Re: [IAC#RG] PRESS RELEASE­­: publication by India Against Corruption

Dear Vidyut

1) Lets confine ourselves to real issues.

• a) The Indian media is NOT free.
• b) Censorship is both overt and covert.
• c) You have faced censorship and threats (as have I).
• d) We remember your blogposts on Sailgate, and also "MoneyLife journalists getting threats" which got taken down / trimmed
• I recall your support for Aseem Trivedi (who is, in my opinion, a pathetic cartoonist who well deserved to be censored / jailed).
  

So for IAC "Freedom of Speech and Expression" is a core issue. IAC wants it, IAC will fight for it, IAC will (to the availability of its resources and operational priorities) defend this principle / right.

2) The information dissemination platforms IAC is putting in place are not identified with IAC.

3)  Items / articles which are published by IAC are "cleaned up" to remove much of the bias / slant. Although we defend the right to have ALL sides of an issue published / circulated, IAC reserves the right to ULTIMATELY determine the balance / tone (we prefer though that the news contributors do so on their own).

It would be highly counter-productive if IAC platforms are perceived as biased / slanted / propagandist etc.

4) Ordinary people can, and do, have "extra-ordinary" views which deserve to get better known. That is what Democracy (and a Republic) requires to flourish.

5) IAC does not defend or support any other organisation or THEIR policies.

6) The trick is to find balance and consensus. We did that internally for IAC's submissions to Justice Verma Committee where your views (and also SIFFs) got incorporated. Balance is achieved when either "both sides are happy, or both sides are equally unhappy".

7) If anyone leaves the battlefield, it concedes a walkover to their opponents. IAC needs participation from all sides, rival persons, rival organisations, rival religions, everyone is welcome at IAC IFF the goal is common and the decencies are maintained.

8) EQUALLY, other organisations need IAC. Its a "win-win" for all concerned.

9) Oftentimes, people / organisations are FORCED to adopt extremist / absurd positions because they are not heard.

10)  Lets not jump our fences before seeing the entire picture. Lets see if experts like you and me can get scalable, resilient, credible info-channels in place even if the SIFFs of this reality eventually use it more than you or I do.

Sarbajit

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 3:30 PM, Vidyut Kale <wide.aware@gmail.com> wrote:

I find SIFF to be an extremely misogynist organization doing little for the rights of men and more of objection to any protection of women. For example, SIFF does zero about male on male abuse. Either sexual or otherwise. Within family or without.

In this latest episode, the idea that women threaten men as some kind of controlling gimmick is an extreme generalization. People prone to suicide are known to speak about it aloud. For example, in this case they are objecting to, Pancholi has confessed to assault on Jiah Khan. They were in a long term relationship and he was hardly unaware of previous attempt to suicide. What is the responsibility of a partner of a suicidal person? Is it the sole responsibility of the mother as SIFF appears to present? How is physical assault ignored so blatantly?

SIFF promotes several lies.

Some more from this article itself are that abatement to suicide is punishable only in India. This is bullshit. Provoking suicide is punishable almost worldwide - particularly when accompanied (which Pancholi himself has confessed to). Forget laws and such - let us talk of two high profile cases. The first the nurse to Kate Middleton who got pranked b the Australiam radio hosts and committed suicide. This is UK. The second is Dharun Ravi convicted for provoking the suicide of Clementi. This is US. Naming these, because with Indian connections, they may be easier to remember.

SIFF likes to present a false association between high rates of suicide between married men and abuse, when in fact, there is no proven corelation. For example, self-employed men are a far larger percentage of suicides than married men.

SIFF likes to focus on the idea that both men and women are abused without looking at the corresponding fact that in the abuse of both men and women, men are majority of the abusers. Women are NOT "equally" abusers as SIFF likes to present.

SIFF has been known to fake information, claims and work to oppose protection of women rather than protecting men as it superficially claims.

Finally, Jiah Khan did not merely threaten Pancholi with suicide, she accused him of assault - something he confesses to. She accuses him of ditching her after promises of marriage - something Pancholi's mom herself has implied to media. Lastly, a threat isn't a form of manipulation if the action warned about actually happens. Jiah Khan is dead.

And so on. There are several articles debunking this crap. The basic method is to look at the exception and call it the norm. It is almost like saying Sikhs are evil because a few must have attacked the others in 1984, while wholly ignoring the massacre itself.

This is not to say that there isn't misuse of laws or that women don't misuse rights or that men don't suffer. However, it is not logical or helpful to put blanket blame on women as being malicious by default. For example, this letter itself speaks of threats of suicide by women to helpless men - in the title itself, while going on to treat a man's suicide as genuine harassment - a view that is held against the credibility women, while it is cops who did not file the case - unknown gender, usually male. Particularly since our population ratio, crime statistics are completely opposite of this claim. The idea that dead, injured, and violated women are unimportant gets promoted when you have an organization that questions the credibility of most crime stats without ANY factual basis whatsoever.

I forget the link. This mythical helpline of theirs gets 98% calls related with men being abused, which how an article by this bunch claims 98% men are abused. I suppose if 98% people walking into a jeweller's shop buy jewellery, it is safe to say all Indians buy lakhs worth jewellery each, daily. Manufactured stats at its finest.

I object to this nonsense and highly misogynist propaganda given a platform and credibility on IAC. Either this crap is rejected, or I exit. Non negotiable. My presence holds a certain credibility on human rights related views. I refuse to grant it to a platform that openly promotes an organization working against women.

Vidyut

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Sarbajit Roy <sroy.mb@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear IAC participants,

Swaup Sarkar's email to me, below, encapsulates the problem, ordinary people or groups with extra-ordinary views have in being heard in a controlled information society.

An information society where editorial content is openly negotiated  for advertising revenue (Zee TV and Naveen Jindal), or where semi-literate persons wielding power arbitrarily (Wikipedia refusing to acknowledge P Kalyanasundaram simply because his "truth" and Jimbo Wales's don't mesh).

When somebody approached me about 10 days back because he was harassed by a particularly abusive blogger (whose father incidentally is our valued contributor on spirituality and misgovernance) and a paid chamcha for Baba Ramdev, I advised the individual to use "open source cloud technology" to correct the information imbalance. Clouding works: for eg. Do a google search for "Baba Ramdev Coward" or "Sanjeev Sabhlok ass" to confirm that these links are #1 (or at least top 5) on Google.

So members can shortly start sending IAC their UNIQUE Press Releases and articles on politics, politicians, corruption, governance, events etc. with the IAC GUARANTEE that IAC will publish it if it meets IAC's standards (which we will inform members shortly).

PS: Save India Family Foundation's Press Release has been uploaded (after cleaning it up), but our sites are not operational (as yet) for public view.

Sarbajit