Listening ideas for 11 August 2011 (1)

Mahabharata Podcast
Episode 66 - Kurukshetra, Day 9
Episode 67 - On the previous day, Duryodhana was quickly losing faith with his uncle. He began to suspect that Bhisma was throwing the contest in favor of the Pandavas. Karna didn't help any when he offered to take charge in place of the old man. So Duryodhana asked the old man to either fulfill his oaths or get out of the game. Now today, on the 9th day, Bhisma sets out to finish off his Dharma so he could move on to the next phase in his life. On the battlefield, he kills hundreds of thousands, including the entire nation of the Saumakas. Bhisma takes out a large chunk of the Pandava army. If he keeps this up another day or two, there will be no one left to fight on the Pandavas' side. So that night, after the battle, they go unarmed to Bhisma's tent and ask him what they should do about this and how they should win the war. Of course, they've known what they needed to do all along, but it's nice to have Bhisma tell you himself and to even give his blessing! We'll see tomorrow if Arjun finally carries through with his duty...
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Radio Open Source
The Fisherfolk of Karachi: a Parable of Pakistan
The city of Karachi (pop. roughly 20-million) dumps 500-million gallons of waste into its harbors every day — “into the bowl of our livelihood,” as Mohammad Ali Shah puts it, and that’s just the beginning. “Land grabbers,” whom we’d call developers, are encroaching on their land, as fish factories at sea are gobbling their catch. Two of the allied activists fighting the “land mafia” that has targeted their mangrove forest were murdered this past May. Fishing families suffer the cold war between Pakistan and India acutely, in the periodic arrest (and long arbitrary sentences) of fishermen who stray across territorial borders. And on top of everything, says Mohammad Ali Shah, nobody seems to care — certainly nobody with much political power. Pakistani politics, he instructs us, is an inside brokers’ game that shuns “people power.”
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The Economist
Britain's riots
Our correspondents on riots that had more to do with unruly chaos than genuine grievances, and how the Conservatives could benefit
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