Slutwalk, a knock on male abusers

The Slutwalk in the capital was to send out a strong message to the abusers and it was equally supported by men. People don't even think it's an issue, especially boys. They believe it's the birth right to stare; they don't know staring for more than 36 seconds is punishable. Face book is an encyclopedia of slangs. If you go to HMG wall, you will find series of slangs and outraging statements. No one says no to anyone rather reacts more aggressively with strong abusive words. ‘Fuck you’ seems to be a very small word for the facebook users and that is the reason why we find them using it very often. But, those whoever uses this kind of adjectives for girls, should place their mother and sister or wife in front of them and repeat the slang. Only then they will understand how much pleasure they get using such dirty words. The reason for such bad behaviour is either they have weak minds or suffer from poor upbringing.

I still remember Protima Bedi's nude run on the Juhu beach in Mumbai that spawned a legion of young admirers along with a bunch of raised eyebrows. Many thought this was the best way to get attention in the public space. As we all wear clothes, nudity could attract a lot of attention. Protima Bedi had done streaking in Mumbai, which had created a lot of hue and cry in 1970s. It was her message for perverted sect of the society. Covered woman is tripped off for satisfying ego, abused and tarnished by male chauvinists then she can even bare to be nude. What if everywoman sheds the inhabitations and face the odd? When she shed her clothing and streaked across Juhu beach, onlookers merely smiled.

Well, Persis Khambatta shaved her head and passed message don’t frame woman is certain parameters of looking beautiful. She shaved her head and then went on a man hunt? Nina Gupta, unmarried mother dared to conceive a child out of wed locks and passed a message that motherhood does not require any bonds and props; woman alone is capable of taking care of the child. Britney Spears and Madonna's French kiss while performing at the 2005 MTV Awards created quite a furor. But they gave message to love and live, and that man is not the only option. However, radical religious leaders have always attacked over such incidences, but they never made any special efforts to stop violence against women.

Deepa Mehta’s fire again was with a strong message to those men who wants women as show piece in their life. We had a myth that lesbianism did not exist in Hindu families. But "Fire," gave an insight to this issue. Why does the story revolve around a Hindu family? Why has the filmmaker named the main characters Sita and Radha? The reason, even Hindu family’s conservative woman has her own desires and it’s high time if man tries to suppress them, then they have better options. Hindu fundamentalists have always attacked theatres over these issues but things are moving towards betterment.

The Delhi chapter was supposed to be the first of its lot in India, but Bhopal took out its own version on July 17th. But when Delhi finally took the show to the road after months of speculation, the ‘SlutWalk’ was rather impressive. SlutWalk or Besharmi Morcha as the India chapter choose to call it – had intense media coverage and ample police protection. The morning papers announced the tentative route but participants were also told mildly that a ‘walk’ would not be allowed since the police feared for the safety of the participants. The India chapter of SlutWalk that was supposed to kick off in Delhi - finally took to the streets on a sunny morning. Despite the sun and the humidity, an impressive crowd gathered at Jantar Mantar at 10:30 waiting for the action to begin. Students with their teachers, parents, friends, media personnel, performers, volunteers and heavy security amidst a million cameras made it look like the biggest thing on a Sunday morning. No one seemed to mind the discomfort of the crowds or the innumerable camera wires all over the place. The fact that there were so many men participated was quite interesting; they carried posters condemning the sex crimes, the sexism and the indifference. The march kicked off with bright neon posters declaring – "Ladki tere baap ki jagiir nahin"; "Believe it or not, my short skirt has nothing to do with you!"; "Mujhe bus mein safar karna hai, english wala suffer nahin"…and more. "Enough" was the most pertinent slogan on everyone’s mind. The sexual harassment, the derogatory comments, the insults need to stop and Delhi was serious. The huge group of enthusiasts took a quite walk around the block to return to the site where the march started. As the crowds grew, the Delhi Drum Circle took up the rhythm and set things in motion. Amidst cheers and drum beats – the slogans were shouted out loud- "Besharam kaun? Teri aage teri soch!"

The people gathered there were vocal about the fact that they did not support harassment of any sort and that it was time to take matters in their own hands. Social activist and Actor, Nafisa Ali, was the only celebrity present at the march. She pointed out that every day was a struggle for the woman and this had to stop, and thus she supported the movement strongly. The theatre group Asmeeta took the centre stage for their street play and the crowds cheered on. They brought out the troubles women faced everyday – while traveling, on the streets; from sexually derogatory comments to sinister matters of rape, acid and razor attacks. It was not only about what was being said to the women – but also what was being done to them. Age, sex, nationality aside, the huge group of people who got together on the Sunday morning had one clear agenda in mind – stop harassing women. Some posters declared – "Gentlemen don’t get provoked, sexual offenders don’t need provocation." And hopefully the message would make it all clear. Slutwalk has become a revolution across the world.

Even as older Indians and the right-wing Hindu groups condemned the march, more than 100 protesters shouted angry slogans, enacted street plays and carried placards saying “I Have Nothing To Be Ashamed of,” “Stop Staring” and “Walk of No Shame.” In India, protesters were not skimpily clad as many were in walks in other cities.

The SlutWalk was started in Toronto earlier this year after a police officer said "women should avoid dressing like sluts" to avoid being victimized by sexual predators. But many objected to the officer's statement, saying the victims are not to be blamed for their assault, regardless of dress. Sexual assault survivors are never at fault, it is the fault of the rapist, not of the victim. Since the SlutWalk in India, men and women around the world have taken the officer's derogatory statement and used it as a word of empowerment. It's a word that we need to take back. It's a word that we need to reclaim, because it's not something that somebody can tell you to make you feel bad about yourself anymore.

Congress party of India websites are on the target of hackers

Fight against corruption but not against the nation.. Use your knowledge to make a better India not to hack Indian websites we also want to remove corruption for that don't hack the Army Page of India. Be an Indian. Don't ask what the nation has done for you ask what you have done for your nation. What have you done? The Indian arm of a hacker group 'Anonymous' - called “Operation India” - has removed its pages from Facebook and Twitter. Both the 'Operation India' Face book page and '@Operationindia' Twitter handle are no more accessible. They were not kicked out by Face book or twitter, they were removed by one of the Indian hacker who runs news portal and those pages were also created by him. On #OpIndia irc , there was too much of chaos and fight over these pages and they were created without the permission and consent of #OpIndia admins. What NDTV has mentioned is totally wrong. No Indian hacker is hooted out by Twitter or Facebook.

‘Anonymous’ is a 'hacktivist' group ( but they don’t attack anyone without any reason, it’s their way of showing disagreements, for me they are Robin Hoods. They fight with fat authorities, for the welfare of common man) that has been linked to the recent attack on Sony as well as against the governments of Iran, Spain, New Zealand and Colombia, and today they hacked Spain's national police website. Their operations started in India recently and came into the limelight when they claimed to have hacked the National Informatics Centre (NIC) website and the Indian Army website last week. But maximum hackers in #OpIndia are Indians; hardly there is any existence of actual Anon members. This Indian group of hackers using pseudonym ‘Anonymous’ to make this operation India safe and secured. There is no doubt the hackers involved in this operation are skillful and even seasoned in their profession.

It will be really difficult for Indian government to trace them with logs or any traces on line. When first time when NIC was hacked it was with the intention to reach their message in the corridors of power and government authorities. And also to make sure that government better take them seriously in case if the NIC was just some random target, second time they again hacked it and this time with rest of the data of NIC which includes the several ids and passwords of the various database on the server, they even posted the log files which NIC admins were studying to trace the origin of hack. It was done with the intention to make it loud and clear that Anon are really serious about their demands and intentions.

These hackers have already declared on defaced page with graffiti that said: "We exist without nationality. We exist with humanity. NIC took 3 mins." Yes they are Indian but they don’t believe in nationality (as anonymous is not just a voice of some individual hackers or a group of hackers, there mission is to bring revolution and that too all around the globe so any one can be Anonymous) and that’s the Indian sites were randomly attacked. In a similar hack, the Indian Army's website was reportedly taken down for about an hour.

According to some hackernews, the hackers also released password/ login information and forensic logs of indianarmy.nic.in. The Denial of Service (DoS) attack reportedly did not harm the site and there was no data loss. The site also quotes a message from them that states, "We took Down Indian Army Official Site and NIC knows more what we did.

And there after the group that attacked Indian sites in the cover of Anon, was none other than a hacker with hacker’s. They damaged lots of individuals and Indian sites to settle personal scores and create publicity. I am sure they won’t be able to create deter if ‘Law and Order’ reaches their doors, and reaching them is definitely not impossible.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) group, after these attacks the group has now planned to hack Congress websites. If this is not stopped, we are already under so much of pressure of agitations, corruption, black money, journalists getting killed, rape, and theft…now the cyber space challenges.

Wake up India and Indian authorities.

It’s time to act

It's time to understand the pain of commom citizen of this country.

Move over Marx, Twitter is here

Revolution is no longer the long-drawn process it once was. If the events that took place in what is the most backward region on Earth last month are any indicator, we have just seen the birth of a new hero in the fight for justice: Social Networking. Opposition supporters talk near graffiti referring to the social networking site "Twitter" in Tahrir Square in Cairo Consider this: One slap to one vendor in some forgotten alley in Tunisia, his resulting suicide, a Tweet, and one page on Facebook, sparked off a movement on a scale never seen in modern times. Some call it the 'Butterfly Effect' - about how the fluttering wings of a butterfly can set off a tsunami half a world away - but for the Africans, cause and effect were very much in the same country, city and square. Egypt, Jordan and Yemen are on the verge of collapse, indeed, civil war. The agent of change: Social networking.

There are reports that spending too much time on Facebook, Twitter and the likes lead to people getting prone to eating disorders and often ruin their social life: How Hosni Mubarak, Samir Rafai and Ali Abdullah Saleh would wish this were true of the Arab world. In the UK, the Britain Police inspection body is only too aware of the efficiency of social networking sites in organising protests. Authorities will have to move faster to help contain the increasing number of protests, an Inspectorate of the Constabulary report said. "Large numbers of protesters can be organised in hours and change their focus in minutes through the use of social media and mobile phones," the report said. "Those responsible for commanding events must plan with this adaptability in mind." An opposition supporter lifts a placard at the front line near Tahrir Square in Cairo.

The report singled out UK Uncut, a protest group organised literally overnight by Twitter users upset at the government's plans to slash public spending and perceived tax avoidance by major British companies. The group has used social networking sites to help coordinate their actions, including a live mapping service intended to help protesters dodge police cordons.
The report said that police forces -- many of whom have long been working to expand their online presence -- would have to consider how best to communicate with tech-savvy protesters.
All said, police forces the world over have been reduced to playing the catch up game with a people determined to not remain quiet anymore. Voices, hitherto lacking confidence and hence considered unimportant, have begun to be heard, and the internet is the loudspeaker.
How? Social networking sites, if nothing else, are accessible, and, above all, affordable. There is no cost of printing pamphlets, no problems about 'reaching the people' and thousands can be mobilised with one click of the mouse. They are a far cry from the European and Marxist traditions of organising demonstrations that are prevalent in the subcontinent.

A Trinamul Congress rally at Esplanade in Kolkata. In India, protests take days to organise: First, posters sprout up all over the city; next, an autorickshaw/handcart/Maruti 800 passes by in the narrow lanes blaring propaganda through rustic loudspeakers, making sure to mention the date and venue of said protest. And sure enough, on D-day, thousands turn up by the truckloads; rallies and flags would throng the streets; and by 6pm, after much sloganeering, everyone one dusts off, packs up, goes home and ponders over a day well spent.
In Egypt, it was Google executive Wael Ghonim's Twitter post, the day before he was whisked away by Cairo's police, that launched the Egypt uprising. One hundred and forty characters summed up three decades of angst: Pray for #Egypt. Very worried as it seems that government is planning a war crime tomorrow against people. We are all ready to die #Jan25. January 25, 2011. The day the internet ceased to be just a cache of information, and became the platform for the oppressed. A sign of better times. And for India, such a movement might just be waiting in the wings.

Source: India Syndicate

Twitter's Trending Topics Reinforce User's Love Of Mainstream Media

Big media still rules when it comes to Twitter, it seems. Hewlett-Packard researchers have been looking into where Twitter's Trending Topics come from, and the answer may be somewhat depressing to those convinced that the internet is all about democraticizing information. According the HP report, Trending

Topics are all about the retweets, with as high as 31% of a TT consisting of retweets instead of original content. They're also shortlived, with the average length of time they remain popular being less than 40 minutes, and tend to come from mainstream media sources; in a 40-day period, 72% of the most popular - and retweeted - tweets came from media outlets like CNN, the New York Times and the BBC (which, to some degree, makes sense - People are still attuned to repeat what they consider comes from some voice of authority, such as media institutions), a finding that mirrors the recent GlobalWebIndex Wave report that suggested that the internet was turning users back into passive consumers, instead of producers in their own right. Obviously, Twitter needs to be stopped before it's too late.

Brands that want a little piece of that sweet Twitter action are going to have to pay a little extra in the future, if rumors about Twitter increasing the cost of "promoted trend" ads by tens of thousands of dollars are true. According to the All Things Digital blog, Twitter has started telling buyers that the price of a one-day stint at the top of the Trending Topics bar will go from between $70,000-$80,000 to $100,000-$120,000. Considering the spots have been continually selling out since their introduction last year, it's unlikely that the price bump will cause anyone to blink. But the news that the company is thinking of doing a similar increase for its less-successful Promoted Accounts program might. Looks like Twitter is serious about tripling its revenue this year, and potentially without its users - most of whom ignore Promoted Trends or Accounts quite easily - even noticing.

When actress Elizabeth Hurley tweets that she loves a specific Estee Lauder product, she could be getting paid the big bucks to say so. Since the actress has been the face of the brand for over 15 years, it seems like quite the coincidence that every once and awhile she gives Estee Lauder shout out. Although the FTC ruled late last year that endorsed tweets in the U.S. must be clearly labeled, no such mandate exists in Hurley's native England. Or at least, not yet. The UK's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has begun cracking down on deceptive endorsed tweets, starting with its attack on PR company Handpicked Media. The OFT said in a statement that "online advertising and marketing practices that do not disclose they include paid for promotions are deceptive under trading laws."

This crackdown would put tweets like Hurley's in jeopardy of punishment, since the actress neither mentions the companies she endorses on her twitter page nor adds the hashtag #ad to her endorsed tweets.But full disclosure of endorsed tweets doesn't mean the end to twitter advertising. Stateside celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Snoop Dogg still rake in thousands (up to $10,000 and $3,000 respectively) to tweet about a product, even with the #ad hashtag.