Sanjay Kak’s documentary about Kashmir, “Jashn-e-Azadi” (How We Celebrate Freedom), was not allowed to be screened in Mumbai. Here’s a report at Mumbai Mirror. Also see here, here and here. Ranjit Hoskote from PEN-India has this statement:

We write to bring to your notice yet another violation of the freedom of expression in India. On Friday, 27 July 2007, a posse of policemen attached to the Dadar police station in Bombay broke into a private screening of Sanjay Kak’s documentary, ‘Jashn-e-Azaadi’, and confiscated the DVD. The screening, which was hosted by the Vikalp group of independent filmmakers, was intended to bring to a Bombay audience an eloquent cinematic argument for dialogue beyond anguish and antagonism; for an understanding of the ‘Kashmir issue’ in human and cultural terms. Kak’s ‘Jashn-e-Azaadi’ dwells on the experience of the Kashmiri people during the protracted period of strife they have suffered — with equal elements of militancy, State repression, criminal violence, and a struggle for self-articulation. According to the Bombay police, it contains “scenes of a provocative nature”. To disrupt the screening of such a documentary is only to re-enact the brutality that has become the tragic norm in the Valley. We strongly deplore this violation of the right of Indian citizens to examine, express and discuss questions of great public importance, without falling in line with the official view on these questions. Such high-handedness cuts at the very root of democracy.

jashn-e-azadi

If Bush vetoes the bill designed to provide state health insurance coverage for children, Barbara Ehrenreich proposes that we demand that he “open up pet health insurance to all American children now!”

This year, Americans will spend about $9.8 billion on healthcare for their pets, up from $7.2 billion five years ago. According to the New York Times, New York’s leading pet hospitals offer CT scans, MRIs, dialysis units and even a rehab clinic featuring an underwater treadmill, perhaps for the amphibians in one’s household. A professor who consults to pet health facilities on communication issues justified these huge investments in pet health to me by pointing out that pets are, after all, “part of the family.”

Well, there’s another category that might reasonably be considered “part of the family.” True, they are not the ideal companions for the busy young professional: It can take two to three years to housebreak them; their standards of personal hygiene are lamentably low, at least compared with cats; and large numbers of them cannot learn to sit without the aid of Ritalin.

barbara-ehrenreich-the-nation-health-insurance-pets-kids