A Separation –Iranian film that cuts across boundaries of gender and class

An unhappily married couple break up in this complex, painful, fascinating Iranian drama by writer-director Asghar Farhadi, with explosive results that expose a network of personal and social faultlines.A Separation is a portrait of a fractured relationship and an examination of theocracy, domestic rule and the politics of sex and class – and it reveals a terrible, pervasive sadness that seems to well up through the asphalt and the brickwork. In its depiction of national alienation in Iran, it's comparable to the work of Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof. But there is a distinct western strand. The film shows a middle-class household under siege from an angry outsider; there are semi-unsolved mysteries, angry confrontations and family burdens: an ageing parent and two children from warring camps appearing to make friends. All these things surely show the influence of Michael Haneke's 2005 film Hidden. Farhadi, like Haneke, takes a scalpel to his bourgeois homeland.

Do not tell us it is not a class war

The entire world seems to be one huge advertisement for The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein showed in her book how the corporate-political-military-media complex exploits crises to further impose their harsh right-wing agenda – even when they themselves created the crisis. In a sane world, the economic meltdown and deep recession of the past four years would have led at minimum to stringent regulation of financiers and speculators plus programs to assist their victims. But in this world, you have to be nuts to believe in a sane world.

Pakistan celebrates documentary Oscar win

Saving Face, a short documentary about acid attacks on women and those who help them recover.

The film by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy follows survivors among hundreds of people attacked every year, and focuses on Mohammad Jawad, a British Pakistani plastic surgeon who returned to his homeland to help restore their faces and lives.

The attacks are often carried out by angry husbands or spurned lovers.

In 2010, at least 8,000 acid attacks, forced marriages and other forms of violence against women were reported.

Because the group relied mostly on media reports, the figure is likely an undercount.

Mistreatment of women is widespread in Pakistan, a nation of some 175 million where most people are poor, only half the adults can read, and extremist ideologies such as that of the Taliban are gaining traction.

A new law mandates that convicted attackers serve a minimum sentence of 14 years, and pay a minimum
fine of about $11,200. It also criminalises other common abuses, such as marrying off young girls to settle tribal disputes and families preventing women from inheriting property.

Michael Omi and Howard Winant -Racial Formation in the United States

The meaning of race is defined and contested throughout society, in both

collective action and personal practice. In the process, racial categories

themselves are formed, transformed, destroyed and reformed. We use the

term racial formation to refer to the process by which social, economic and

political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories,

and by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings.

Crucial to this formulation is the treatment of race as a central axis of social

relations which cannot be subsumed under or reduced to some broader

category or conception.

The continuing persistence of racial ideology suggests that these racial myths and

stereotypes cannot be exposed as such in the popular imagination. They are, we think, too

essential, too integral, to the maintenance of the US social order. Of course, particular

meanings, stereotypes and myths can change, but the presence of a system of racial

meanings and stereotypes, of racial ideology, seems to be a permanent feature of US

culture.

Film and television, for example, have been notorious in disseminating images of racial

minorities which establish for audiences what people from these groups look like, how they

behave, and "who they are.” The power of the media lies not only in their ability to reflect

the dominant racial ideology, but in their capacity to shape that ideology in the first place.

D. W. Griffith's epic Birth of a Nation, a sympathetic treatment of the rise of the Ku Klux

Klan during Reconstruction, helped to generate, consolidate and "nationalize" images of

blacks which had been more disparate (more regionally specific, for example) prior to the

film's appearance.1 In US television, the necessity to define characters in the briefest and

most condensed manner has led to the perpetuation of racial caricatures, as racial

stereotypes serve as shorthand for scriptwriters, directors and actors, in commercials, etc.

Televisions tendency to address the "lowest common denominator" in order to render

programs "familiar" to an enormous and diverse audience leads it regularly to assign and

reassign racial characteristics to particular groups, both minority and majority.

Racialization: The Historical Development of Race

In the United States, the racial category of "black" evolved with the consolidation of racial

slavery. By the end of the seventeenth century, Africans whose specific identity was Ibo,

Yoruba, Fulani, etc., were rendered "black" by an ideology of exploitation based on racial

logic—the establishment and maintenance of a "color line." This of course did not occur

overnight. A period of indentured servitude which was not rooted in racial logic preceded

the consolidation of racial slavery. With slavery, however, a racially based understanding

of society was set in motion which resulted in the shaping of a specific racial identity not

only for the slaves but for the European settlers as well. Winthrop Jordan has observed:

"From the initially common term Christian, at mid-century there was a marked shift toward

the terms English and free. After about 1680, taking the colonies as a whole, a new term of

self-identification appeared—white."19

We employ the term racialization to signify the extension of racial meaning to a previously

racially unclassified relationship, social practice or group. Racialization is an ideological

process, an historically specific one. Racial ideology is constructed from pre-existing

conceptual (or, if one prefers, "discursive") elements and emerges from the struggles of

competing political projects and ideas seeking to articulate similar elements differently. An

account of racialization processes that avoids the pitfalls of US ethnic history remains to

be written.

Racialization: The Historical Development of Race

In the United States, the racial category of "black" evolved with the consolidation of racial

slavery. By the end of the seventeenth century, Africans whose specific identity was Ibo,

Yoruba, Fulani, etc., were rendered "black" by an ideology of exploitation based on racial

logic—the establishment and maintenance of a "color line." This of course did not occur

overnight. A period of indentured servitude which was not rooted in racial logic preceded

the consolidation of racial slavery. With slavery, however, a racially based understanding

of society was set in motion which resulted in the shaping of a specific racial identity not

only for the slaves but for the European settlers as well. Winthrop Jordan has observed:

"From the initially common term Christian, at mid-century there was a marked shift toward

the terms English and free. After about 1680, taking the colonies as a whole, a new term of

self-identification appeared—white."

We employ the term racialization to signify the extension of racial meaning to a previously

racially unclassified relationship, social practice or group. Racialization is an ideological

process, an historically specific one. Racial ideology is constructed from pre-existing

conceptual (or, if one prefers, "discursive") elements and emerges from the struggles of

competing political projects and ideas seeking to articulate similar elements differently. An

account of racialization processes that avoids the pitfalls of US ethnic history remains to

be written.

Particularly during the nineteenth century, the category of "white" was subject to

challenges brought about by the influx of diverse groups who were not of the same Anglo-

Saxon stock as the founding immigrants. In the nineteenth century, political and ideological

struggles emerged over the classification of Southern Europeans, the Irish and Jews,

among other "nonwhite" categories. Nativism was only effectively curbed by the

institutionalization of a racial order that drew the color line around, rather than within,

Europe.

By stopping short of racializing immigrants from Europe after the Civil War, and by

subsequently allowing their assimilation, the American racial order was reconsolidated in

the wake of the tremendous challenge placed before it by the abolition of racial slavery.22

With the end of Reconstruction in 1877, an effective program for limiting the emergent

class struggles of the later nineteenth century was forged: the definition of the working

class in racial terms—as "white." This was not accomplished by any legislative decree or

capitalist maneuvering to divide the working class, but rather by white workers themselves.

Many of them were recent immigrants, who organized on racial lines as much as on

traditionally defined class lines. The Irish on the West Coast, for example, engaged in

vicious anti-Chinese race-baiting and committed many pogrom-type assaults on Chinese

in the course of consolidating the trade union movement in California.

Thus the very political organization of the working class was in important ways a racial

project. The legacy of racial conflicts and arrangements shaped the definition of interests

and in turn led to the consolidation of institutional patterns (e.g., segregated unions, dual

labor markets, exclusionary legislation) which perpetuated the color line within the working

class. Selig Perlman, whose study of the development of the labor movement is fairly

sympathetic to this process, notes that:

The political issue after 1877 was racial, not financial, and the weapon was not merely the ballot, but

also "direct action"-violence. The anti-Chinese agitation in California, culminating as it did in the

Exclusion Law passed by Congress in 1882, was doubtless the most important single factor in the

history of American labor, for without it the entire country might have been overrun by Mongolian [sic]

labor and the labor movement might have become a conflict of races instead of one of classes.

More recent economic transformations in the US have also altered interpretations of racial

identities and meanings. The automation of southern agriculture and the augmented labor

demand of the postwar boom transformed blacks from a largely rural, impoverished labor

force to a largely urban, working-class group by 1970. When boom became bust and

liberal welfare statism moved rightwards, the majority of blacks came to be seen,

increasingly, as part of the "underclass," as state "dependents." Thus the particularly

deleterious effects on blacks of global and national economic shifts (generally rising

unemployment rates, changes in the employment structure away from reliance on labor

intensive work, etc.) were explained once again in the late 1970s and 1980s (as they had

been in the 1940s and mid-1960s) as the result of defective black cultural norms, of

familial disorganization, etc.26 In this way new racial attributions, new racial myths, are

affixed to “blacks.”27 Similar changes in racial identity are presently affecting Asians and

Latinos, as such economic forces as increasing Third World impoverishment and

indebtedness fuel immigration and high interest rates, Japanese competition spurs

resentments, and US jobs seem to fly away to Korea and Singapore.

Once we understand that race overflows the boundaries of skin color, super-exploitation,

social stratification, discrimination and prejudice, cultural domination and cultural

resistance, state policy (or of any other particular social relationship we list), once we

recognize the racial dimension present to some degree in every identity, institution and

social practice in the United States—once we have done this, it becomes possible to

speak of racial formation. This recognition is hard-won; there is a continuous temptation to

think of race as an essence, as something fixed, concrete and objective, as (for example)

one of the categories just enumerated. And there is also an opposite temptation: to see it

as a mere illusion, which an ideal social order would eliminate.

In our view it is crucial to break with these habits of thought. The effort must be made to

understand race as an unstable and "decentered" complex of social meanings constantly

being transformed by political struggle.

Where movies end and politics begins

How representations of heroism in movies shape our expectations of a U.S. president, and how our real-world candidates are packaged into superficial, two-dimensional personas designed to appeal to both the electorate and the media.

Judith Butler -New forms of democratic insurgency

Although some have argued that the politics of the street has been replaced by new media politics, it seems that the public sphere within which politics takes place is now defined by a specific mode of bodies interacting with media. Hannah Arendt once argued that there could be no exercise of freedom without the creation of a 'space of appearance' and even 'a right to appear'. How do we understand those new forms of democratic insurgency that form alliances that are not in coalitional forms? Who is the embodied 'we' on the street transported through media, and yet in place and at risk?

Thich Nhat Hanh -The lack of meaning and connection in peoples' lives

The healing of the people should go together with the healing of the Earth.

"We need a real awakening to change our way of thinking and seeing things."

Václav Havel (1936–2011)

On the rocky road to democracy and a working market economy, Václav Havel had been with the Czechs, sometimes an inspiring figure, sometimes an annoying scold, articulating his vision for the country, for Europe, and for the world. It was a vision based on a democratic politics underpinned by a strong civil society and rooted in common decency, morality, and respect for the rule of law and human rights; a politics that sought to transcend racial, cultural, and religious differences by articulating a “moral minimum” that Havel believed existed at the heart of most faiths and cultures and that would provide a basis for agreement and cooperation without sacrificing the unique gifts that each person, each culture, and each “sphere of civilization” could bring to enrich modern life.

How disruption breeds disruption

In the half-century between 1962 and the present, the US has become more prosperous, peaceful and fair, but the social fabric has deteriorated. Social trust has plummeted. Society has segmented.

Social breakdown began in the 1960s, a time of unprecedented prosperity.

No matter how social disorganization got started, once it starts, it takes on a momentum of its own. People who grow up in disrupted communities are more likely to lead disrupted lives as adults, magnifying disorder from one generation to the next.

It’s not true that people in disorganized neighborhoods have bad values. Their goals are not different from everybody else’s. It’s that they lack the social capital to enact those values.

While individuals are to be held responsible for their behavior, social context is more powerful than we thought. If any of us grew up in a neighborhood where a third of the men dropped out of school, we’d be much worse off, too.

Mindful Eating as Food for Thought

Jennifer May for The New York Times

Diners wait until everyone is seated at the Blue Cliff Monastery. More Photos »

WHEN YOU EAT, JUST EAT. Unplug the electronica, focus on the food.

CONSIDER SILENCE. Avoiding chatter for 30 minutes might be impossible for some but specialists suggest that greenhorns start with short periods of quiet.

TRY IT WEEKLY. Sometimes there’s no way to avoid wolfing down onion rings in your cubicle. But if you set aside one sit-down meal a week as an experiment in mindfulness, the insights may influence everything else you do.

PLANT A GARDEN, AND COOK. Anything that reconnects you with the process of creating food will magnify your mindfulness.

CHEW PATIENTLY. It’s not easy, but try to slow down, aiming for 25 to 30 chews for each mouthful.

USE FLOWERS AND CANDLES. Put them on the table before dinner. Rituals that create a serene environment help foster what one advocate calls “that moment of gratitude.”

FIND A BUDDHIST CONGREGATION where the members invite people in for a day of mindfulness.

Michelle Alexander: Drug War Racism

The U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary means of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. Alexander provocative book challenges the civil rights community—and all of us—to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in the US. As the United States celebrates the nation's triumph over race with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life.

Michelle Alexander - Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

The drug war was launched in response to racial politics, not drug crime. The drug war was part of the Republican Party’s grand strategy, often referred to as the Southern strategy, an effort to appear —appeal to poor and working-class white voters who were threatened by, felt vulnerable, threatened by the gains of the civil rights movement, particularly desegregation, busing and affirmative action. And the Republican Party found that it could get Democrats — white working-class poor Democrats — to defect from the Democratic New Deal coalition and join the Republican Party through racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare.

There are more African Americans under correctional control, whether in prison or jail, on probation or on parole, than there were enslaved in 1850. And more African American men are disenfranchised now because of felon disenfranchisement laws than in 1870.
A new book by legal scholar and civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander argues that although Jim Crow laws have been eliminated, the racial caste system it set up was not eradicated. It’s simply been redesigned, and now racial control functions through the criminal justice system.

Michelle Alexander -The New Jim Crow

Mass incarceration and minorities in the US

The New Jim Crow. Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

A devastating account of the US legal system doing its job perfectly well. The US government has replaced one caste system (Jim Crow) for another one (imprisonment, parole, detention) that keeps the majority of minorities in a permanent state of disenfranchisement. Michelle Alexander looks in detail at what economists usually miss, namely the entire legal structure of the courts, parole, probation and laws that effectively turn a perpetrator of a crime into a moral outlaw who is unworthy of rehabilitation.... Alexander does a fine job of truth-telling, pointing the finger where it rightly should be pointed: at all of us, liberal and conservative, white and black.”—Marion Wright Edelman.

Contrary to the rosy picture of race embodied in Barack Obama’s political success and Oprah Winfrey’s financial success, legal scholar Alexander argues that racial caste has not ended in the US; it has been merely redesigned. Jim Crow and legal racial segregation has been replaced by mass incarceration as a system of social control. More Americans of African descent are under correctional control today ... than were enslaved in 1850.

Alexander reviews US racial history from the colonies to the Clinton administration, delineating its transformation into the ‘war on drugs.’ She offers an analysis of the effect of this mass incarceration upon former inmates ‘who will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives, denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits.’ Most provocatively, she reveals how both the move toward colorblindness and affirmative action may blur our vision of injustice: ‘most Americans know and don't know the truth about mass incarceration’. —Miami Herald.

Bill Moyers

How Big Banks are Rewriting the Rules of US Economy

Vargas Llosa -Modernidad y realismo político

Enrique Krauze - Redentores

El modelo socialista autoritario que en los años sesenta y setenta reclutaba a todas las vanguardias políticas del continente y era el santo y seña de sus juventudes, está hoy prácticamente en ruinas, condenado a una marginalidad que se sigue encogiendo y que alientan apenas grupos y grupúsculos huérfanos de calor popular, en tanto que una nueva izquierda, como la que gobernó en Chile con la Unidad Popular y que gobierna ahora en países como Brasil, Uruguay, El Salvador y Perú, ha dejado atrás sus viejos sueños colectivistas y estatistas y optado por el pragmatismo democrático y de economías abiertas de la social democracia europea.

El camino a la modernidad y el realismo políticos– ha sido largo, sangriento, de confusión y delirio ideológicos, sueños utópicos de redención social a través de la violencia, la guerra civil, dictaduras atroces, democracias paralizadas por la ineptitud y la venalidad de sus líderes, burócratas y parlamentarios.

Los repetidos fracasos, las enormes desigualdades económicas y sociales, el sufrimiento que las repetidas desventuras políticas han ido sembrando por todo el continente, poco a poco han ido empujando a las sociedades latinoamericanas hacia los consensos democráticos, el primero, el de coexistir en la diversidad política sin entrematarse, acatando los veredictos electorales, la renovación periódica de los gobiernos, el respeto a la libertad de expresión y al derecho de crítica, la aceptación de la propiedad, de la empresa privada y del mercado como mecanismos indispensables del desarrollo económico. Todo ello ha ido imponiéndose poco a poco, por la fuerza de las cosas, a través de la evolución de una derecha y una izquierda que, no sin reticencias y traspiés, han ido renunciando a sus viejas obsesiones excluyentes y violentistas, y cambiando de métodos.