reader-list Digest, Vol 79, Issue 8

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Today's Topics:

   1. Anti-POSCO activists boycott Orissa Government's  meeting on
      POSCO project (Anivar Aravind)
   2. Anti-Posco Struggle: Ground Zero by Dilip Bisoi (Anivar Aravind)
   3. test (Kshmendra Kaul)
   4. Amnesty International in bed with Jihadi types (just      like
      many on the left) (Harsh Kapoor)
   5. Seagull Resource Centre needs Programme Assistant for     Arts
      Programme -- Kolkata, India (Chintan)
   6. request for donation to Smt. Ambubai Residential  School for
      Blind Girls Gulbarga (Dattu Agarwal Agarwal)

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Anti-POSCO activists boycott Orissa Government's meeting on POSCO project
Saturday, February 06, 2010

http://www.orissadiary.com/CurrentNews.asp?id=16641

Report by Amarnath Parida; Jagatsinghpur: Posco meeting which was
scheduled to finalise the betel vine compensation and other
rehabilitation packages by the presence of the Chairman cum Managing
Director, IDCO has paralyzed on Saturday due to boycott to attend this
meeting by the members of United Action Committee .

Sources said that the members of UAC, a purportedly pro-Posco outfit
in the project site area, threatened not to abstain the today's Posco
meeting being chaired by Chairman cum Managing Director, IDCO Mr.
Priyabrat Pattnaik to finalize the betel vine compensation,
rehabilitation packages and other issues related to Posco steel
project on an also sent their opening to the district administration
through fax on Friday.

UAC members have expressed that their various demands like normalcy in
trouble torn Dhinkia, Gobindpur villages, resettlement to left out 70
villagers in their village, proposal of illegal deployment of police
in peace zone area, false commitment of administration and police to
restore peace, distribution of form for applying compensation of betel
vine without the knowledge of villagers and other demands have not yet
fulfilled.

Earlier, the members of UAC decided not to apply to the district
administration in Jagatsinghpur for compensation against loss of betel
vines unless their 29-point charter of demands relating to
compensation, rehabilitation package and employment are fulfilled. In
parallel, the Posco Pratirodha Sangram Samiti (PPSS), the organization
spearheading the anti-Posco movement, urged the villagers of Dhinkia
not to receive the application forms pertaining to compensation for
protesting Posco project .It may be noted that administration has
invited application forms from the betel vine losers from 1st to 10th
February for disbursement of compensation while BDO, Erasama has
issued notification of sarpanch of Dhinkia, Nuagaon and Gadkujang
panchyats to conduct pallisabha to hand over forest land to Posco
Company.

CMD, IDCO Mr Pattnaik intervened in this matter and sought the
cooperation of the members of UAC to finalise the compensation and
rehabilitation packages so he scheduled to attend this meeting at
Paradip on Saturday. Meanwhile, his visit to Paradip has been canceled
and Posco meeting has also paraylsed due to abstain of UAC members on
today. On the other hand, UAC members Mr Tamil Pradhan, Nirvya
Samntray and Gadkujang Sarpanch Mr Nakul Sahoo have expressed that UAC
has invited district officials, CMD, IDCO and Posco officials to
project site to discuss everything in the presence of villagers.

District Collector Mr Gyanranjan Dash has expressed that today's
meting has been deferred because of CMD, IDCO's busy in other meeting.
He informed that no fax message members regarding skip of this meeting
has yet received.

-- 
"[It is not] possible to distinguish between 'numerical' and
'nonnumerical' algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from
other kinds of precise information." - Donald Knuth

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Ground Zero

http://orissaconcerns.net/2010/02/ground-zero/

Dilip Bisoi
Financial Express
Posted online: Feb 07, 2010 at 1959 hrs

>From Bhubaneswar, it takes us five hours to reach Patna village, at
the heart of Posco-India’s planned 12-million tonne steel plant. We
find children playing with pebbles, but they aren’t at an innocuous
game—they arrange tiny stones across the road when they see an
approaching vehicle, imitating elders who routinely put up road
blockades or gates to prevent entry of unknown vehicles. Patna falls
within the core area of the proposed 4,004 acre plant site, and
villagers, who are against the project, keep round-the-clock vigil on
the movement of outsiders.

Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik may have assured South Korean
President Lee Myung-Bak that the land acquisition process for the
$12-billion plant in Orissa’s Jagatsinghpur district will be speeded
up, but at Ground Zero, things don’t look so easy. Posco-India still
doesn’t have an inch of land, though the final forest clearance came
through in December, on the eve of Lee’s visit to India as chief guest
for Republic Day. Of the 4,004 acres identified for the project,
2,958.79 acres is forestland.

He was keen to visit the Posco site, but was told the ground situation
wasn’t conducive. There’s stiff resistance to the project from locals,
but Posco-India and the Orissa government is hoping to win over the
opposition with the promise of a better rehabilitation and
resettlement policy.

“The resettlement and rehabilitation package of Posco-India for the
plant at Jagatsinghpur is in line with the Orissa government’s R&R
Rules 2006, which is regarded as one of the best R&R policies in the
country,” says Posco-India General Manager (external relations)
Simanta Mohanty. “We are confident that everybody in our project area
will be at an advantage with our package. Our package is specially
oriented towards landless labour and we have made special provisions
for employment of those needing jobs. We are compensating those who
have planted betel vines on government land and we are sure they will
see that we are giving them a fair deal,” he adds. Over the past three
months, the Patnaik government, too, has given a push to the land
acquisition process, but villagers will need a lot of convincing
before they give up their land.

In neighbouring Govindpur, children play cricket, imagining the ball
to be Posco-India. Every time a batsman hits the ball hard, a cheer
goes up. The villagers of Govindpur are quite militant in their
opposition to the project, considered to be the country’s largest FDI.

Four years of agitation have changed the lives of villagers living in
Posco’s proposed site. For villagers, guarding the gates has become a
daily chore. All their discussions revolve around the Posco project.
Womenfolk do their household work, but with an eye on the main street
for Posco executives or government officials. Posco officials are
often detained for a few hours by villagers.

The two villages of Govindpur and Dhinkia are at the heart of the site
and this is where the dictates of the Posco Pratirodha Sangaram Samiti
(PPSS), the organisation that is spearheading the anti-project
movement, runs. PPSS has virtually converted the 4,004 acres into a
fort, with 17 gates plugging all the roads to the core area. No gates
open without the permission of PPSS. The PPSS chief, Abhaya Sahoo,
guards the main gate at Balitutha, the entry point to the Posco site.
The PPSS network is quite strong. When government officials or Posco
company executives start from Bhubaneswar for Jagatsinghpur, Sahoo
gets the information, and villagers are alerted immediately.

With the forest clearance coming through, and Lee’s visit putting the
project onto the fast track, the Jagatsinghpur Collector has put out
ads asking betel vine owners to claim compensation and give up the
land. Interestingly, the 4,004 acres is part of a vast stretch of land
that was added to the mainland when the sea receded, so the landscape
is dotted with huge sand mounds. The government says the reclaimed
land is government land but people have lived here for generations.

Over the years, the forests too have disappeared—first the mangroves
and then the casuarina plantations, destroyed by a super cyclone. Now,
villagers grow betel vines and cashew on the high lands and have
converted the low laying areas to paddy fields. “The paddy field gives
us rice for the whole year and the betel vines the cash to buy other
items,” says Ramesh Mohanty. “We will not allow the Posco project to
come up on this site,” says PPSS chief Abhaya Sahoo. “No
rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) policy is acceptable to us,” he
points out.

When you argue that Posco-India has promised to give a better package
than the R&R package announced by the state government, Dhinkia
sarpanch Sisira Mohapatra, who is also the general secretary of PPSS,
shows you the R&R package of Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) for the
oustees of Paradip Refinery project. A vacant plot of seven acres,
earmarked with concrete pillars outside village Dhinka, is the
so-called rehabilitation colony. The abandoned, dilapidated facility
centre (hospitals, schools and temples) isn’t assuring villagers.

“We have seen the R&R package of a public sector company. How do we
trust a foreign private company?” Mohapatra shoots back. The stories
of promises not kept and the success of people’s movements like the
anti-missile test range agitation of Baliapal have kept the resistance
against Posco alive. But the Orissa government too has made a heap of
promises to Posco-India which it will find very difficult to walk away
from.

--
"[It is not] possible to distinguish between 'numerical' and
'nonnumerical' algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from
other kinds of precise information." - Donald Knuth

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7017810.ece


>From The Sunday Times
February 7, 2010

Amnesty International is ‘damaged’ by Taliban link
An official at the human rights charity deplores its work with a ‘jihadist’
Amnesty International demonstrators wearing boiler suits

by Richard Kerbaj

A SENIOR official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of
putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of
their victims.

Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty’s international
secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former
British inmate at Guantanamo Bay, “fundamentally damages” the
organisation’s reputation.

In an email sent to Amnesty’s top bosses, she suggests the charity has
mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his “jihadi” group,
Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.

Sahgal describes Begg as “Britain’s most famous supporter of the
Taliban”. He has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and
hate preachers, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged spiritual
mentor of the Christmas Day Detroit plane bomber.

Amnesty’s work with Cageprisoners took it to Downing Street last month
to demand the closure of Guantanamo Bay. Begg has also embarked on a
European tour, hosted by Amnesty, urging countries to offer safe haven
to Guantanamo detainees. This is despite concerns about former inmates
returning to terrorism.

Sahgal, who has researched religious fundamentalism for 20 years, has
decided to go public because she feels Amnesty has ignored her
warnings for the past two years about the involvement of Begg in the
charity’s Counter Terror With Justice campaign.

“I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s
integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human
rights,” Sahgal wrote in an email to the organisation’s leaders on
January 30. “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous
supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is
a gross error of judgment.”

Amnesty is the world’s biggest human rights organisation with 2.2m
members and a galaxy of celebrity supporters, including Bono, John
Cleese, Yoko Ono, Al Pacino and Sinead O’Connor. Its decision to work
with Begg poses liberal backers with a moral dilemma and raises
questions about the direction in which Amnesty has travelled since it
was set up in 1961 to support “prisoners of conscience”.

“As a former Guantanamo detainee it was legitimate to hear his
experiences, but as a supporter of the Taliban it was absolutely wrong
to legitimise him as a partner,” Sahgal told The Sunday Times.

Begg, 42, from Birmingham, was held at Guantanamo for three years
until 2005 under suspicion of links to Al-Qaeda, which he denies.
Prior to his arrest, Begg lived with his family in Kabul and praised
the Taliban in his memoirs as “better than anything Afghanistan has
had in 20 years”. After his release Begg became the figurehead for
Cageprisoners, which describes itself as “a human rights organisation
that exists solely to raise awareness of the plight of prisoners ...
held as part of the War On Terror”.

Among the Muslim inmates it highlights are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Abu Hamza, the hook-handed
cleric facing extradition from Britain to America on terror charges,
and Abu Qatada, a preacher described as Osama Bin Laden’s “European
ambassador”.

Sahgal, 53, is not the only critic of Begg at Amnesty. In 2008 a board
member of its US arm opposed Begg’s appearance, via videolink, at its
AGM, but was overruled.

When Begg appeared at Downing Street last month as part of a group
delivering a letter to Gordon Brown calling for the release of the
last British resident held at Guantanamo, he was accompanied by Kate
Allen, head of Amnesty’s UK section since 2000. Allen is a leftwinger
who was the girlfriend of Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London,
for almost 20 years.

This weekend Amnesty said it had launched an internal inquiry after
Sahgal raised her concerns with bosses, including Allen and Claudio
Cordone, the interim secretary-general.

Anne Fitzgerald, policy director of Amnesty’s international
secretariat, said the charity had formed a relationship with Begg
because he was a “compelling speaker” on detention. She said he had
been paid expenses for his attendance at its events.

Asked if she thought Begg was a human rights advocate, Fitzgerald
said: “It’s something you’d have to speak to him about. I don’t have
the information to answer that.”

Yesterday Begg dismissed Sahgal’s claims as “ridiculous”. He defended
his support for the Taliban and the decision by Cageprisoners to
highlight the plight of detainees linked to Al-Qaeda: “We need to be
engaging with those people who we find most unpalatable. I don’t
consider anybody a terrorist until they have been charged and
convicted of terrorism.”

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*From Bishan Samaddar*
February 6 at 7:37pm

Hello friends!

At Seagull, we are looking for a Programme Assistant for our Arts Programme.


Responsibilities:
To supervise and coordinate arts events at Seagull Arts and Media Resource
Centre. The job includes communicating with other galleries and art spaces,
and with the Press.
The person must have good administrative and communication skills, coupled
with basic computer knowledge.
Salary commensurate with experience and qualifications.

If you are interested in joining Seagull, or know someone who would be
interested, please contact us.

meghs...@gmail.com
theproseandthepass...@gmail.com

Hoping to hear from you soon.

Thanks,
The Seagull team.

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Dear Readers,
I appeal for donation to Smt. Ambubai School for Blind Girls Gulbarga.
At present the school is being managed by the funds received from
local donors and managing committee members but that is not
sufficient.
At present there are forty blind girls at our school. Food clothing
bedding medicine and all other basic needs of the children are being
provided free of cost.
The children belong to under privileged community with rural background.
Apart from formal education music, craft, vocational education,
mobility training etc is given in the school.
The important thing to note is that ours is the only one school in the
entire Hyderabad Karnataka region which is exclusively reserved for
blind girls.
Three teachers and five non-teaching staff members are working in the school.
For the maintenance of hostel, salary of staff members, clothing,
bedding building rent etc we require about 12,0000 twelve lakh rupees for the
year 2009/2010.
Keeping this in mind I invite the donors to come forward to donate
generously to Smt. Ambubai School for the Blind Girls Gulbarga.
I also request the interested donors to visit our school.

Cheques, Demand drafts, Money orders can be sent to the following address---
Head Mistress Smt. Ambubai School for the Blind Girls, H.No. 4-282,
Maktampura Gulbarga Karnataka India.
Yours sincerely
Prof. Dattu Agarwal
Hon. Chairman Hyderabad Karnataka Disabled Welfare Society Gulbarga
Karnataka state India.
Ph.No. 08472-223044
Mobile 09449308779.
Personal e-mail ID dattu.agar...@...

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