Alwan for the Arts: Blog
Biju Mathew and other excellent commentators on Mumbai attacks
Posted at Dec 1, '08 8:03 pm by ahmed
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/1/toll_from_deadly_coordinated_mumbai_attacks
Transcript and audio-visual link to Democracy Now!’s roundtable discussion on the attacks in Mumbai, India’s financial and entertainment capital, that has left nearly 200 people dead and hundreds wounded. Indian officials claim that as few as 10 gunmen coordinated attacks that began late Wednesday night on multiple targets including a crowded railway station, two luxury hotels, a popular cafe, a Jewish center, a hospital, and a movie theater. India’s top domestic security official, Home Minister Shivraj Patil, resigned Sunday over his failure to contain the attacks. The State Chief Minister and his deputy have also offered to quit.
This roundtable features South Asian History professor Vijay Prashad, New York City-based activist and journalist Biju Mathew, veteran journalist and commentator Tariq Ali, and Teesta Setalvad, the award-winning activist and journalist from Mumbai.
Biju Mathew will be at Alwan’s December 2, 2008 panel discussion.
Biju Mathew on Mumbai tragedy: “As the Fires Die: The Terror of the Aftermath”
Posted at Dec 1, '08 7:47 pm by ahmed
http://www.samarmagazine.org/archive/article.php?id=275
“As the smoke lifts from Mumbai, skepticism must prevail over those conjectures which support the official state narrative. It is crucial to increase the pressure for transparency and accountability at this moment to ensure that India doesn’t slide into the same state as post-9/11 USA.”
Article by Biju Mathew, who will participate in Alwan’s December 2, 2008 panel discussion
The Devil’s Bankers By Ibrahim Warde
Posted at Nov 2, '08 8:07 pm by ahmed
The belief of the US and British governments that they could seize dirty money thought to be financing terrorism has merely diverted scarce police resources from the pursuit of criminal money laundering.
http://mondediplo.com/2006/07/18clearstream
The Clearstream scandal, which is currently roiling the French political establishment, exposes two aspects of financial globalisation: the promise of transparency and the potential for money laundering. Indeed, the very name of the Luxembourg-based clearing house suggests both transparency and a cleansing flow.
It was originally assumed that the information revolution and omniscient, self-regulating markets would provide their own defence mechanisms. But huge black holes soon appeared in a world in which “the language is coded, the uninitiated excluded and the rules seldom written and communicable” (1).
Senator John Kerry, in his 1998 book The New War: The Web of Crime That Threatens America’s Security, wrote: “The opening of borders to international commerce and the information highway have benefited terrorists every bit as much as they have helped legitimate businesspeople and criminals” (2). In 2005 Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy, observed that illicit activities were not limited to the margins of the international economy and that crime (the most lucrative business) has been a leading beneficiary of globalisation. Terrorism, nuclear proliferation, arm sales, drug dealing, counterfeiting, piracy, human trafficking, tax evasion and money laundering have all exploded (3).
In a system based on speed, efficiency and anonymity, shadowy operators have an advantage over political and judicial authorities, especially considering the ground lost by national regulators to the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) or the Basle Committee.
The rules of the game are now largely determined by the world’s most powerful nations, especially the United States, in cooperation with little-known private companies such as Clearstream, of which its former boss, André Lussi, said: “Banks have customers and our customers are the banks. We are the notaries public of the world” (4).
In 2004 Lussi was indicted in Luxembourg for money laundering, manipulation of financial statements, fake accounting, financial fraud and tax evasion. The Clearstream affair testifies to the potential for dissimulation and manipulation among those new notaries.
The role of anti-money laundering measures was to fight such dysfunctions. Money laundering integrates funds derived from criminal activities into the legitimate financial system: it cleans dirty money. According to some sources, it goes back to the 1920s (when the gangster Al Capone bought laundromats to help disguise the criminal origin of his hard cash). But the idea, just like as the war against it, is of more recent vintage. The media began to mention it at the time of Watergate (1972-74), which revealed how the Nixon administration had adeptly hidden the origin and destination of funds. The phrase first appeared in legal proceedings only in 1982.
In 1986 the US became the first country to criminalise money laundering, as part of the escalating war on drugs. The idea was that, since profit motivates drug dealers, going after the money would damage the drug trade. The money trail also promised to yield useful clues and unmask vast conspiracies. None of the “three stages of money laundering” - placement (the introduction of funds into the financial system), layering (multiple conversions and movements designed to confuse the money trail) and integration (when the funds re-enter the legitimate economy) - is illegal in itself. But it is illegal to combine them to hide the criminal origin of funds.
The ‘crime of the 1990s’
Money laundering was the “crime of the 1990s” and throughout that decade money laundering laws and regulations grew exponentially. Beyond drug dealing, the range of crimes covered expanded to include almost 200 offences, among them racketeering, theft, trafficking in human organs and endangered species, and, of course, terrorism. In parallel, the US effort against dirty money was internationalised through the FATF, created by the G7 in Paris.
As it expanded, the anti-money laundering apparatus was criticised: the supply of illegal drugs had steadily increased while the amounts of dirty money seized by the government were negligible. In 2001 Paul O’Neill, the Bush administration’s first Treasury Secretary, noted that there was little to show for the $700m a year spent by the government on money laundering: over 15 years there had been only one substantial catch. Although the apparatus gave law enforcement agencies plenty of opportunities to go after smalltime dealers, major drug lords, who could afford to skirt the rules and use the services of the best lawyers, remained elusive.
The Spanish investigating judge, Baltasar Garzon, said that judges felt like mammoths chasing leopards in their battle against major financial criminals: “By the time the mammoth reaches his hideout, the leopard is already far away, laughing” (5).
The 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania led to more concentration on dirty money. It was said that Osama bin Laden had a $300m war chest; and a cottage industry developed in which self-proclaimed “experts” purported to reveal the whereabouts of that fortune. In reality, Saudi Arabia had seized Bin Laden’s wealth in 1994, and his assets in Sudan were confiscated in 1996 when he was forced to leave (6). Terrorist financing was the result of permanent fundraising within Islamist networks (7).
In the late 1990s the Clinton administration attempted without success to introduce “know your customer” rules which would have forced banks (already bound to disclose suspicious transactions) to scrutinise their clients. It also undertook, in conjunction with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, to crack down on tax havens.
As soon as he became president in 2001, George Bush scuttled that initiative and took steps to diminish the anti-money laundering regime until the 9/11 attacks resulted in a major policy U-turn. With the zeal of new converts, those who had been intent on dismantling financial controls presided over an unprecedented expansion of the anti-money laundering apparatus.
The war on terror began with finance when Bush announced “a strike on the financial foundation of the global terror network” on 24 September 2001. The president and top officials kept repeating that money was the oxygen of terror and that acts of terror could not be conducted without an important financial infrastructure (8).
The USA Patriot Act (“uniting and strengthening America by providing appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism”), passed in October 2001, had a major anti-money laundering component. That month, at an extraordinary meeting in Washington, the FATF, which the administration had spurned until then, saw its prerogatives officially expanded from money laundering to terrorist financing.
The two activities became interchangeable. A new acronym, AML-CFT (“anti-money laundering - combating the financing of terrorism”), was instantly and uncritically adopted, joining two fundamentally different issues. Money laundering is based on crime-for-money; it involves large sums and transforms illegally obtained cash into seemingly legitimate funds. Terrorist financing, by contrast, is a political phenomenon, involving relatively small amounts, and, at least since 9/11, the financing happens outside international banking channels.
Terrorist financing is more like money soiling than laundering, since small sums of clean money (not illegally obtained) are used to fund acts of terror (9). None of the post-11 September attacks has cost more than $20,000. The London attacks of 7 July 2005 cost less than $1,000 (10); their “terrorist financier” was one of the suicide bombers who made a living as a substitute teacher. In Iraq, more than half of US casualties have been the result of cheap roadside improvised explosive devices .
Scorecard logic
Yet the financial terrain, vast and little understood, offers political advantages. In the days after 9/11 swift action was not immediately possible against Afghanistan, which harboured Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. No contingency plans existed and military action took weeks (11). Bush was attracted to financial strikes because freezing accounts was the one seemingly bold action the US could take immediately. An added advantage was that the financial front was conducive to what he called a scorecard logic. He gave the order to “seize some assets, and quickly”.
The Treasury general counsel, David Aufhauser, later described the subsequent frantic weekend search: “It was almost comical. We just listed out as many of the usual suspects as we could and said, let’s go freeze some of their assets” (12).
Such financial strikes have since become routine. Not surprisingly, they have done little to dent terrorism (13). Easy and often innocent victims were targeted, such as the Somali remittance group Al-Barakaat. The first 100-day progress report of the war on terror set the tone: “The US and its allies have been winning the war on the financial front” and “denying terrorists access to funds is a very real success in the war on terrorism” (14).
In reality, shifting resources from money laundering to terrorist financing caused terrible mismatches. Those trained to spot global financial crime, and Spanish-speaking specialists in the Latin American drug trade, found themselves chasing Islamic terrorists, leaving the business of money laundering unattended.
Translated by the author
Ibrahim Warde is adjunct professor at the Fletcher School of law and diplomacy, Tufts University, Massachusetts, and author of ‘The Price of Fear: the Truth behind the Financial War on Terror’ (IB Tauris, London, 2006)
(1) Denis Robert and Ernest Backes, Révélations, Les Arènes, Paris 2001.
(2) Simon and Schuster, New York, 1997.
(3) Moises Naim, Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy, Doubleday, New York, 2005.
(4) Denis Robert, La boîte noire, Les Arènes, Paris, 2002.
(5) Denis Robert and Ernest Backes, op cit.
(6) Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist, Alfred A Knopf, New York, 2004.
(7) See The 9/11 Commission Report, Thomas H Kean, chair, and Lee H Hamilton, vice chair, authorised edition, WW Norton, New York, 2004; John Roth, Douglas Greenburg and Serena Wille, Monograph on Terrorist Financing, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Staff Report to the Commission, 2004.
(8) “President Freezes Terrorists’ Assets,” remarks by the President, Secretary of the Treasury O’Neill and Secretary of State Powell, The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 24 September 2001.
(9) See Ibrahim Warde, “Clean money, just a little soiled”, Le Monde diplomatique, English language edition, November 2001.
(10) Ibrahim Warde, The Price of Fear: The Truth Behind the Financial War on Terror, IB Tauris, London. 2006.
(11) Bob Woodward, Bush at War, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2002.
(12) Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2004.
(13) Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, Random House, New York, 2003.
(14) http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/rele …
Riches Beyond Belief?
Logical Lies About Bin Laden’s Wealth
By IBRAHIM WARDE
http://www.counterpunch.org/warde10022007.html
Michael Lewis, in Liar’s Poker, his classic portrait of Wall Street in the 1980s, described how he invented “logical lies” as an investment banker to explain otherwise inexplicable events to nervous clients. Asked why the dollar fell, he would confidently say: “Several Arabs had sold massive holdings of gold for which they received dollars. They were selling those dollars for marks and driving the dollar lower.” In his words: “Most of the time when markets move, no one has any idea why. A man who can tell a good story can make a good living as a broker. And it’s amazing what people will believe … selling out of the Middle East was an old standby. Since no one ever had any clue what the Arabs were doing with their money or why, no story involving Arabs could ever be refuted.” (1).
That story was unavoidable in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks. No one knew anything specific about them. The magnitude of the destruction suggested that a huge financial and logistical infrastructure had been at work. With the involvement of Osama bin Laden, usually described as a Saudi billionaire and terrorist financier, and the participation of 15 Saudi hijackers, the plausibility of the financial argument coincided with a common stereotype. As Jack Shaheen’s comprehensive study of the portrayal of Arabs by Hollywood suggests, they had long been associated with “vile oil sheikhs with an eye for western blondes and arms deals and intent on world domination, or with crazed terrorists” (2). By joining two of the three stereotypes, the billionaire and the bomber (the third was the belly dancer), the events of 9/11 seemed to verify the truth of the caricature.
An instant canon on terrorist financing was established in the days after the attacks. The laundry list was familiar and mindlessly repeated: the Bin Laden $300m fortune, business fronts legal and illegal, Islamic charities, Saudis, rich Arabs, hawalas, drugs, gold and diamonds, etc. From the popular press to prestigious thinktanks, the lists were almost identical. Repetition looked like corroboration. The lackadaisical way in which the discourse on terrorist finance had been constructed contrasted with the authoritative way in which the dubious facts were cited and recited.
After 2004 there was considerable new information available about the financial war on terror, but such evidence had little impact on perceptions or policies. Key players such as former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, and Michael Scheuer, who headed the “virtual Bin Laden station” at the Central Intelligence Agency, published memoirs or contributed to books debunking much of what was commonly believed.
The publication of the September 11 Commission report in August 2004 helped a clearer understanding of the reality and contradicted much of the canon. The report, complemented by a terrorist financing monograph, was based on “a comprehensive review of government materials on terrorist financing from essentially every law enforcement, intelligence and policy agency involved in the effort”.
The story lives on
The report and monograph made important points: they showed how little money is needed for terror attacks; they debunked the urban legend of the Bin Laden personal fortune; and they hinted at the politicisation of terrorist financing inquiries. Since Bin Laden had been singled out in 1998 as Public Enemy Number One, the financial war was driven by the belief that his $300m fortune was the core of the al-Qaida funding network. The report confirmed that the figure was fictive. Yet the story lives on. A Google search in April 2006 yielded 154,000 hits.
The $300m factoid seems to have originated in 1996, when a State Department analyst inserted it in a fact sheet on Bin Laden (3). It was arrived at by a rough calculation based on approximate figures. The analyst divided assets of the Bin Laden group (estimated at $5bn) by the number of sons (estimated at 20). That gave $250m, which he rounded up to $300m. The calculation rested on estimates and dubious assumptions about the family, inheritance laws and practices, the actual worth of the privately-held company and its ownership structure. Though it was not even a back-of-the-envelope calculation, the figure soon gained absolute status.
Most accounts of Bin Laden after 11 September describe a cave-dwelling heir and tycoon with close ties to the Saudi establishment who ran his business empire and made shrewd moves in the stock market while plotting terrorism. The enduring legend became that “of the world’s richest terrorist, a business-savvy nomad who has used a vast inheritance and a constellation of companies to finance a global network of violence” (4).
With almost no exceptions, every news article, every thinktank report, every book of revelations on terrorist financing, has repeated the assertion that Osama bin Laden had a $300m personal fortune, the basis of the financing for al-Qaida. That figure has been unchanged since 1996: despite a life of danger, Bin Laden’s wealth stayed remarkably stable: no gains or losses, no expenses or subsidies to Taliban hosts, no confiscations and no accretions dented or inflated it.
The terrorist-finance literature was a form of magic realism–a mix of rich detail, surrealism and fantasy. Numbers were necessary, even when invented, if only to lend precise cachet to reports or analyses and, to paraphrase George Orwell, give the “appearance of solidity to pure wind”. The lawsuit filed on 15 August 2002 against several Saudi princes, banks and charities (Burnett v Al Baraka Investment and Development Corporation), which came to be called “the lawsuit of the 21st century”, sought “an amount in excess of $100trn” from dozens of defendants (5). The lawsuit was thoroughly prepared and lavishly financed. Yet on the day after it was filed, the attorneys issued a correction, claiming that a clerical error had misstated the amount asked: the plaintiffs were only asking for $1trn. Perhaps the lawyers had realised that the initial amount exceeded the GNP of all countries in the world combined.
At the time of 9/11, the Bush administration was bent on implementing an agenda of financial deregulation which included dismantling much of the existing anti-money laundering apparatus. The attacks caused a sharp policy U-turn. With the zeal of the newly converted, those very people who had been intent on dismantling the legislative apparatus found themselves hastily and vigorously expanding it.
More truthiness than truth
Throughout the war on terror, organised crime analogies came easily to law enforcement agencies, as well as to influential pundits. Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the most influential intellectuals in the early days of the war on terror, described Osama bin Laden as “the CEO of a multinational terrorist corporation… very imaginative at finding ways to make money from his terrorist ventures… The best way to think of the terror network is as a collection of mafia families” (6).
In the 1980s the focus was on Central and Latin American drug lords. After 9/11 the war on drugs was overshadowed by the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. The massive shift of resources resulted in a substantial mismatch. Those government agents who did have some international experience and cultural-linguistic skills were typically fluent in Spanish and had no experience of the Islamic world. New experts appeared who fitted the description of management scholar Henry Mintzberg: “An expert has also been defined as someone who knows more and more about less and less until finally he or she knows everything about nothing. Perhaps this means that if you understand only certain discrete chunks, ultimately you understand nothing” (7).
Since none of the “$300m fortune” was traceable, a new industry purported to reveal the secrets of its whereabouts. Some practitioners were partisan hacks with a transparent political agenda; others were imaginative writers eager for a scoop. Those who made up the original allegations seemed well-informed and were asked for further revelations. Steven Emerson, a ubiquitous terrorist expert, said that immediately after 9/11 he “fielded 1,000 calls, many from news organisations” (8).
Another founding mythographer was Jack Kelley, star reporter of USA Today, the largest circulation daily in the US, who produced countless scoops until, in 2004, his paper discovered a “pattern of lies and deceit”. He found it easy to write about terrorism and financing. Hiding behind confidential and anonymous sources, he broke many of the stories which have since entered the journalistic bloodstream. They included an eyewitness account of young Palestinian suicide bombers and their culture of death; the revelation that prominent Saudi businessmen “worth more than $5bn” continued to transfer tens of millions of dollars to Bin Laden as “protection money to stave off attacks on their businesses in Saudi Arabia”; and the discovery of computer records in Afghan caves showing links between Chicago-based Islamic charities and al-Qaida (9). For his suicide bomb eyewitness account, he was a Pulitzer prize finalist.
With the 9/11 attacks, the lines between fact and fiction were further blurred since the unbelievability of the events lent credence to many of the wildest assertions about Arabs and Muslims. Nobody then knew much about al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. Americans were ready to believe he was a James Bond villain, rich enough to fund his own wars. Indeed, his hidden wealth has captured the imagination of many novelists. Chris Ryan’s Greed (a bestseller, at least according to its cover) bears more than a passing resemblance to non-fiction purporting to reveal the secrets of terrorism financing. A character says: “Al-Qaida has a lot of money. Its roots are in Saudi Arabia, and that’s a rich place. But it has a lot of support right across that region. There are contributions coming from everywhere–Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia. That’s what makes them so deadly. Fanatics we can handle. Fanatics with cash are a different story. Overall, we estimate the organisation has at least $5bn at its disposal. They hide their money, and they are good at it. So it could be a lot more” (10).
It could be said, to borrow from satirist Stephen Colbert, that there is much more truthiness than truth in the terrorist financing discourse–with truthiness defined as what you want the facts to be as opposed to what the facts are. The parallels between Bin Laden’s hidden stash and Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction are striking. They caused the financial war against global terrorism and regime change in Iraq. The usual suspects of terrorist financing–rich Arabs, the Saudis, Islamic charities, etc–became as familiar as the smoking guns of WMD–mobile labs, aluminum tubes, Niger uranium, etc–that helped sell the invasion of Iraq to the US public. Both wars created created a new and very real problem through pursuing an imaginary one.
Ibrahim Warde is adjunct professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University (Medford, Massachusetts). This is excerpted from The Price of Fear: The Truth Behind the Financial War on Terror (IB Tauris and University of California Press, 2007)
(1) Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street (Norton, New York, 1989).
(2) Jack G Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (Interlink Pub Group, New York, 2001).
(3) Kenneth Katzman, “Terrorism: Near Eastern Groups and State Sponsors, 2001″, Washington, DC, Congressional Research Service, 10 September 2001.
(4) Karen DeYoung, David Hilzenrath and Robert O’Harrow Jr, “Bin Laden’s Money Takes Hidden Paths to Agents of Terror”, The Washington Post, 21 September 2001.
(5) Jennifer Senior, “Intruders In The House Of Saud”, The New York Times Magazine, 14 March 2004.
(6) Michael Ledeen, The War Against the Terror Masters (St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2003).
(7) Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning: Reconceiving Roles for Planning, Plans, Planners (Free Press, New York, 1994).
(8) Felicity Barringer, “Terror Experts Use Lenses of Their Specialties”, The New York Times, 24 September 2001.
(9) Jack Kelley, USA Today, 26 June 2001, 29 October 1999 and 30 January 2002.
(10) Chris Ryan, Greed (Arrow Books, London, 2004).
End of the new workplace: smiling serfs of the new economy
By Ibrahim Warde, Le Monde diplomatique March 2002
<http://MondeDiplo.com/2002/03/16work>
Will the crash of Enron, following the dot.com debacle, end the abuse of the‘new economy’ employees in the United States, who surrendered their basic rights in the interests of company shareholders and even had to make voluntary‘contributions’ to their firms’ political friends?
Workers in the United States work harder than their counterparts anywhere else in the industrial world, with the exception of the South Koreans and Czechs, according to the latest International Labour Organisation (ILO) statistics. In 2000 the Americans put in an average 1,979 hours in the workplace, an increase of 36 hours on 1990 (1). This is puzzling since in the last 10 years the US has enjoyed great economic prosperity and had a substantial rise in productivity, two factors that were always assumed to mean less work and more leisure (2).
But, as Benjamin Hunnicutt, a historian of work and leisure at the University of Iowa, says, work has become a new belief system, a new religion
. According to economist Juliet Schor, people work longer hours (or hold more than one job) to keep up with the steady decline in their purchasing power, and be able to afford to buy everything they feel they ought to own (3).
Such overwork leaves little time for family, leisure, community or civic duty. Time is increasingly absorbed by the workplace. Sociologist Arlie Hothschild has found that, for many employees (women in particular), work is home and home is work
. The workplace provides a sense of community, while the home is increasingly defined by dysfunctional relationships (4).
Whether as a cause or consequence of this, the model of human resource management popularised by new economy giants such as Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, Apple or Amazon companies that to the global elites, epitomise technological and social progress strives to fulfil all the needs (physical, psychological, emotional) of employees. The corporate campus the word suggesting a convivial cocoon, as well as a young, laid-back ambiance was a workers’ paradise, with child care, exercise facilities, cafes, therapists, grief counsellors, laundry, post office, bookstore, break rooms stocked with soft drinks and aspirin, and even a concierge service attending to special needs (ordering flowers or buying theatre tickets).
The objective has not been to decrease the workload of employees but to allow them to overwork in the best possible conditions, since well-being improves productivity. Such golden cages look glamorous, especially from the outside. In the rankings of favourite employers that have been a staple of the business press, old-fashioned criteria such as good pay and benefits or lifetime employment were out, and new perks in. At the height of the economic boom, favourite companies were those where work was fun. People in a recent Fortune survey singled out three criteria: a sense of purpose, inspiring leadership, and knockout facilities
(5).
These traits, says Dave Arnott, a Dallas Baptist University professor, mirror the three defining characteristics of a cult: devotion, charismatic leadership and separation from community (6). In such companies, obsessive workaholism has been justified by the sense of a grand mission (building the future, changing the world) and by an us versus them
ethos (them being most often the competitors, the government or the trade unions) fostered by competition. The financial factor is simply a by-product of the great adventure. As the cliché goes, It’s not about the money, it’s about the future
(7). Salary may not have reflected the amount of work, but employees have stood to benefit, via their stock options, from their contribution to the bottom line, and presumably to the value of the stock. And in the new economy that for a while seemed to defy the laws of gravity, the sky was the limit (8).
Commitment to the firm has been bolstered by devotion to the chief. It is not surprising that Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Jack Welch (General Electric) or Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines) became folk heroes whose superstar status was rivalled only by the biggest pop culture icons (in sports, movies or rock music). Their every deed was mythologised in hagiographies and fawning media profiles. And their presumed charisma (from the Greek: gift of grace) earned them the right to expect their employees to go the extra mile (9).
Separation from community has happened because of the amenities on those corporate campuses. If a company caters to all needs, why would employees need to leave the workplace, except perhaps to sleep, and why should they interact (or to use corporate jargon, interface) with the outside world? New technologies (magnetic identification cards, surveillance cameras, pagers, cell phones, email) put employees on a short electronic leash. Their whereabouts are known and they can be reached at any time.
At Cisco, a company that just announced that the productivity of its employees had to increase by 50%, the head of human resources called for an update of the idea of work/family balance. The goal should be integration, not balance, so that employees move seamlessly between on-the-job and off-the-job duties throughout the day. The blurring of private and professional is actively promoted at Southwest Airlines: the company employs both the spouses of 821 couples, and actively promotes relationships among its employees through its own singles group, Mingle (10). The problem with this new social contract is its one-sidedness. Since the firms are primarily dedicated to the creation of shareholder value, they are prone to constant shedding of employees, which, for the downsized, means the simultaneous loss of job, family and community.
Ten hugs a day
As in all cults, incessant indoctrination, through training sessions, retreats (usually in the employee’s own time) and all hands meetings, instils corporate values and leaves little room for critical thinking. The corporate creed (mission statement, company goals and values) is recited as a catechism. House slogans and cheers, typically using sporting and war metaphors, are chanted with enthusiasm. Even clothing, often adorned with corporate logos, is a way of proving loyalty. At Nike, employees are encouraged to tattoo their ankle with the famous swoosh logo.
To promote teamwork and bolster employee morale, there is now a cottage industry of counsellors, facilitators and job coaches whose own job is to explain to employees how to be themselves. As in chat shows (and in cults), the public confession dominates. Dubious human resource theories justify bizarre practices. At Health Care & Retirement Corp in Toledo, Ohio, employees were subjected to an 11-hour seminar on the art and science of hugging. Human resource director Harley King explained that the average human needs eight to 10 hugs a day; the minimum is four.
(But you have to get permission before you hug someone, and you can’t just hug the most attractive people.)
The new combination of overwork and loss of job security has demanded the use of newspeak of course: using the rhetoric of freedom and personal fulfilment, psychic income and title inflation could make up for stagnating wages. So, in the fast food industry, almost everyone is a manager. Many firms followed the lead of distribution giant Wal-Mart when it decreed that all employees (the majority of whom only earned minimum wage) would be called associates. Well, they are in a way, since their pension plan made them, if in infinitesimal proportions, corporate shareholders. There is also a suspiciously strong correlation between the actual concentration of corporate power and talk of employee empowerment.
Combining constant lowering of costs, empowerment and emotional fulfilment of employees has often required ingenuity. In December 1999 the Bank of America, after announcing the prospect of 10,000 redundancies, sent all its employees a glossy brochure inviting them to adopt an automated teller machine. Adoption meant assuring, on their own time and at their expense, the weekly maintenance of an ATM machine in an urban or rural area. The brochure explained how to keep your ATM on the road to success; pick up any trash that may have been left behind, clean the screen and keyboard, make sure the lights are working and trim bushes. The initiative promised to be a win-win endeavours characteristic of the new economy: customers would enjoy shiny ATMs, employees would derive pride and satisfaction from their volunteer work and shareholders would gain value.
But the California Labour Commissioner, noting the bank’s naïve interpretation of labour law, ordered it to compensate the volunteers for their time and effort, and provide them with cleaning and gardening tools. The bank was puzzled by this intrusion of the government and said the bureaucrats had misunderstood an initiative meant simply to boost employee morale and promote teamwork. The bank was outraged at the suggestion that it might have tried to lower its costs with the threat of layoffs. It also assured the world it never intended to use the ATM’s hidden camera for quality control purposes (11).
During the 1990s stock market euphoria, overwork reached its peak. A work-is-fun culture justified non-stop work in hot start-up companies headed for IPO (initial public offering) riches. Internet mythology glorified those who never left the office, sleeping two hours a night under their desk. For others, there was nothing wrong in working 16 or 18 hours a day in a playful, festive atmosphere, surrounded by football machines, basketballs, frisbees and games and toys. For the self-defined individualists and libertarians, organised joy was de rigueur, and anything was a pretext to party with colleagues: going away, celebratory drinks and the obligatory Friday night drinking binge. The bubble has burst, but certain habits persist those pink slip parties where laid-off workers congregate to network with recruiters.
Notes
(1) Washington Post, 4 September 2001.
(2) Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, Basic Books, New York 1976.
(3) Juliet Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, Basic Books, New York 1992, and The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need, Basic Books, New York 1999.
(4) Arlie Hochschild, The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work, Metropolitan Books, New York 1998.
(5) Fortune, 12 January 1998.
(6) Dave Arnott, Corporate Cults: The Lure of the All-Consuming Organization, AMACOM, New York 2000, p 8.
(7) These are the words used by venture capitalist John Doerr in Secrets of Silicon Valley (2001), a film directed by Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman.
(8) Ibrahim Warde The rise and rise of the Dow
, Le Monde diplomatique English edition, October 1999.
(9) Michael S Malone, Infinite Loop: How the World’s Most Insanely Great Computer Company Went Insane, Doubleday, New York, 1999; Alan Deutschman, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, Broadway Books, New York 2000; Ken Auletta, World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies, Random House, New York 2001; Mike Wilson, The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison, William Morrow & Co, New York 1998; Janet Lowe, Welch: An American Icon, John Wiley & Sons, New York 2001.
(10) Fortune, 10 January 2000.
(11) The San Francisco Examiner, 23 December 1999; The San Francisco Chronicle, 23 December 1999.
Translated by the author.
Bin Laden
As A Fantasy Figure
Riches Beyond Belief
IBRAHIM WARDE / Le Monde diplomatique (Paris, France) 1sep2007
Most of the factoids that have become canon about Osama bin Laden and the financing of terror were estimates, guesstimates or simply made up, as in the case of his presumed $300m personal fortune. But these fantasies have driven real and dangerous actions.
Michael Lewis, in Liar’s Poker, his classic portrait of Wall Street in the 1980s, described how he invented “logical lies” as an investment banker to explain otherwise inexplicable events to nervous clients. Asked why the dollar fell, he would confidently say: “Several Arabs had sold massive holdings of gold for which they received dollars. They were selling those dollars for marks and driving the dollar lower.” In his words: “Most of the time when markets move, no one has any idea why. A man who can tell a good story can make a good living as a broker. And it’s amazing what people will believe… selling out of the Middle East was an old standby. Since no one ever had any clue what the Arabs were doing with their money or why, no story involving Arabs could ever be refuted.” (1).
That story was unavoidable in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks. No one knew anything specific about them. The magnitude of the destruction suggested that a huge financial and logistical infrastructure had been at work. With the involvement of Osama bin Laden, usually described as a Saudi billionaire and terrorist financier, and the participation of 15 Saudi hijackers, the plausibility of the financial argument coincided with a common stereotype. As Jack Shaheen’s comprehensive study of the portrayal of Arabs by Hollywood suggests, they had long been associated with “vile oil sheikhs with an eye for western blondes and arms deals and intent on world domination, or with crazed terrorists” (2). By joining two of the three stereotypes, the billionaire and the bomber (the third was the belly dancer), the events of 9/11 seemed to verify the truth of the caricature.
An instant canon on terrorist financing was established in the days after the attacks. The laundry list was familiar and mindlessly repeated: the Bin Laden $300m fortune, business fronts legal and illegal, Islamic charities, Saudis, rich Arabs, hawalas, drugs, gold and diamonds, etc. From the popular press to prestigious thinktanks, the lists were almost identical. Repetition looked like corroboration. The lackadaisical way in which the discourse on terrorist finance had been constructed contrasted with the authoritative way in which the dubious facts were cited and recited.
After 2004 there was considerable new information available about the financial war on terror, but such evidence had little impact on perceptions or policies. Key players such as former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, and Michael Scheuer, who headed the “virtual Bin Laden station” at the Central Intelligence Agency, published memoirs or contributed to books debunking much of what was commonly believed.
The publication of the September 11 Commission report in August 2004 helped a clearer understanding of the reality and contradicted much of the canon. The report, complemented by a terrorist financing monograph, was based on “a comprehensive review of government materials on terrorist financing from essentially every law enforcement, intelligence and policy agency involved in the effort”.
The story lives on
The report and monograph made important points: they showed how little money is needed for terror attacks; they debunked the urban legend of the Bin Laden personal fortune; and they hinted at the politicisation of terrorist financing inquiries. Since Bin Laden had been singled out in 1998 as Public Enemy Number One, the financial war was driven by the belief that his $300m fortune was the core of the al-Qaida funding network. The report confirmed that the figure was fictive. Yet the story lives on. A Google search in April 2006 yielded 154,000 hits.
The $300m factoid seems to have originated in 1996, when a State Department analyst inserted it in a fact sheet on Bin Laden (3). It was arrived at by a rough calculation based on approximate figures. The analyst divided assets of the Bin Laden group (estimated at $5bn) by the number of sons (estimated at 20). That gave $250m, which he rounded up to $300m. The calculation rested on estimates and dubious assumptions about the family, inheritance laws and practices, the actual worth of the privately-held company and its ownership structure. Though it was not even a back-of-the-envelope calculation, the figure soon gained absolute status.
Most accounts of Bin Laden after 11 September describe a cave-dwelling heir and tycoon with close ties to the Saudi establishment who ran his business empire and made shrewd moves in the stock market while plotting terrorism. The enduring legend became that “of the world’s richest terrorist, a business-savvy nomad who has used a vast inheritance and a constellation of companies to finance a global network of violence” (4).
With almost no exceptions, every news article, every thinktank report, every book of revelations on terrorist financing, has repeated the assertion that Osama bin Laden had a $300m personal fortune, the basis of the financing for al-Qaida. That figure has been unchanged since 1996: despite a life of danger, Bin Laden’s wealth stayed remarkably stable: no gains or losses, no expenses or subsidies to Taliban hosts, no confiscations and no accretions dented or inflated it.
The terrorist-finance literature was a form of magic realism - a mix of rich detail, surrealism and fantasy. Numbers were necessary, even when invented, if only to lend precise cachet to reports or analyses and, to paraphrase George Orwell, give the “appearance of solidity to pure wind”. The lawsuit filed on 15 August 2002 against several Saudi princes, banks and charities (Burnett v Al Baraka Investment and Development Corporation), which came to be called “the lawsuit of the 21st century”, sought “an amount in excess of $100trn” from dozens of defendants (5). The lawsuit was thoroughly prepared and lavishly financed. Yet on the day after it was filed, the attorneys issued a correction, claiming that a clerical error had misstated the amount asked: the plaintiffs were only asking for $1trn. Perhaps the lawyers had realised that the initial amount exceeded the GNP of all countries in the world combined.
At the time of 9/11, the Bush administration was bent on implementing an agenda of financial deregulation which included dismantling much of the existing anti-money laundering apparatus. The attacks caused a sharp policy U-turn. With the zeal of the newly converted, those very people who had been intent on dismantling the legislative apparatus found themselves hastily and vigorously expanding it.
More truthiness than truth
Throughout the war on terror, organised crime analogies came easily to law enforcement agencies, as well as to influential pundits. Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the most influential intellectuals in the early days of the war on terror, described Osama bin Laden as “the CEO of a multinational terrorist corporation… very imaginative at finding ways to make money from his terrorist ventures… The best way to think of the terror network is as a collection of mafia families” (6).
In the 1980s the focus was on Central and Latin American drug lords. After 9/11 the war on drugs was overshadowed by the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. The massive shift of resources resulted in a substantial mismatch. Those government agents who did have some international experience and cultural-linguistic skills were typically fluent in Spanish and had no experience of the Islamic world. New experts appeared who fitted the description of management scholar Henry Mintzberg: “An expert has also been defined as someone who knows more and more about less and less until finally he or she knows everything about nothing. Perhaps this means that if you understand only certain discrete chunks, ultimately you understand nothing” (7).
Since none of the “$300m fortune” was traceable, a new industry purported to reveal the secrets of its whereabouts. Some practitioners were partisan hacks with a transparent political agenda; others were imaginative writers eager for a scoop. Those who made up the original allegations seemed well-informed and were asked for further revelations. Steven Emerson, a ubiquitous terrorist expert, said that immediately after 9/11 he “fielded 1,000 calls, many from news organisations” (8).
Another founding mythographer was Jack Kelley, star reporter of USA Today, the largest circulation daily in the US, who produced countless scoops until, in 2004, his paper discovered a “pattern of lies and deceit”. He found it easy to write about terrorism and financing. Hiding behind confidential and anonymous sources, he broke many of the stories which have since entered the journalistic bloodstream. They included an eyewitness account of young Palestinian suicide bombers and their culture of death; the revelation that prominent Saudi businessmen “worth more than $5bn” continued to transfer tens of millions of dollars to Bin Laden as “protection money to stave off attacks on their businesses in Saudi Arabia”; and the discovery of computer records in Afghan caves showing links between Chicago-based Islamic charities and al-Qaida (9). For his suicide bomb eyewitness account, he was a Pulitzer prize finalist.
With the 9/11 attacks, the lines between fact and fiction were further blurred since the unbelievability of the events lent credence to many of the wildest assertions about Arabs and Muslims. Nobody then knew much about al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. Americans were ready to believe he was a James Bond villain, rich enough to fund his own wars. Indeed, his hidden wealth has captured the imagination of many novelists. Chris Ryan’s Greed (a bestseller, at least according to its cover) bears more than a passing resemblance to non-fiction purporting to reveal the secrets of terrorism financing. A character says: “Al-Qaida has a lot of money. Its roots are in Saudi Arabia, and that’s a rich place. But it has a lot of support right across that region. There are contributions coming from everywhere - Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia. That’s what makes them so deadly. Fanatics we can handle. Fanatics with cash are a different story. Overall, we estimate the organisation has at least $5bn at its disposal. They hide their money, and they are good at it. So it could be a lot more” (10).
It could be said, to borrow from satirist Stephen Colbert, that there is much more truthiness than truth in the terrorist financing discourse - with truthiness defined as what you want the facts to be as opposed to what the facts are. The parallels between Bin Laden’s hidden stash and Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction are striking. They caused the financial war against global terrorism and regime change in Iraq. The usual suspects of terrorist financing - rich Arabs, the Saudis, Islamic charities, etc - became as familiar as the smoking guns of WMD - mobile labs, aluminum tubes, Niger uranium, etc - that helped sell the invasion of Iraq to the US public. Both wars created created a new and very real problem through pursuing an imaginary one. ________________________________________________________
Ibrahim Warde is adjunct professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University (Medford, Massachusetts). This is excerpted from The Price of Fear: The Truth Behind the Financial War on Terror (IB Tauris and University of California Press, 2007)
(1) Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street (Norton, New York, 1989).
(2) Jack G Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (Interlink Pub Group, New York, 2001).
(3) Kenneth Katzman, “Terrorism: Near Eastern Groups and State Sponsors, 2001″, Washington, DC, Congressional Research Service, 10 September 2001.
(4) Karen DeYoung, David Hilzenrath and Robert O’Harrow Jr, “Bin Laden’s Money Takes Hidden Paths to Agents of Terror”, The Washington Post, 21 September 2001.
(5) Jennifer Senior, “Intruders In The House Of Saud”, The New York Times Magazine, 14 March 2004.
(6) Michael Ledeen, The War Against the Terror Masters (St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2003).
(7) Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning: Reconceiving Roles for Planning, Plans, Planners (Free Press, New York, 1994).
(8) Felicity Barringer, “Terror Experts Use Lenses of Their Specialties”, The New York Times, 24 September 2001.
(9) Jack Kelley, USA Today, 26 June 2001, 29 October 1999 and 30 January 2002.
(10) Chris Ryan, Greed (Arrow Books, London, 2004).
Original text in English
source: 4sep2007
The New York Arab and South Asian Film Festival, March 5 - 16, 2008
Posted at Jan 16, '08 8:35 am by ahmed
NY Arab & South Asian Film Festival: www.nyasaff.org
Alwan for the Arts, 3rd i NY, and the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective are once again joining forces to bring New York audiences the best in recent features, docs, & shorts from North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and their diasporas at prestigious venues such as Tribeca Cinemas, Columbia University, Art in General, Two Boots Pioneer theater and NYU.
Scheduled for March 5 - 16, 2008, the New York Arab and South Asian Film Festival (NYASAFF) strives to bring you films and videos that achieve the highest artistic quality as well as provide a much-needed counterpoint to the stereotypical representations often encountered in mainstream media.
Although our organizations came together as a result of the geopolitical realities of the contemporary post 9-11 world, over time, we have also discovered the need to reflect on the complex and intertwined histories of these regions and the ways in which our art, music, philosophy, and literature have enriched and inflected each other over millennia.
As we finalize the 2008 NYASAFF program, we are happy to announce several highlights and themes that should delight and challenge viewers. The 2008 fest rolls out a slew of US and NY Premiere features that range from politically astute comedies to gritty, yet poignant examinations of urban poverty. An emerging theme amongst this roster of films is the multi-faceted nature of sexual desire in the Arab & South Asian world, stories of love and attraction marked by racial and class tension, war, religious restrictions, and the hardships of migration. Joseph Massad, Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, will guest curate a program on Belly-Dancing in Egyptian Cinema.
Tribeca alternative arts space, Art in General, will play host to an evening of Video Art Programs, that will be guest curated by Özkan Cangüven a graduate of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. Ozkan has put together a selection of Turkish videos exploring issues that are transforming the country as it prepares to enter the European Union. In addition, Swati Khurana, a member of South Asian Women’s Creative Collective and media artist, will curate a program of experimental Arab & South Asian shorts that will examine the subject of storytelling and its complicated connection to the real.
HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:
US & NY Premieres
AmericanEast tells a real story of Arabs living in the US from their perspective. Featuring Emmy Award-winning actor Tony Shalhoub and Kais Nashif (of Paradise Now fame), the film demonstrates, with both humor and raw emotion, how friendships are tested amongst diverse patrons of a Middle Eastern restaurant in Los Angeles when the owner decides to partner with a Jewish businessman.
Cut & Paste is the latest romantic comedy by Egyptian female director Hala Khalil, starring Hanan Turk and Sherif Mounir as two young Egyptians who plot a bogus marriage in order to emigrate to New Zealand. Khalil exploits the hilarity of a marriage of convenience that unexpectedly turns into something more.
Night Shadows by Algerian director Nasser Bakhti takes us beneath the privileged exterior of Geneva, Switzerland where we meet five multi- racial and cultural characters, and monitor their deeply desperate lives over 24 hours.
Rising Tunisian director Jilani Saadi also takes viewers into the grittier side of urban life with Tender is the Wolf, in which a gentle young man and his group of outcast friends must pay the price when they rape a prostitute.
In the Name of God (Khuda Ke Liye), the Pakistani 170 minute debut epic which won its director Shoaib Mansoor the Silver Pyramid award at the 2007 Cairo International Film Festival is about a young man’s musical career that is turned upside in the intersection of politics and religion in post 9/11 Pakistan. With all the Bollywood elements of musical stars (Naseeruddin Shah); love and romance; politics, religion and intrigue, In the Name of God is a riveting complex plot that switches from Lahore to London, from Waziristan to Chicago with urgent pace dissecting relationship and sentiments, without losing grip on its multilayered narrative.
Penny Woolcock directs one of the most refreshing, funny, yet hard-hitting films to come from the UK in years with Mischief Night. Set in the council estates of Leeds during Mischief Night, the Yorkshire version of Halloween, children’s pranks unwittingly break the barriers between two families, one white and one Pakistani, in a blaze of crime, clubbing, love and fireworks – changing all their lives forever.
Morshedul Islam’s Doll House is a story of anguish and love set against the backdrop of war. Rehana, a headstrong young woman, arrives in a village along with other refugees during the turmoil of liberation in Bangladesh, 1971. There she meets and comes to love Yakub who is torn between protecting her and joining the fight.
Belly-Dancing in Egyptian Cinema
Hassan Al Imam’s Take Care of Zuzu (Khali balak min zuzu) is an Egytian classic Hussein Fahmy and Soad Hosny in which Zuzu is a student who has paid her way through college by bellydancing in her mother’s troupe. She has kept this fact a secret, but has decided to give up dancing because she has fallen in love with a college professor. His ex-fiancee discovers Zuzu’s secret and tries to sabotage her.
Niazi Mostafa’s A Glass and a Cigarette (Sigara we Kass) is a captivating classic from the golden age of Egyptian cinema featuring Samia Gamal as Hoda, a famous dancer who gives up the spotlight to marry Mamdouh, a handsome young doctor. When Mamdouh’s scheming head nurse Yolanda (played by the radiant Dalida) sets her sights on Mamdouh, Hoda’s jealousy drives her to drink, ultimately endangering everything she holds dear.
Hassan Al Imam’s Shafiqa the Copt is based on the real story of a legendary bellydancer born to conservative Coptic parents whose early death left her poor. She rose to fame by dancing in the “El Dorado” nightclub, where she was the first to do the candelabra dance before owning her own club. She eventually succumbed to addiction and died in 1926. Featuring Hind Rostom, Hassan Youssef, and Zizi El Badrawi.
Shore of Love (Châti’ el gharâm) follows Adel, a rich young bachelor content with his affair with a dancer, Soheir, who steadfastly refuses his aunt’s urging to marry her daughter. However, his life changes when he falls in love with and marries Laila, a beautiful but penniless woman with a lovely singing voice. family aren’t willing to give up easily. Starring the legendary bellydancer Tahia Carioca.
Video Art Programs
“The Country, not the Bird” curated by Özkan Cangüven
Özkan Cangüven is a independent curator, originally from Turkey who is currently living and working in New York. Graduated from Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies last summer where he curated his thesis show “We Love Cinema” with artists appropriating cinema in their works. Cangüven previously worked at New Museum of Contemporary Art and at Scenic as curatorial assistant to curators Simon Watson and Craig Hansela. He has currently curated a film screening with Shirin Neshat and Matthew Barney for the Istanbul Film Festival and working on other curatorial projects.
“This screening consists of a selection of videos that impressed me as a curator and as an avid video art fan. With their aesthetic creativity and technical execution, they are among the most impressive of the last couple of years. “
Osman Bozkurt’s documentary video “auto-park” reflects the urban struggle of an every growing city where people create their own ways of leisure in places they are not supposed to be.
Köken Ergün’s “I, Soldier” is a voyeuristic look at to a nationalistic ceremony where the “sacred” identity of being a soldier has been reaffirmed and celebrated.
Sefer Memisoglu “Untitled” has a nonlinear narration, presenting a brief, psychological story rife with ambiguous readings and interpretations.
Ahmet Ögut’s “Cut it out” a fictional re-creation of a familiar reality of our times, in a disturbing but ironic approach.
Fahrettin Örenli’s video “Shadows of Dust(Episode III.)” overlays a segment of a traditional shadow puppet show with a current speech about money, connecting the past to the present.
“The Stories We Tell” curated by Swati Khurana
Swati Khurana is an Indian-born, Brooklyn-based artist, whose work has been shown internationally. She has received several awards and residencies, recently through the Jerome Foundation, Rotunda Gallery/BCAT, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Kartong Village Development Committee (The Gambia, West Africa). Swati has been a founding member of, and now currenly serves as a Board Member of, the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective.
This video program will feature short, experimental works by South Asian and Arab artists whose work reveals the tenuous nature of story-telling. The videos will be a combination of home movies as necessary fictions, excavations of propaganda and other effective formats of lie-spreading, documentary efforts at revealing the
‘real’, the stories that performances and performativity can tell, and narrative films where the act of telling the story becomes the narrative.
Titles include:
“Coconut Oil” Rina Banerjee, 2004, RT 5:00
“When scenes travel …bubble, bubble” Rina Banerjee, 2004, RT: 4:52
“Residence” Andrew Demirjian, 2004, RT: 2:00;
“Desiring” Dahlia Elsayed, 2007, RT 1:06;
“The Birthday of a Hunter” Hamid Ghavami, 2000, RT: 5:00;
“No body has a name Nobody” Hosein Gourchian, 5:00, 2006;
“Natasha” Sarita Khurana, 2007, RT 10:00;
“I Can’t Get Enough of You” Carol Pereira, 2007, RT: 4:06;
“A Short Film about Graffiti” Sai Sriskandarajah, 2007, RT 3:15
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