Seattle: The Seattle City Council voted today to pass a landmark ordinance to ban caste discrimination in Seattle City.
The legislation, introduced by Councilmember Kshama Sawant, outlaws caste-based discrimination. This historic decision will have far-reaching implications for the oppressed castes in the States, and everywhere that the evils of caste have spread.
“We thank Council member Kshama Sawant for sponsoring the ordinance and her advocacy on behalf of the oppressed castes and organizations representing them. We, along with our partner organizations – Coalition of Seattle Indian-Americans, Ambedkar King Study Circle, Ambedkar Association of North America and Equality Labs – had worked closely with Councilmember Kshama Sawant to help draft this legislation,” said Ram Kumar, President, Ambedkar International Centre.
Today is an important day for caste equity, social justice, and human rights.
This historic decision will have far-reaching implications for the oppressed castes in the United States, and everywhere where that the evils of caste have spread.#BanCasteInUSApic.twitter.com/PFR3AyFnr7
— Ambedkar International Center (AIC) (@ambedkar_center) February 22, 2023
Efforts of Ambedkar International Center
Over the last two years, the Ambedkar International Center has championed caste equity and justice for the caste-oppressed through our policy and advocacy efforts including being an amicus curiae in the Cisco caste discrimination case and launching the policy initiative to add caste as a protected category in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The efforts of the Ambedkar International Centre were joined by a dynamic and resilient collective of more than 170 human and civil rights groups, faith communities and other non-governmental organizations, as well as experts, academics, advocates and dynamic leaders on the ground in Seattle.
“Together, we built a movement of organizations and individuals, endorsing and advancing the ordinance, informing and mobilizing people. We would like to thank MAPS-AMEN, in particular, and the Ravidassia community for their colossal support and tireless work in raising awareness and engaging the organizations and stakeholders to join the coalition to achieve this victory. We would also like to thank our policy consultant Sumit Anand for his guidance and expertise throughout the campaign. We thank all the supporters who submitted testimony today, and everyone who previously provided verbal or written comment to the Council,” added Kumar.
Seattle paved way for social change, justice and equality
“We are grateful and would like to acknowledge John Doe from the Cisco lawsuit, whose revolutionary actions, despite facing all odds stacked against him, brought the issue of caste discrimination in the tech industry and within the South Asian diaspora to a point where it can no longer be denied. This movement has stepped up on his labor, sacrifice and bravery,” said Anil Wagde, Spokesperson, Ambedkar International Centre.
“Seattle has paved the way for social change, justice and equality. We hope that the rest of the country will follow the suit soon. We are now one step closer to an egalitarian world,” added Anil Wagde. “I congratulate and appreciate the Seattle City Council for this historic step and standing by the caste oppressed. It is applaudable that the Council did not fall to the fabricated threats and tales told by right wing groups.”
Petrol-Diesel Prices Today, February 20: Petrol and diesel prices remain same across metro cities. Oil marketing companies at 6 AM revise fuel prices. The last change in country-wide fluctuation in fuel prices was witnessed in May 2022 when the Centre cut the excise duty on petrol by Rs 8 per litre and Rs 6 per litre on diesel. Retail petrol and diesel prices vary from state to state and various factors like freight charges, local taxes, and Value-Added Tax (VAT).
The retail price for petrol and diesel In Delhi, is priced at Rs 96.72, while diesel in the National Capital is retailing at Rs 89.62 per litre. In Mumbai, petrol is retailing at Rs 106.03 per litre, and diesel is selling at Rs 94.27 per litre. The prices of petrol and diesel change state by state, depending upon various criteria such as Value Added Tax (VAT), freight charges, local taxes, etc. The last country-wide change in fuel rates was on 21 May last year, when Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman slashed excise duty on petrol by Rs 8 per litre and Rs 6 per litre on diesel.
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Today & Yesterday’s Petrol Price in Indian major State
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Today & Yesterday’s Diesel Price in Major Indian States
District-Wise Petrol Price In Jammu And Kashmir
District-Wise Diesel Price In Jammu And Kashmir
City/District
Price
Change
Anantnag
85.75 ₹/L
0.11
Badgam
86.87 ₹/L
0.04
Bandipora
87.01 ₹/L
0.18
Baramulla
87.19 ₹/L
0.20
Doda
85.38 ₹/L
0.29
Ganderbal
87.11 ₹/L
0.00
Jammu
83.26 ₹/L
0.00
Kathua
83.66 ₹/L
0.26
Kishtwar
86.12 ₹/L
0.00
Kulgam
86.30 ₹/L
0.00
Kupwara
87.64 ₹/L
0.20
Poonch
85.80 ₹/L
0.10
Pulwama
86.77 ₹/L
0.32
Rajouri
84.29 ₹/L
0.00
Ramban
84.99 ₹/L
0.00
Reasi
84.30 ₹/L
0.00
Samba
83.26 ₹/L
0.29
Shopian
86.29 ₹/L
0.03
Srinagar
86.83 ₹/L
0.00
Udhampur
83.93 ₹/L
0.29
The change in the price of crude oil in the international market directly influences the price of crude oil in the domestic market; this is one of the most important factors responsible for an increase in petrol prices in Indian domestic market. Increase in international demand, low production rate and any political unrest in the crude oil producing countries of the world severely affects petrol price.
The prices of petrol and other petroleum products varies according to the local government policies which impose taxes on fuels. As and when the government of India raises tax rates on fuels the oil companies in India also increases the price of the petrol to recover losses and maintain marginal profits in the oil business in India.
The rupee-dollar exchange rate is also one of the major factors which influence the price of petrol in India. Indian oil companies pay to the oil imported from other countries in terms of dollars, but their expenses are regarding rupee. So, when the price of the crude oil is in the fall but the rupee is also weak against the dollar then it will reduce the gains to the oil refiners. On the other hand, when the rupee strengthens against the dollar and the price of the crude oil is in the fall, then the oil companies tend to gain.
You can check petrol prices in India, in a number of ways. The most popular way is to send an SMS. For example, if you are at an HPCL pump you can send an SMS to: HPPRICE DEALER CODE and send it to 9222201122. For Indian Oil Corporation or IOC send SMS to: Type: RSP DEALER CODE and send it to 9224992249.
There are six brands of petrol pumps which are currently active in India. They are:
SRINAGAR: Divisional Commissioner Kashmir Vijay Bidhuri on Saturday said the ongoing development works in the city centre Lal Chowk for smart city projects have taken pace as the work is going on in double shifts, while the next two months are crucial in view of the proposed G20 meeting in Srinagar.
Talking to reporters after taking review of development works in Lal Chowk, Bidhuri, as per the news agency KNO said in the coming two month people might have to face inconvenience as some roads will be closed to complete the development works.
He said the development works will be completed in a stipulated time as work is going on in double shifts.
“We had started works when there was no proposal for G20 meeting in Srinagar, but since it has been proposed to hold the meeting here it benefitted us as we started work in double shifts. The projects will be completed in time now,” he said.
Karachi: Unidentified armed terrorists on Friday attacked the police chief’s office in Pakistan’s most populous city, Karachi, ensuing heavy firing between paramilitary rangers, police and the attackers.
According to sources, the number of terrorists involved in the attack is not confirmed.
The terrorists first threw half a dozen hand grenades into the main compound of the Karachi Police Chief’s office building and then entered the premises.
Atleast 12 personnel of Pakistani SFs lost their lives and many are hostage in ongoing fire fighting between Pak SFs and TTP & SLA fighters in Karachi Police Headquarter. (Sources)#Karachipic.twitter.com/QOspyppdN5
“Heavy firing is going on between paramilitary rangers, police and the attackers. All mobile vans in the district and area have been summoned urgently to the spot to surround the attackers,” one police source said.
Hyderabad: Tension gripped Kalapather in the Old City here on Thursday after Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) workers staged a dharna demanding action against an All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) corporator for preventing them from holding a meeting. Following a complaint, the Kalapather police booked a case against AIMIM corporator under various sections.
The BJP’s local unit was holding a street corner meeting at Mochi Colony under the Kalapather police station limits. On coming to know about it, Ramnaspura corporator Mohd Qader, who is from the AIMIM, along with workers allegedly came and stopped the programme.
Hyderabad: BJP workers staged dharna against AIMIM corporator at Kalapather Police station
Hyderabad: BJP workers staged dharna against AIMIM corporator at Kalapather Police station
The police dispersed both the groups at Mochi colony. BJP party workers later came to the Kalapather police station and sat on a protest demanding police take action against AIMIM workers. They reportedly picked up an argument with the police officials.
As the situation got tense, senior police officials came to the spot with additional forces.
Police pickets are deployed in Kalapather Mochi colony, ITI and surrounding localities as a precautionary measure.
There’s an international socialist conspiracy afoot, and it wants to make it easier to walk to the shops. Fringe forces of the far left are plotting to take away our freedom to be stuck in traffic jams, to crawl along clogged ring roads and trawl the streets in search of a parking spot. The liberty of the rush-hour commute, the sanctity of the out-of-town shopping centre and the righteousness of the suburban food desert is under threat as never before. The name of this chilling global movement? The “15-minute city”.
Westminster can often seem like a badly scripted spoof of itself, but rarely has parliament descended into parody as far as it did last week, when the Conservative MP for the South Yorkshire constituency of Don Valley, Nick Fletcher, launched a plucky tirade against the concept of convenient, walkable neighbourhoods. “Will the leader of the house please set aside time for a debate on the international socialist concept of so-called 15-minute cities and 20-minute neighbourhoods?” he asked, in an ominous tone. “Sheffield is already on this journey, and I do not want Doncaster, which also has a Labour-run socialist council, to do the same.”
It is not the first time that an online conspiracy theory has made it into the Commons chamber, but it may be one of the most surreal. Simply put, the 15-minute city principle suggests you should have your daily needs – work, food, healthcare, education, culture and leisure – within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from where you live. It sounds pleasant enough, but in the minds of libertarian fanatics and the bedroom commentators of TikTok, it represents an unprecedented assault on personal freedoms.
“Creepy local authority bureaucrats would like to see your entire existence boiled down to the duration of a quarter of an hour,” warned a furious presenter on GB News last week, as if describing a plot line from Nineteen Eighty-Four. The 15-minute city, he suggested, was a “dystopian plan”, heralding “a surveillance culture that would make Pyongyang envious”.
Never before has a mundane theory of urbanism been such a lightning rod for outrage. It’s like suggesting that public parks are part of a sinister plant-worshipping plot to demolish our homes and replace them with grass. Or that public transport is the work of a satanic bus cult. Some online forums have claimed that the 15-minute city represents the first step towards an inevitable Hunger Games society, in which residents will not be allowed to leave their prescribed areas. They see it not as a route to a low-traffic, low-carbon future, but as the beginning of a slippery slope to living in an open-air prison.
As one irate TikToker shrieked, while jumping around his room in disbelief: “You’re going to have to apply for a fucking permit to leave your zone!” (Although he also ascribed the 15-minute city plans to the Tories, so it’s not quite clear which deranged Reddit forum he got his information from).
A protester at a demonstration against 15-minute cities, London, 10 December 2022. Photograph: Martin Pope/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
There are lots of good reasons to interrogate the cute logic of the 15-minute city – could it actually lead to further social segregation? Would wealthy residents, and their money, remain in the prosperous enclaves? Who is providing the services and where do they live? – but the threat of our rights being curtailed by travel permits isn’t one of them.
The conspiracy theory pot was given a powerful stir in December, when the Canadian rightwing culture warrior Jordan Peterson decided to get involved. “The idea that neighbourhoods should be walkable is lovely,” he tweeted, in a post that has since clocked up 7.5m views. “The idea that idiot tyrannical bureaucrats can decide by fiat where you’re ‘allowed’ to drive is perhaps the worst imaginable perversion of that idea,” he continued, “and, make no mistake, it’s part of a well-documented plan.” Peterson quoted a tweet that featured the telltale hashtag #GreatReset, referring to the World Economic Forum’s post-pandemic economic recovery plan – widely used in the stranger corners of the internet as a byword for a shadowy global conspiracy intent on robbing us of our freedoms. The anti-vaccine, pro-Brexit, climate-denying, 15-minute-phobe, Great Reset axis is a strong one.
So where did the fear come from? Many of the UK conspiracy theorists highlight that these “un-British” ideas of urban walkability emanate from France, so they must be distrusted on principle. Worse than that, they point out, the ideology has been driven by a bearded Colombian scientist with radical roots. The ideas had been around since the 1920s, but the 15-minute city phrase was coined by Carlos Moreno, esteemed professor at the Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris, who was once a member of a leftwing guerrilla group in the 1970s. And now he’s coming for your cars.
“Their lies are enormous,” Moreno said in a recent interview , describing some of the claims made by his critics. “You will be locked in your neighbourhood; cameras will signal who can go out; if your mother lives in another neighbourhood, you will have to ask for permission to see her, and so on,” adding that they “sometimes post pictures of concentration camps.”
Moreno first promoted his concept of la ville du quart d’heure in 2016, but it gained international attention when the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, adopted it as part of her re-election campaign in 2020. She promised she would close off roads and turn them into public plazas, plant more trees and turn schools into the “capitals of the neighbourhood”, open to everyone for sports and recreation in evenings and at weekends.
The pandemic proved to be a powerful trial for how a 15-minute city might work in practice, and led to bodies such as UN Habitat, the World Economic Forum, the C40 Global Cities Climate Network and the Federation of United Local Governments championing the cause – which also helped to boost unhinged fantasies that it is all part of a grand global scheme of totalitarian oppression.
More recently, the principles have gained traction in the UK, with Oxford, Birmingham, Bristol, Canterbury and Sheffield councils considering 15-minute city ideas. Cue outrage from those with no other cause left to flog. “The climate change lockdowns are coming,” tweeted Nigel Farage, in response to Canterbury’s innocuous traffic filtering scheme, while Oxford’s plans triggered similar ripples of incredulous fury.
“Oxfordshire County Council yesterday approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ from global warming,” screamed one alarmist headline. “The latest stage in the ‘15-minute city’ agenda is to place electronic gates on key roads in and out of the city, confining residents to their own neighbourhoods.” The claims had zero basis in fact, but they poured further fuel on the fire of those battling low-traffic neighbourhoods, and their fellow band of assorted culture warriors.
It seems fitting that a leaflet drop warning against Oxford’s traffic filters plan was organised by Not Our Future – a new pressure group led by none other than Fred and Richard Fairbrass of 1990s band turned anti-vaxxers Right Said Fred. Too sexy for their car? Maybe they could try cycling to the shops instead.
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#praise #15minute #city #mundane #planning #theory #terrifying #conspiracists #Oliver #Wainwright
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
It is threatening to become a Premier League truism. When Manchester City face Arsenal, they always win. But never in a meeting as loaded as this. City’s 11th straight victory over Arsenal in the competition carried them above their opponents on goal difference at the top of the table, although they have played an extra game. As a statement of intent about a fifth title in six years, it was red hot.
Arsenal were the better team in the first half, running on passion, showing character to recover from Kevin De Bruyne’s wonderful opener. It was Bukayo Saka who equalised with the second-most important penalty of his career, coolly rolled past Ederson and, at the interval, you would have backed Mikel Arteta’s team to emerge from their wobble – the loss at Everton followed by the draw at home against Brentford on Saturday.
City simply narrowed their focus and raised their level. The second half would belong to them, with Erling Haaland to the fore. When he started to hare around and barge people about, it was as if he had zapped bolts of chaos at the Arsenal defence and fear around the Emirates.
Haaland played a part in Jack Grealish’s goal for 2-1, taking a pass from Bernardo Silva after Gabriel Magalhães had given away possession and ushering in Ilkay Gündogan. Jack Grealish took over, finishing with his right foot via a slight deflection off Takehiro Tomiyasu.
It was Haaland who moved the game beyond Arsenal when he rammed home City’s third. Gündogan was involved and De Bruyne cut the ball back. Touch from Haaland, finish, game over. In the blink of an eye and with the latest demonstration of his explosiveness. Haaland has 26 league goals already this season.
The symbol of City’s chutzpah? De Bruyne walking around the pitch and eyeballing the Arsenal support after his 87th-minute substitution as they threw bottles at him.
De Bruyne had not scored in his previous 13 City appearances but he corrected that after an error by Tomiyasu, who Arteta had selected ahead of Ben White at right-back. Tomiyasu was facing his own goal, under pressure from Grealish, when he decided to go back to Aaron Ramsdale, which went horribly wrong. De Bruyne had started loosely but he read Tomiyasu’s intentions and, with Ramsdale off his line, he knew what he had to do. The first-time left-footed lob was perfection.
The respective siege mentalities were a theme. Arteta had muttered darkly about the VAR aberration from the Brentford game, which allowed the equaliser against his team to stand, saying it had given everybody at the club “more desire to pass this hurdle they’ve put on us”.
Guardiola, though, could see Arteta’s dodgy refereeing decision and raise it by a hundred or so Premier League charges for financial irregularities. The City manager has harnessed the mood of defiance and persecution at the Etihad. Happy flowers? Guardiola wants hungry fellas. Or something like that.
Bukayo Saka scores Arsenal’s equaliser from the penalty spot in the 42nd minute. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian
De Bruyne’s goal was a kick in the teeth for Arsenal because they ought to have been in front. Jorginho – in for the injured Thomas Partey – had intercepted a De Bruyne pass to release Eddie Nketiah, who saw his shot blocked by Rúben Dias, but the big chance came on 22 minutes when Oleksandr Zinchenko whipped over a cross from the left. Nketiah flashed a free header wide.
Haaland had nearly got around the back of Tomiyasu in the 16th minute but it was Arsenal who forced the issue, their press high and effective. Ederson would be booked for timewasting mainly because he could not see a pass out. By then, Tomiyasu had lifted a volley high, Saka been held up by Nathan Aké after a wonderful move and Nketiah miscontrolled following a Gabriel Martinelli flick. Arsenal bristled with energy; an equaliser was in the air.
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It came when Nketiah chased a ball over the top and Ederson seemed to stop, the Arsenal striker going into him after hooking in a shot that Aké scrambled off the line. The referee, Anthony Taylor, penalised Ederson for the foul, although he decided against showing him a second yellow card. Enter Saka. Ederson pointed to his right. Saka read the bluff and put the kick there. A breathless first half ended with a Rodri header flicking off Aké’s heel and striking the Arsenal crossbar.
Guardiola had made the journey to north London with a personal pledge not to die wondering. Hence the boldness of his starting lineup, packed with attacking midfield menace and Silva as a left-back when City were out of possession. Guardiola would change to a back four when he introduced Manuel Akanji for Riyad Mahrez on the hour and there was greater aggression from his team.
City thought they had a penalty just before the system change when Haaland muscled past Gabriel and was fouled by the defender. Taylor, under relentless pressure throughout, pointed to the spot only for the VAR, David Coote, to spot that Haaland had been offside from Kyle Walker’s ball forward.
Nketiah almost got on to a Tomiyasu cross but it was City who came to push, Rodri working Ramsdale with a header; Akanji seeing the rebound blocked. Haaland was also denied by the goalkeeper after a Zinchenko mistake before Grealish enjoyed his big moment. Haaland deserved a goal and he would get it. Arsenal’s evening was summed up when Nketiah blew another gilt-edged header in added time.
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#Grealish #Haaland #put #Manchester #City #top #table #Arsenals #expense
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Indore: Indore may have earned the prestigious tag of being the cleanest city India, but its air quality is worsening due to rapid development in the transport, construction and industrial sectors, said experts on Wednesday stressing the need for intensifying efforts to control the situation.
As per the data shared by the Central Pollution Control Board, the air quality of Indore on Wednesday was “moderate”, which can cause breathing discomfort to people with lungs, asthma and heart diseases.
Indore has been selected by Clean Air Catalyst, a global alliance working to improve air quality, apart from Jakarta (Indonesia) and Nairobi (Kenya) for one of its projects.
As part of the project, three air pollution monitoring stations have been set up in Indore to record data on pollutants like fine particulate matter or PM2.5, carbon monoxide and black carbon, an official of the Clean Air Catalyst said.
“Indore is not among the most polluted cities in the world, but it is not even one of the cleanest cities in the world in terms of air quality,” Hisham Mundol, chief advisor in India for the Environmental Defense Fund associated with the Clean Air Catalyst, told PTI.
He said that the air quality in Indore is being affected due to the rapid activities taking place in the transport, construction and industrial sectors.
Mundol said that under the ‘Clean Air Catalyst’ project, the data on air pollution in the city will be studied for the next two years and after that appropriate solutions will be provided to the local administration.
According to Dr Dilip Vaghela, an environmental expert associated with the Clean Air Catalyst and a former officer of the Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board, the challenges of air pollution in Indore are increasing continuously.
“In Indore, the amount of pollutants like PM10 and PM 2.5 increases a lot, especially during the winter season and lack of wind,” he said.
Vaghela said that most of the roads in densely populated Indore, the commercial capital of Madhya Pradesh, are not very wide, while the density of vehicles on them is very high.
“The population of the city is between 38 to 40 lakh, while the number of vehicles is estimated to be between 18 to 20 lakh, which means, there is a vehicle for every two people in the city. This ratio is probably the highest in the whole country,” he said.
“Efforts need to be intensified to improve the air quality to prevent the situation in the city from deteriorating,” he said.
Indore Mayor Pushyamitra Bhargava said the traffic and air quality problems in the city were like a “spot on the beautiful moon”.
“We have taken up the task of solving both these problems in a major way with the help of the Clean Air Catalyst,” he added.
The latest album by Heinali is a rather beautiful piece created from field recordings made around his home city – recordings from rail stations, the sound of traffic and birdsong, the dripping of water in a tunnel, the rumbling of trains on a track, the babble of voices in a shopping mall – all sliced up, manipulated, accompanied by synthesisers and transformed into a piece of compelling ambient music. What transforms this niche arthouse project into an urgent piece of work is the fact that the city in question is Kyiv. “These are recordings of a world that has disappeared,” says Heinali, AKA Ukrainian musician Oleh Shpudeiko. “The album documents a city that has changed for ever.”
The album, Kyiv Eternal, was completed after the Russian invasion, but the project dates back more than a decade. “I bought myself a handheld digital tape recorder in 2012 and started to record sounds around Kyiv,” says Shpudeiko. “I had hundreds of these sound sketches on my hard drive when I had to flee the city in February last year.”
He relocated to Lviv while the battle of Kyiv raged in the early months of the war, and briefly returned after the Russian army’s advances were successfully repelled. “Kyiv was more alive than ever, but I wanted to protect it from harm, to console it,” he says. “This was a city where I had spent 37 years of my life. So this album became a hymn to this part of my identity.”
Heinali: Kyiv Eternal – stream Spotify
Shpudeiko describes the audio loops he works with as “memory loops”. He explains: “When we remember things, we only remember certain parts. We might change parts of that memory in our brain: we’ll add or remove or amplify a piece of information. It is very similar to a musical loop. A fragment performed over and over again will change slightly with each repetition.”
Kyiv Eternal is released exactly a year after the Russian invasion, and comes not long after the release of another Heinali album, Live From a Bomb Shelter in Ukraine, which documents a performance live-streamed from a Lviv basement as Russian missiles rained down upon the nation. That album featured music from a project called Organa which he has been working on for several years, in which medieval liturgical music is reconfigured for modular synths and non-classical vocalists.
“Early music and contemporary music have a lot in common,” says Shpudeiko. “Medieval music is less about harmonic development and more about creating a certain atmosphere and a feeling. Drone and ambient music is the same. It is designed to invoke certain religious experiences, mystical experiences.”
Shpudeiko is now living temporarily in Germany, one of hundreds of Ukrainian artists relocated around Europe (thanks to the support of Ukraine’s ministry of culture) who aim to preserve and further Ukrainian art in exile. He would have loved to have come to the UK: his English is flawless, London is his favourite city and he has long been influenced by British electronic artists such as Coil, Psychic TV, Current 93 and Death in June. But the UK’s asylum policy made this almost impossible. “It is incredibly hard to get a UK visa – it costs a lot of money and British embassies demand your passport for the duration of the application process, which can take as long as three months.”
‘Early music and contemporary music have a lot in common’ … Oleh Shpudeiko pictured in 2020. Photograph: Ksenia Popova
Shpudeiko was brought up in a Russian-speaking family but he rejects the myth – promulgated by Putin and his “Vatnik” apologists – that Ukraine’s Russian speakers are pro-Moscow. However, the invasion has changed his attitude towards the Russian language. “I used to read a lot in Russian. Things I wanted to read – the literature, or the books about music history or sound studies – were only available in English or Russian, never translated into Ukrainian.
“But after 24 February, I haven’t been able to read a single Russian book. I switched off that part of my brain. It was quite painful. I still speak Russian occasionally in non-official situations, like with my family, but officially I only use Ukrainian or English. I think we have all had to put Russian on pause for the duration of the war. It is extremely traumatic for any of us to deal with even the greatest Russian culture right now, knowing what they did in Bucha or Mariupol. I understand that this is not a healthy reaction, but there can be no healthy reactions to war.”
How does he see the war panning out? “I am the worst person to ask about this,” he says. “This time last year I was arguing with my girlfriend: ‘No of course there won’t be a full-scale invasion.’ Worst-case scenario was that there would be another active phase of war in the east. The Russians trying to take Kyiv seemed insane.”
Will he be touring Kyiv Eternal? “My live shows are much more improvised affairs. I’m not sure if I should ever perform this material outside of Ukraine. It is so closely connected with my home town. Maybe it can exist as a sound art installation, but it is too personal to think of doing this live.”
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#Ukrainian #composer #Heinali #preserving #sound #Kyiv #wanted #protect #city #harm
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Hyderabad: In view of curbing illegal activities on the outskirts of the city, 32 farmhouses were raided by the Special Operations Teams (SOTs) in coordination with the Cyberabad police for organising gambling and illegal supply of liquor.
On receiving a tip-off, the police conducted surprise checking at 32 locations last weekend and on Monday and booked cases against the anti-social activities carried out in them.
The farmhouses located on the outskirts of the city that were reportedly raided include the Bigg Boss farmhouse in Moinabad, Jahangir Dream Valley, The Ripplez farmhouse in Shamshabad, and Govardhan Reddy’s farmhouse in Medchal.
Police seized 29 liquor bottles, hookah material, one lakh cash, 10 sets of playing cards and seven cell phones from these farmhouses.
