Photographic Industry Helping Others To Overcome, or P.H.O.T.O. is a recently established relief fund to help photographers who have fallen victim to the tragic natural and man-made calamities in the Gulf coast states of America. The fund has raised almost $50,000 so far.

To make your donation using your Mastercard or VISA, please click here. If you have a PayPal account, please click here.

While that is an impressive amount of money, I am jumping in the fray by saying that starting today I will donate 10% of all luxury package weddings I book for 2006. So, please help me spread the word.

I respectfully request that all discounts I have offered through magazines such as Shaadi Style or India New England be transferred to aid this worhty cause. Thank you!

Via Rebecca Karamehmedovic

Indus Women Leaders is proud to present “Leadership Summit 2004: Unleashing Our Potential” on Saturday, October 23, 2004 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Rena Golden, Senior Vice President of CNN International
Dr. Margaret Abraham, Professor in the Department of Sociology at Hofstra University, New York
Lubna Khalid, Founder and President of Real Cosmetics
Beena Kamlani, Editor at Viking Penguin and Professor of Publishing at NYU
Dr. Mangalam Srinivasan, Senior Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and Former Scientific Advisor to PM Indira Gandhi
Roopa Unnikrishnan, Management consultant for Katzenbach Partners LLC and a world-class sports rifle shooter
Alka Gupta, VP Corporate Strategy and Development at Lycos Inc.

This year's conference is experiential and interactive as it is focuses on personal growth, relationship building, and community building.

Workshops include:

The Power of Influence: Be the change you want to see
The Balancing Act
The Undiscovered Diamond Mine: South Asian Women Leaders
Artist Reception – Harmony of Hues featuring South Asian women artists

Register Now!

SPECIAL Registration: For Non-Profit and Arts, you may register for only $75! Limited Availability.

**New York SPECIAL** IWL is arranging a Bus from New York to Boston for the conference! Please RSVP.

The event is sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Procter & Gamble.

Reserve your room NOW! Call the Comfort Inn Boston toll free at 1-800-886-0056. Room rates are $109/ night till September 22nd. Please let them know if you would like to share a room!

Early Registration until Oct 1, 2004
Non-profit/arts (full time), limited tickets: $75
All other: $100
Regular Registration (if available) after Oct 1, 2004
All: $125

I will inspire.
I will empower.
I will achieve.
I will.
IWL.
Indus Women Leaders
Leaders inspired. Networks empowered. Excellence achieved.

South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow, or SAALT is sponsoring the Fourth Annual National Gandhi Day Of Serivce. If you live in the Bay area, contact Subha Varadarajan to register for the October 2 event.

From the SAALT website, here are some reasons why you should get involved:

The National Gandhi Day of Service perpetuates the legacy of Mohandas K. Gandhi, who spent much of his life the least fortunate members of his community through tireless service.

The collective efforts of local Gandhi Day projects provides a vehicle for unity in the South Asian community while sending a message that we are contributing members of American society.

Gandhi Day provides an opportunity to give back for the many successes and opportunities that we have been afforded as immigrants.

It is a fun activity for members of your organization to come together, do something positive for your neighborhood, and become a part of a rewarding national movement.

Despite what Mr. Bush and his cohorts say, the war in Iraq is far from over. There have been some rumblings about it becoming another Vietnam. Perhaps one of the most significant factors in the defeat of the US in Vietnam was the constant stream of images (still and television) of America's war-dead being brought back in body-bags. Some 57,000 soldiers died in that war.

Day in and day out as Americans supped by their television sets or broke open a newspaper, images of a distant war rumbled the psyches of all Americans. The images fueled the protests against that abysmal and ill-timed war. We weren't winning the “hearts and minds” of people in Vietnam or back here in the US. As America's international policy was coming unraveled, the administration clearly saw their failure in curtailing media access to “sensitive” areas of the war. Since the end of Vietnam war in 1975, administration after administration, save for perhaps Jimmy Carter's, has practically hand-cuffed journalists to a line of thinking and delivery that prevents the general public from knowing the whole story. History has a funny way of repeating itself and the current administration knows it all too well.

As more and more Americans loose their lives in Iraq, I have been following the brewing controversy of showing or censoring images of American flag-draped coffins arriving on transport planes. The Seattle Times was perhaps the first newspaper to publish an image, shot by a contract worker for the Department of Defense, now distributed widely on the internet, showing soldiers busily tacking down the coffins in the bay of a transport plane. The response, according to Editor&Publisher, has been favorable. Mike Fancher, executive editor at The Seattle Times, defends his paper's use of the image as newsworthy. And, I have to agree.

The New York Times today reported that, “The Web site, The Memory Hole, had filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year, seeking any pictures of coffins arriving from Iraq at the Dover base in Delaware, the destination for most of the bodies. The Pentagon yesterday labeled the Air Force Air Mobility Command's decision to grant the request a mistake, but news organizations quickly used a selection of the 361 images taken by Defense Department photographers.”

The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times have their own take on the situation.

How these images play out with the American public is yet to be seen. Despite the controlled and perhaps programmed nature of the news in the US we are hearing reports that things aren't going well for the Iraqis and it is likely to only get worse as the US leaves at the end of June. Will they actually hand things off to the Iraqis? Will there be peace?