Lamb of God To Play in Bangalore Tomorrow And You Can’t Miss It

By Supritha Sanjay & Ranjini Garani

Bangalore, May 14 : Going by vocalist Randy Blythe’s Twitter updates, the rocker can’t wait to hit the Indian circuit. “I’m ready to go see temples, eat my ass off and play a RAGING show. I’m VERY excited — always wanted to see India,” Blythe says on Twitter with barely concealed exuberance. What’s more, he even says he is looking forward to tasting ‘idli-chutney’.

For fans of Lamb of God, the American heavy metal band that was nominated for a Grammy in 2007, the next two days are sure to carry a heavy charge of anticipation as they wait for the band to perform live on Saturday, May 15. The heavy metal outfit from Virginia is all set to headline at the Summer Storm Festival at Palace Grounds. The performance is sure to give trash metal fanatics an opportunity to support pure American metal, say fans from the city.

Lamb of God, sometimes shortened to LoG, is also called ‘The wrath of Virginia' and comprises of vocalist Randall Blythe, guitarists Mark Morton and Willie Adler, bassist John Campbell and drummer Chris Adler. Today, the band has a world-wide following. “It’s exciting to see people from Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Dubai flocking to Bangalore to watch them live,” says Vinay Venugopal, co-owner of event management company Overture that is organizing the performance.

Bringing LoG down made perfect sense for Overture as the band is currently at the peak of its spell. But it wasn’t easy to manage the logistical challenges, the company confesses. “We had a few difficulties convincing the band, but LoG’s management has been very cooperative and patient with us,” says Venugopal.

Overture also aims to encourage local talent and figures there can’t be a better way to do that than giving Bangalore bands an opportunity to open the LoG act. Arpan Peter, co-founder of Overture, says, “We at Overture are trying to provide a platform for local bands and international acts like this one present the perfect opportunity.” Some of India’s youngest and grooviest bands such as Bhoomi and Extinct Reflections from Bangalore, Boomarang from Mizoram and Scribe from Mumbai will be opening for Lamb of God.

For Indian bands, the prospect of performing with LoG is exciting. Sandesh Nagaraj, guitarist, Extinct Reflections, has flown down from Los Angeles especially for this. For the band’s vocalist Prasad Bhat, “Opening for Lamb of God is challenging, but also a great honour.” Unfortunately, this one might be Extinct Reflections’ last gig, though Bhat feels this is the “best way to end our chapter in music.”

Venugopal feels that the intricacies of LoG’s music appeals to both technically inclined musicians as well as the average listener. A fan himself,Venugopal expects LoG to captivate the crowd in minutes with its riffs and onstage histrionics. Speaking of the music scene in the city, Venugopal says, “The city has a progressive music scenario, people have begun to appreciate an assortment of genres.” And he is indeed optimistic about the turnout for this one.

Going by the mood in the city, Bangalore seems to have a pretty large Lamb Of God fan following. Shruti Rao, who calls herself a“hardcore LoG fan”, says: “The countdown has begun! I’m looking forward to watching Walk With Me in Hell live. The guitar solo is insane. Mark Morton is the man!”

For young metal-heads, it’s time to celebrate as the city is hosting a large-scale metal event after a long dry spell. Bhargav Venkatesh, a student, is thrilled about the Summer Storm Festival. “After a string of disappointing acts, metal-heads like me are relieved that LoG will be performing here. They never fail to deliver inside the studio or out. My friends and I would always joke about LoG performing here one day, and now it’s really happening. We are totally kicked about this.” No wonder then that the organisers are excited about hosting Lamb of God. “They are one of the biggest international bands and have made a mark,” says Venugopal. Going by Blythe’s tweets, the band too is excited about its maiden India visit. We hope it’s not just for the ‘idli-chutney’.

20 Injured in Clash, Police Firing in Meghalaya

Guwahati/Shillong, May 14 : Over 20 people were injured when a clash broke out between two communities and subsequent police firing at a village along Assam-Meghalaya border today, police said.

The incident happened at a weekly market in the disputed Langpi village, claimed by both the states, when a group of people attacked another community with firearms, stones, bricks and sticks, Kamrup (Rural) SP P S Mahanta said.

Police opened fire after the attackers continued to hurl stones at the other group who fled to a nearby police outpost at the village bordering Meghalaya's West Khasi Hills district and Assam's Kamrup district, he said.

20 people were injured, 10 of them seriously, in the incident, he said, adding that the injured were rushed to the Guwahati Medical College Hospital.
Additional police forces have been rushed to the village, officials said.

Miley Cyrus is Dirty Dancing

Video scandal with producer THREE times her age

By Chris Johnson

Miley Cyrus appears to have danced herself into another round of media scrutiny.

A video of the Hannah Montana star, then 16, doing some 'dirty dancing' with 45-year-old film producer Adam Shankman has surfaced on the internet.

The saucy clip was originally posted by celebrity website TMZ.com before hitting YouTube. But it has now been removed.

Bump and grind: Miley Cryus, seen here aged 16 last summer, dirty dancing with producer Adam Shankman at the cast wrap party of the film The Last Song

   

Moving in: The footage was shot in Georgia last summer

The impromptu dance reportedly took place in Georgia last summer at the cast wrap party for The Last Song, which Shankman produced.

Miley, now aged 17, is seen gyrating against the openly gay producer in the footage, wearing just a pair of hot pants, a top and cardigan.

The pair cavort and writhe around to various hip hop tunes, including the Black Eyed Peas track Boom Boom Pow.

Gyrating: The pair cavorted to various hip hop tunes, including the Black Eyed Peas track Boom Boom Pow

Shankman, a judge on the U.S. version of So You Think You Can Dance, responds to Miley's provocative moves by waving his hands around and at one stage appears to gesture slapping her thighs.

TMZ reported that Miley's parents, Billy Ray Cyrus and Leticia, were not present at the party.

It's not the first time the teenage star has attracted controversy. In April 2008, she did a raunchy shoot for Vanity Fair, where she posed with just a bedsheet.

And her performance at the Teen Choice Awards last August made headlines after she danced along a pole on top of an ice-cream cart.

Provocative: Miley with producer Shankman, left, and right, with boyfriend Liam Hemsworth, also her co-star in The Last Song, which Shankman produced

Shankman began his professional career in musical theatre and was a dance in music videos for Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson. He also choreographed one of the Spice Girls' tours.

He produced the film The Last Song which stars Cyrus as a New York teenager reluctantly spending the summer in a small Southern beach town.

In March she admitted she was dating her co-star in the movie, Australian actor Liam Hemsworth, 20.

Mailonline has contacted Miley's spokesman and awaits comment.

Not the first time: Miley caused outrage by performing a pole dance onstage during the Teen Choice Awards in California last August

[ via Dailymail ]

Northeast Rebels ‘Making Porn Films’ To Raise Funds

Rebels in India’s northeastern state of Tripura are making pornographic films to raise money for their separatist campaign, officials say.

Agartala, May 14 : The information has come from surrendered guerrillas of the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), according to police.

They say the rebels are forcing captured tribal women, and some men, to take part in the films.

The films are then dubbed to be sold in India and neighboring countries.

Remote areas

The former guerrillas of the NLFT have told police their leaders not only sexually abused scores of tribal girls recruited into the rebel army but also used them – and some male guerrillas – to produce scores of porn films, officials say.

“The films were found to be dubbed in Burmese, Bengali, Thai and Hindi, suggesting they were being marketed to many countries in the region,” said Ghanshyam Murari Srivastava, Tripura’s police chief.

He said police have recovered scores of pornographic DVDs featuring young women and men from various parts of the state, including remote areas such as Amarpur and Gandacherra.

Such pornographic DVDs have also been recovered from NLFT bases inside Bangladesh after they were raided by the Bangladesh army, the police chief said.

‘Sleek product’

Discreet inquiries with video production houses in Tripura confirmed what the surrendered rebels are reported to have said.

“We do get orders to process raw porn shot in remote tribal areas from time to time,” the owner of a video production company in the state’s capital Agartala told the BBC.

He did not want to be named.

Production houses say rebels give them good money for their work

“We get a lot more money , much above our normal rates, to process these films and deliver a sleek final product.

“We know the insurgents are behind these films. When we process their raw stock, we can see boys standing around with automatic rifles and revolvers pulling in girls but we are supposed to cut all that out and just concentrate on the sex,” the owner said.

“It is very good money and we don’t think it is right to question the insurgents anyway,” he said.
The latest pornographic video that has become sought after by young men in Tripura is Hamjagoi Tongthoklaima, or Our Experiences.

Like a feature film, it runs a full cast of “heroes” and “heroines”.

Initially it appears to be a love film with boys and girls holding hands and walking past lakes and trees. But soon the video starts featuring close-up shots of the actors undressing and sex.

‘Actress fled’

Surrendered NLFT rebels say their leaders have always abused tribal women , both in the villages and also those recruited into the rebel army.

A study by two researchers, Meenakshi Sen Bandopadhyay and Jayanta Bhattacharya, documented in detail sexual abuses perpetrated by the NLFT.
“The NLFT rebels did not allow a tribal girl in North Tripura to get married because they wanted to enjoy her by turns. Her parents were helpless because they lived in a tea garden in a remote area,” the study says.

One surrendered NLFT guerrilla Mohan Reang said: “One tribal actress Anita Reang who played the heroine in some local films had to flee her village because a top NLFT leader wanted to whisk her away.”

But while forcing tribal women to have sex with them at gunpoint or carrying them away to the rebel camps is not new, using them to produce pornography certainly is.

“This seems to have started a year or two back,” says local journalist Manas Paul who began legal proceedings to bring this to the notice of the authorities.

“But it is now rampant, so many of these discs are circulating all over our state and possibly in other parts of northeast India as well,” he said.

But in some other northeast Indian states like Manipur, the rebels punish those who produce pornography.

In the state of Manipur, some girls who acted in porn films were shot in the legs, as were the producers.

[ via The BBC ]

Security Forces to Clear Dimapur-Imphal NH-39

New Delhi, May 14 : In a move which will bring much needed relief to Manipur which has been facing a severe shortage of essential commodities in the wake highway blockades, the Centre on Thursday managed to impress upon supporters of NSCN (IM) general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah to let traffic resume on at least one of the highways leading to the state.

Sources here said that the Dimapur-Imphal National Highway-39 could be cleared by security forces and it was ready for truck traffic to Manipur. The Centre's intervention came in the wake of Union home secretary G K Pillai's visit to both Nagaland and Manipur on Tuesday-Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the blockade of the Silchar-Jiribam-Imphal NH-53 by the All Naga Students' Association Manipur (ANSAM) continued.

The ANSAM, which strongly supported the entry of Muivah to his hometown at Somdal in Manipur's Ukhrul district, had launched the blockade in protest against the Manipur government's plan to hold elections to the autonomous district councils in the hills.

Meetei’s Vs. The People Of Manipur

By Sinlung

’Hau’ 'Ching Mi’ ‘People from the Hills’, ‘Tribals’ and then the people from the valley the Meitei's. Who owns Manipur? Looking at the current imbroglio between Muivah and AMUCO. It has become very clear what the people in the valley think?

If we debate about the same, they’ll start from Kabaw Valley in Burma days, but which part of Manipur is Hills and which part is valley and where do each group of people from Manipur reside. Is it not just because there is a state and then there is a capital called Imphal that all of Manipur’s wealth should be in Imphal.

See Map below and point where Manipur Hills are?

Churachandpur, Chandel, Tamenglong, Senapati, Ukhrul are in the hills. And Imphal and Thoubal are in the valley.

When have the Meitei's ever stood for the Hill People of Manipur? From time immemorial, if a Hill tribesman comes shopping to Imphal market…the tribals were not even let into shops, they’ve been called ‘Hau, Chingmi’ and given sticks to point to the things they wanted. The tribals were only let into ‘Mangon’ a some sort of verandah outside their houses.
We don’t support ANSAM’s economic blockade but we do support their need. What is their need? A group of people coming together as one, Which force in the world can stop that….?

Does AMUCO or for that matter Meitei's own Manipur? No and they have never have. What is Manipur integration, when politicians keep stealing money for Manipur Hills for some apartment in Delhi or a plot in Imphal?

Why were the Manipur integration movers silent when Meitei's raped Hmar girls in Lungthulien and Parbung? Why do Meitei insurgents use Kuki people from Chandel as human shields?

Enough…

So, the conclusion is…Divide Manipur…you many ask the question why? Well it’s easy Religion….if you can’t overcome the Vishnu trap of 0000 BC, tribal's have progress far enough at least a 100 years.

Now Manipur government has no option but to look to Mizoram and National Highway 150, lets see what Ibobi and his team of musicians will do?

Maybe they may try to change the tune of music a bit…but NH 150 will be NH 150…

The Saga Naga

By Samudra Gupta Kashyap

Nagaland state Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio (R) shakes hands with T. Muivah, leader of separatist group the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), at Viswema

Nine years after the Greater Nagalim issue left Nagaland and Manipur on the boil, the planned visit of NSCN (IM) general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah has again put the two states on the edge.

Who is Thuingaleng Muivah?

Originally appointed as general secretary of A Z Phizo’s Naga National Council (NNC) in 1964, 75-year-old Thuingaleng Muivah is currently general secretary of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim faction headed by him and its chairman Isak Chisi Swu, thus the acronym NSCN (IM). He, Swu and Khaplang (now heading the NSCN-K faction) launched the NSCN in 1978 following the Shillong Accord by the NNC in November 1975. The NSCN split into NSCN (IM) and NSCN (K) in 1988. Muivah is also ‘ato kilonser’ — “prime minister of the Government of the People’s Republic of Nagalim (GPRN)” — with Swu being its ‘yaruiwo’ or “president”.

What is Nagalim?

While Nagaland (area: 16,527 sq km) was created on December 1, 1963, out of the Naga Hills district of Assam, combined with the Tuensang Tract of erstwhile North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), Nagalim or “Greater Nagalim” is the proposed sovereign Naga state that the NSCN wants. It comprises the present Nagaland as well as all “Naga-inhabited” areas of adjoining Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur and Myanmar, together adding up to about 1,20,000 sq km.

What is the current status of the NSCN agitation?

The NSCN (IM) signed a ceasefire with the Government of India on July 25, 1997, which came into effect from August 1, 1997. While the ceasefire was an outcome of then prime minister P V Narasimha Rao’s first meeting with Muivah in Paris in 1995, successive PMs H D Deve Gowda and A B Vajpayee also met the NSCN (IM) in Zurich and Paris in 1997 and 1998, respectively. Since then over 40 rounds of talks have taken place between the government and the NSCN (IM) leadership. Muivah, who lives in Bangkok, Amsterdam and other places, has been in India since March, mostly put up at the NSCN(IM)’s general headquarters at Hebron near Dimapur in Nagaland.

Why does Muivah want to go to Manipur?

He is a Tangkhul Naga hailing from Somdal in Ukhrul district of Manipur. The hill districts of Manipur, especially Ukhrul, Senapati and Tamenglong, are dominated by Tangkhuls and other smaller Naga tribes. With the NSCN (IM) demanding inclusion of Manipur’s hill districts in ‘Greater Nagalim’, Muivah expressed his wish to visit his ancestral village. It would be his first visit to Somdal since 1964, which he left after joining the Naga rebels. Since then he has either been underground or has lived abroad.

Why does Manipur have a problem with the visit?

The government of Manipur obviously does not want to part with even an inch of its territory. The Centre’s decision in 2001 to extend the ceasefire with the NSCN (IM) without territorial limits had evoked massive protests in Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. In Manipur, protesters had even set the state Assembly building on fire. Eighteen persons were killed in police firing. Manipur’s stand is that Muivah is not just visiting his village but would also address public meetings to whip up the campaign for inclusion of the state’s hill districts in ‘Greater Nagalim’.

What is the Centre’s role?

Incidentally, the Centre, on April 29, asked the governments of Manipur and Nagaland to provide Muivah, a Z-plus protectee, “foolproof security” when he visited Somdal in Ukhrul, and held public meetings at Ukhrul and Senapati. But Okram Ibobi Singh, the Chief Minister of Manipur, is determined not to let Muivah enter his state.

What is the current situation in Manipur?

The Meiteis who dominate the Imphal Valley (and constitute about 70 per cent of the state’s population) are opposed to Muivah’s visit. The All Manipur United Clubs Organisation (AMUCO) has imposed a ban on vehicle movement from Imphal Valley to the hill districts. The United Naga Council (UNC) of Manipur on the other hand has resorted to strikes against the Ibobi Singh government’s stand against Muivah. Two persons were killed when police fired upon protesters at Mao in Manipur close to the Nagaland border on May 6. Protesters have also set on fire government offices in Manipur’s hill districts. The two highways which connect Manipur to the outside world — NH-39 and NH-53 — have been paralyzed due to blockades put up by both sides.

What is Nagaland’s stand?

While on the one hand Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphui Rio has accused Ibobi Singh of “using state machinery against the people of Manipur who are protesting democratically (against Manipur’s refusal of entry to Muivah)”, on the other hand, he personally went to meet Muivah to ask him to postpone his visit to Manipur till the situation improved. The Nagaland Assembly has in the past adopted resolutions supporting integration of all Naga-inhabited areas.

Where is Muivah at the moment?

Having set off from Hebron along with several top NSCN (IM) leaders for Somdal on May 5, Muivah is currently put up at Viswema, a village in Nagaland 10 km short of the border with Manipur. While the PMO and the Government of India have requested him to postpone his Somdal visit till the situation improves, Muivah is bent on going ahead. He had earlier turned down a government offer to take a helicopter to Somdal.

March in Support of Manipur’s Iron Lady

Pune, May 14 : Describing the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) as a draconian regulation, a group of cultural activists from the State of Kerala are undertaking a peace march to Imphal to express solidarity with Irom Sharmila, a poet who is also known as the Iron Lady of Manipur, who is on a political fast seeking withdrawal of AFSPA from Manipur and other areas of Northeast.

Addressing the media here on Thursday, team leader and cultural activist, C Chandran said, “We began our march under the aegis of the Hind Swaraj Peace March from Cherthala in Kerala on May 7 and intend to reach Imphal by the 27thof this month.”

Chandran added “We decided to undertake the march for two reasons, the primary reason is that the Union Defence Minister A K Antony hails from Kerala and secondly we wanted to take Sharmila's message to the Defence Minister.”

Chandran said the group comprising 20 members is travelling through the rail network, halting at Chennai, Bangalore and Vijayawada prior to their stop in Pune.

“During our breaks, we spread the message of peace and the struggle of Sharmila against AFSPA, apart from performing cultural programs narrating her struggle against the odds,” he outlined.

Chandran said that is unfortunate that the Indian government has turned a deaf ear towards the legitimate demand to withdraw the Act.

On the other hand the government protests and makes no bones of its dislike to military regimes in neighbouring countries contradicting its own position.

From here, the troupe would halt at Delhi and Calcutta for a similar interaction-cum-cultural show before proceeding to Imphal, its final destination, Chandran added.

About Irom Sharmila

Irom Sharmila Chanu is a civil rights activist, journalist and poet. Since November 2000, she’s on a political fast seeking withdrawal of AFSPA,1958, from Manipur and other areas of North- eastern India.

Ten years after it began, Sharmila's fast is unparallelled in the history of political protest.