chronologically arranged journal entries available online alongwith several sourced hyperlinks. In terms of type, this one definition does it well. In terms of degree though, if there are to be more definitions than one, which I am sure is the compelling case: there are plenty. And it is amidst this scope of plenty, that some journalists seek their most preferred explanation.
Needless to say, I have found one which is as varied in degrees as possible, to include comments, pictures, external hyperlinks, and poems ranging from mine to Woody Guthrie’s.
Read the entire article here.
If there is just one way to define a blog, I would do it thus: a series of chronologically arranged journal entries available online alongwith several sourced hyperlinks. In terms of type, this one definition does it well. In terms of degree though, if there are to be more definitions than one, which I am sure is the compelling case: there are plenty. And it is amidst this scope of plenty, that some journalists seek their most preferred explanation.
Needless to say, I have found one which is as varied in degrees as possible, to include comments, pictures, external hyperlinks, and poems ranging from mine to Woody Guthrie’s.
Read the entire article here.
Web definition of Open Source
The
standard definition online of GNU/communism is
that it's a term used to mock open source activist,
and tag them as communists. Communist is used due to
the resemblance between open source's philosophy of
sharing the code among all humanity and communism's
idea to share resources among all continent's
population.
I do not have any problem with that. Actually I also think Richard Stallman is a highly progressive thinker and I adore him for that. But I dont quite get why the "open source" people are called activists and on top of that "mocked" as communists. First of all, a standard definition using mock as a word is itself pejorative. Two, open source activists themselves will come forward to denounce communism on their own. Why take extra trouble? For one, I know GNU is not as "open source" as "open source" people claim they are.
Don't these people study any philosophical differences between Stallman (read the GNU) with the rest (read the open source managers like Linus Torvlds, Bruce Perens etc..)?
I do not have any problem with that. Actually I also think Richard Stallman is a highly progressive thinker and I adore him for that. But I dont quite get why the "open source" people are called activists and on top of that "mocked" as communists. First of all, a standard definition using mock as a word is itself pejorative. Two, open source activists themselves will come forward to denounce communism on their own. Why take extra trouble? For one, I know GNU is not as "open source" as "open source" people claim they are.
Don't these people study any philosophical differences between Stallman (read the GNU) with the rest (read the open source managers like Linus Torvlds, Bruce Perens etc..)?
What's new about my Blogs?
Is
there anything new about my blogs?
Amidst hope, there is despair. Nothing astounding. But surely, not a matter of one exercising free will to carve out the hope and purge the despair.
Where I do exercise my free will, is where I blog.
I do not feel vulnerable as I blog. Indeed, I get empowered. There is no feeling as powerful as knowing that one is able to express the voice within. The medium well could be the message, but the message is what counts, after all.
Read the complete article here.
Amidst hope, there is despair. Nothing astounding. But surely, not a matter of one exercising free will to carve out the hope and purge the despair.
Where I do exercise my free will, is where I blog.
I do not feel vulnerable as I blog. Indeed, I get empowered. There is no feeling as powerful as knowing that one is able to express the voice within. The medium well could be the message, but the message is what counts, after all.
Read the complete article here.
Why I Blog?
My
rationale for why I blog:
I blog, therefore I am. Without blogging, I would surely have an essence, but no existence. Not only does existence precede the essence, but I am of the view that, to exist one carves a different path than to live off the essence.
To exist, I need to know that I do. To discover my essence I need only to see the outcomes of my participation in the social production process. My works at home, office or community mark my essence. The purpose that I have created of life, and conveniently amended from time to time in order to suit the societal circumstances, do bring out the essence. But I can have the existence, even sans the manufactured timeline, and without succumbing to the social infrastructure in place.
Read the complete article here.
I blog, therefore I am. Without blogging, I would surely have an essence, but no existence. Not only does existence precede the essence, but I am of the view that, to exist one carves a different path than to live off the essence.
To exist, I need to know that I do. To discover my essence I need only to see the outcomes of my participation in the social production process. My works at home, office or community mark my essence. The purpose that I have created of life, and conveniently amended from time to time in order to suit the societal circumstances, do bring out the essence. But I can have the existence, even sans the manufactured timeline, and without succumbing to the social infrastructure in place.
Read the complete article here.
What do Americans use Internet for?
07/12/04 13:22 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Reference
What struck me was the way Pew Charitable Trusts have
produced the 2004 fact sheet for The Internet and
Daily Life: Many Americans use the Internet in
everyday activities, but traditional offline habits
still dominate.
A thouroughly documented 34 pages document discusses why Americans use Internet and there are comprehensive tables to indicate findings. You can read it here...
For it to strike me, I went ahead and made a search for the ‘sex’ word on the document. Lo and behold! Zero result!
A thouroughly documented 34 pages document discusses why Americans use Internet and there are comprehensive tables to indicate findings. You can read it here...
For it to strike me, I went ahead and made a search for the ‘sex’ word on the document. Lo and behold! Zero result!
Business of Blogs
How do
I feel about the business of blogs, now that I am
into it?
Famously described as the free forum for virtual communities, blogs have been of late developing the vibrant industry traits of attracting revenues. Despite being acclaimed as an outcry against big media monopoly and providing for scopes of a participatory democracy where the aim is ideally to live life online with fellow members of the community without having to worry about the rents and the lease, some vastly inhibited changes in the economics of blogs have prompted this research.
To read the entire article, click here.
Famously described as the free forum for virtual communities, blogs have been of late developing the vibrant industry traits of attracting revenues. Despite being acclaimed as an outcry against big media monopoly and providing for scopes of a participatory democracy where the aim is ideally to live life online with fellow members of the community without having to worry about the rents and the lease, some vastly inhibited changes in the economics of blogs have prompted this research.
To read the entire article, click here.
Blogs: Political pundits are here
NYT has a story on the political bloggers by Matthew
Klam. Just for the record, the entire text follows.
Fear and Laptops on the Campaign Trail:
Nine blocks north of Madison Square Garden, next door to
the Emerging Artists Theater, where posters
advertised ''The Gay Naked Play'' (''Now With More
Nudity''), the bloggers were up and running. It was
Republican National Convention week in New York City, and
they had taken over a performance space called the Tank. A
homeless guy sat at the entrance with a bag of cans at his
feet, a crocheted cap on his head and his chin in his
hand. To reach the Tank, you had to cross a crummy little
courtyard with white plastic patio furniture and half a
motorcycle strung with lights and strewn with flowers,
beneath a plywood sign that said, ''Ronald Reagan Memorial
Fountain.''
Read More...
Fear and Laptops on the Campaign Trail:
Nine blocks north of Madison Square Garden, next door to
the Emerging Artists Theater, where posters
advertised ''The Gay Naked Play'' (''Now With More
Nudity''), the bloggers were up and running. It was
Republican National Convention week in New York City, and
they had taken over a performance space called the Tank. A
homeless guy sat at the entrance with a bag of cans at his
feet, a crocheted cap on his head and his chin in his
hand. To reach the Tank, you had to cross a crummy little
courtyard with white plastic patio furniture and half a
motorcycle strung with lights and strewn with flowers,
beneath a plywood sign that said, ''Ronald Reagan Memorial
Fountain.''
Read More...
When culture meets Media
08/07/04 11:14 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Reference
Mail & Guardian, Africa’s first online newspaper,
has a
story
on how new media will help tell African stories.
on how new media will help tell African stories.
When culture meets media, interesting things happen. A provincial premier gets pictured in bed; a bunch of fortysomething journos stage a reunion; and innovative publishing technology gets deployed.
It's festival time in Grahamstown again -- the 30th edition of an event that's always like a first time. It is made possible by, among others, a healthy grant from the Eastern Cape government, whose Premier Nosima Balindlela was previously the province's arts and culture minister.
This is what we paid for
An article by George Monbiot in the Guardian 'This Is
What We Paid For', which one can
read here
This Is What We Paid For
This Is What We Paid For
Britain's foreign aid has been used to bankroll a programme for mass
starvation
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 18th May 2004
Tony Blair has lost the election. It's true he wasn't standing, but we won't
split hairs. His policies have just been put to the test by an electorate
blessed with a viable opposition, and crushed. In throwing him out of their
lives, the voters of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh may have destroyed
the world's most dangerous economic experiment. Read More...
Who creates Jayson Blairs?
29/02/04 09:00 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Saswat
By Saswat Pattanayak
Jayson Blair is the latest disgrace. But the unparalleled publicity he is getting is beyond reason. And the breeding ground for such a claim to defame is incidentally my college.
What should not come as surprising is that we breed journalists to be truthful, and credible, instead of socially relevant and useful.
Hence with much stress on these unattainable traits as truthfulness (unattainable since nowhere does a single truth exist anyway) the first casualty is honesty. And of course if Blair and his types only understood that journalism has a mission to serve the society rather than their own interests as career professionals, things would be different. The social responsibility explains the conducts of people in a way that self-growth syndrome cannot.
Secondly, the schools expecting huge amount of money and commitment from students of course function as big business houses. And they instill a sense of arrogance (like Maryland says “Fear the Turtle&rdquo than a sense of duty. They lead
the students to use education for a personal
career rise using competitive yardsticks instead
of using education as a utilitarian means to
promote cooperative understandings.
Anyway, contextually speaking, Baltimore Sun has an extensive report on who created the genius!
Jayson Blair is the latest disgrace. But the unparalleled publicity he is getting is beyond reason. And the breeding ground for such a claim to defame is incidentally my college.
What should not come as surprising is that we breed journalists to be truthful, and credible, instead of socially relevant and useful.
Hence with much stress on these unattainable traits as truthfulness (unattainable since nowhere does a single truth exist anyway) the first casualty is honesty. And of course if Blair and his types only understood that journalism has a mission to serve the society rather than their own interests as career professionals, things would be different. The social responsibility explains the conducts of people in a way that self-growth syndrome cannot.
Secondly, the schools expecting huge amount of money and commitment from students of course function as big business houses. And they instill a sense of arrogance (like Maryland says “Fear the Turtle&rdquo
than a sense of duty. They lead
the students to use education for a personal
career rise using competitive yardsticks instead
of using education as a utilitarian means to
promote cooperative understandings.
Anyway, contextually speaking, Baltimore Sun has an extensive report on who created the genius!
Pew Research! Phew!!
14/02/04 20:50 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Reference
In a national phone survey between March 12 and May 20, 2003, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that more than 53 million American adults or 44% of adult Internet users have used the Internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files and otherwise contribute to the explosion of content available online. 21% of Internet users say they have posted photographs to Web sites. 13% of Internet users maintain their own Web sites. Around 7% have Web cams running on their computers that allow other Internet users to see live pictures of them and their surroundings.
Read all about it here.
As always Interesting stuff, this Pew research. Wondering what they mean by "American adult Internet users". This is funny but I must confess, after reading thousands of opinion polls, I see I am never intereviewed for a poll in life. Just a sheer coincidence or an exalted call to an idea that I am one in a million.
Chinese blog by Berkeley bloggers
03/01/04 10:40 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Reference
Very Interestin