A couple of clips from Chris Hedges appearance on C-SPAN's Book TV In Depth program.
To Listen to the Episode
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Mic Check Radio: Chris Hedges -- Empire of Illusion and the Occupy Wall Street Movement
Mic Check Radio
A couple of clips from Chris Hedges appearance on C-SPAN's Book TV In Depth program.
To Listen to the Episode
A couple of clips from Chris Hedges appearance on C-SPAN's Book TV In Depth program.
To Listen to the Episode
Thursday, February 02, 2012
2011 Oscar Nominations for Best Foreign Film
The announcement for the nominees for the 2011 Oscar for Best Foreign Film have been announced:
Bullhead/Rundskop (Belgium: Michael R. Roskam)
Footnote/Hearat Shulayim (Israel: Joseph Cedar)
In Darkness (Poland: Agnieszka Holland)
Monsieur Lazhar (Canada: Philippe Falardeau)
A Separation (Iran: Asghar Farhadi)
Bullhead/Rundskop (Belgium: Michael R. Roskam)
Footnote/Hearat Shulayim (Israel: Joseph Cedar)
In Darkness (Poland: Agnieszka Holland)
Monsieur Lazhar (Canada: Philippe Falardeau)
A Separation (Iran: Asghar Farhadi)
Amy Borden: At the global market: Ousmane Sembène’s Moolaadé and the economics of women’s rights
At the global market: Ousmane Sembène’s Moolaadé and the economics of women’s rights
by Amy E. Borden
Jump Cut
In Moolaadé Sembène considers how women may effect change in their communities and families if given access to the economic and cultural power that had in previous generations been reserved for men. Focusing on both Moolaadé’s narrative and its funding history, I argue that Sembène uses a narrative form that features the development from individual activist to collective force to depict the potentially liberating force of internationally defined human rights in a West African context when used by local activists. His depiction of women as collective and individual forces for change touches on questions of the libratory potential of capitalism and media as modernizing forces for a contemporary generation of African community leaders.
The depiction of modern activism within the Islamic, West African community depicted in the film is presented diegetically via the narrative construction of the film’s main character, Collé, played by renowned Malian women’s rights activist, Fatoumata Coulibaly. Collé is constructed as an individual whose personal experiences offer an interiorized psychological depiction and history of a woman now advocating for cultural change; she uses her personal experiences to change community practice and belief. In the script, Collé’s ability to assert her personal experiences and values within the community may best be understood as a staging of the drama of human rights activism. In some ways, the character exemplifies ways in which contemporary human rights declarations and proclamations issued by, for example, the United Nations; additional NGOs, such as Tostan — a Senegalese women’s rights NGO; and various African continental human rights treaties, such as the African Banjul Charter, may be translated into local action on the part of activists and grass-roots campaigns aimed at ending FGC, and, by extension, advance West African women’s rights.[10]
J. Hoberman describes the film as “diagrammatic” in its approach to women’s rights in a review prior to the film’s New York theatrical run (“Auteurs”). He particularly cites the rousing rally staged in front of the community’s male elders at the end of the film where the majority of the village women adopt Collé’s position against genital cutting. The rally is staged and shot as a public performance; it mimics events sponsored by anti-FGC NGO Tostan, which has held rallies celebrating the decision by local women to end FGC in communities throughout Senegal.[11] In the scene’s staging, the village elders occupy one third of the on-screen space, the pro-Collé supporters another third, and the salindana occupy the final third, eventually joining the community’s women creating a division between the sexes in the blocking of the sequence. The lesson of this rally is bolstered by a mother, Salba, who holds her infant godchild in the air while chanting alongside the other village women that this girl will not be “cut,” that no girls will ever be “cut” again.
In addition to the film’s conclusion, Hoberman is perhaps more correct in his reading than he imagined. As I will argue, the plot of Sembène’s final feature film strongly resonates with articles inscribed in the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the 1980 establishment and 1993 strengthening of provisions for the rights of women in the UN the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).[12] The entire premise of the film — the right of protection or moolaadé — is specifically covered in the UN Universal Human Rights Declaration as the right of seeking and enjoying in other countries “asylum from persecution.”[13] If one accepts the film’s central thesis that ritual “purification” is a form of persecution, Collé is justified in creating a free space beyond the rules confining conduct in the village (Moolaadé). The sanctuary she creates via the moolaadé is akin to a nation-state with its distinct but permeable boundary — members of the community may move between it and the village at large. They may not, however, remove the young girls who have sought sanctuary from the space without Collé’s permission. Much like a sovereign authority, it is only Collé’s “word” that may release the girls from their protected space (Moolaadé). Additionally, the space Collé creates emerges from a historical tradition understood as juridical within the village because of its ability to punish or allow clemency. This tradition is substantiated in the community via the cultural memory marked in the village by the termite mound.
Sembène’s career-long critique of nation as a corrupted patriarchal institution that denies equal rights to women complicates the idea that a sovereign space akin to a nation-state may provide safety. The fact, then, that this asylum is enacted by and controlled by Collé, a woman, is significant because it asserts the ability of women to claim sovereign power from local, cultural traditions. Collé’s ability to provide asylum and to assert that ability within the community may be seen as a performance of the provision in the UN human rights’ declaration that states, “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community” and guarantees “the right to…security of person.”[14] The fact that both the men and women of the community respect the sanctity of the moolaadé regardless of the gender of its enactor points to local cultural traditions on which activists may build in the pursuit of women’s rights.
Anthropologist Ellen Gruenbaum describes how asylum has become an effective means for women to remain in first world countries — “Canada, Australia, Sweden, and others” to avoid FGC in their home nation.[15] It is an increasingly useful tool for women to gain protection for themselves and for parents to gain protection for their female children. While limited, the practice has received a lot of press coverage, particularly following Togo citizen Fauziya Kassindja’s and Ghanian citizen Adelaide Abankwah’s applications for US asylum in the late-1990s and Malian Aminata Diop’s application for asylum in France in the early-1990s.[16] Citing the increased recognition of cultural practices as a basis for asylum, Gruenbaum argues,
“The use of asylum provisions for cultural, rather than strictly political, risks is a remarkable development, giving new stature to the human rights of women and children to be protected from the effects of their social and economic disempowerment. The basis for such claims to asylum is the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, on the grounds that these women would be at risk of grievous harm in the forms of FGM [female genital mutilation] if they were to return home.” (217)
By enacting a local cultural custom to create an asylum within the community, Collé effectively relocates an international anti-FGC human rights tool at the local level. This staging allows Sembène to provide an argument for local change that does not draw directly on the authority of the laws of other nations, as is the case with the asylum cases mentioned previously, nor directly on international conventions, such as the UN Refugee Convention Gruenbaum cites. Sembène’s use of asylum as a juridical form of protection indirectly draws from the discourse surrounding international efforts to end FGC, yet forcefully argues for local, community-driven actions.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Amy E. Borden
Jump Cut
In Moolaadé Sembène considers how women may effect change in their communities and families if given access to the economic and cultural power that had in previous generations been reserved for men. Focusing on both Moolaadé’s narrative and its funding history, I argue that Sembène uses a narrative form that features the development from individual activist to collective force to depict the potentially liberating force of internationally defined human rights in a West African context when used by local activists. His depiction of women as collective and individual forces for change touches on questions of the libratory potential of capitalism and media as modernizing forces for a contemporary generation of African community leaders.
The depiction of modern activism within the Islamic, West African community depicted in the film is presented diegetically via the narrative construction of the film’s main character, Collé, played by renowned Malian women’s rights activist, Fatoumata Coulibaly. Collé is constructed as an individual whose personal experiences offer an interiorized psychological depiction and history of a woman now advocating for cultural change; she uses her personal experiences to change community practice and belief. In the script, Collé’s ability to assert her personal experiences and values within the community may best be understood as a staging of the drama of human rights activism. In some ways, the character exemplifies ways in which contemporary human rights declarations and proclamations issued by, for example, the United Nations; additional NGOs, such as Tostan — a Senegalese women’s rights NGO; and various African continental human rights treaties, such as the African Banjul Charter, may be translated into local action on the part of activists and grass-roots campaigns aimed at ending FGC, and, by extension, advance West African women’s rights.[10]
J. Hoberman describes the film as “diagrammatic” in its approach to women’s rights in a review prior to the film’s New York theatrical run (“Auteurs”). He particularly cites the rousing rally staged in front of the community’s male elders at the end of the film where the majority of the village women adopt Collé’s position against genital cutting. The rally is staged and shot as a public performance; it mimics events sponsored by anti-FGC NGO Tostan, which has held rallies celebrating the decision by local women to end FGC in communities throughout Senegal.[11] In the scene’s staging, the village elders occupy one third of the on-screen space, the pro-Collé supporters another third, and the salindana occupy the final third, eventually joining the community’s women creating a division between the sexes in the blocking of the sequence. The lesson of this rally is bolstered by a mother, Salba, who holds her infant godchild in the air while chanting alongside the other village women that this girl will not be “cut,” that no girls will ever be “cut” again.
In addition to the film’s conclusion, Hoberman is perhaps more correct in his reading than he imagined. As I will argue, the plot of Sembène’s final feature film strongly resonates with articles inscribed in the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the 1980 establishment and 1993 strengthening of provisions for the rights of women in the UN the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).[12] The entire premise of the film — the right of protection or moolaadé — is specifically covered in the UN Universal Human Rights Declaration as the right of seeking and enjoying in other countries “asylum from persecution.”[13] If one accepts the film’s central thesis that ritual “purification” is a form of persecution, Collé is justified in creating a free space beyond the rules confining conduct in the village (Moolaadé). The sanctuary she creates via the moolaadé is akin to a nation-state with its distinct but permeable boundary — members of the community may move between it and the village at large. They may not, however, remove the young girls who have sought sanctuary from the space without Collé’s permission. Much like a sovereign authority, it is only Collé’s “word” that may release the girls from their protected space (Moolaadé). Additionally, the space Collé creates emerges from a historical tradition understood as juridical within the village because of its ability to punish or allow clemency. This tradition is substantiated in the community via the cultural memory marked in the village by the termite mound.
Sembène’s career-long critique of nation as a corrupted patriarchal institution that denies equal rights to women complicates the idea that a sovereign space akin to a nation-state may provide safety. The fact, then, that this asylum is enacted by and controlled by Collé, a woman, is significant because it asserts the ability of women to claim sovereign power from local, cultural traditions. Collé’s ability to provide asylum and to assert that ability within the community may be seen as a performance of the provision in the UN human rights’ declaration that states, “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community” and guarantees “the right to…security of person.”[14] The fact that both the men and women of the community respect the sanctity of the moolaadé regardless of the gender of its enactor points to local cultural traditions on which activists may build in the pursuit of women’s rights.
Anthropologist Ellen Gruenbaum describes how asylum has become an effective means for women to remain in first world countries — “Canada, Australia, Sweden, and others” to avoid FGC in their home nation.[15] It is an increasingly useful tool for women to gain protection for themselves and for parents to gain protection for their female children. While limited, the practice has received a lot of press coverage, particularly following Togo citizen Fauziya Kassindja’s and Ghanian citizen Adelaide Abankwah’s applications for US asylum in the late-1990s and Malian Aminata Diop’s application for asylum in France in the early-1990s.[16] Citing the increased recognition of cultural practices as a basis for asylum, Gruenbaum argues,
“The use of asylum provisions for cultural, rather than strictly political, risks is a remarkable development, giving new stature to the human rights of women and children to be protected from the effects of their social and economic disempowerment. The basis for such claims to asylum is the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, on the grounds that these women would be at risk of grievous harm in the forms of FGM [female genital mutilation] if they were to return home.” (217)
By enacting a local cultural custom to create an asylum within the community, Collé effectively relocates an international anti-FGC human rights tool at the local level. This staging allows Sembène to provide an argument for local change that does not draw directly on the authority of the laws of other nations, as is the case with the asylum cases mentioned previously, nor directly on international conventions, such as the UN Refugee Convention Gruenbaum cites. Sembène’s use of asylum as a juridical form of protection indirectly draws from the discourse surrounding international efforts to end FGC, yet forcefully argues for local, community-driven actions.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Sarah van Gelder: Corporate Rule Is Not Inevitable
Corporate Rule Is Not Inevitable: 7 signs the corporatocracy is losing its legitimacy ... and 7 populist tools to help shut it down.
by Sarah van Gelder
Yes!
You may remember that there was a time when apartheid in South Africa seemed unstoppable.
Sure, there were international boycotts of South African businesses, banks, and tourist attractions. There were heroic activists in South Africa, who were going to prison and even dying for freedom. But the conventional wisdom remained that these were principled gestures with little chance of upending the entrenched system of white rule.
“Be patient,” activists were told. “Don’t expect too much against powerful interests with a lot of money invested in the status quo.”
With hindsight, though, apartheid’s fall appears inevitable: the legitimacy of the system had already crumbled. It was harming too many for the benefit of too few. South Africa’s freedom fighters would not be silenced, and the global movement supporting them was likewise tenacious and principled.
In the same way, the legitimacy of rule by giant corporations and Wall Street banks is crumbling. This system of corporate rule also benefits few and harms many, affecting nearly every major issue in public life. Some examples:
Powerful corporations socialize their risks and costs, but privatize profits. That means we, the 99 percent, pick up the tab for environmental clean ups, for helping workers who aren’t paid enough to afford food or health care, for bailouts when risky speculation goes wrong. Meanwhile, profits go straight into the pockets of top executives and others in the 1 percent.
The financial collapse threw millions of Americans into poverty. 25 million are unemployed, under-employed, or have given up looking for work; four million have been unemployed for more than 12 months. Poverty increased 27 percent between 2006 and 2010. And students who graduated with student loans in 2010 had borrowed 5 percent more than the previous year’s graduating class—owing more than $25,000. Meanwhile, those who caused the collapse continue the same practices. And the unwillingness of the 1 percent to pay their fair share of taxes means the the public services we rely on are fraying.
Scientists say that we are on the brink of runaway climate change; we only have a few years to make the needed investments in clean power and energy efficiency. This transition could be a huge job creator—on the order of the investments made during World War II, which got us out of the Depression. But fossil fuel industries don’t want to see their investment in dirty energy undermined by the switch to clean energy and conservation. So far, by paying millions to climate deniers, lobbyists, and political campaigns, they’ve succeeded in stymieing change.
Agribusiness get taxpayer subsidies for foods that make us sick; for farming practices that destroy rivers, soils, the climate, and the oceans; and for trade practices that cause hunger at home and abroad.
Through ALEC, the private prison industry crafts state laws that boost the numbers behind bars, lengthen sentences, and privatize prisons.
Big Pharma jacks up prices; insurance companies raise premiums and delivers fewer benefits; the burden of inflated care drags down the economy and bankrupts families. But only a very few politicians stand up to the health care industry's war chests and advocate for Canadian-style single-payer health care, which would go a long way toward solving the cost problem.
Corporations and wealthy executives fund an army of lobbyists and election campaigns, spreading untruths and self-serving policy prescriptions.
It’s not that we, the people, haven’t noticed all this.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Sarah van Gelder
Yes!
You may remember that there was a time when apartheid in South Africa seemed unstoppable.
Sure, there were international boycotts of South African businesses, banks, and tourist attractions. There were heroic activists in South Africa, who were going to prison and even dying for freedom. But the conventional wisdom remained that these were principled gestures with little chance of upending the entrenched system of white rule.
“Be patient,” activists were told. “Don’t expect too much against powerful interests with a lot of money invested in the status quo.”
With hindsight, though, apartheid’s fall appears inevitable: the legitimacy of the system had already crumbled. It was harming too many for the benefit of too few. South Africa’s freedom fighters would not be silenced, and the global movement supporting them was likewise tenacious and principled.
In the same way, the legitimacy of rule by giant corporations and Wall Street banks is crumbling. This system of corporate rule also benefits few and harms many, affecting nearly every major issue in public life. Some examples:
Powerful corporations socialize their risks and costs, but privatize profits. That means we, the 99 percent, pick up the tab for environmental clean ups, for helping workers who aren’t paid enough to afford food or health care, for bailouts when risky speculation goes wrong. Meanwhile, profits go straight into the pockets of top executives and others in the 1 percent.
The financial collapse threw millions of Americans into poverty. 25 million are unemployed, under-employed, or have given up looking for work; four million have been unemployed for more than 12 months. Poverty increased 27 percent between 2006 and 2010. And students who graduated with student loans in 2010 had borrowed 5 percent more than the previous year’s graduating class—owing more than $25,000. Meanwhile, those who caused the collapse continue the same practices. And the unwillingness of the 1 percent to pay their fair share of taxes means the the public services we rely on are fraying.
Scientists say that we are on the brink of runaway climate change; we only have a few years to make the needed investments in clean power and energy efficiency. This transition could be a huge job creator—on the order of the investments made during World War II, which got us out of the Depression. But fossil fuel industries don’t want to see their investment in dirty energy undermined by the switch to clean energy and conservation. So far, by paying millions to climate deniers, lobbyists, and political campaigns, they’ve succeeded in stymieing change.
Agribusiness get taxpayer subsidies for foods that make us sick; for farming practices that destroy rivers, soils, the climate, and the oceans; and for trade practices that cause hunger at home and abroad.
Through ALEC, the private prison industry crafts state laws that boost the numbers behind bars, lengthen sentences, and privatize prisons.
Big Pharma jacks up prices; insurance companies raise premiums and delivers fewer benefits; the burden of inflated care drags down the economy and bankrupts families. But only a very few politicians stand up to the health care industry's war chests and advocate for Canadian-style single-payer health care, which would go a long way toward solving the cost problem.
Corporations and wealthy executives fund an army of lobbyists and election campaigns, spreading untruths and self-serving policy prescriptions.
It’s not that we, the people, haven’t noticed all this.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
BCTC Library: African American History Month resources
African-American History Month is a time to honor, to learn and to celebrate. At the LRC, we wanted to do some things to acknowledge this important time! Throughout the month of February, books by African-American authors and books about African-American history will be on display in the LRC. We also have a web page, accessible from our main page, African American History Month resources. We have two selected bibliographies, one for items about African-American history and one for items by African-American authors. Additionally, we have a page with links to selected web sites. We also have a link to templates of our bookmarks. All of these items will be available in hard copy in the LRC. Please share this information with your classes, and if there is anything else we can do, let us know. Have a great month!
The faculty and staff of the Learning Resource Center.
The faculty and staff of the Learning Resource Center.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Law and Disorder Radio -- Jon Burge, Former Chicago Police Commander Sentenced to 4 ½ Years; Bill Goodman: State of Democratic Rights; Sara Hogarth: Post Coup Aftermath – Honduras
Law and Disorder Radio (WBAI: New York City)
Jon Burge, Former Chicago Police Commander Sentenced to 4 ½ Years
Here on Law and Disorder we’ve reported on the ongoing developments of the Chicago Torture case and former Chicago police commander Jon Burge. Burge has been sentenced to 4 and a half years in prison for obstruction of justice and lying about torturing prisoners to obtain coerced confessions. The People’s Law Office brought the case in 2005 and the city of Chicago refused to settle while pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the case. Attorney with the People’s Law Office Flint Taylor says the city has spent over the 10 million dollars in aiding the defense of former Commander Jon Burge. Mr. Burge, who is 63 and in ill health, was fired from the Chicago Police Department in 1993. Attorney Flint Taylor’s Statement on Burge sentencing.
Guest – Attorney Flint Taylor, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern University School of Law and a founding partner of the Peoples Law Office. More bio
—-
State of Democratic Rights – Bill Goodman
We’re joined today by attorney Bill Goodman former legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights. Bill has been an extraordinary public interest lawyer for more than 30 years he’s served as counsel on issues including post-Katrina social justice, public housing, voting rights, the death penalty, living wage and human rights work in Haiti. Bill delivered a speech recently titled the State of Democratic Rights, defining democracy as we now understand it. Everyone of these defining points has been attacked or undermined and very little has been done to repair them under the Obama Administration.
Guest – Bill Goodman, former legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights has been an extraordinary public interest lawyer for over 30 years, and has served as counsel on issues including post-Katrina social justice, public housing, voting rights, the death penalty, living wage, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights, human rights work in Haiti, and civil disobedience.
—
Post Coup Aftermath – Honduras: Sarah Hogarth
Today we are joined by legal worker Sarah Hogarth who has recently returned from a human rights delegation to Honduras through the Friendship Office of the Americas. We talk with her about her observations on the post coup human rights crisis in that country. As listeners may know On June 28, 2009, the Honduran military ousted the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Former Parliamentary speaker Roberto Micheletti was sworn in as Zelaya’s replacement. Repressive tactics were used immediately after the coup–people on the front lines who oppose this regime have been beaten and illegally detained by the state. Journalists and LGBT activists were among the first to be targeted and killed. Dr James Cockcroft joins interview.
Guest – Sarah Hogarth, human rights activist in New York City. She is a freelance legal worker and writer and has recently returned from a human rights delegation to Honduras through the Friendship Office of the Americas. The delegation met with activists to learn about the human rights situation in Honduras in the one year since the elections in November 2009. In June 2009, democratically elected President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was removed in a military coup d’etat.
Guest – Dr. James Cockcroft, historian and activist, Jim has written 45 books on Latin America. He’s a professor at the State University of New York and is a member of the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five.
To Listen to the Episode
Jon Burge, Former Chicago Police Commander Sentenced to 4 ½ Years
Here on Law and Disorder we’ve reported on the ongoing developments of the Chicago Torture case and former Chicago police commander Jon Burge. Burge has been sentenced to 4 and a half years in prison for obstruction of justice and lying about torturing prisoners to obtain coerced confessions. The People’s Law Office brought the case in 2005 and the city of Chicago refused to settle while pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the case. Attorney with the People’s Law Office Flint Taylor says the city has spent over the 10 million dollars in aiding the defense of former Commander Jon Burge. Mr. Burge, who is 63 and in ill health, was fired from the Chicago Police Department in 1993. Attorney Flint Taylor’s Statement on Burge sentencing.
Guest – Attorney Flint Taylor, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern University School of Law and a founding partner of the Peoples Law Office. More bio
—-
State of Democratic Rights – Bill Goodman
We’re joined today by attorney Bill Goodman former legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights. Bill has been an extraordinary public interest lawyer for more than 30 years he’s served as counsel on issues including post-Katrina social justice, public housing, voting rights, the death penalty, living wage and human rights work in Haiti. Bill delivered a speech recently titled the State of Democratic Rights, defining democracy as we now understand it. Everyone of these defining points has been attacked or undermined and very little has been done to repair them under the Obama Administration.
Guest – Bill Goodman, former legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights has been an extraordinary public interest lawyer for over 30 years, and has served as counsel on issues including post-Katrina social justice, public housing, voting rights, the death penalty, living wage, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights, human rights work in Haiti, and civil disobedience.
—
Post Coup Aftermath – Honduras: Sarah Hogarth
Today we are joined by legal worker Sarah Hogarth who has recently returned from a human rights delegation to Honduras through the Friendship Office of the Americas. We talk with her about her observations on the post coup human rights crisis in that country. As listeners may know On June 28, 2009, the Honduran military ousted the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Former Parliamentary speaker Roberto Micheletti was sworn in as Zelaya’s replacement. Repressive tactics were used immediately after the coup–people on the front lines who oppose this regime have been beaten and illegally detained by the state. Journalists and LGBT activists were among the first to be targeted and killed. Dr James Cockcroft joins interview.
Guest – Sarah Hogarth, human rights activist in New York City. She is a freelance legal worker and writer and has recently returned from a human rights delegation to Honduras through the Friendship Office of the Americas. The delegation met with activists to learn about the human rights situation in Honduras in the one year since the elections in November 2009. In June 2009, democratically elected President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was removed in a military coup d’etat.
Guest – Dr. James Cockcroft, historian and activist, Jim has written 45 books on Latin America. He’s a professor at the State University of New York and is a member of the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five.
To Listen to the Episode
Claudia Springer: Taken by Muslims -- Captivity Narratives in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer and Prisoner of the Mountains
Taken by Muslims: captivity narratives in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
and Prisoner of the Mountains
by Claudia Springer
Jump Cut
Prisoner of the Mountains does not simply reverse the terms of typical Muslim captivity narratives and naively assert that all Russians are destructive and all Chechens are kindhearted. Quite the contrary: there are trigger-happy Chechens eager to kill the two captive soldiers, and a Chechen man shoots his own son for the offense of working for the Russian police. Their violence, though, is shown in the context of their motivations, not as resulting from sadistic impulses. On the Russian side, even the Commander seems to have a change of heart and indicates that he may be ready to trade Abdoul-Mourat's son, an event that is foiled when the son tries to escape and is shot. Rather than paint a simplistic picture, the film suggests that empathy becomes possible when people learn about the realities of others' lives.
In Vanya's friendship with Dina, we see the film reject Orientalist divisiveness and replace it with what philosopher Martin Buber calls an "I and thou" relationship based on nonjudgmental respect. Vanya and Dina overcome inherited cultural myths that would make them enemies and learn to perceive each other as individuals, not symbols. This is the type of connection called for by Czech theorist Vilém Flusser, who critiques the insularity of people who identify too strongly with their homelands—their heimats—to the point that they reject foreigners and anyone with unfamiliar customs. Flusser offers as a solution to intolerance the condition of the migrant, a person who is not anchored to any one place and who "carries in his unconscious bits and pieces of the mysteries of all the heimats through which he has wandered" (14). The migrant, Flusser writes, works on "the mystery of living together with others" and poses the following challenge to all of us:
"how can I overcome the prejudices of the bits and pieces of mysteries that reside within me, and how can I break through the prejudices that are anchored in the mysteries of others, so that together with them we may create something beautiful out of something that is ugly?" (15).
Prisoner of the Mountains gives us a glimpse of two people—Vanya and Dina—who break through prejudices and briefly create something beautiful. Their friendship develops awkwardly and tentatively, initiated by curiosity and followed by small acts of generosity, leading up to her secret visits to the deep pit within which Vanya is chained after his failed attempt to escape with Sacha. In addition to lowering bread and water to him on a rope, Dina informs him of his fate, standing above him at the edge of the pit: "My brother is dead. You have one more night to live." Her elevation indicates her power over him, but their conversation reveals mutual respect, she by acknowledging that he has a right to know what lies ahead, and he by responding patiently. Their cultural differences are apparent, because her idea of being helpful originates in her beliefs about the afterlife, which are meaningless to him, but his responses, while indicating his despair, avoid undermining her. She says, "Usually they throw the enemies' bodies to the jackals. But I will bury yours." He asks her to bring the key to release him. She says, "No. I will dig a wide grave for you. And you will see the Angel of Death. I'll put my necklace in the grave as your wedding gift. Maybe your soul will find a bride in heaven." He responds with a gentle smile: "I don't think so."
Later, she does bring him the key to his leg shackle after finding it hidden in a box while the film crosscuts to her father returning to the village with his son's body in the back of a truck. Before she throws the key to Vanya, she says to him, "Don't kill any more people, promise?" Her request represents a significant shift away from her former acculturated hatred for Russians as well as an attempt to break the cycle of revenge that has trapped both sides in the conflict. She has learned through her friendship with Vanya to respect life—everyone's life. Vanya responds in kind when he refuses to leave in order to protect her from punishment. Her father, Abdoul-Mourat, finds the two of them together at the edge of the pit and sends her home after scolding her for being more concerned about Vanya than about her own dead brother. But even Abdoul-Mourat—perhaps following his daughter's example—rejects vengeance when he lets Vanya go after marching him into the mountains.
Vanya's respect for Dina extends to the film's refusal to eroticize her. Even when she dances for him, she is not objectified; her dance is grave and earnest and shot from a respectful distance. She wears a headscarf and boots and an ankle-length red dress with a dark jacket. Her dance is accompanied by wailing diegetic music from a funeral procession winding its way through the village. She and the other Chechen women—most of them weather-beaten and wearing headscarves—are frequently seen at work. It is their labor, not their sexuality, that defines them. Dina is seen working with donkeys, preparing food, cleaning up, knitting—preparing for life as a village woman—and she calmly explains her future to Vanya before she dances for him. He asks her, "Did you get married yet?" She replies, "No." He says, "I would marry you." She says, "We cannot get married. I can get married next year. We marry early here." Later, when she returns to the pit to tell Vanya that he has one more night to live, she is dressed entirely in black to show that she is in mourning for her brother but also suggesting that she is preparing to mourn for Vanya, taking on the role of his widow although they have never even exchanged a kiss. She stands above him in her black robe, embodying the Angel of Death as well as the bride she speculates he might find in the afterlife. Their union is symbolic, impossible in the world they inhabit but indicative of the connection they have made.
The film also treats the Chechen landscape, customs, and music, all initially strange and unfamiliar to the Russian captives, with respect. Perched on rocky cliffs, the village is both precarious and solid, built of stone to withstand the ferocious winds. A song sung by the village children tells of the longevity of the Chechen culture and the inability of visitors to tolerate the wind. The film was shot on location in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, neighboring Chechnya, just twenty miles from where fighting was taking place at the time. (Ironically and sadly, the region's harsh conditions proved fatal for the actor Sergei Bodrov Jr. a few years later when he returned to direct a film and was killed by an avalanche.) The music, cinematography, and editing combine to emphasize endurance. But it is all obliterated at the end with the offscreen Russian assault. Vanya's inability to conjure up the villagers in his dreams symbolizes the military attack's total erasure of their existence, eliminating their history along with their future. Instead of exalting military might—as does The Lives of a Bengal Lancer—the film raises questions about the morality of bombing raids on civilian targets as a military strategy.
The final crucial element that sets this film apart is its slow, deliberate pacing, counteracting the speed with which the Bengal Lancers engage in their adventures. Unhurried panning shots linger over the mountains and valleys and the village's worn cobblestone streets. It takes time to overcome enmity, and Prisoner of the Mountains measures time very slowly. Its choices provide a cinematic model for relinquishing Hollywood's tired anti-Muslim clichés.[2]
To Read the Entire Essay
__PrisonerOfTheMountains(3).jpg)
and Prisoner of the Mountains
by Claudia Springer
Jump Cut
Prisoner of the Mountains does not simply reverse the terms of typical Muslim captivity narratives and naively assert that all Russians are destructive and all Chechens are kindhearted. Quite the contrary: there are trigger-happy Chechens eager to kill the two captive soldiers, and a Chechen man shoots his own son for the offense of working for the Russian police. Their violence, though, is shown in the context of their motivations, not as resulting from sadistic impulses. On the Russian side, even the Commander seems to have a change of heart and indicates that he may be ready to trade Abdoul-Mourat's son, an event that is foiled when the son tries to escape and is shot. Rather than paint a simplistic picture, the film suggests that empathy becomes possible when people learn about the realities of others' lives.
In Vanya's friendship with Dina, we see the film reject Orientalist divisiveness and replace it with what philosopher Martin Buber calls an "I and thou" relationship based on nonjudgmental respect. Vanya and Dina overcome inherited cultural myths that would make them enemies and learn to perceive each other as individuals, not symbols. This is the type of connection called for by Czech theorist Vilém Flusser, who critiques the insularity of people who identify too strongly with their homelands—their heimats—to the point that they reject foreigners and anyone with unfamiliar customs. Flusser offers as a solution to intolerance the condition of the migrant, a person who is not anchored to any one place and who "carries in his unconscious bits and pieces of the mysteries of all the heimats through which he has wandered" (14). The migrant, Flusser writes, works on "the mystery of living together with others" and poses the following challenge to all of us:
"how can I overcome the prejudices of the bits and pieces of mysteries that reside within me, and how can I break through the prejudices that are anchored in the mysteries of others, so that together with them we may create something beautiful out of something that is ugly?" (15).
Prisoner of the Mountains gives us a glimpse of two people—Vanya and Dina—who break through prejudices and briefly create something beautiful. Their friendship develops awkwardly and tentatively, initiated by curiosity and followed by small acts of generosity, leading up to her secret visits to the deep pit within which Vanya is chained after his failed attempt to escape with Sacha. In addition to lowering bread and water to him on a rope, Dina informs him of his fate, standing above him at the edge of the pit: "My brother is dead. You have one more night to live." Her elevation indicates her power over him, but their conversation reveals mutual respect, she by acknowledging that he has a right to know what lies ahead, and he by responding patiently. Their cultural differences are apparent, because her idea of being helpful originates in her beliefs about the afterlife, which are meaningless to him, but his responses, while indicating his despair, avoid undermining her. She says, "Usually they throw the enemies' bodies to the jackals. But I will bury yours." He asks her to bring the key to release him. She says, "No. I will dig a wide grave for you. And you will see the Angel of Death. I'll put my necklace in the grave as your wedding gift. Maybe your soul will find a bride in heaven." He responds with a gentle smile: "I don't think so."
Later, she does bring him the key to his leg shackle after finding it hidden in a box while the film crosscuts to her father returning to the village with his son's body in the back of a truck. Before she throws the key to Vanya, she says to him, "Don't kill any more people, promise?" Her request represents a significant shift away from her former acculturated hatred for Russians as well as an attempt to break the cycle of revenge that has trapped both sides in the conflict. She has learned through her friendship with Vanya to respect life—everyone's life. Vanya responds in kind when he refuses to leave in order to protect her from punishment. Her father, Abdoul-Mourat, finds the two of them together at the edge of the pit and sends her home after scolding her for being more concerned about Vanya than about her own dead brother. But even Abdoul-Mourat—perhaps following his daughter's example—rejects vengeance when he lets Vanya go after marching him into the mountains.
Vanya's respect for Dina extends to the film's refusal to eroticize her. Even when she dances for him, she is not objectified; her dance is grave and earnest and shot from a respectful distance. She wears a headscarf and boots and an ankle-length red dress with a dark jacket. Her dance is accompanied by wailing diegetic music from a funeral procession winding its way through the village. She and the other Chechen women—most of them weather-beaten and wearing headscarves—are frequently seen at work. It is their labor, not their sexuality, that defines them. Dina is seen working with donkeys, preparing food, cleaning up, knitting—preparing for life as a village woman—and she calmly explains her future to Vanya before she dances for him. He asks her, "Did you get married yet?" She replies, "No." He says, "I would marry you." She says, "We cannot get married. I can get married next year. We marry early here." Later, when she returns to the pit to tell Vanya that he has one more night to live, she is dressed entirely in black to show that she is in mourning for her brother but also suggesting that she is preparing to mourn for Vanya, taking on the role of his widow although they have never even exchanged a kiss. She stands above him in her black robe, embodying the Angel of Death as well as the bride she speculates he might find in the afterlife. Their union is symbolic, impossible in the world they inhabit but indicative of the connection they have made.
The film also treats the Chechen landscape, customs, and music, all initially strange and unfamiliar to the Russian captives, with respect. Perched on rocky cliffs, the village is both precarious and solid, built of stone to withstand the ferocious winds. A song sung by the village children tells of the longevity of the Chechen culture and the inability of visitors to tolerate the wind. The film was shot on location in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, neighboring Chechnya, just twenty miles from where fighting was taking place at the time. (Ironically and sadly, the region's harsh conditions proved fatal for the actor Sergei Bodrov Jr. a few years later when he returned to direct a film and was killed by an avalanche.) The music, cinematography, and editing combine to emphasize endurance. But it is all obliterated at the end with the offscreen Russian assault. Vanya's inability to conjure up the villagers in his dreams symbolizes the military attack's total erasure of their existence, eliminating their history along with their future. Instead of exalting military might—as does The Lives of a Bengal Lancer—the film raises questions about the morality of bombing raids on civilian targets as a military strategy.
The final crucial element that sets this film apart is its slow, deliberate pacing, counteracting the speed with which the Bengal Lancers engage in their adventures. Unhurried panning shots linger over the mountains and valleys and the village's worn cobblestone streets. It takes time to overcome enmity, and Prisoner of the Mountains measures time very slowly. Its choices provide a cinematic model for relinquishing Hollywood's tired anti-Muslim clichés.[2]
To Read the Entire Essay
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Open Culture: Alain de Botton Wants a Religion for Atheists -- Introducing Atheism 2.0
Alain de Botton Wants a Religion for Atheists: Introducing Atheism 2.0
Open Culture
Last summer Alain de Botton, one of the better popularizers of philosophy, appeared at TEDGlobal and called for a new kind of atheism. An Atheism 2.0. This revised atheism would let atheists deny a creator and yet not forsake all the other good things religion can offer — tradition, ritual, community, insights into living a good life, the ability to experience transcendence, taking part in institutions that can change the world, and the rest.
What he’s describing kind of sounds like what already happens in the Unitarian Church … or The School of Life, a London-based institution founded by de Botton in 2008. The school offers courses “in the important questions of everyday life” and also hosts Sunday Sermons that feature “maverick cultural figures” talking about important principles to live by. Click here and you can watch several past sermons presented by actress Miranda July, physicist Lawrence Krauss, author Rebecca Solnit, and Alain de Botton himself.
If Atheism 2.0 piques your interest, you’ll want to pre-order de Botton’s soon-to-be-published book, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion.
Link
Open Culture
Last summer Alain de Botton, one of the better popularizers of philosophy, appeared at TEDGlobal and called for a new kind of atheism. An Atheism 2.0. This revised atheism would let atheists deny a creator and yet not forsake all the other good things religion can offer — tradition, ritual, community, insights into living a good life, the ability to experience transcendence, taking part in institutions that can change the world, and the rest.
What he’s describing kind of sounds like what already happens in the Unitarian Church … or The School of Life, a London-based institution founded by de Botton in 2008. The school offers courses “in the important questions of everyday life” and also hosts Sunday Sermons that feature “maverick cultural figures” talking about important principles to live by. Click here and you can watch several past sermons presented by actress Miranda July, physicist Lawrence Krauss, author Rebecca Solnit, and Alain de Botton himself.
If Atheism 2.0 piques your interest, you’ll want to pre-order de Botton’s soon-to-be-published book, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion.
Link
Dan Ariely: The Upside of Irrationality
Dan Ariely: The Upside of Irrationality
FORA TV
Dan Ariely is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management. He also holds an appointment at the MIT Media Lab where he is the head of the eRationality research group.
He is considered to be one of the leading behavioral economists. Currently, Ariely is serving as a Visiting Professor at the Duke University, Fuqua School of Business where he is teaching a course based upon his findings in Predictably Irrational.
Ariely was an undergraduate at Tel Aviv University and received a Ph.D. and M.A. in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in business from Duke University. His research focuses on discovering and measuring how people make decisions. He models the human decision making process and in particular the irrational decisions that we all make every day.
Ariely is the author of the book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
FORA TV
Dan Ariely is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management. He also holds an appointment at the MIT Media Lab where he is the head of the eRationality research group.
He is considered to be one of the leading behavioral economists. Currently, Ariely is serving as a Visiting Professor at the Duke University, Fuqua School of Business where he is teaching a course based upon his findings in Predictably Irrational.
Ariely was an undergraduate at Tel Aviv University and received a Ph.D. and M.A. in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in business from Duke University. His research focuses on discovering and measuring how people make decisions. He models the human decision making process and in particular the irrational decisions that we all make every day.
Ariely is the author of the book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Dan Ariely: The Upside of Irrationality from Booksmith on FORA.tv
Monday, January 23, 2012
The Corporation (Canada: Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Balkan, 2003/2005)
[ENG 102 students this is the post for the class screening of The Corporation -- in the comments below this post, feel free to ask questions, provide responses, or introduce information]
The People Featured in The Corporation
The Official Website
Image by Austin Kleon
To Watch The Corporation (with commercials) online
The People Featured in The Corporation
The Official Website
Image by Austin Kleon
To Watch The Corporation (with commercials) online
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