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Not long ago, criminal psychologist-filmmaker Sudeep Ranjan Sarkar’s Hindi feature film Umformung – The Transformation made news when monks and sex workers came together under one roof at Kolkata to watch the film. Now, Mumbai witnessed a celeb-studded Poster Launch of the film that speaks of equality among all of God’s creations. Besides Director Sudeep Ranjan Sarkar and Producers Rita Jhawar and Saharsh Khaitan, music director Sanjib Sarkar, actors Sushil Bhosale, Neha Kapoor, Parijat Chakraborty, Yogesh Anand of Reincarnation India, present at the do at Bora Bora Club in Andheri West were chief guest Bappi Lahiri, and celebs Shaleen Bhanot, Mudasir Ali, Gaurav Chopra, Aamir Dalvi, K K Goswami, among others.
The story of intense dimensions, two parallel stories juxtaposed in one world Umformung – The Transformation is about a Buddhistmonk in search of the ultimate truth on one hand, and a ruthless entrepreneur who knows that power is the ultimate truth on the other.
Languid and unbiased, the film unfolds as Karma unfolds. The journey of the monk from the idyllic monastery set in the mountains to prostitutes at a city brothel and his movement into the path of self-actualisation, alongside the transformation of the builder when life comes half way to meet her on her path of self-destruction, forms the crux of Umformung – The Transformation.
And that is all that Dr. Sudeep Ranjan Sarkar set to achieve along with social entrepreneurs Rita Jhawar and Saharsh Khaitan, when he made his maiden film based on Buddhist principles. Umformung – The Transformation, interestingly, the film is the winner of Best Story – Indian Cine Film Festival, Best Background Score – Noida International Film Festival, Best Director and Best Background Music –10th Free Spirit Festival, Merit for Newcomer Director – World Film Award, and Merit for International Film – World Film Award, Jakarta, Best Background Score – 5th Dadasaheb Phalke Film Festival, Official Selection – 4th Washington DC South Asian Film Festival, Maverik Movie Awards, Khajuraho International Film Festival, Miami Independent Film Festival among others. Umformung – The Transformation is distributed by Yogesh Anand Reincarnation India.
Unfazed by the accolades and worldwide acclaim, Sarkar is humble. “Umformung – The Transformation isn’t just a film for me. It is a marriage of poetry, philosophy of life and a painting of moving images,” confesses the director, adding that the diverseness of the audiences of the screening was a simple way to illustrate the open arms of Gautam Buddha and his tenets.
“Guided by Senior Rimpoche from McLeodgunj, Himachal Pradesh from His Holiness Dalai Lama’s temple, the film looks at Buddhism as a way of life and how detachment is the ultimate truth. A sex worker in that sense is no different from any of us in the so called respectable society, and by her straightforwardness and honest approach to life, is actually an inspiration to a monk to find Nirvana!”
Now that is one concept we are looking forward to see on celluloid!
Delhi’s incestuous publishing world simmers with skulduggery, backstabbing and retribution. Last evening in Khan Market I spotted Penguin Random House India’s Rajni George chatting very amiably with Somak Ghoshal of HarperCollins India. They were talking in whispers and had hidden themselves well amid the Full Circle bookshelves. Just what was cooking between these two rival publishing houses? According to unconfirmed rumors, the duo was later spotted in a party hosted by Chiki Sarkar's new publishing house, Juggernaut Books. Watch this space for more updates.
The architecture known as Bolia Sarkar’s Chhatri constructed in 1858 AD in memory of Sardar Chimnaji Appa Sahib Bolia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shantanu_Moitra/
Shantanu Moitra (born Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India) is an Indian music director who has composed music for the Bollywood film industry.
He was born in Lucknow and then moved to Delhi with his family. Then lived in an area called Chitaranjan Park. Moitra shifted to Mumbai in 2002. He studied at Delhi University and has a degree in economics.
Moitra composed music for Indipop albums that were hits including Mann ke Manjeere: an album of women's dreams for Breakthrough and Ab ke Saawan.
Moitra composed the music in a few films but gained recognition with his music in Pradeep Sarkar's Parineeta (2005). His music was critically acclaimed and he received a nomination for the Filmfare Best Music Director Award. That same year he won the Filmfare RD Burman Award for New Music Talent.
photo: SANJIB GANGULY
The architecture known as Bolia Sarkar’s Chhatri constructed in 1858 AD in memory of Sardar Chimnaji Appa Sahib Bolia.
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Public Meeting .
Unfolding-ReaJities of .
·~Qhc;~e Din' ~ Q~allenges speaker to the Idea of India Pranay Krishna .
Allahabad University,Secy. JanSanskriti Manch, !1 0 Aug Tonight Mahi-Mandavi Mess 9.30pm FormerJNUSU President -----------.
Modi's 'Achcche Din' Dream Turns Into 'Bure Din' Nightmare .
The Modi Government came to power with the promise of 'achchhe din'-and it hasn't taken very long for that promise to turn into the nightmare of extremely 'bure din.' .
Modi Sarkar or UPA-111? On the counts of price rise, corruption, corporate bailouts and neglect of basic rights, there isn't much to choose between the UPA Govt and the Modi Sarkar. If anything, Modi Sarkar is pursuing the same anti-people .
policies far more aggressively than the earlier regime. In an unethical move just before the budget, Modi sarkar announced steep hike in railway fares. Remember it was the same Modi, who, while in Opposition, had demanded roll back of rail fare hikes by the UPA Govt! Prices of petrol, diesel, LPG were hiked twice in a month. Like a string of UPA Budgets before it, the Modi Sarkar's budget also wrote off Rs 5.72 lakh crore worth of corporate taxes. The SIT on black money was announced with much fanfare, but later the Modi Sarkar pleaded that there is no list of Indians with accounts in Swiss banks. The normally talkative Modi is silent on the Vyapam scam in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and the CAG report slamming the Gujarat Govt for massive inappropriate benefits to the Reliance and Ad ani corporations. The highlight of the Modi Budget more than the peanuts allocated for major health and.
was the allocation of Rs 200 crore for a single statue, much education initiatives, or for women's safety! Again following in its predecessors' footsteps, the Modi Sarkar 'leaked' an 'intelligence report' branding various people's movements as foreign funded threats to 'development'. Before elections Modi's slogan was: "Bahut Ho Gaya Mahangai Ki Maar, Ab Ki Baar Modi Sarkari" Now, Modi Sarkar's shameless explanation for .
the problems, intensifying by the day, is "Peechhle Baar UPA Sarkar"!!!! .
So, all in all, people are quite right in calling the Modi Sarkar-UPA Ill ! Except that the Modi Govt also has lost no time in pushing the communal fascist agenda. .
Orchestrated Communal Moves :The Modi victory was flagged off by communal mob violence by saffron brigades in several places: these include communal violence and minority-baiting by a BJP victory procession in Karnataka, communal .
violence in Ahmedabad on the eve of Modi's swearing-in, the attack by ABVP on a seminar held at the AN Sinha Institute in .
Patna, and most disturbing of all, the killing of Mohsin Sadiq by a Hindu Rashtra Sena lynch mob in Pune. A Goa minister .
Dipak Dhavalikar declared, "Modi will develop India into a Hindu state." The very next day, Goa Deputy Chief Minister D' .
Souza went on to add, "India is a Hindu country. It is Hindustan. All Indians in Hindustan are Hindus, including I-I am a .
Christian Hindu"! .
Simultaneously, the communal cauldron has been set boiling in UP. In a series of investigative reports, Indian Express has noted 600 plus instances of communal tension since Lok Sabha polls, mostly around those 12 constituencies, where by-polls are .
shortly due. Indian Express has documented how "fighting kids to dhaba bills" have become pretexts for flaring up of communal .
polarisation and potential riots. It is also being reported that a vicious campaign has been lauched to tie Rakhis to lakhs of .
Hindu men, asking them to pledge to protect their sisters from Muslim men and "love jehad." The VHP has been running a helpline .
urging Hindus to approach them "if your daughter is being harassed by Muslim boys." And a khap panchayat in Muzaffarnagar .
has imposed a ban on mobile phones and jeans for girls, claiming that these result in 'eve-teasing'. .
Travesty of Investigation and Justice: Two IPS officers, Dinesh MN and Abhay Chudasama accused in the Sohrabuddin .
fake encounter, have been reinstated in the job by the Rajasthan and Gujarat government govt respectively. In a similar manner, .
G L Singhal, an accused IPS officer in the Ishrat fake encounter case was posted to the state reserve police in Gandhinagar after .
he was granted default bail! To cap it all, tainted Am it Shah has been elevated as BJP president and all steps are being taken to .
secure immunity for the perpetrators in the Snoopgate case! .
False-Framing and Minority Witch-Hunt Nailed: In judgement after judgement the Supreme Court has nailed down .
repeated cases of false-framing and witch-hunt of minorities by the Gujarat Govt. Recently, on July 17,2014, the Supreme Court, .
in a landmark judgement, has acquitted all the 11 persons who were convicted and sentenced by a TADA Court in October 2008 .
for alleged involvement in the 'twin blasts' Surat bomb blasts case of 1993. The judgement is significant as the Gujarat government .
was looking for enhcHlLd punishment for those in jail! Not too long b;JCk, on 16 May 2014, Supreme Court ha~ f"lilSSed a similar .
damning judgement ripping apart Gujarat Police in the 2002 Akshardham terror case. While acquitting all the 6accused (including .
3 who were sentenced to death) in the Akshardham case, the Supreme Court slammed the Gujarat Police for the incompetence .
and "perversity in conducting this case at various stages, right from the investigation level to the granting of sanction by .
the state government to prosecute the accused persons under POTA." The apex court added, "We, being the apex court CII!J .
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~It is the Poor and CPI(M}'s Own Erstwhile Su pporters Who Are on the 12.04.0i ~Warpath Against the Rightist Policies of the CPI(M) Govt in West Bengal ;,.. "Saali, Jomi rakhbi?Jomi debi na? 11 -11 8itch, you'll keep your land,will you? Won't give it up?11 -CPI(M} goons and policemen as they beat .
up and raped the women at Nandigram (as recounted by Prof. Tanika Sarkar in a public meeting on campus on 10April) .
;,.. "CPt(M) cadres keep threatening us-'Either come overto our side andjoin the CPI(M) camp. orwe'll cut you to p1eces' We know we'll all die,but .
wed racher d1e than gtve up our land."-Villagers of Nandigram to Prof. Tanika Sarkar .
.
;,.. ''The re1gn of terror ts far from over tn Nand1gram ...women begged us to stay w1th lhem, since there is bombing on their huts by the CPI(M) supporters .
every night... .
;,.. One woman lying on her stomach in hospital keeps weepmg, recalling how achild who sheltered in her palluwas snatched away and rut tnto p1eces .
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before her eyes.Another woman lies with her buttocks hanging from her body, chopped off by a sword Hundreds of people have senous tnJunes lo their eyes, some have lost sightpermanently,due to the tear gas.Normal tear gas does not cause such long-1asijng stght damage, so doctors suspect thatsome other chemical substance was used.... .
;,.. We have never seen avillage so denuded ofchildren... people keep recounting tmages of children be1ng drowned in ponds or beaten like dothes upon .
th~ ground... we can only hope it's acollective hallucination and that the children will all be found, but we fear that tt may really be true. .
r People saw trucks from which limbs were dangltng, betng taken away .. no one knows what happened to those bodies .
.
. .
,. There 1s as yet no offictal notice to the effect that the SEZ 1s to be shifted away from Nandigram, only the verbal assurance of the Ch1ef Mtmster ..Not .
astngle CPI{M) leader who claim we are wrong about the realtty of Nandigram has bothered to visit a single tOJUred person tn Nandigram There IS .
no compensation betng offered.... .
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,. The CBI enqutry also seems to have been suppressed: we may never really know the whole truth about what happened on March 14 .
,. ll IS true that some CPI{M) people were chased out of the v1tlage by the villagers who were resistmg land grab..but there can be no companson .
between the nature of·violence' on both sides. On the one hand was aresistance ofpoor peasants,on the other was the might of the state ruthlessly .
terronsing people to re-establish CPI(M} control over thearea..." -excerpts from Prof. Tanika Sarkar's account ofher visit to Nandigram, .
in apublic meeting on 10 April. .
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What a Joke: The Killers of Nandigram are Posing as 'Apostles' of 'Non-Violence'! .
In tis leaflet of 10 April, SFI has tried to allege that 'Naxal' students vandaltsed Jadavpur University in an attempt to turn the Universtty into a Free Zone .
like Nandigram'. .
All those familiar with West Bengal know the truth : that SFI rout inely does not allow elections to be held in most lesser .
.
known colleges. But in prestigious institutes where they cannot avoid a contest because of the public gaze, they .
indulge in violent retaliation whenever defeated in elections. Be it Jadavpur or Prestdency College, this is the story EVERY year .
Students belonging to "We The Independent" (WTI), who won the elections in Jadavpur University's science faculty, tell the facts. that their victory .
march was attacked by the members of Karmachari San sad and two teachers, namely Prof Deepak Kesh of Mathematics department and ProfArghya .
Deb of Physics department Among the inJured students who were admrtted in MR Bangur hospital were Surajrt Sarkar, Someswar Chandra, Sourav .
.
Guha, Sourav Mitra, Suman Mazumdar and Proto Banerjee The March wns attacked when 1t reached the Scrence Club, near the eflgtneenng faculty .
canteen and adjacent to the office of the JU Karmachari Samsad, the union of non-teachmg employees loyal to the CPM. This 1s the same Science Club .
which SFI claims was vandalised and destroyed by 'Naxals'! .
.
Proloy Kumar Saha, a WTIIeader and outgoing general secretary of the Sc1ence Facuity Students' Union sa1d ·rhey k1cked and punched us and also .
assaulted us w1lh iron rods, sticks and bricks" . ·seven students. mcludmg myself. were lfiJUred Someshwar Chandra fractured h1s hand and Surapt .
Sarkar sustained a neck injury. Among the others inJured are Sourav Guha. Proto Banerjee, Sourav Mtlra and Suman Majumdar· .
.
Why is SFI comparing Jadavpur to Nandigram ? .
SF l'sagenda is clear: in the name of Jadavpur, they are actually try1ng to distort the reality of Nandigram-and propagate the lie that CPI(M) people are .
lhe real vict1ms in Nandigram which has been turned into a'Free Zone' by Naxc:ls! .
What SFI is refusing to answer Is: how come the 'Naxals ' and 'Opposition' suddenly managed to storm so many CPI(M) bast1ons-from .
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North Bengal tea gardens to Singur to Nand/gram? How come workers rose up to defy CPI(M) diktats from Hind Motors to Haldia .
Petrochemicals? How come students refuse to digest SF/'s lies-from JNU to Jadavpur? .
The truth is -CPI(M) is squarely failing to convince its own mass base of its by now naked nee-liberal agenda. Having failed in its .
project of ensuring quiet takeover by Salems and Tatas, CPI(M) has turned the guns on its 0 WN people, branding them 'anarchic'. .
.
CPI(M) keeps talking of the fate of its supporters "chased out" of Nandigram. What does the CPI(M) represent to the people of Nandigram-are .
they not seen as agents of corporate land grab? Isn't it natural for people under threat of losing hearth and home, to resist such .
eviction by opposing those acting as agents of corporates? Isn't this the legacy of Left movements and peasant movements, whlch people who .
.
p.
used to be CPI(M)'s own mass base are upholding with their resistance in the fields. factories and streets? .
\.
Those in CPI(M)'s .. relief camps" are being used as a showcase item by the leadership dancing to the dictates of corporates, to hide CPI(M)'s own offensive against the poor peasantry of Nandigram. Such politics of pitting one section of the poor aga1nst the other 1s reprehenstble .
The angu1sh of CPI(M)'s former supporters at CPI(M)'s betrayal was best vo1ced in the public meettng of 10 Apnl by Tanika Sarkar and Praful Bidwai who dc::clared the present Sttuation to be the greatest crisis in the Left movement of independent India, where a Govt.whlle calling itself 'Left' is pumping bullets on the poor peasants, worker and students to facilitate corporate land grabl Will the SFI respond with hum11tty and senous rntr.ospection-or with ugly arrogance and brute force? Unfortunately, be it Jadavpur or JNU, the SFI seems to be choosmg the latter. .
Isolate the Defenders of Corporate Land Grab and Corporate-Dic1ated Killings! .
sd/-Awadhesh, President, AISA, JNU sd/-Mobeen Alam,Vice-PCI)r~..i .
.
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.
,· .
' II .
~ .
;J Join .
Public MeetingUnfolding Realities of'AQhQhhe Din' ~ Oha.Ilenges .
speaker.
to the Idea of lndia.
' 10 Aug Tonight Mahi-Mandavi Pranay KrishnaMess 9.30pm Allahabad University,Secy.Jan SanskrttiManch,.
FormerJNUSU President----The Modi Government came to power with the promise of 'achchhe din'-and it hasn't taken very long for that promise to .
Modi's 'Achcche Din' Dream Turns Into 'Bure Din' Nightmare.
turn into the nightmare of extremely 'bure din.'.
Modi Sarkar or UPA-111 ? On the counts of price rise, corruption, corporate bailouts and neglect of basic rights, there policies far more aggressively than the earlier regime. In an unethical move just before the budget, Modi sarkar announced steep hike in railway fares. Remember it was the same Modi, who, while in Opposition, had demanded roll back of rail fare isn't much to choose between the UPA Govt and the Modi Sarkar. If anything, Modi Sarkar is pursuing the same anti-peoplehikes by the UPA Govt! Prices of petrol, diesel, LPG were hiked twice in a month. Like a string of UPA Budgets before it, the with much fanfare, but later the Modi Sarkar pleaded that there is no list of Indians with accounts in Swiss banks. The .
normally talkative Modi is silent on the Vyapam scam in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and the CAG report slamming the .
Modi Sarkar's budget also wrote off Rs 5. 72 lakh crore worth of corporate taxes. The SIT on black money was announcedwas the allocation of Rs 200 crore for a single statue, much more than the peanuts allocated for major health and Gujarat Govt for massive inappropriate benefits to the Reliance and Adani corporations. The highlight of the Modi Budget .
education initiatives, or for women's safety! Again following in its predecessors' footsteps, the Modi Sarkar 'leaked' an .
'intelligence report' branding various people's movements as foreign funded threats to 'development'. Before elections .
the problems, intensifying by the day, is "Peechhle Saar UPA Sarkar"!!!! .
Modi's slogan was: "Bahut Ho Gaya Mahangai Ki Maar, Ab Ki Saar Modi Sarkar!" Now, ModiSarkar's shameless explanation for .
So, all in all, people are quite right in calling the Modi Sarkar-UPA Ill ! Except that the Modi Govt also has lost no time in pushing the communal fascist agenda..
Orchestrated .
Communal Moves :The Modi victory wasflagged off by communal mob violence by saffron brigades.
Patna, and most disturbing of all, the killing of Mohsin Sadiq by a Hindu Rashtra Sena lynch mob in Pune. A Goa minister in several places: these include communal violence and minority-baiting by a BJP victory procession in Karnataka, communal .
violence in Ahmedabad on the eve of Modi's swearing-in, the attack by ABVP on a seminar held at the AN Sinha Institute in .
Dipak Dhavalikar declared, "Modi witl develop India into a Hindu state." The very next day, Goa Deputy Chief Minister D' .
Christian Hindu"! .
Simultaneously, .
Souza went on to add, "India is a Hindu country. It is Hindustan. All Indians in Hindustan are Hindus, including I -I am a.
the communal cauldron has been set boiling in UP. In a series of investigative reports, Indian Express has noted .
shortly due. Indian Express hasdocumented how "fighting kidsto dhaba bills" have become pretexts for flaring up ofcommunal .
.
polarisation and potential riots. It is also being reported that a vicious campaign has been lauched to tie Rakhis to lakhs of .
.
600 plus instances of communal tension since Lok Sabha polls, mostly around those 12 constituencies, where by-polls are.
.
Hindu men, asking them to pledge to protect their sisters from Muslim men and "love jehad." The VHP has been running a helpline.
Travesty of Investigation and Justice: Two 1PS officers, Dinesh MN and Abhay Chudasama accused in the Sohrabuddin .
.
has imposed a ban on mobile phones and jeans for girls, claiming that these result in 'eve-teasing'. .
urging Hindus to approach them "if your daughter is being harassed by Muslim boys." And a khap panchayat in Muzaffarnagar.
fake encounter, have been reinstated in the job by the Rajasthan and Gujarat government govt respectively. In a similar manner, .
he was granted default bail! To cap it all, tainted Amit Shah has been elevated as BJP president and all steps are being taken to G L Singhal, an accused IPS officer in the Ishrat fake encounter case was posted to the state reserve police in Gandhinagar after .
secure immunity for the perpetrators in the Snoopgate case!.
.. .
False-Framing and Minority Witch-Hunt Nailed: In judgement after judgement theSupreme Court has naileddown .
in a landmark judgement, has acquitted all the 11 personswho were convicted and sentenced by a TADA Court in October 2008 .
repeated cases of false-framing and witch-hunt of minorities by the Gujarat Govt. Recently, on July 17, 2014, the Supreme Court,was looking for enhanced punishment for those in jail! Not too long back, on 16 May 2014, Supreme Court has passed a similar for alleged involvement in the 'twin blasts' Surat bomb blastscase of1993. The judgementis significant as theGujaratgovernment damning judgement ripping apart Gujarat Police in the 2002Akshardham terror''case. Whileacquitting allthe 6 accused (including .
and "perversityin conductingthiscase at various stages, rightfrom the investigation leveltothegrantingofsanction by 3 whoweresentenced to death)in theAkshardham case, the SupremeCourt slammedthe Gujarat Police forthe incompetence .
e\lliCI .
the state government to prosecutetheaccused persons underPOTA." The apex court added, "We, being the apex court l'!!!l:ll!lll!'!!llltl~~· .
.
Get ready Melbourne for our celebrity designer Sayantan Sarkar's beautiful collection only at Meilleur event's India fashion week Australia on 11th August.
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The Postcard
The front side of an advertising card promoting performances of Making Marilyn in May 2024.
The card was designed by Andrew Kay and the photography was by Chris Bissell.
Julie Burchill
The British journalist Julie Burchill was born on the 3rd. July 1959 in Frenchay, Bristol.
Beginning as a staff writer at the New Musical Express at the age of 17, she has since contributed to newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times and The Guardian.
Her writing, which was described by The Observer in 2002 as "outrageously outspoken" and "usually offensive," has been the subject of legal action.
Burchill is also a novelist, and her 2004 novel Sugar Rush was adapted for television.
-- Julie Burchill - The Early Years
Julie Burchill was educated at Brislington Comprehensive School in Bristol. Her father was a Communist union activist who worked in a distillery, and her mother had a job in a cardboard box factory.
In 2010, Burchill wrote of her parents:
"I don't care much for families. I adored
my mum and dad, but to be honest I don't
miss them much now they're dead."
Three years later she contradicted this when she said she couldn't return to Bristol, as every time she heard someone speaking with her parents' Bristol accent it would remind her how much she missed them.
Julie did not attend university, leaving the A-levels she had started a few weeks earlier in order to begin writing for the New Musical Express (NME).
-- Julie Burchill's Early Career
Julie began her writing career at the NME in 1976 at the age of 17 after responding (coincidentally with her future husband Tony Parsons) to an advert in that paper.
The ad was seeking "hip young gunslingers" to write about the then-emerging punk movement. She gained the job by submitting a "eulogy" of Patti Smith's Horses.
She later wrote that at the time she only liked black music, and said:
"When I actually heard a punk record,
I thought, 'Oh my Lord! This is not music,
this is just shouting'."
Indeed, she managed to decry the first self-released punk album in the UK, The Outsiders' Calling on Youth featuring Adrian Borland:
"Apple-cheeked Ade has a complexion
that would turn a Devon milkmaid green
with envy."
Fortunately for her, as she later said:
"Punk was over in two years. That was
the only damn good thing about it."
She left her position at the NME at the age of 20, and started freelancing in order to be able to write about other subjects, although she has never completely given up writing about pop music.
-- Julie Burchill in the 1980's
Julie's main employers after the NME were The Face and The Sunday Times, where she wrote about politics, pop, fashion and society. She was also their film critic from 1984 to 1986.
She admitted in 2008 to making up film reviews and having "skived" from screenings, and her ex-husband, Cosmo Landesman, has admitted to attending screenings on her behalf.
During the Falklands War in 1982, Burchill argued that the military dictatorship of General Galtieri represented a greater evil, and she wrote articles favourable to Margaret Thatcher.
Her sympathy for Thatcher helped in gaining a column for The Mail on Sunday, where in 1987 she went against the paper's usual political line by urging its readers to vote Labour.
Though she claims to like the Mail on Sunday, she said of journalists on the Daily Mail in 2008:
"Everybody knows that hacks are the biggest
bunch of adulterers, the most misbehaving
profession in the world – and you have people
writing for the Daily Mail writing as though they
are vicars ... moralising on single mothers and
whatnot."
-- Julie Burchill Into the 1990's
Burchill has spoken repeatedly and frankly of her relationship with drugs, writing that:
"I have put enough toot up my admittedly
sizeable snout to stun the entire Colombian
armed forces".
Julie also declared that:
"As one who suffered from chronic shyness
and a low boredom threshold ... I simply can't
imagine that I could have ever had any kind
of social life without cocaine, let alone have
reigned as Queen of the Groucho Club for a
good part of the '80's and '90's."
While Burchill has frequently drawn on her personal life for her writing, her personal life has been a subject of public comment, especially during this period, when "everything about her – her marriages, her debauchery, her children – seemed to be news."
In 1991, Burchill, Landesman and Toby Young established a short-lived magazine called Modern Review. It was launched under the slogan "Low culture for high brows."
The "Fax war" in 1993 between Burchill and author Camille Paglia, published in the Modern Review, gained much attention.
The magazine lasted until 1995, when Burchill and her colleagues fell out.
Julie met Charlotte Raven through the magazine, with whom she had a much publicised affair..
Julie said in an interview with Lynn Barber in 2004:
"I was only a lesbian for about
six weeks in 1995."
In a 2000 article she referred to:
"My very enjoyable six months
of lesbianism."
In 1995, Burchill wrote a column for The Times, titled "I'm a bitch, and I'm proud", in which she argued that women should reclaim the word 'bitch,' used as a slur. She wrote:
"It is the nature of these things that, in recent years,
the slighted have taken steps to repossess the slight;
thus, we have blacks who call each other 'nigger',
pansies who call each other 'queer' and upper-class
cretins who quite happily call each other 'Henry'."
In 1996, the actor, author, playwright and theatre director Steven Berkoff won a libel action against Burchill in respect of one of her articles, published in the Sunday Times newspaper, which included comments suggesting that he was "hideously ugly".
The judge ruled that Burchill's actions "held him to ridicule and contempt."
The late 1990's were a turbulent period for Burchill, as she has recalled:
"I got the heave-ho from my cushy billet at the Sunday
Express, where I later learned my nickname had been
"Caligula’s Horse" because my best friend – briefly the
editor – had appointed me.
For the first time in my brilliant career, no one wanted
to hire me. Somehow I limped into a column on the
doddering Punch – and then I got the boot from there,
too!
Surely I had reached the mythical rock bottom at last?"
-- Julie Burchill From 2000 to 2004
A user of cocaine, sharing in the activity in the company of Will Self among others, she was positive about her use in The Guardian in 2000 when defending actress Danniella Westbrook for Westbrook's loss of her nasal septum because of cocaine use.
Journalist Deborah Orr, who was then married to Self, was scathing in The Independent of Burchill and her article:
"She does not identify herself as a
cocaine addict, so she has no pity
for Ms Westbrook."
In revenge for Deborah's article, Burchill invented a supposedly long-standing crush on Will Self with the intention of upsetting Orr.
A letter in The Independent in June 2000 from the head waitress at the Groucho Club at the time, Deborah Bosley, caused a minor stir. Responding to an article by Yvonne Roberts, Bosley, at the time the partner of Richard Ingrams, a long standing critic of Burchill, stated that Burchill was merely "a fat bird in a blue mac sitting in the corner" when ensconced at the Groucho.
Burchill on Beckham (2001), a short book about David Beckham's life, career, and relationship with Victoria Beckham, attracted some of the worst notices since Jeffrey Archer's heyday.
One reviewer wrote:
"Burchill is to football writing what
Jimmy Hill is to feminist polemics."
According to Robert Winder in the New Statesman:
"The book fits in with Burchill's theme of praising
the working class; Burchill presents Beckham as
an anti-laddish symbol of old working-class values –
he reminds her of those proud men of her childhood,
'paragons of generosity, industry and chastity'."
Burchill's career was in trouble; she had been sacked by the revived Punch magazine. However she was appointed by Orr in 1998 to write a weekly column in the Guardian. Julie wrote for the Guardian for five years until 2003.
Burchill frequently thanked Deborah Orr for rescuing her. One of the pieces she wrote for The Guardian was in reaction to the murder of BBC TV presenter Jill Dando in 1999. She compared the shock of Dando's murder to finding a "tarantula in a punnet full of strawberries".
In 2002 she narrowly escaped prosecution for incitement to racial hatred following a Guardian column where she described Ireland as being synonymous with child molestation, Nazi-sympathising, and the oppression of women.
Burchill had expressed anti-Irish sentiment several times throughout her career, announcing in the London journal Time Out that:
"I hate the Irish, I think
they're appalling".
Julie supported the Iraq War, writing in The Guardian in 2003 that:
"I am in favour of a smaller war now
rather than a far worse war later."
She criticised those opposed to the war as "pro-Saddam apologists".
She justified her stance by stating that:
"This war is about freedom, justice – and oil.
Because Britain and the United States sell
weapons to Iraq, it is our responsibility to
redress our greed and ignorance by doing
the lion's share in getting rid of him".
Burchill left The Guardian acrimoniously, saying in an interview that they had offered her a sofa in lieu of a pay rise. She stated that she left the newspaper in protest at what she saw as its "vile anti-Semitism".
-- Julie Burchill From 2005 to 2009
Burchill was an early critic of the fashion for denigrating lower social classes as "chavs". In 2005, she presented the Sky One documentary In Defence of Chavs.
Julie commented in an interview for The Daily Telegraph at the time:
"Picking on people worse off than
you are isn't humour. It's pathetic,
it's cowardly and it's bullying."
She went on to say:
"It's all to do with self-loathing. ... The
middle classes can't bear to see people
having more fun, so they attack Chavs
for things like their cheap jewellery.
It's jealousy, because they secretly
know Chavs are better than them.
They're even better looking."
Following her departure from The Guardian, in early 2005 she moved to The Times, who were more willing to meet her demands, doubling her previous salary.
Shortly after starting her weekly column, she referred to George Galloway, but appeared to confuse him with former MP Ron Brown, reporting the misdeeds of Brown as those of Galloway:
"He incited Arabs to fight
British troops in Iraq."
She apologised in her column, although The Times paid damages thought to have been £50,000.
In 2006, The Times dropped her Saturday column, and arranged a more flexible arrangement with Burchill writing for the daily paper.
Later it emerged, during a Guardian interview published in 2008, that eventually she "was given the jolly old heave ho" by The Times, and paid off for the last year of her three-year contract, still receiving the £300,000 she would have earned if she had been obliged to provide copy.
Julie later described her columns for her abbreviated Times contract, which ended abruptly in 2007, thus:
"I was totally taking the piss. I didn't
spend much time on them and they
were such arrant crap."
In February 2006, she announced plans for a year's sabbatical from journalism, planning, among other things, to study theology. In June 2007, she announced that she would not be returning to journalism, but instead would concentrate on writing books and TV scripts and finally undertake a theology degree. However she returned to writing for The Guardian.
Burchill's co-written book with Chas Newkey-Burden, Not in My Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy, appeared in August 2008, and is dedicated "to Arik and Bibi" (Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu).
According to Gerald Jacobs, writing for The Jewish Chronicle in 2008:
"This book does not merely stand
up for Israel, it jumps up and down,
cheers and waves its arms".
The newspaper described her as "Israel's staunchest supporter in the UK media". When asked if Israel has any flaws, she responded:
"Yes. They are much too tolerant of
their freaking neighbours, much too
reasonable".
She declared in 2005, after Ariel Sharon's withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip, that:
"Israel is the only country I would
f**king die for. He's the enemy of
the Jews. Chucking his own people
off the Gaza; to me that's disgusting".
Besides writing occasional pieces for The Guardian, Julie wrote four articles for the centre-right politics and culture magazine Standpoint between July and October 2008.
-- Julie Burchill in the 2010's
At the end of June 2010 it was announced that Burchill would be writing exclusively for The Independent, contributing a weekly full-page column for the paper.
The connection lasted less than 18 months. Burchill wrote her last column for The Independent at the end of October 2011. Admitting that he had tried to recruit Burchill for The Sun in the 1980's, Roy Greenslade commented:
"My admittedly occasional reading of
her columns in recent years has left me
feeling that she realises her old schtick
is no longer working. She has run out
of steam – and sympathetic newspaper
editors".
Commenting on the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, Burchill wrote in The Independent:
"It would be wonderful to think that what replaces
Mubarak will be better. But here's the thing about
Middle Eastern regimes: they're all vile.
The ones that are 'friendly' are vile, and the ones
that hate us are vile.
Revolutions in the region have a habit of going
horribly wrong, and this may well have something
to do with the fact that Islam and democracy appear
to find it difficult to co-exist for long."
On the 13th. January 2013, Burchill wrote an article for The Observer defending Suzanne Moore after a reference by Moore to transsexuals had been greeted with a great deal of criticism.
In Burchill's view, it showed the "chutzpah" of transsexuals to have their "cock cut off and then plead special privileges as women".
There were a number of objections to her writing from members of the transgender community and non-transgender community alike. The editor of The Observer, John Mulholland, responded on the comments page to what he described as "many emails protesting about this piece" and stated that he would be looking into the issue.
Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone, formerly a junior Minister for Women and Equalities, called for the dismissal of Burchill and Mulholland in response to the piece. The article was withdrawn from the website the following day and replaced with a message from Mulholland, but reappeared on the Telegraph website.
On 18 January 2013, The Observer's Readers Editor Stephen Pritchard defended the decision to remove the article from the newspaper's website, quoting the editor who took that decision as saying:
"This clearly fell outside what we might consider
reasonable. The piece should not have been
published in that form. I don't want the Observer
to be conducting debates on those terms or with
that language. It was offensive, needlessly. We
made a misjudgment and we apologise for that".
Julie Burchill on Religion and Philo-Semitism
In her 1987 essay collection Damaged Gods: Cults and Heroes Reappraised, Burchill criticised what she called "the anti-Semitism of politicized American blacks" such as Jesse Jackson, who had referred to New York City as "Hymietown."
Burchill wrote:
"Imagine how the blacks would have gnashed
their diamond-studded teeth if a Jewish leader
had publicly referred to Harlem as 'Nigger-town'!".
In 1999, Burchill said she "found God", and had become a Lutheran and later a "self-confessed Christian Zionist".
In June 2007 Julie announced that she would undertake a theology degree, although she subsequently decided to do voluntary work instead as a way to learn more about Christianity.
In June 2009, The Jewish Chronicle reported that Burchill had become a Friend of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue and was again considering a conversion to Judaism.
According to The JC, she had attended Shabbat services for a month, and was studying Hebrew. Julie described herself as an "ex-Christian", pointing out that she had been pondering on her conversion since the age of 25.
Burchill said that:
"At a time of rising and increasingly vicious anti-
Semitism from both left and right, becoming
Jewish especially appeals to me. ... Added to the
fact that I admire Israel so much, it does seem to
make sense – assuming of course that the Jews
will have me".
Julie wrote in November 2012:
"The things I love about the Jews are: their
religion, their language and their ancient
country".
Burchill however clashed with Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah of the Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, and the Rabbi's lesbian partner, Jess Woods.
Among the reasons for their differences was Rabbi Sarah's defence of Muslims and her advocacy of the Palestinian cause. In Burchill's words, the rabbi "respects PIG ISLAM".
Rabbi Sarah told The Independent in September 2014:
"The problem is Burchill doesn’t have any
in-depth knowledge.
I can imagine her endlessly watching the film
Exodus with Paul Newman. She’s got a kind
of Hollywood view of Jews. You know, ‘Jews
are so clever, we’ve survived ...'."
In 2014, Burchill's crowdfunded book Unchosen: The Memoirs of a Philo-Semite was published. Tel Aviv-based writer Akin Ajayi in Haaretz thought:
"The reactionary solipsism of Unchosen
is far removed from the affectionate
warmness that a love of the Jewish people
can be".
Burchill's ex-husband, Cosmo Landesman, considered it to be:
"An exhilarating and exasperating mix
of the utterly brilliant and the totally
bonkers".
He observed that:
"There are plenty of Jews Julie doesn't love,
including the millions of Jews around the
world who have ever criticised Israel.
Her love is blind, deaf and dumb to such an
obvious contradiction".
Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman wrote:
"Burchill divides up the chosen people into
Good Jews (hardliners, Israelites) and Bad
Jews (liberal Jews) with the enthusiasm of
an anti-Semite. Hilariously, she sets herself
up as the Jewishness Police, railing against
Jews who are not Jewish enough".
In his review in The Independent, Keith Kahn-Harris described Unchosen as:
"Occasionally touching, sometimes bigoted
and sporadically hilarious, but it often
degenerates into EDL-style abuse that lacks
any redeeming wit."
In The Guardian Will Self wrote:
"I’m afraid I can’t really dignify her latest
offering with the ascription 'book', nor the
contents therein as 'writing' – rather they
are sophomoric, hammy effusions,
wrongheaded, rancorous, and pathetically
self-aggrandising."
-- Julie Burchill's Other Books and Television Programmes
Burchill has written novels and made television documentaries. Her lesbian-themed novel for teenagers Sugar Rush (2004) was adapted into a television drama series produced by Shine Limited for Channel 4. Lenora Crichlow's portrayal of the central character Maria Sweet inspired the 2007 sequel novel Sweet.
Burchill has made television documentaries about the death of her father from asbestosis in 2002 (BBC Four) and Heat magazine broadcast on Sky One in 2006.
-- Welcome to the Woke Trials
Welcome To The Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics was planned to be issued by Tabatha Stirling of Stirling Publishing in the summer of 2021 after being dropped by its original publisher following Burchill's defamatory tweets to Ash Sarkar.
On the 14th. March 2021, when referencing her new publisher, Burchill announced that, with Stirling:
"I've found someone
who's JUST LIKE ME."
Stirling is alleged to have written a series of articles for Patriotic Alternative as "Miss Britannia", describing her son's school as "a hellhole for sensible, secure White boys" and claimed:
"There is one member of staff who is
openly gay, and I mean RuPaul extra
gay".
On the 16th. March 2021, Burchill announced that she would not publish her book with Stirling Publishing, the same day she issued a public apology for libel and harassment of Sarkar. The book was subsequently published by Academica Press.
-- Responses
Burchill has described her own style as the writing equivalent of screaming and throwing things. For her novel Sugar Rush her publicist described her as "Britain's most famous and controversial journalist".
One of her most consistent themes is the championing of the working class against the middle class, and she has been particularly vocal in defending 'chavs'. According to Will Self:
"Burchill's great talent as a journalist is
to beautifully articulate the inarticulate
sentiments and prejudices of her
readers".
For Michael Bywater:
"Burchill's insights were, and remain,
negligible, on the level of a toddler
having a tantrum".
John Arlidge wrote in The Observer in 2002:
"If Burchill is famous for anything it is
for being Julie Burchill, the brilliant,
unpredictable, outrageously outspoken
writer who has an iconoclastic, usually
offensive, view on everything."
In November 1980, former Sex Pistols front man John Lydon gave an interview to Ann Louise Bardach in which he referred to Burchill and Tony Parsons as:
"Toss-bag journalists, desperately
trying to get in on something."
Lydon was incensed by Burchill and Parsons attributing his talent to his alleged use of amphetamines.
In October 1999, in an article for The Guardian, Julie wrote:
"That young men succeed in suicide more
often than girls isn't really the point. Indeed,
the more callous among us would say that
it was quite nice for young men finally to
find something that they're better at than
girls".
After a previous occasion when Burchill wrote "suicides should be left to get on with it", she "received a small number of letters from people whose sons had killed themselves".
In 2002, her life was the subject of a one-woman West End play, Julie Burchill is Away, by Tim Fountain, with Burchill played by her friend Jackie Clune.
A sequel by Fountain, Julie Burchill: Absolute Cult, followed in 2014, with Lizzie Roper in the central role.
In 2003, Burchill was ranked number 85 in Channel 4's poll of 100 Worst Britons. The poll was inspired by the BBC series 100 Greatest Britons, though it was less serious in nature. The aim was to discover the "100 worst Britons we love to hate".
The poll specified that the nominees had to be British, alive and not currently in prison or pending trial. In 2005, on the 25th. anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, she told The Guardian:
"I don't remember where I was, but I was
really pleased he was dead, as he was a
wife-beater, gay-basher, anti-Semite and
all-round bully-boy."
In the essay "Born Again Cows" published in Damaged Gods (1987), she wrote:
"When the sex war is won, prostitutes
should be shot as collaborators for their
terrible betrayal of all women."
On the 6th. June 2021, and shortly after the announcement of the birth of Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor, the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Burchill tweeted:
"What a missed opportunity. They could
have called it Georgina Floydina!”
This was a reference to George Floyd. Her comments were widely condemned, with racial equality activist Shola Mos-Shogbamimu stating:
"Lilibet is referred to as 'IT'. The utter
disrespect & dehumanisation of
#HarryandMeghan children because
of their proximity to ‘Blackness’ is Racist."
Actress Kelechi Okafor wrote:
"Likening baby Lilibet to George Floyd
is to hone in on the fact she isn't fully
white...She refers to Lilbet as 'it' even
though it has been announced that the
baby is a girl and she could've addressed
her as such...Disgusting scenes."
On the 8th. June, via her Facebook account, Burchill announced that she had been sacked by The Daily Telegraph as a result of her online comments.
-- Libel
In 2020, Burchill posted a series of defamatory tweets of Ash Sarkar, which included claims that she condones paedophilia and is supportive of Islamist terrorism.
Burchill called on her Facebook followers to "wade in on Twitter" against "the Islamists" and the "nonces". As a result of the comments, her publisher, Little, Brown Book Group, cancelled the scheduled publication of Welcome to the Woke Trials, stating that her comments about Islam were “not defensible from a moral or intellectual standpoint”.
In March 2021, after being sued for libel and harassment, Burchill retracted her comments, issued a full apology and paid substantial damages to Sarkar, including her legal costs.
Burchill stated:
"I should not have sent these tweets,
some of which included racist and
misogynist comments regarding Ms
Sarkar's appearance and her sex life."
She further apologised for "liking" posts calling on Sarkar to kill herself, and promised to refrain from any further harassment of Sarkar.
-- Julie Burchill's Personal Life
Burchill married Tony Parsons (whom she met at NME) in 1979 at the age of 20. She left Parsons three years later, leaving behind a son, which was followed by years of rancour in the media, described in 2002 as "a steady stream of vitriol in both directions."
Julie had claimed to have persevered with the "sexual side" of their marriage "by pretending that my husband was my friend Peter York".
Her relationships, particularly with Parsons, have featured in her work; Parsons later wrote that:
"It's like having a stalker. I don't
understand her fascination with
someone whom she split up with
15 years ago."
Immediately after her relationship with Parsons, Burchill married Cosmo Landesman, with whom she also had a son. She split from Landesman in 1992. The sons from her marriages with Parsons and Landesman lived with their fathers after the separations.
She married for a third time in 2004, to Daniel Raven, around 13 years her junior, and the brother of her former lover Charlotte Raven. She wrote of the joys of having a "toyboy" in her Times column in 2010.
Fellow NME journalist/author Paul Wellings wrote about their friendship in his book I'm A Journalist...Get Me Out of Here:
"She has written about her lesbian relationships,
and declared that "I would never describe myself
as 'heterosexual', 'straight' or anything else.
Especially not 'bisexual' (it sounds like a sort of
communal vehicle missing a mudguard).
I like 'spontaneous' as a sexual description".
In 2009 Julie said that she was only attracted to girls in their 20's, and since she was now nearly 50:
"I really don't want to be an
old perv. So best leave it".
Julie has lived in Brighton and Hove since 1995, and a book on her adopted home town titled Made in Brighton (Virgin Books) was published in April 2007.
Her house in Hove was sold (and demolished for redevelopment as high-density flats) around 2005 for £1.5 million, of which she has given away £300,000, citing Andrew Carnegie:
"A man who dies rich, dies shamed."
Burchill's second son, Jack Landesman, died by suicide in June 2015, aged 29. In an article for The Sunday Times Magazine, Julie wrote of his inability over many years to experience pleasure and the serious mental health issues from which he suffered.
Mojo - created by Sumit Sarkar
"Artist Sumit Sarkar's work is inspired by Sci-fi, especially The Transformers. He has thus created a robotic version of the Snowdog. But what does he transforms into…?"
Dhaka, July 16 -The car of Ganajagaran Manch spokesperson Imran H Sarkar came under egg attack on Sunday while he was leaving Dhaka court after hearing on a case filed for his derogatory remarks about Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, reports UNB.
A group of men threw eggs towards his car at the...
thebangladeshtoday.com/2017/07/eggs-hurled-imran-sarkars-...
Married at the tender age of 13 and becoming a mother at 14 Neetu Sarkar’s story is truly inspirational. She took up wrestling to support her family financially. She started training at a facility in Rohtak and her hard work paid off soon. She won her first bronze medal at a national event and after that there was no looking back, she has won medals at many national and international events. #WomenAchievers
Hello friends, today we will talk about Alivia Sarkar Wiki, Biography, Age, Parents, Boyfriend, Career, Net Worth & More
Alivia Sarkar Wiki - Alivia Sarkar is a famous Indian Actress and Model. Alivia Sarkar works in the Bengali film and tv serial. Alivia Sarkar is known for playing the female antagonist Malini Sen in Joy and Tia in Seemarekha.
Alivia Sarkar Wiki, Biography, Age
Alivia Sarkar's birth took place in Durgapur, West Bengal, India on 20 May 1993. Currently, Alivia lives in Durgapur, West Bengal, India. She follows religion is Hindu. Alivia Sarkar is a famous Indian Actress and Model. Alivia Sarkar works in the Bengali film and tv serial. Alivia Sarkar is known for playing the female antagonist Malini Sen in Joy and Tia in Seemarekha.
Quick Biography
Name
Alivia Sarkar
Profession
Actress & Model
Personal Information
Date Of Birth
20 May 1993
Birth Place
Durgapur, West Bengal, India
Nationality
Indian
Father
Asim Sarkar
Mother
Seema Sarkar
Siblings
Sankhadeep Sarkar
Age
29 years old
Marital Status
Marital Status
Unmarried
Boyfriend
Not Known
Physical Appearance
Height
5 feet 6 inches
Weight
56 Kg
Eyes Color
Dark Brown
Hair Color
Dark Brown
Alivia Sarkar Parents, Siblings
Alivia Sarkar's father’s Name is Asim Sarkar and her mother’s name is Seema Sarkar. Alivia Sarkar has a brother whose name is Sankhadeep Sarkar.
Alivia Sarkar Boyfriend
Alivia Sarkar's marital status is Unmarried.
.
It is the Poor and CPI(M)'s Own Erstwhile Supporters Who Are on the 12.04.07.
.
Warpath Against the Rightist Policies of the CPI(M) Govt in West Bengal.
.
Ø "Saali, Jomi rakhbi?Jomi debi na?" - "Bitch, you'll keep your land, will you? Won't give it up?" - CPI(M) goons and policemen as they.
beat up and raped the women at Nandigram (as recounted by Prof. Tanika Sarkar in a public meeting on campus on 10 April).
.
Ø "CPI(M) cadres keep threatening us - `Either come over to our side and join the CPI(M) camp, or we'll cut you to pieces'. We know we'll all die,.
but we'd rather die than give up our land." - Villagers of Nandigram to Prof. Tanika Sarkar.
.
Ø "The reign of terror is far from over in Nandigram...women begged us to stay with them, since there is bombing on their huts by the CPI(M).
.
supporters every night....
.
Ø One woman lying on her stomach in hospital keeps weeping, recalling how a child who sheltered in her pallu was snatched away and cut into.
pieces before her eyes. Another woman lies with her buttocks hanging from her body, chopped off by a sword. Hundreds of people have serious.
injuries to their eyes; some have lost sight permanently, due to the tear gas. Normal tear gas does not cause such long-lasting sight damage,.
so doctors suspect that some other chemical substance was used.....
.
Ø We have never seen a village so denuded of children...people keep recounting images of children being drowned in ponds or beaten like clothes.
upon the ground...we can only hope it's a collective hallucination and that the children will all be found, but we fear that it may really be true....
.
Ø People saw trucks from which limbs were dangling, being taken away...no one knows what happened to those bodies.....
.
Ø There is as yet no official notice to the effect that the SEZ is to be shifted away from Nandigram; only the verbal assurance of the Chief Minister....
Not a single CPI(M) leader who claim we are wrong about the reality of Nandigram has bothered to visit a single injured person in Nandigram..
There is no compensation being offered.....
.
Ø The CBI enquiry also seems to have been suppressed; we may never really know the whole truth about what happened on March 14.....
.
Ø It is true that some CPI(M) people were chased out of the village by the villagers who were resisting land grab...but there can be no comparison.
between the nature of `violence' on both sides. On the one hand was a resistance of poor peasants, on the other was the might of the state,.
.
ruthlessly terrorising people to re-establish CPI(M) control over the area...." - excerpts from Prof. Tanika Sarkar's account of her visit to.
.
Nandigram, in a public meeting on 10 April..
What a Joke: The Killers of Nandigram are Posing as `Apostles' of `Non-Violence'!.
.
In its leaflet of 10 April, SFI has tried to allege that `Naxal' students vandalised Jadavpur University in an attempt to turn the University into a.
`Free Zone like Nandigram'..
.
All those familiar with West Bengal know the truth: that SFI routinely does not allow elections to be held in most lesser known.
colleges. But in prestigious institutes where they cannot avoid a contest because of the public gaze, they indulge in violent.
retaliation whenever defeated in elections. Be it Jadavpur or Presidency College, this is the story EVERY year..
.
Students belonging to "We The Independent" (WTI), who won the elections in Jadavpur University's science faculty, tell the facts: that their victory.
march was attacked by the members of Karmachari Sansad and two teachers, namely Prof Deepak Kesh of Mathematics department and Prof.
Arghya Deb of Physics department. Among the injured students who were admitted in MR Bangur hospital were Surajit Sarkar, Someswar Chandra,.
Sourav Guha, Sourav Mitra, Suman Mazumdar and Proto Banerjee. The March was attacked when it reached the Science Club, near the engineering.
faculty canteen and adjacent to the office of the JU Karmachari Samsad, the union of non-teaching employees loyal to the CPM. This is the same.
Science Club which SFI claims was vandalised and destroyed by `Naxals'!.
.
Proloy Kumar Saha, a WTI leader and outgoing general secretary of the Science Faculty Students' Union said "They kicked and punched us and also.
assaulted us with iron rods, sticks and bricks" ... "Seven students, including myself, were injured. Someshwar Chandra fractured his hand and Surajit.
Sarkar sustained a neck injury. Among the others injured are Sourav Guha, Proto Banerjee, Sourav Mitra and Suman Majumdar"..
.
Why is SFI comparing Jadavpur to Nandigram ?.
.
SFI's agenda is clear: in the name of Jadavpur, they are actually trying to distort the reality of Nandigram - and propagate the lie that CPI(M).
people are the real victims in Nandigram which has been turned into a `Free Zone' by Naxals!.
.
What SFI is refusing to answer is: how come the `Naxals' and `Opposition' suddenly managed to storm so many CPI(M) bastions - from.
North Bengal tea gardens to Singur to Nandigram? How come workers rose up to defy CPI(M) diktats from Hind Motors to Haldia Petro-.
chemicals? How come students refuse to digest SFI's lies - from JNU to Jadavpur?.
.
The truth is - CPI(M) is squarely failing to convince its own mass base of its by now naked neo-liberal agenda. Having failed in its project.
of ensuring quiet takeover by Salems and Tatas, CPI(M) has turned the guns on its O WN people, branding them `anarchic'..
.
CPI(M) keeps talking of the fate of its supporters "chased out" of Nandigram. What does the CPI(M) represent to the people of Nandigram - are.
they not seen as agents of corporate land grab? Isn't it natural for people under threat of losing hearth and home, to resist such eviction.
by opposing those acting as agents of corporates? Isn't this the legacy of Left movements and peasant movements, which people who used to.
be CPI(M)'s own mass base are upholding with their resistance in the fields, factories and streets?.
.
Those in CPI(M)'s "relief camps" are being used as a showcase item by the leadership dancing to the dictates of corporates, to hide CPI(M)'s.
own offensive against the poor peasantry of Nandigram. Such politics of pitting one section of the poor against the other is reprehensible..
.
The anguish of CPI(M)'s former supporters at CPI(M)'s betrayal was best voiced in the public meeting of 10 April by Tanika Sarkar and Praful Bidwai.
who declared the present situation to be the greatest crisis in the Left movement of independent India, where a Govt.while calling itself `Left' is.
pumping bullets on the poor peasants, worker and students to facilitate corporate land grab! Will the SFI respond with humility and serious.
introspection - or with ugly arrogance and brute force? Unfortunately, be it Jadavpur or JNU, the SFI seems to be choosing the latter..
.
Isolate the Defenders of Corporate Land Grab and Corporate-Dictated Killings!.
.
sd/-Awadhesh, President, AISA, JNU sd/-Mobeen Alam,Vice-Pesident, AISA, JNU.
..
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""~\>;.....~ ......._,.,.,_~,L._........-..,.., " I .
.
......,_ .
' .
Join Public Meeting·.
r .
Unfolding BeaUties of,A:GhQhbe Din" z Challenges speakerto the Idea_ of India Pranay Krishna .
Allahabad University, Secy.Jan Sanskriti Manch,.
10 Aug Tonight Mahi-Mandavi Mess 9.30pm .
FormerJNUSU President----------.
Modi's 'Achcche Din' Dream Turns Into 'Bure Din' Nightmare The Modi Government came to power with the promise of 'achchhe din'~ and it hasn't taken very long for that promise to.
turn into the nightmare of extremely 'bure din.' .
Modi Sarkar or UPA-111 ? On the counts of price rise, corruption, corporate bailouts and neglect of basic rights, there.
isn't much to choose between the UPA Govt and the Modi Sarkar. If anything, Modi Sarkar is pursuing the same anti-peoplepolicies far more aggressively than the earlier regime" In an unethical move just before the budget, Modi sarkar announced.
steep hike in railway fares. Remember it was the same Modi, who, while in Opposition, had demanded roll back of raU farehikes by the UPA Govt! Prices of petrol, diesel, LPG were hiked twice in a month. like a string of UPA Budgets before it, theModi Sarkar'.
s budget also wrote off Rs 5. 72 lakh crore worth of corporate taxes. The SIT on black money was announced.
::""*":;*' .
with much fanfare, but later the Modi Sarkar pleaded that ther~ is no list of Indians with accounts in Swiss banks. Thenormally talkative Modi is silent on the Vyapam scam in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and the CAG report slamming the.
Gujarat Govt for massive inappropriate benefits to the Reliance and Ad ani corporations. The highlight of the Modi Budgetwas the allocation of Rs 200 crore for a single statue, much more than the peanuts allocated for major health and.
education initiatives, or for women's safety! Again following in its predecessors' footsteps, the Modi Sarkar 'leaked' an'intelligence report' branding various people's movements as foreign funded threats to 'development'. Before elections.
Modi's slogan was: uBahut Ho Gaya Mahangai Ki Maar, Ab Ki Saar Modi Sarkar!" Now, ModiSarkar's shameJess explanation for.
the problems, intensifying by the day; is "Peechhle Baar UPA Sarkar"!!I! .
,. So, all in all, people are quite right in calling the Modi Sarkc:r-UPA Ill ! Except that the Modi Govt also has los-t no time in.
pushing the communal fascist agenda. .
.
Orchestrated Communal Moves :The Modi victory was flagged offby communal mob violence by saffron brigades.
in several places: these jnclude communal violence and minority-baiting by a BJP victory p-rocession in Karnataka, commtmalviolence in Ahmedabad on the eve ofModi's swearing-in, the attack by ABVP on a seminar held at the AN Sinha Institute inPatna, and most disturbing of all, the killing of Mohsin Sadiq by a Hindu Rashtra Sena lynch mob in Pune. A Goa minister.
;;,.
Dipak Dh·avalikar declared, 11Modi will develop India into a Hindu state." The very next day, Goa Deputy Chief Minister D'.
Souza went on to add, "India is a Hindu country. It is Hindustan. All Indians in Hindustan are Hindus, including I -I am aChristian Hindu"I .
Simultaneously, the communal cauldron has been set boiling jn UP. In a series of investigat ive reports, Indian Express has noted.
600 plus instances of cc;>mmunal tension since lok Sabha polls, mostly around those 12 constituencies, where by~poll~ are .
_,::..
shortly due. Indian Express has documented how "fighting kidsto dhaba bills" have become pretexts for flaring up of communalpqfarisation and potential riots. It is also being reported that a vicious campaign tJas been lauched to tie..Rakhis to lakhs of.
Hindu men, asking them to pledge to protect their sisters from Muslim men and "love jehad." The VHP has been running a helplineurging Hindus to approach them " if your daughter is being harassed by Muslim boys." And a khap panchayat in Muzaffarnagar.
:,~'~!·~ .
has imposed a ban on mobile phones and }eans .,.for girfs, claiming that these result i·n·'eve-teasing'. .
Travesty of Investigation and Justice: Two IPS offic~rs, Dinesh MN and Abhay Chudasama accused in the Sohrabuddin.
..~..... .
fake encounter, !:lave been reinstated inthe job by the Rajasthan and;Gujarat government govt respectively. In a similar manner,.
.
G l Singhal, an accused IPS offic_er in the Ishrat fake encounter case was poste-d to the state reserve police in Gandhinagar after.
he was granted ~~fault bail! To cap it all, tainted AmitShah ha,s,"been.elevated as BJP president and all s~eps are being taken to.
i secure immunity for the perpetrators in the Snoopgate case! .
.
·!: ~. .
False-Framing and MinorcityWitc:h-Hunt Nailed : !n judgement after judgementthe Supreme Cot:Jrt has n~iled ~own.
~:: >~~-.·_;~ .
repeated ~ases of false-framing and witch--hunt ofminorities bythe Guiarat Govt. Recently, on July 17, 2014, the Supr~meCou·rt, in a landmark judgement, hasacquitted all the 11persons who were convicted and sentenced by a TADA Coort in October ~008.
,.. .
,... . ., for alleged involvement in the 'twin blas~s' Surat tlomb!Jiasts case of 1993. The j'i;dgementis significant as the Gujarat governm.~ntwas looking for enhanced punishment for those in jail! Not too long back, on 16 May 2014, Supreme Court ha~ pass~ a similar .f .
damning judgement ripping ~partGujarat P...olice in th~200? Akshardh~mterrorcase. While acquittingall'the 6 accused· (including 3 who we~esentenced to death) in theAkshardliah\ case,"the~upremeCourt slammedtheG~JaratP~liceforthe incompetenceand "perversityin condu~ingthis case atvariousstages,.right from the·investiJation levelto thegranti.ngof~a~ctionby .the state government to prosecute the accused persons under POTA." The apex court·added, "We, being the apex tourt l:aiiJ .
.
.
When People Unitedly Protest Against Corporate Land Grab, .
f .
CPI(M)'s Trick is to Play the Communal Cordi In Nandigram, since most of the protesting farmers happen to be Muslims, CPI(M) chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya rushed to allege that the protests are being fanned by the communal Jamaat-e-Uiema-i-Hind. Nothtng ' can be more dangerous than such communal stereotyping.Ciear1y, CPI(M) -SFI tried to invoke lslamophobia to whip up deep-seated majoritarian anti-MusHm prejudices to delegitimlse the fanners' struggle and prevent people from feeling sympathy with the protestors.It is really a shame that a setf declared leftist party is now resorting-to1hts oft repeated Minoos COlTlffiU.MI tactic of lndian ruUng class. SFI accuses AJSA of equaYng CP1{M) and BJP. Welt, not only AISA but even CPI(M)'s sympathlsers lfke Prof. lciiNt iarbr and~CPI(M) Finance MlnJster of West BengaiAshok Mitra are highly dfsappotnted to find ·CAfMt speaklftg SJP's langu.aga, branding pmtestors as 'outsiders', bran~n!J Muslim peasants tn Nandtgram es 'communal' and &Wn provfdklg the coconut and pf#/arl for a 'bhoeml puja' ritual ~y Tata at Stngur (see Ashok Mitra'~ articte on BhoomJ Puja r.n TelegraplJ, 2Feb.Q7).Jhese observers are disappointed and shocked at CPI(M) ,---b.orro-wmg from saffron-speak, precisely because they do natequate It with BJP and expect it to stand by secular norms I CPI(M)'s Ter·ror Speal< .
'Repressron is Democrncy' .
Noted Historian Sumit Sarkar, after his visit to Singur wrote .
'The work ofthe police is not to make drawings or {"A Question Marked In Red in Indian Express, 9 Jan. 07) .
teach in schools and colle.ges. The police are the " ... there is no doubt that the vast bulk of the villagers we instrument ofrepression. It is for the gove.mmeot met are opposed to t.be take-over of land and most arc to d«ide whom tbey shall repress. refusing compensation. .
Some forces are trying to indulge in violence and ...Three, we found much evidence of force being employed, .
create disorder fOr lowly and narrow political interest particularly on the nights of September 25 and December 2." aftd hriAg ntiRatioft to West BeogaJ. It is democracy .
" ... What the villagers repeatedly alleged was that along with .
to repras tite8e fetus 1ft the interests ami security .
the police, and it seems more than the police, party.
Gfdie peofJie oftlte state."-Benoy Kooar, CPI(M) .
activists, whom the villagers call 'cadres' -which bas.
Kisan Sabh.a leader, People's Democracy, ](}Dec. satUy become a term of abuse -did the major part of the.
0' .
beating up.." .
"Human rights are only for citizens... police must .
be merciless in dealing with ultras"-Buddbadeb A report by the West Bengal Govt Home Ministry itself admits addressing agathering on World Human Rights Day that what happened at Nandigram was the r~sult of CPI(M) (IOIJec. 96) peasant supporters themselves going against the party because .
.' When Medba Patk.ar visits here next, we'll ask of the land grab. So the protestors were not just 'insiders' to our woell cadres to sltow her their backsides'_ Nandigram, they were also 'insiders' to CPI(M) itself till CPf(M) CentralCommittee MemberBeo~ooar. recently!(Anandabazar Patrika, 2 Feb. 07) .
~Jan07) ~' ;~;:=-::...t=-=~~~~o..!:v~m~eo~tL!linL!W!.Esi.t.!B~e:!ln~alL_.!,;C:!jit~i~e!!nst''l.P:!!a!!_nef.}_l.
(See Anandabazar Patrika, -<.,.,v-~-: .
ln dlisseeson, maeysoakesoomeoutofth.eirboles; 'The State Govt.. alleged that there was a communal overtone .
you mast mke dM flag (jluuula) offfrom the sticks to the struggle ofthe people but we found remarkable communal (dtmdtr) and 1111e the sticks to crush the snakes' ·ru th d .
um.J on egroun and that people's protests cut across political .
buds. -CPI(M) Central Committee Member differences." Suryakaota Misllra, referring to the protestors at Singur and NaAdi.gram "We found the people's fury was genuine. It was partly due to .
lack of transparency. They were not part of any discussion.
(See Anandabazor Patrika, JCJJan 07) .
a?ut maners that concerned their lives and livelihood. Singur.
"Central Committee member Benoy Konar, asked .
villagers learnt ofthe land acquisitton for the Tata factory from .
about Profs. Sumit and Tanika Sarkar's visit to Singur .
newspapers. They claim that holders of360 acres have refused .
and Nandigram: " I can't do anything if the .
to accept cash compensation. There is no land for 111 nd .
historians decide to go back in time. ....Their views .
rehabilitation, only cashcompensation and that too much below .
are anti-industry" -Indian Express, 31 Jan 07 .
the actual price"( Hindu, 04Feb.07) .
Decide which side you are on... The side of truth or the side of terror! .
!he 'deba~e· is not a petty quarrel between AISA and SFI . It is a question of taking sides '" .th~ rogmg battle between evicted peasants and terrorised poor struggling for survival on obne srde, and corpora:es grabbing land backed by the might of State on the other. It is a attle between the r1ghts of aam aadmi and 'special' 'foreign' enclaves of preferred people on the other. SFI and CPI(M) have show.n ~~t the> stand for the privileges aud profit ofcorporates, not the struggles ofthe povr. SFJ already showed th1s m J!!' drfcn~o.fthe Nestle Outlet in JNU -and once again they are conducting a .
$'f:7-~IT:J::Ir.3~~~~.-;,~"""'s~mllarshameless campaign. .
SCRAP SEZ I Resist Corporate Land Grab .
Nould SH Explain: .
.
WHY did its MPs vote to PASS the SEZ Act 2005 in Parliament? .
.
.
Does CPI(M) believe tlaat it is necessary to create 'special' zones of 'FOREIGN TERRITORY' oa Iatlian soil ia order to promote 'iDdastrialilatio'! .
.
.
Does SFI believe tlaat iadutriaiisatl011 is NOT p111iltle witlaet civi-l WI perates a 'special' licease te Evade taxes and ..wt, Evict pauu u4 &nit laiMII, Euleit laiMr! .
.
.
Thus having PASSED the SEZ Act ift Parli1m1Rt; CPI(M}SFI, in the face ofmassive people's protests, is now proposin~ SOAte 'liMe. I lAta' 1hat are nothing btrt eyewash. .
.
.
WoukiiR Explain : .
Why are they NOT ready to demand SCRAPPING ofthe SEZ Act, why do they merely demand amendments? Ifyou don't demand scrapping of SEZ Act, you are tk(oullng it! .
SITs Pro-Corporate Saga ...From Nestle in JNU to Nandigram in '\'Vest Bengal SFI brought in the Nestle Outlet in JNU; and when students protested against it, SF! proposed to allow Nestle to stay with some ·restricted" rules. But JNU students refused to accept an MNC Outlet that snatched away the livelihoo~.of those who run dhabas-and kicked Nestle's Outlet off the campus! .
In the same way, CPI(M) MPs in Parliament quietly voted for the shameful SEZ Act. But when farm£rs' protests at Kakinada, DQdri, Navi Mumbai, Singor and ~igramexposed SEZs as a·national shame, a-I(M) started demanding ·GfTlendments" to ·improv£ Sffi on the lines of tM 8engal model. .
SFI claims SEZs are a necessary evil forced upon us by the Coagress-BJP etc, aad aU we ca de is to '..etl' theiR Mightly. But if this is the case, how does SFI explain the fact that the CPI(M) Govemmcftt's 'Doiag Basiaese ia Beagal' brochure distrib!lted amongst industrialists proadly a4vertises tlaat "West ~is oae of tile early States te implement the s~z COIICept..." and tllat West Beagal laas passed its ...... SEZ Act Ia l0ft3 .
itself? Let us call SFI's bluff -Let us take a look at their proposed 'amend~~ats', and compare them -both with the Cetral SEZ Act li8S, aAd with the West Bengal SEZ Act 1003 and the WB Goverameat's "Doing Ruiess" brochure. .
.
r;-::-:---· ' .._.
~-.ns .
.
--ACT. .
·I n:a;u~o~ I.
r I I ' IN . t .
WEST.BF.NiAL I J .
.
.,.. .
. . }.
j. .
I ;_ . .
.
Document Of PRETENSIONS in JNU .
Pumose Of SEZ .
.
CPI(Ml-SFI's Proposed "Amendments" : NilCentral SEZ Act 2005 "the promotion of exports CPUM)-SFI's Practicing RealityCPI(M)-Sfl's Proposed "Amendment&" : Nil West Bengal SEZ Act Also deemed to be 'foreign territory'.
CPI(M)-SFI's Practicing Reality Actual Implications.
.
West Bengal SEZ Act's(2003) stated purpose: "to accelerate Declaring corporate enclaves to be 'foreign territory'economic reforms· amounts to an assault on India's sovereignty, and Actual Implications .
people's inalienable rights.This (and the following two CPI(M) claims its amendments will put the brakes on neo-liberal points which are linked to it) is the most dangerous economic reforms, but two years before the Central Act, they aspect of the SEZ Act, which the CPI(M) does not passed their own SEZ Act in Bengal with the self-proclaimed even try to 'amend'. .
purpose to "accelerate reforms·! .
'FonlllTeiTitiiJ' central SEZ Act 2005 : Section 49 empowers the Government to exemptanyoraU SEZs ftom the operation of.
Central SEZ Act 2005 any central law through a notification. Further, Section 48SEZs declared to be 'Foreign Territory' on Indian soil .
.
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The Postcard
A Norman Series postcard that was published by Shoesmith & Etheridge Ltd. of Hastings. The card was posted in Hastings using a 2½d. stamp on Friday the 3rd. July 1959. The postmark states:
'Express Good Wishes
by Greetings Telegrams'
The card was sent to:
W. & B. Dunlop,
41, Hyndland Road,
Glasgow,
Scotland.
The message on the divided back was as follows:
"Having quite a nice
holiday.
The weather has been
variable but is improving
now.
It is not as warm as I
would have liked it.
Hope you are feeling
better.
Love from
Lil Pollock."
Sounds like the weather was awful.
South American Success at Wimbledon
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 3rd. July 1959, for the first time, a Wimbledon tennis champion came from South America.
Alex Olmedo, a United States citizen from Peru, won the men's singles title, beating Australia's Rod Laver 6–1, 6–3 and 6–4.
The next day, Maria Bueno of Brazil ended a 21-year streak of U.S. titles, defeating American Darlene Hard, 6–4, 6–3, to win the women's singles.
Julie Burchill
The day also marked the birth in Frenchay, Bristol of the British journalist Julie Burchill.
Beginning as a staff writer at the New Musical Express at the age of 17, she has since contributed to newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times and The Guardian.
Her writing, which was described by The Observer in 2002 as "outrageously outspoken" and "usually offensive," has been the subject of legal action.
Burchill is also a novelist, and her 2004 novel Sugar Rush was adapted for television.
-- Julie Burchill - The Early Years
Julie Burchill was educated at Brislington Comprehensive School in Bristol. Her father was a Communist union activist who worked in a distillery, and her mother had a job in a cardboard box factory.
In 2010, Burchill wrote of her parents:
"I don't care much for families. I adored
my mum and dad, but to be honest I don't
miss them much now they're dead."
Three years later she contradicted this when she said she couldn't return to Bristol, as every time she heard someone speaking with her parents' Bristol accent it would remind her how much she missed them.
Julie did not attend university, leaving the A-levels she had started a few weeks earlier in order to begin writing for the New Musical Express (NME).
-- Julie Burchill's Early Career
Julie began her writing career at the NME in 1976 at the age of 17 after responding (coincidentally with her future husband Tony Parsons) to an advert in that paper.
The ad was seeking "hip young gunslingers" to write about the then-emerging punk movement. She gained the job by submitting a "eulogy" of Patti Smith's Horses.
She later wrote that at the time she only liked black music, and said:
"When I actually heard a punk record,
I thought, 'Oh my Lord! This is not music,
this is just shouting'."
Indeed, she managed to decry the first self-released punk album in the UK, The Outsiders' Calling on Youth featuring Adrian Borland:
"Apple-cheeked Ade has a complexion
that would turn a Devon milkmaid green
with envy."
Fortunately for her, as she later said:
"Punk was over in two years. That was
the only damn good thing about it."
She left her position at the NME at the age of 20, and started freelancing in order to be able to write about other subjects, although she has never completely given up writing about pop music.
-- Julie Burchill in the 1980's
Julie's main employers after the NME were The Face and The Sunday Times, where she wrote about politics, pop, fashion and society. She was also their film critic from 1984 to 1986.
She admitted in 2008 to making up film reviews and having "skived" from screenings, and her ex-husband, Cosmo Landesman, has admitted to attending screenings on her behalf.
During the Falklands War in 1982, Burchill argued that the military dictatorship of General Galtieri represented a greater evil, and she wrote articles favourable to Margaret Thatcher.
Her sympathy for Thatcher helped in gaining a column for The Mail on Sunday, where in 1987 she went against the paper's usual political line by urging its readers to vote Labour.
Though she claims to like the Mail on Sunday, she said of journalists on the Daily Mail in 2008:
"Everybody knows that hacks are the biggest
bunch of adulterers, the most misbehaving
profession in the world – and you have people
writing for the Daily Mail writing as though they
are vicars ... moralising on single mothers and
whatnot."
-- Julie Burchill Into the 1990's
Burchill has spoken repeatedly and frankly of her relationship with drugs, writing that:
"I have put enough toot up my admittedly
sizeable snout to stun the entire Colombian
armed forces".
Julie also declared that:
"As one who suffered from chronic shyness
and a low boredom threshold ... I simply can't
imagine that I could have ever had any kind
of social life without cocaine, let alone have
reigned as Queen of the Groucho Club for a
good part of the '80's and '90's."
While Burchill has frequently drawn on her personal life for her writing, her personal life has been a subject of public comment, especially during this period, when "everything about her – her marriages, her debauchery, her children – seemed to be news."
In 1991, Burchill, Landesman and Toby Young established a short-lived magazine called Modern Review. It was launched under the slogan "Low culture for high brows."
The "Fax war" in 1993 between Burchill and author Camille Paglia, published in the Modern Review, gained much attention.
The magazine lasted until 1995, when Burchill and her colleagues fell out.
Julie met Charlotte Raven through the magazine, with whom she had a much publicised affair..
Julie said in an interview with Lynn Barber in 2004:
"I was only a lesbian for about
six weeks in 1995."
In a 2000 article she referred to:
"My very enjoyable six months
of lesbianism."
In 1995, Burchill wrote a column for The Times, titled "I'm a bitch, and I'm proud", in which she argued that women should reclaim the word 'bitch,' used as a slur. She wrote:
"It is the nature of these things that, in recent years,
the slighted have taken steps to repossess the slight;
thus, we have blacks who call each other 'nigger',
pansies who call each other 'queer' and upper-class
cretins who quite happily call each other 'Henry'."
In 1996, the actor, author, playwright and theatre director Steven Berkoff won a libel action against Burchill in respect of one of her articles, published in the Sunday Times newspaper, which included comments suggesting that he was "hideously ugly".
The judge ruled that Burchill's actions "held him to ridicule and contempt."
The late 1990's were a turbulent period for Burchill, as she has recalled:
"I got the heave-ho from my cushy billet at the Sunday
Express, where I later learned my nickname had been
"Caligula’s Horse" because my best friend – briefly the
editor – had appointed me.
For the first time in my brilliant career, no one wanted
to hire me. Somehow I limped into a column on the
doddering Punch – and then I got the boot from there,
too!
Surely I had reached the mythical rock bottom at last?"
-- Julie Burchill From 2000 to 2004
A user of cocaine, sharing in the activity in the company of Will Self among others, she was positive about her use in The Guardian in 2000 when defending actress Danniella Westbrook for Westbrook's loss of her nasal septum because of cocaine use.
Journalist Deborah Orr, who was then married to Self, was scathing in The Independent of Burchill and her article:
"She does not identify herself as a
cocaine addict, so she has no pity
for Ms Westbrook."
In revenge for Deborah's article, Burchill invented a supposedly long-standing crush on Will Self with the intention of upsetting Orr.
A letter in The Independent in June 2000 from the head waitress at the Groucho Club at the time, Deborah Bosley, caused a minor stir. Responding to an article by Yvonne Roberts, Bosley, at the time the partner of Richard Ingrams, a long standing critic of Burchill, stated that Burchill was merely "a fat bird in a blue mac sitting in the corner" when ensconced at the Groucho.
Burchill on Beckham (2001), a short book about David Beckham's life, career, and relationship with Victoria Beckham, attracted some of the worst notices since Jeffrey Archer's heyday.
One reviewer wrote:
"Burchill is to football writing what
Jimmy Hill is to feminist polemics."
According to Robert Winder in the New Statesman:
"The book fits in with Burchill's theme of praising
the working class; Burchill presents Beckham as
an anti-laddish symbol of old working-class values –
he reminds her of those proud men of her childhood,
'paragons of generosity, industry and chastity'."
Burchill's career was in trouble; she had been sacked by the revived Punch magazine. However she was appointed by Orr in 1998 to write a weekly column in the Guardian. Julie wrote for the Guardian for five years until 2003.
Burchill frequently thanked Deborah Orr for rescuing her. One of the pieces she wrote for The Guardian was in reaction to the murder of BBC TV presenter Jill Dando in 1999. She compared the shock of Dando's murder to finding a "tarantula in a punnet full of strawberries".
In 2002 she narrowly escaped prosecution for incitement to racial hatred following a Guardian column where she described Ireland as being synonymous with child molestation, Nazi-sympathising, and the oppression of women.
Burchill had expressed anti-Irish sentiment several times throughout her career, announcing in the London journal Time Out that:
"I hate the Irish, I think
they're appalling".
Julie supported the Iraq War, writing in The Guardian in 2003 that:
"I am in favour of a smaller war now
rather than a far worse war later."
She criticised those opposed to the war as "pro-Saddam apologists".
She justified her stance by stating that:
"This war is about freedom, justice – and oil.
Because Britain and the United States sell
weapons to Iraq, it is our responsibility to
redress our greed and ignorance by doing
the lion's share in getting rid of him".
Burchill left The Guardian acrimoniously, saying in an interview that they had offered her a sofa in lieu of a pay rise. She stated that she left the newspaper in protest at what she saw as its "vile anti-Semitism".
-- Julie Burchill From 2005 to 2009
Burchill was an early critic of the fashion for denigrating lower social classes as "chavs". In 2005, she presented the Sky One documentary In Defence of Chavs.
Julie commented in an interview for The Daily Telegraph at the time:
"Picking on people worse off than
you are isn't humour. It's pathetic,
it's cowardly and it's bullying."
She went on to say:
"It's all to do with self-loathing. ... The
middle classes can't bear to see people
having more fun, so they attack Chavs
for things like their cheap jewellery.
It's jealousy, because they secretly
know Chavs are better than them.
They're even better looking."
Following her departure from The Guardian, in early 2005 she moved to The Times, who were more willing to meet her demands, doubling her previous salary.
Shortly after starting her weekly column, she referred to George Galloway, but appeared to confuse him with former MP Ron Brown, reporting the misdeeds of Brown as those of Galloway:
"He incited Arabs to fight
British troops in Iraq."
She apologised in her column, although The Times paid damages thought to have been £50,000.
In 2006, The Times dropped her Saturday column, and arranged a more flexible arrangement with Burchill writing for the daily paper.
Later it emerged, during a Guardian interview published in 2008, that eventually she "was given the jolly old heave ho" by The Times, and paid off for the last year of her three-year contract, still receiving the £300,000 she would have earned if she had been obliged to provide copy.
Julie later described her columns for her abbreviated Times contract, which ended abruptly in 2007, thus:
"I was totally taking the piss. I didn't
spend much time on them and they
were such arrant crap."
In February 2006, she announced plans for a year's sabbatical from journalism, planning, among other things, to study theology. In June 2007, she announced that she would not be returning to journalism, but instead would concentrate on writing books and TV scripts and finally undertake a theology degree. However she returned to writing for The Guardian.
Burchill's co-written book with Chas Newkey-Burden, Not in My Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy, appeared in August 2008, and is dedicated "to Arik and Bibi" (Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu).
According to Gerald Jacobs, writing for The Jewish Chronicle in 2008:
"This book does not merely stand
up for Israel, it jumps up and down,
cheers and waves its arms".
The newspaper described her as "Israel's staunchest supporter in the UK media". When asked if Israel has any flaws, she responded:
"Yes. They are much too tolerant of
their freaking neighbours, much too
reasonable".
She declared in 2005, after Ariel Sharon's withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip, that:
"Israel is the only country I would
f**king die for. He's the enemy of
the Jews. Chucking his own people
off the Gaza; to me that's disgusting".
Besides writing occasional pieces for The Guardian, Julie wrote four articles for the centre-right politics and culture magazine Standpoint between July and October 2008.
-- Julie Burchill in the 2010's
At the end of June 2010 it was announced that Burchill would be writing exclusively for The Independent, contributing a weekly full-page column for the paper.
The connection lasted less than 18 months. Burchill wrote her last column for The Independent at the end of October 2011. Admitting that he had tried to recruit Burchill for The Sun in the 1980's, Roy Greenslade commented:
"My admittedly occasional reading of
her columns in recent years has left me
feeling that she realises her old schtick
is no longer working. She has run out
of steam – and sympathetic newspaper
editors".
Commenting on the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, Burchill wrote in The Independent:
"It would be wonderful to think that what replaces
Mubarak will be better. But here's the thing about
Middle Eastern regimes: they're all vile.
The ones that are 'friendly' are vile, and the ones
that hate us are vile.
Revolutions in the region have a habit of going
horribly wrong, and this may well have something
to do with the fact that Islam and democracy appear
to find it difficult to co-exist for long."
On the 13th. January 2013, Burchill wrote an article for The Observer defending Suzanne Moore after a reference by Moore to transsexuals had been greeted with a great deal of criticism.
In Burchill's view, it showed the "chutzpah" of transsexuals to have their "cock cut off and then plead special privileges as women".
There were a number of objections to her writing from members of the transgender community and non-transgender community alike. The editor of The Observer, John Mulholland, responded on the comments page to what he described as "many emails protesting about this piece" and stated that he would be looking into the issue.
Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone, formerly a junior Minister for Women and Equalities, called for the dismissal of Burchill and Mulholland in response to the piece. The article was withdrawn from the website the following day and replaced with a message from Mulholland, but reappeared on the Telegraph website.
On 18 January 2013, The Observer's Readers Editor Stephen Pritchard defended the decision to remove the article from the newspaper's website, quoting the editor who took that decision as saying:
"This clearly fell outside what we might consider
reasonable. The piece should not have been
published in that form. I don't want the Observer
to be conducting debates on those terms or with
that language. It was offensive, needlessly. We
made a misjudgment and we apologise for that".
Julie Burchill on Religion and Philo-Semitism
In her 1987 essay collection Damaged Gods: Cults and Heroes Reappraised, Burchill criticised what she called "the anti-Semitism of politicized American blacks" such as Jesse Jackson, who had referred to New York City as "Hymietown."
Burchill wrote:
"Imagine how the blacks would have gnashed
their diamond-studded teeth if a Jewish leader
had publicly referred to Harlem as 'Nigger-town'!".
In 1999, Burchill said she "found God", and had become a Lutheran and later a "self-confessed Christian Zionist".
In June 2007 Julie announced that she would undertake a theology degree, although she subsequently decided to do voluntary work instead as a way to learn more about Christianity.
In June 2009, The Jewish Chronicle reported that Burchill had become a Friend of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue and was again considering a conversion to Judaism.
According to The JC, she had attended Shabbat services for a month, and was studying Hebrew. Julie described herself as an "ex-Christian", pointing out that she had been pondering on her conversion since the age of 25.
Burchill said that:
"At a time of rising and increasingly vicious anti-
Semitism from both left and right, becoming
Jewish especially appeals to me. ... Added to the
fact that I admire Israel so much, it does seem to
make sense – assuming of course that the Jews
will have me".
Julie wrote in November 2012:
"The things I love about the Jews are: their
religion, their language and their ancient
country".
Burchill however clashed with Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah of the Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, and the Rabbi's lesbian partner, Jess Woods.
Among the reasons for their differences was Rabbi Sarah's defence of Muslims and her advocacy of the Palestinian cause. In Burchill's words, the rabbi "respects PIG ISLAM".
Rabbi Sarah told The Independent in September 2014:
"The problem is Burchill doesn’t have any
in-depth knowledge.
I can imagine her endlessly watching the film
Exodus with Paul Newman. She’s got a kind
of Hollywood view of Jews. You know, ‘Jews
are so clever, we’ve survived ...'."
In 2014, Burchill's crowdfunded book Unchosen: The Memoirs of a Philo-Semite was published. Tel Aviv-based writer Akin Ajayi in Haaretz thought:
"The reactionary solipsism of Unchosen
is far removed from the affectionate
warmness that a love of the Jewish people
can be".
Burchill's ex-husband, Cosmo Landesman, considered it to be:
"An exhilarating and exasperating mix
of the utterly brilliant and the totally
bonkers".
He observed that:
"There are plenty of Jews Julie doesn't love,
including the millions of Jews around the
world who have ever criticised Israel.
Her love is blind, deaf and dumb to such an
obvious contradiction".
Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman wrote:
"Burchill divides up the chosen people into
Good Jews (hardliners, Israelites) and Bad
Jews (liberal Jews) with the enthusiasm of
an anti-Semite. Hilariously, she sets herself
up as the Jewishness Police, railing against
Jews who are not Jewish enough".
In his review in The Independent, Keith Kahn-Harris described Unchosen as:
"Occasionally touching, sometimes bigoted
and sporadically hilarious, but it often
degenerates into EDL-style abuse that lacks
any redeeming wit."
In The Guardian Will Self wrote:
"I’m afraid I can’t really dignify her latest
offering with the ascription 'book', nor the
contents therein as 'writing' – rather they
are sophomoric, hammy effusions,
wrongheaded, rancorous, and pathetically
self-aggrandising."
-- Julie Burchill's Other Books and Television Programmes
Burchill has written novels and made television documentaries. Her lesbian-themed novel for teenagers Sugar Rush (2004) was adapted into a television drama series produced by Shine Limited for Channel 4. Lenora Crichlow's portrayal of the central character Maria Sweet inspired the 2007 sequel novel Sweet.
Burchill has made television documentaries about the death of her father from asbestosis in 2002 (BBC Four) and Heat magazine broadcast on Sky One in 2006.
-- Welcome to the Woke Trials
Welcome To The Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics was planned to be issued by Tabatha Stirling of Stirling Publishing in the summer of 2021 after being dropped by its original publisher following Burchill's defamatory tweets to Ash Sarkar.
On the 14th. March 2021, when referencing her new publisher, Burchill announced that, with Stirling:
"I've found someone
who's JUST LIKE ME."
Stirling is alleged to have written a series of articles for Patriotic Alternative as "Miss Britannia", describing her son's school as "a hellhole for sensible, secure White boys" and claimed:
"There is one member of staff who is
openly gay, and I mean RuPaul extra
gay".
On the 16th. March 2021, Burchill announced that she would not publish her book with Stirling Publishing, the same day she issued a public apology for libel and harassment of Sarkar. The book was subsequently published by Academica Press.
-- Responses
Burchill has described her own style as the writing equivalent of screaming and throwing things. For her novel Sugar Rush her publicist described her as "Britain's most famous and controversial journalist".
One of her most consistent themes is the championing of the working class against the middle class, and she has been particularly vocal in defending 'chavs'. According to Will Self:
"Burchill's great talent as a journalist is
to beautifully articulate the inarticulate
sentiments and prejudices of her
readers".
For Michael Bywater:
"Burchill's insights were, and remain,
negligible, on the level of a toddler
having a tantrum".
John Arlidge wrote in The Observer in 2002:
"If Burchill is famous for anything it is
for being Julie Burchill, the brilliant,
unpredictable, outrageously outspoken
writer who has an iconoclastic, usually
offensive, view on everything."
In November 1980, former Sex Pistols front man John Lydon gave an interview to Ann Louise Bardach in which he referred to Burchill and Tony Parsons as:
"Toss-bag journalists, desperately
trying to get in on something."
Lydon was incensed by Burchill and Parsons attributing his talent to his alleged use of amphetamines.
In October 1999, in an article for The Guardian, Julie wrote:
"That young men succeed in suicide more
often than girls isn't really the point. Indeed,
the more callous among us would say that
it was quite nice for young men finally to
find something that they're better at than
girls".
After a previous occasion when Burchill wrote "suicides should be left to get on with it", she "received a small number of letters from people whose sons had killed themselves".
In 2002, her life was the subject of a one-woman West End play, Julie Burchill is Away, by Tim Fountain, with Burchill played by her friend Jackie Clune.
A sequel by Fountain, Julie Burchill: Absolute Cult, followed in 2014, with Lizzie Roper in the central role.
In 2003, Burchill was ranked number 85 in Channel 4's poll of 100 Worst Britons. The poll was inspired by the BBC series 100 Greatest Britons, though it was less serious in nature. The aim was to discover the "100 worst Britons we love to hate".
The poll specified that the nominees had to be British, alive and not currently in prison or pending trial. In 2005, on the 25th. anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, she told The Guardian:
"I don't remember where I was, but I was
really pleased he was dead, as he was a
wife-beater, gay-basher, anti-Semite and
all-round bully-boy."
In the essay "Born Again Cows" published in Damaged Gods (1987), she wrote:
"When the sex war is won, prostitutes
should be shot as collaborators for their
terrible betrayal of all women."
On the 6th. June 2021, and shortly after the announcement of the birth of Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor, the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Burchill tweeted:
"What a missed opportunity. They could
have called it Georgina Floydina!”
This was a reference to George Floyd. Her comments were widely condemned, with racial equality activist Shola Mos-Shogbamimu stating:
"Lilibet is referred to as 'IT'. The utter
disrespect & dehumanisation of
#HarryandMeghan children because
of their proximity to ‘Blackness’ is
Racist."
Actress Kelechi Okafor wrote:
"Likening baby Lilibet to George Floyd
is to hone in on the fact she isn't fully
white...She refers to Lilbet as 'it' even
though it has been announced that the
baby is a girl and she could've addressed
her as such...Disgusting scenes."
On the 8th. June, via her Facebook account, Burchill announced that she had been sacked by The Daily Telegraph as a result of her online comments.
-- Libel
In 2020, Burchill posted a series of defamatory tweets of Ash Sarkar, which included claims that she condones paedophilia and is supportive of Islamist terrorism.
Burchill called on her Facebook followers to "wade in on Twitter" against "the Islamists" and the "nonces". As a result of the comments, her publisher, Little, Brown Book Group, cancelled the scheduled publication of Welcome to the Woke Trials, stating that her comments about Islam were “not defensible from a moral or intellectual standpoint”.
In March 2021, after being sued for libel and harassment, Burchill retracted her comments, issued a full apology and paid substantial damages to Sarkar, including her legal costs.
Burchill stated:
"I should not have sent these tweets,
some of which included racist and
misogynist comments regarding Ms
Sarkar's appearance and her sex life."
She further apologised for "liking" posts calling on Sarkar to kill herself, and promised to refrain from any further harassment of Sarkar.
-- Julie Burchill's Personal Life
Burchill married Tony Parsons (whom she met at NME) in 1979 at the age of 20. She left Parsons three years later, leaving behind a son, which was followed by years of rancour in the media, described in 2002 as "a steady stream of vitriol in both directions."
Julie had claimed to have persevered with the "sexual side" of their marriage "by pretending that my husband was my friend Peter York".
Her relationships, particularly with Parsons, have featured in her work; Parsons later wrote that:
"It's like having a stalker. I don't
understand her fascination with
someone whom she split up with
15 years ago."
Immediately after her relationship with Parsons, Burchill married Cosmo Landesman, with whom she also had a son. She split from Landesman in 1992. The sons from her marriages with Parsons and Landesman lived with their fathers after the separations.
She married for a third time in 2004, to Daniel Raven, around 13 years her junior, and the brother of her former lover Charlotte Raven. She wrote of the joys of having a "toyboy" in her Times column in 2010.
Fellow NME journalist/author Paul Wellings wrote about their friendship in his book I'm A Journalist...Get Me Out of Here:
"She has written about her lesbian relationships,
and declared that "I would never describe myself
as 'heterosexual', 'straight' or anything else.
Especially not 'bisexual' (it sounds like a sort of
communal vehicle missing a mudguard).
I like 'spontaneous' as a sexual description".
In 2009 Julie said that she was only attracted to girls in their 20's, and since she was now nearly 50:
"I really don't want to be an
old perv. So best leave it".
Julie has lived in Brighton and Hove since 1995, and a book on her adopted home town titled Made in Brighton (Virgin Books) was published in April 2007.
Her house in Hove was sold (and demolished for redevelopment as high-density flats) around 2005 for £1.5 million, of which she has given away £300,000, citing Andrew Carnegie:
"A man who dies rich, dies shamed."
Burchill's second son, Jack Landesman, died by suicide in June 2015, aged 29. In an article for The Sunday Times Magazine, Julie wrote of his inability over many years to experience pleasure and the serious mental health issues from which he suffered.
.
------------·---.
When People Unitedly Protest Against Corporate Land Grab, SCRAP SEZ I Resist Corporate Land Grab .
Would SR Explain:.
.
CPI(M)'s Trick is to Play the Communal Cardt .
.Buddha~eb WHY did its MPs vote to PASS the SEZ Act 2005 in Parliament? .
In Nandigram, sfnce most of the protesting fanners happen to be Muslims, CPI(M) chief minister Bhattacharya rushed to allege that the protests are being fanned by the communal Jamaat-e-Uiema-1-Hind.Nothmg Does CPI(M) believe that it is necessary to create 'special' zones of 'FOREIGN.
a 'a.
can be more dangerous than such communal stereotyplng.Ciearty, CPI(M) -SFI tried to invoke lslamophobia to whip up All India--.
' TERRITORY' on Indian soil io order to promote 'industrialisation'? .
deep-seated majoritarian anti-Muslim prejudices to defegltimise the fanners.' struggle and prevent people~feeling Students .
Does SFI belie\'e that industrialiJation is NOT possible without giviag corporate& a .
sympathy Mh the protestors.It is really a shame that a self declared leftist party is now resorting·to1hls oft repeated Association .
'special' Ucense to Evade taxes and laws, Evict peasants and grab laad, Expleit labour? .
heinous commwnal tactic ofIndian ruling class. .
SFI accuses AJSA ofequating CPI(M) and BJP. Well, not only AISA but even CPI(M)'s sympathisers like Prof. (AISA) Thus having PASSED the SEZ Act in Parliament; CPI(M)-SFI, in the face ofmassive people's Sumlt Sartcar and former CPJ(M) Finance Minister ofWest BengaiAshok Mitra are highly disappoJnted to find protests, is now proposing some 'arnendmeAts' that are nothing hut eyewash. .
·CPf(M) speakiftt BJP'slanguage, branding protestors as 'outsiders', branding Muslim peasants In Nandigram as Would IH Explain : .
'communal' and even providing the coconut and pujarlfor a 'bhooml puja' ritual by Tata at Singur (see Ashok Why are they NOT ready to demand SCRAPPING ofthe SEZAct, why do they merely demand .
Mitra's article on Bhoorm Pufa in Telegraph, 2Feb.07).,.These observers are disappointed and shocked at CPI(M) donotequate it with BJPand expect it to stand by secular norms! amendments? Ifyou don't demand serappin2 of SEZ Act, you are defending iii~-bo-rrowingfrom saffron-speak, precisely because .
CPI(M)'sTe·ror· Speak SFI's Pro-Corporate Saga ...From Nestle in JNU to Nandigram in West Bengal ~Repression is Democrncy' Noted Historian Sumit Sarkar, after his visit to Singur wrote SFI brought in the Nestle Outlet in JNU; and when students protested against it, SF! proposed to 'ThewGrk ofthcpolke is not t:o makedrawings or (AQuestion Marked InRedin Indian Express, 9Jan. 07} allow Nestle to stay with some ·restricted" rules. But JNU students refused to accept an MNC Outlet.
teach in schools and colleges. The police are the "..there is no doubt that the vast bulk of the villagers we that snatched away the livelihood .of those who run dhabas-and kicked Nestle's Outletoff the campus! instrumentofrepression. His for thegovernment met are opposed to the take-over of land and most a.re In the same way, CPI(M) M~s in Parliament quietly voted for the shameful SEZ Act. But when .
to dedde whom theyshaD repress. refusing compensation. farmers' protests at Kakinada, Dadri, Navi Mumbai, Singur and Nandigram exposed SEZs as crnational .
...Three, we found much evidence of force being employed,.
Some forces are trying to indulge in violence and shame, CPI(M) started demanding amendments" to ·improve" SEZs on the lines of the ·Bengal model". createdisorder for lowly and narrow political interest particularly on the nights of September 25 and December 2." SFI claims SEZs are a necessary evil forced upon us by the Congress-BJP etc, and all we can do is to aed bring ruiutionto West Bengal. It is democracy "...What the villagers repeatedly alleged was that along with 'amend' them slightly. But if this is the case, how does SFI expJain the fact that the CPI(M) Government's 'Doingfe repress tlte8e forces in theinterests andsecurity the police, and it seems more than the police, party .
ofthe people ofthestate."-Benoy Kooar, CPL(M) activists, whom the villagers call 'cadres' -which has Business in Bengal' brochure distrib]Jted amongst industrialists proudly advertises that "West Bengal is one of Kisan Sabha leader, People's Democracy, IODec. sadly become a term ofabuse-did the major part of tbe tbe early States to implement the S~Zconcept.." and that West Bengal bas passed its own SEZ Act In 2003 0~ ·, .
beating up." itself? .
"Rumaa rightsareooly forcitizens...police must A re ort b the West Ben al Govt. Home Ministrv itself admits Let us call SFI's bluff-.. bemerciless in dealing with uJtras"-Buddhadcb Let us take a look at their proposed 'amendments', and compare them-both with the Central SEZ Act addressing agathering onWorld Human Rights Day that what happened at Nandigram was the result of CPI(M) 2005, and with the West Bengal SEZ Act l003 and the WB Government's "Doing Business" brochure. (IOD«. 06) peasant supporters themselves going against the party because .
~ .
of the land grab. So the protestors were not just 'insiders' to .
'When Mcdba Patkar visits here next, we'Uask .E-.
·ollr WOIIleR cadres to show hertheir backsides' -Nandigram, they were also 'insiders' to CPI(M) itself till -....--I.
, 1.
CPI(M) Central Committee Member Benoy Konar. recently!(Anana'ahazar Patrika, 2 Feb. 07) , .
lND1JSTJ,UAUSmON 'I.
.
(See Anandabazl!'" Patrilca, 30Jon07) It is a peasants' movement in West Bengal : Citizens'Panel IN 1 I .
In thisseason_, m.aoysnakes comeoutof theirholes; "'The State Govt. aJieged that there was a communal overtone ~r ~ .
you miiSt take tbe flag(jhanda) offfrom thesticks to ~1estruggle ofthe people but we found remarkablecommunal AldfSSliiG THE IOLISSUO'.
.
.
(danda) and ase the stieks to crush the snakes' ~ttyon the ground and that people's protests cutacross political .... ~ 1.
beads. -CPI(M) Central Committee Member dtfferences." .
Sucyak.anta Misbra, referring to lhe protestors at .
.
"We found the people's fury was genuine. It was partly due to.
Singur and Naadigram .
lack of transparency. They were not part of any discussion .
(See Anondahazor Patrilw, 30Jan 07) about matters that concerned their lives and livelihood. s·mgur.
.
..Cenlral Committee member Benoy Konar, asked V·I11agers 1eamt ofthe ~and acquisittOn for the Tata factory from about Profs.Sum it and Tanika Sarkar's visit to Singur newspapers. They clatm that holders of360 acres have re~ d Pumose Of sn CPI(M)-SFI's Proposed "Amendments" : Nil and NandigTam: "I can't do anything if the to. accept cash compensation. There is no land r used Central SEZ Act 2005 "the promotion of exports.
10r usn CPI(M}-SFI's Practicing Reatrty .
histnrians decide to go back in time.....Theirviews h bT ·.
re a ' ttatton, only cash compensation and that too much beIow CPI(M)-SFI's Propose-d "Amendments" : Nil West Bengal SEZ Act: Also deemed to be 'foreign territory'are anli-iodustry" -Indian Express, 31Jan 07 the actual price"( Hindu, 04Feb.07) .
CPI{M}-SFI's Practicing Reality .
Actual Implications Decide which side you are on...The side of truth or the side oft 1 west Bengal SEZ Act's(2003) stated purpose: to aocelerat'e · Declaring corporate enclaves to be 'foreign territory'.
error..
Th 'd b . economic reforms· amounts to an assault on India's sovereignty, and e e ate' is not a petty quarrel between AISA and SFI It · s inalienable rights. This (and the following two.
rn the raging eattle between evicted peasants and terroris~d ol:r as:uestJ.on of t akirlf! sides Actual Jmptteations people'.
points which are llnked to it) is the most dangerous.
rugglmg for survtval on CPI(M) claims its amendmentswill put the brakes on neo-liberat.
one side, ood corporates grabbing land backed by the m. ht ~ S~ate on the other. It is a aspect of the SEZ Act, which the CPI(M) does not .
bettie betweeA the rights of aam aadmi and 'special' 'f tg . ? economic reforms. but two years before the Central Act, they .
oreJgn enc aves of preferred people even try to 'amend'..
on the other passed their own SEZ Act in Bengal with the self-proclaimed t purpose to accelerate reforms"! ExamutiGalram taws ofdie land.
SFI and CPI(M) have shown that theystand for the privileges ~dprofit ofco .
Central SEZ Act 2005 : Secti.on 49 empowers the.
poor. SFT aJready showed this in it!: defence ofthe Nestle Outlet in JNU -and::.cs.not the struggles o~the 'FOrel!ln Terrttorv' Governmentto exempt any orall SEZs from the operation ofsimilarshameless campaign. agrun they arcconductmg a .
Central SEZ Act 2005 any central law through a notification. Further, Section 48 ;f : I SEZs declared to be 'Foreign Territory' on Indian soil .
' .
.
Description from Uttarayan Cultural Association, Delhi:
Sanjoy Sarkar, better known as Babla, hardly need introduction when it comes to promoting Rabindra Sangeet in an around Delhi. A versatile performer and a meticulous organizer of a varity of thematic events, functions and other programs revolving around enlarging the cultural Rabindra philosophy, he is also endeared as a teacher of substance in this area.
Having born into a family where music, Rabindra Sangeet in particular, was worshiped as a ritual, it was natural for Sanjoy to take to singing. His interest was initially steered by his mother Shrimati Protima Sarkar, and later influenced by Shri Shubho Guha Thakurta and Shrimati Manjula Guha Thakurta of “Dakshinee”. After acquiring his professional degree in Engineering from Jadavpur Engineering College, he went on to pursue his formal music training from “Dakshinee” itself.
Sanjoy came to Delhi in 1975 in pursuit of his professional career. His singing talent too was readily acknowledged. Together with some like-minded friends, he started organizing a verity of musical programs and functions. His passion for performing arts resulted in the formation of now famous “Uttarayan”. Its first endeavor “Phalguni” was a commendable success. Since then, Sanjoy, under the expert guidance of Shri Ashish Mukherjee spearheaded many well-acclaimed productions like “Balmiki Pratibha”, “Kshudito Pashan”, “Shrabone Gatha”, “Chandalika”, “Jonmodin ashey barey barey”, “Tobu mone rekho,” and many more in addition to the “Jabi Smaran” led by him every year to celebrate Tagore’s birthday to the delight of his audiences.
The CD”Amar Swaponocharini” released by P & M Records on the rendition of Sanjoy Sarkar’s melodious voice in 2006, further lent grace to his vast list of achievements.
Sanjoy has been schooling talents in the field of Rabindra Sangeet since 1993 had affiliation by Dakshinee, Kolkata to conduct its own Diploma course in Delhi for award of Diploma to deserving students in Rabindra Sangee. He continues to hold regulate training classes at various locations of Delhi.
In commemoration of Tagor’s 150th Birth Anniversary, Sanjoy, on behalf of Uttarayan, organized a good number of exclusive and innovative solo performances, in response to invitation from ICCR, Ministry of Culture, TCGS. To name a few of his undertakings. “Tota Kahini (by the children) . “Gitanjali” (to be staged in Kalamandir as part of Dakshinee invite). “Teen Sandhya” (theatre based on Tagore’s writing), “music Conference “ (inviting Tagore-talents all over India).
Uttaryan, today, founded in Delhi years back to promote Rabindra Sangeet, has now blossomed into a grown tree vast enough to shelter both established and aspiring fresh talents. Feeling nostalgic about the achievement of this great order, Sanjoy is all the more enthused to making an impacting advance further in this direction.