Recently, discussions of sex work have been made interesting by activists, and made more urgent by bullshit immigration policies mixed with rabid liberal stupidities, sensationalism, cliche. So, I was reading this book - Bedanabala. Her Life. Her Times by Mahasweta Devi, translated by Sunandini Banerjee (Seagull Books) and was reminded that I need to link with stuff that matters - see below..."All I've done is speak of them, the whores of times past. But is that all? Not sought my roots therein? No matter the luxury that smothers me today, my mother lived in a brothel, adopted and reared by the woman who owned it, who owned her, and others like her.
And what of me? My life? To tell of my life I will have to tell of those women, recount their lives from the age of Uttar Veda to the present day. Women whose stories will never be told completely; 'If the sky were a sheet of paper/ If every blade of grass on earth were a pen/ If the seven seas were awash with ink/ if all of that were used up even then/ It would not be enough for their history to be written.'"
I wrote earlier on Mahasweta Devi here. And on walking the streets here and on writing here"Nik found a Anarchist Federation newsletter which had as its front page an article about 'trafficking', that was just pathetic and wrong. As some of you will know mainstream media articles concerning 'sex slaves' appear in the press in London about once a week. The trend for the 'left' is to take up the radical feminist / abolitionist position and recently George Galloway (respect party) has been talking about cleaning up the east end and shutting down strip clubs.
As well the usual raids are still occurring in brothels and many sex workers have been deported. ...on many fronts it feels like we are not winning in the debate -- not from a migrants rights perspective and less still from a sex worker perspective. There are many things that can be done -- and many of them we are already doing.
So what to do when the all seems a little lost? -- start a debate ;) We are hoping to conduct this discussion in a space (libcom) that is supposed to be more radical than many other spaces that are available at the moment - but we will have to see -- nothing like sex work to bring out people's politics about gender and sexuality. Nik has posted a short text on libcom -- and i thought it would be useful to send the link out to people".So folks - Click here to see Nik's post.
In solidarity with bookseller Sunita Narayan, this is from WTW:
"India: What is a “terrorist” book?
20 November 2006. A World to Win News Service. A contingent of 70 armed police invaded the Chandrapur Book Fair and surrounded the stall of the publisher Daanish Books 15 October. They made a list of some 200 books they found “objectionable” and “anti-national”. Among the authors were Clara Zetkin, Bhagat Singh, Che Guevara, Baburam Bhattarai, Li Onesto, Anand Swarup Varma and Vaskar Nandy. These books are not banned in India; they can usually be bought anywhere. Yet the police surrounded the bookstand for three hours. On the initiative of the Superintendent of Police, they returned the next day to seize 41 titles and arrest the owner, Sunita Narayan.
She was interrogated for 14 hours and finally charged under Section 18 of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, a law passed two years ago when the new government came in that was presented as a step away from the widely hated (and US/UK-inspired) Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). The section under which she is charged states, “Whoever conspires or attempts to commit, or advocates, abets, advises or incites or knowingly facilitates the commission of, a terrorist act or any act preparatory to the commission of a terrorist act, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than five years but which may extend to imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.” The authorities have made it very clear that her “terrorist act” was publishing progressive books.
Although Narayan was released three days later, after protests locally in the state of Maharashtra and on the national level, she was given written notice to present herself if and when the police summon her.
At a 20 October press conference at the Press Club of India in New Delhi, a dozen independent publishers, half a dozen organizations and individuals condemned this arrest. In their statement, they pointed out that this was not an isolated incident:
“Similarly, a few weeks back, the performance of a play dealing with the history of Mumbai mills was forcibly stopped in Nagpur and the theatre group harassed.
“We are also concerned with the increasing menace of vigilantism by right wing groups in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Orissa, and the tacit or open support provided to them by the state agencies. This spells danger to the free exchange of ideas and the freedom to read, write, publish, disseminate and perform.”
end item"
Come to our workshop. Details here.
"Because it's built with a "memory," here's a calculator that does for you what a calculator should do. The all electric Burroughs Calculator with Memory Dials gives you instantaneous answers in one register, and automatically accumulates those answers in a second register (the Memory Dials) - for grand totals or net results. There's no rehandling of figures ...no chance for pencil and paper errors.
But that's not all. This new Burroughs calculator has the distinctive advantage of combining this answer - saving feature with the day in, day out advantages of a simplified, instant - action keyboard. The gadgets are gone! Every key is "live" and every key stroke counts. Finally, this truly extraordinary calculator has a very ordinary price tag. It's as easy to buy as it is to operate - just call your Burroughs man. Or write to Burroughs Corporation, Detroit, Mich".
I've not met Jodi Dean, but I like her style - a little anxiety at an error on the last page of her new book I can surely understand (since my first book - Rumour - had an error on page two - gnnng). And I like the way you can have a little anxiety and still do self promotion (which is what this blog is about - see Trinketization for better-more-the same...)..."I cite August 09, 2006Don't look any further Jodi - you can't change em now. It will be fine.
[jodi writes:]
My advance copies of Zizek's Politics arrived today.
Apparently, books will be in the warehouse in two weeks.
It's weird. On the one hand, I'm happy to have the book out. On the other, I feel a kind of pit in my stomach, anxiety over the book's appearing. Somehow, the appearance of this book makes me feel more exposed than I have with other books and articles. It may be that this sick feeling is linked to the difficulties during copyediting, a process that was more complicated than usual because I had to
make a bunch of alterations after Parallax View appeared.
The sick feeling was confirmed and heightened just now when I discovered that the last sentence of the book makes no sense (a word is missing or one word should be
changed), that there is a mistake in it. The mistake is, of course, mine. But I wish I had caught it. Or that one of the various copyeditors had. Oh god, this makes me feel so completely ill. I'm afraid of looking through it and finding more errors."
Apparently Malaysia Govt bans books - including my mate Bobby's (sadly not very red) rant on Kamalism.
KUALA LUMPUR, June 15 (Bernama) -- Eighteen books published locally and overseas have been banned by the Internal Security Ministry under the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 as they have been deemed to be able to disrupt peace and harmony.
A copy of the prohibition citation dated June 8 by the ministry was made available to Bernama, here Thursday.
The act prohibits any form of reproduction or distribution of these books, six of which are in Malay and the rest in English.
The 18 banned books
So, this list joins the film discussed here.
Rubbish- la
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