Bharat Rakshak

Arjun wrote:This seems to be a new-fangled "Non Profit" think tank in the School of Business...Probably the start of a new wormhole that allows for Angana-type scum to penetrate the business establishment.

Raja Bose wrote:[
Harsh Mander, Teesta all are there - only one missing is Arundhoti, perhaps she will be invited as a visiting scholar.

shiv wrote:This gels in well with all that I have been hearing about the gradual decline of top US universities as temples of learning into cesspools of jealousies and plagiarism.

ramana wrote:

nvishal wrote:This Indrani Bagchi women is a joker. Every article she writes has over-the-top sentences.

Indians pride themselves in composing complex and compound sentences.

India serves as a case in point, given that several diverse parts of the country are beset by armed conflict. Civilian populations—especially children, youth, women and minorities—suffer in the absence of adequate governance, access to responsible development, and the preservation of human rights.

The National Human Rights Commission of India, in its submission to the UN Human Rights Council for India’s Second Universal Periodic Review (2008), stated: “There are inordinate delays in the provision of justice... There is still no national action plan for human rights.”

Drawing on international, regional, and local expertise, the project aims to develop two inter-related but separate outputs: a Policy document and several Protocols.

Contemporary conflicts and transitional contexts will inform the development of this policy and the protocols.

The regions of Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur, and Chhattisgarh are differently but persistently affected by conflict, with conflict-related issues intermittently occurring in Punjab. Additionally, areas such as Gujarat and Odisha have been impacted by far-reaching violence on minority communities in recent history.

These conflicts are spurred by a myriad of issues, including cultural and communal identity, religionization, self-determination, and economic empowerment. Such conflicts can have far-reaching human impact and lead to intense psychosocial and economic suffering of civilian populations in the affected areas, collapse of responsible governance, development, and social protection mechanisms, and can also have a broader disruptive effect impacting national, regional, and global security.

The importance of this project lies in the fact that nothing close to a policy framework with attendant protocols currently exists in India that protects civilians and their rights in areas of armed conflict and mass violence, in a way that is consistent with India’s legal, ethical, and constitutional obligations, even as brutal conflicts and suffering continue.

If such a policy framework is adopted in India, and appropriate technical protocols are implemented with the aid and participation of civil society and affected populations, it would serve as a model for other countries.

Objectives

In the development of the Policy and Protocols, this project will focus on questions of transitional and transformative justice.

These questions pertain to issues of access to justice and conflict resolution; accountability and human rights; governance and the rule of law; gendered violence; minority rights; religious freedom; memory and healing; commitment to nonviolence; mechanisms for restitution and redressal; and people’s rights and humanitarian considerations during and after conflict; as well as multi-sectoral approaches, including involving education technology and social enterprise, toward inclusive development.

Policy and Protocols:

The Policy will be a document proposing a general course of action with the long-term goal of justice and stability across the country.

The Protocols --blueprints of standards and steps for accountability and reparation pertaining to healing through reparatory, transitional, and transformative justice in areas of current conflict and post-conflict--will be specific to the issues presented by various conflicts in India.

Topics of the protocols will include:

Gendered violence and human rights during armed conflict and massified violence.
Casualties and missing persons.
Supporting survivors through holding all parties to the conflict accountable (army, paramilitary, police, and non-state armed groups).
Impunity laws and failures of legal justice.
Historical dialogue and alliance-building.
Social trauma, memory, and psychosocial restitution.
Humanitarian and socioeconomic development, such as women’s health, and access to education.

In the course of producing these outputs, the project will involve those affected by conflict in conceiving redress. It will initiate cross-cultural dialogue. The project will facilitate remembrance and documentation, and undertake to create an archive and web-based memorialization installations. It will involve progressive civil society and the next generation in India, the Diaspora, and the global community in dialogue on peace, nonviolence, and justice. The project will initiate pilot processes through which to identify mechanisms for psychosocial restitution and humanitarian efforts.

The project will draw on diverse and plural imaginations of rights and justice in local, customary, and global traditions, in creating a framework for acknowledgement and remorse, accountability and justice, and healing and restitution.

The project will avoid taking positions on political questions, focusing instead on human rights and humanitarian concerns.

We are assisted by the following Partners:
Institute for the Study of Human Rights; Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability, Columbia University.
International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic, Stanford University Law School.
International Human Rights Law Clinic, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley.
Asian Legal Resource Center, Hong Kong (holding general consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, United Nations).
Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong.
Center for Equity Studies, Delhi.
Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network.
Prashant: Center for Human Rights, Justice, and Peace, Gujarat.
Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, Jammu & Kashmir.
Khalra Mission Organization, Punjab.
Indian American Muslim Council.
Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances, Philippines.

Scholar-Affiliates

:
Paramjit Kaur Khalra, Khalra Mission Organization, Punjab.
Robert Nickelsberg, Photojournalist, New York.

Advisory Group :

Amitava Kumar, Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English, Vassar College.
Betsy Apple, Legal Expert and Adjunct Faculty, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Sociology, and the Cultural Foundations of Education & Dean’s Professor of the Humanities, Syracuse University.
Charlie Clements, Executive Director, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Kennedy School, Harvard University.
Christophe Jaffrelot, Research Director, CNRS-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris.
Elazar Barkan, Professor of International and Public Affairs, Director of SIPA's Human Rights Concentration & Director of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University.
Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English & Director of the Humanities Center, Harvard University.
Inderpal Grewal, Professor, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Yale University.
Jacqueline Bhabha, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, School of Public Health & Director of Research, François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University.
Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature & Co-director of the Program of Critical Theory, University of California, Berkeley.
Jyoti Puri, Professor of Sociology, Simmons College.
Khurram Parvez, Program Coordinator, Jammu & Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, Srinagar.
Laurel Fletcher, Clinical Professor of Law & Director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley.
Nora Silver, Director, Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
Paul Rabinow, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley.
Richard M. Buxbaum, Jackson H. Ralston Professor of International Law (Emeritus), School of Law, University of California, Berkeley.
Richard Rudd, Sutter East Bay Medical Foundation, Berkeley.
Roxanna Altholz, Associate Director, International Human Rights Law Clinic, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley.
Sam Gregory, Program Director, WITNESS, New York.
Stefan Schmitt, Director, International Forensic Program, Physicians for Human Rights.
Vinay Lal, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles.
Wendy Brown, Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley.
Assisted by the following:

Research Associates: Alejandro Urruzmendi and Pei Wu .
Research Affiliates: Asif ETV, Haas-EWMBA 2013.
17 Wonderful interns and externs.

2013 Business Leader of the Year
Family of Philanthropists

Douglas E. Goldman, MD, BA ’74, carries on a long tradition of giving
By Sean Elder

Long before founding a successful software company and becoming involved in various philanthropies, Dr. Douglas E. Goldman, BA ’74, completed his residency at one of California’s busiest emergency rooms. Valley Medical Center in Fresno was a fulcrum of activity, thanks to “two major freeways passing through with their commensurate accidents and a very active knife-and-gun club,” Goldman recalls.
[..]
And Goldman is carrying on the unique tradition with his own children, the sixth generation of philanthropists. His twin sons, Jason and Matthew, the family’s fifth generation of Cal graduates, serve on the advisory board of the Haas School’s Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership. They also sit on the board of the 20-year-old Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund, whose name reflects Goldman’s wife’s own passion for giving. “To me that was part of the marriage,” Goldman says. “That was something my wife would engage in with me and that my kids would continue this legacy.”

Goldman is chairman and founder of Certain Inc., a leading global provider of enterprise-level, event-management software solutions. In addition to serving as a member of the advisory board at Haas (which is named after his grandfather, Walter Haas), Goldman is a trustee of the UC Berkeley Foundation.

As part of the Campaign for Berkeley, Goldman and his wife, Lisa, gave $10 million to

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has announced plans to set up a European communications network as part of a broad counter-espionage offensive designed to curb mass surveillance conducted by the US National Security Agency and its British counterpart, GCHQ.

The move is her government’s first tangible response to public and political indignation over NSA and GCHQ spying in Europe, which was exposed last October with revelations that the US had bugged Ms Merkel’s mobile phone and that MI6 operated a listening post from the British Embassy in Berlin.

Announcing the project in her weekly podcast, Ms Merkel said she envisaged setting up a European communications network which would offer protection from NSA surveillance by side-stepping the current arrangement whereby emails and other internet data automatically pass through the United States.

The NSA’s German phone and internet surveillance operation is reported to be one of the biggest in the EU. In co-operation with GCHQ it has direct access to undersea cables carrying transatlantic communications between Europe and the US.

Ms Merkel said she planned to discuss the project with the French President, François Hollande, when she meets him in Paris on Wednesday. “Above all we’ll talk about European providers that offer security to our citizens, so that one shouldn’t have to send emails and other information across the Atlantic,” she said. “Rather one could build up a communications network inside Europe.”

French government officials responded by saying Paris intended to “take up” the German initiative.

Ms Merkel’s proposals appear to be part of a wider German counter-espionage offensive, reported to be under way in several of Germany’s intelligence agencies, against NSA and GCHQ surveillance.

Der Spiegel magazine said on Sunday that it had obtained information about plans by Germany’s main domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, for a “massive” increase in counter-espionage measures.

The magazine said there were plans to subject both the American and British Embassies in Berlin to surveillance. It said the measures would include obtaining exact details about intelligence agents who were accredited as diplomats, and information about the technology being used within the embassies.

Last year information provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that US intelligence agents were able to bug Ms Merkel’s mobile phone from a listening post on the US Embassy roof. Investigations by The Independent subsequently revealed that GCHQ ran a similar listening post from the roof of the British Embassy in Berlin.

Intelligence experts say it is difficult if not impossible to control spying activities conducted from foreign embassies, not least because their diplomatic status means they are protected from the domestic legislation of the host country.

Der Spiegel said Germany’s military intelligence service, (MAD) was also considering stepping up surveillance of US and British spying activities. It said such a move would mark a significant break with previous counter-espionage practice which had focused on countries such as China, North Korea and Russia.

Germany’s counter-espionage drive comes after months of repeated and abortive attempts by its officials to reach a friendly “no spy” agreement with the US. Phillip Missfelder, a spokesman for Ms Merkel’s government, admitted recently that revelations about NSA spying had brought relations with Washington to their worst level since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Der Spiegel claimed that on a single day last year, January 7, the NSA tapped into some 60 million German phone calls. The magazine said that Canada, Australia, Britain and New Zealand were exempt from NSA surveillance but Germany was regarded as a country open to “spy attacks”.

UlanBatori wrote:O Alla*!!
Khalra Mission Organization, Punjab.

critically acclaimed documentary film about the India-Pakistan conflict (which has been featured on National Public Radio, Al Jazeera and several international film festivals).

When shall we three meet again,
in thunder, lightning or in rain?

The project will avoid taking positions on political questions, focusing instead on human rights and humanitarian concerns.

UlanBatori wrote:Jhujar, I think you recognize the extreme seriousness of this wasp nest growing at Berkeley, hain?

UlanBatori wrote:Jhujar, I think you recognize the extreme seriousness of this wasp nest growing at Berkeley, hain? Same entities as described here, except new digs and UCBerkeley credentials. The other co-chair has apparently created an "acclaimed" documentary on "India-Pakistan conflict". I can guess the nature of that, but anyone here seen/heard of it?

UB it is not only WASPs.

UlanBatori wrote: Pls kindly help in finding helpful info such as:
a) funding sources
b) funding amounts and periods
c) India political connections and funding....

Prem Kumar wrote:The rogue's gallery at the soon-to-be "Haas-been School of Business" seems like a circling the wagons effort to prepare for a post-Modi-win scenario in LS elections. They will be a useful thorn in his side. Since it will be Indian Sepoys publishing atrocity literature against other Indians, whites can sit back with coke + popcorn. It looks like a good cop, bad cop routine - Nancy Powell to engage with Modi, while the wasp nest is used to sting him on & off. Expect atrocity literature to reach fever pitch if/when Modi visits the U.S

The nest also helps in moulding the opinion of fence-sitting, US-admiring, liberal Indian graduate students in Universities. Expect their work to bounce off echo-chambers in US based NGOs like AID, Asha etc.

Also expect "papers" on sustainable development, at the intersection of business+human rights+environment (read Posco+Adivasi+Orissa forest), which will give Jairam Ramesh the big O

Since *both* conservative & liberal whites in the US hate Modi (for their own respective reflex reasons), I wouldnt be surprised if this program is sustained by wealthy conservatives

There is a war on for the hearts and minds of Desi Niseis in the diaspora. The usual ideological grooming methods have been combined with vigorous “compulsions to choose a side” in order to deny Nationalists any trans-geographic multiplier opportunities. This is akin to processes that targeted the German Diaspora during WW I and the Japanese Diaspora during WW II. A Nationalist dispensation in India will have to recognize this dynamic and deal with it in a clinical and non-sentimental manner. L’affaire DK exemplifies this challenge.

ramana wrote:UB and Prem kumar....
Its also to shape the NRI minds. Silcone Valley is hotbed of many DIE money bags who would like to reshape modern India in their mind view.

There is a war on for the hearts and minds of Desi Niseis in the diaspora. The usual ideological grooming methods have been combined with vigorous “compulsions to choose a side” in order to deny Nationalists any trans-geographic multiplier opportunities. This is akin to processes that targeted the German Diaspora during WW I and the Japanese Diaspora during WW II. A Nationalist dispensation in India will have to recognize this dynamic and deal with it in a clinical and non-sentimental manner. L’affaire DK exemplifies this challenge.

Look at the various NRI groups that went public to shape the mind view.

Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America by Andrei S. Markovits
English | 2007 | ISBN: 0691122873 | 296 pages |

No survey can capture the breadth and depth of the anti-Americanism that has swept Europe in recent years. From ultraconservative Bavarian grandmothers to thirty-year-old socialist activists in Greece, from globalization opponents to corporate executives--Europeans are joining in an ever louder chorus of disdain for America.

For the first time, anti-Americanism has become a European lingua franca. In this sweeping and provocative look at the history of European aversion to America, Andrei Markovits argues that understanding the ubiquity of anti-Americanism since September 11, 2001, requires an appreciation of such sentiments among European elites going back at least to July 4, 1776. While George W. Bush's policies have catapulted anti-Americanism into overdrive, particularly in Western Europe, Markovits argues that this loathing has long been driven not by what America does, but by what it is.

Focusing on seven Western European countries big and small, he shows how antipathies toward things American embrace aspects of everyday life--such as sports, language, work, education, media, health, and law--that remain far from the purview of the Bush administration's policies. Aggravating Europeans' antipathies toward America is their alleged helplessness in the face of an Americanization that they view as inexorably befalling them. More troubling, Markovits argues, is that this anti-Americanism has cultivated a new strain of anti-Semitism. Above all, he shows that while Europeans are far apart in terms of their everyday lives and shared experiences, their not being American provides them with a powerful common identity--one that elites have already begun to harness in their quest to construct a unified Europe to rival America.

TKiran wrote:It has been almost 2 weeks since Arshack filed reply to PB's counter, how much time to take a final decision by the court? Anybody has any idea?

... More troubling, Markovits argues, is that this anti-Americanism has cultivated a new strain of anti-Semitism.

UlanBatori wrote:Time running short - for the Gift of 100,000 bottles of Vodka from the East, each carried by an individual armed courier..