News Nuggets

London exhibition of paisley motif

  The origin of the paisley motif, first popularised in Indian shawls and other garments, is explored in a London gallery. The PM Gallery in Ealing, West London, has a show of new work by international artists, all based on paisley. The exhibition highlights the origins, development and many uses of the pattern which originated in Babylon before spreading to India and Europe.
   Officers of the East India Company first spotted Kashmiri shawls with the tear-drop buta-shaped motif in the eighteenth century. They brought them back home, where inexpensive copies were made in the Scottish town of Paisley.
   It took Indian weavers up to three years to complete the original shawls, each priced at the time at 300 guineas, or £20,000 at today’s prices. Indian aristocrats exchanged them as gifts. They were equally prized by their contemporaries first in England and then in the rest of Europe. The Empress Josephine is recorded as having had several hundred paisley shawls. Buta or boteh is the original name for the motif that was exported to India and Europe in textiles, embroidery, tiles and carvings. The buta has been compared to mango fruit, pine, gourd, pitcher plant and the young shoots of the date palm. Regarded as a symbol of renewal, the date palm provided food, wine, thatch, wood, paper and string and is thought to have been the prototype for the Tree of Life.
   Carol Swords of PM Gallery commented, ‘The paisley pattern has fascinated people for centuries, appearing in many places, from gentlemen’s waistcoats, to 1960s hippie clothing, and the paisley bandanas of US gang culture and Hip Hop artists. The buta has decorated saris for hundreds of years. The exhibition celebrates the origins and many uses of paisley, reinterpreting it both in traditional woven work and surprising and experimental new forms, breathing new life into the pattern.’

Bangladesh bears the brunt of cyclone

  Saudi Arabia has led the international community with pledges of US$100 mn assistance to victims of the Bangladesh cyclone, which claimed thousands of lives and left millions homeless. Britain has offered US$5.1 mn and India US$1 mn. Help was also forthcoming from the European Union and the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), which called on member governments and civil bodies to send urgently needed help.
   The US government has confirmed the deployment of US navy helicopters to help coordinate relief efforts. Promises of assistance also came from the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kampala at the end of November.
   The confirmed death toll in the cyclone had crossed 3000 by the end of November, but the head of the Bangladesh Red Crescent said upward of 5000 to 10,000 had been killed. Entire villages, washed away by a massive tidal wave, left stranded families isolated for days without food or drinking water.

Yahoo charged with betrayal of privacy

  Yahoo, the global Internet services company, has agreed to a settlement with two Chinese dissidents who said details of their e-mail and personal information supplied to the Chinese government led to their arrest and incarceration.
   The World Organization for Human Rights in the US acted for journalist Shi Tao and cyber dissident Wang Xiaoning, who were awarded legal fees and financial compensation for themselves and their families.
   The company has also agreed to a ‘human rights fund to provide humanitarian and legal aid to dissidents who have been imprisoned for expressing their views online.’
   Shi was convicted of ‘leaking state secrets’ for contacting a New York-based website to reveal government instructions to media outlets about how to report the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. Wang was separately convicted for posting an internet appeal for democratic reform. Both have been given 10-year sentences.
   Yahoo’s settlement follows severe criticism by the US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, who described its actions as ‘inexcusably negligent behaviour at best, and deliberately deceptive behaviour at worst.’  
   Shi and Wang’s lawyer, according to reports, said the deal ‘provides a precedent making clear that US companies have to do much more than just follow the orders of their host governments; that they have to look to US laws and US human rights standards when they make their decisions abroad.’
   Pending legislation in the US House of Representatives prohibits US companies from cooperating with foreign nations in censoring Internet content and in providing information to track down users. If approved, it would permit ‘affected parties’ to sue companies that violate the Global Online Freedom Act.

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