By Albina Kovalyova

Even Though the Subject Matter of Russia 88 May Be Controversial, to Ban the Film Would Mean to Sweep the Issue of Russian Fascism under the Rug

A new film has sparked reactions across Russia’s social and political spectrum, broaching issues of censorship, morality and nationalism. The audience appears to be divided into those who believe that portraying young fascists is an important part of the effort to understand the psychology and influence behind their violence, and those who think that the film simply glamorizes skinheads.

The Russia 88 “mockumentary” has no clear beginning. The viewer is simply thrust into the aggressive world of a fascist gang in the midst of their vandalizing and violence on the Moscow metro. It soon becomes apparent that the filming is being done by one of the gang’s members who is documenting their world.

Due to its controversial subject, the film has encountered distribution problems in Russia. Reportedly, a phone call from the government to the jury of the first international film debut festival the Spirit of Fire, held in Khanty Mansiysk, precluded Russia 88 from receiving the first prize. The filmmakers do not know who the call was from, but would certainly like to. They have been told by journalists that the latter have been discouraged from writing about this matter.

Rumors that the film has been banned are backed by speculations that the portrait of Adolf Hitler that the gang members quickly flip over when visited by the police, only to reveal Vladimir Putin on the other side, has offended the government. Others believe that it was a scene in which a member of an “official” ultra-right group offers the fascist gang a license and a legitimate right to act as part of this group—a clear insinuation that the government actually resorts to such tricks to attain its goals.

But despite the difficulties that this low-budget picture is facing, its producers hope that it will be released in the very near future. Anna Mikhalkova, one of the film’s producers and the daughter of the notorious film director Nikita Mikhalkov, as well as a well renowned actress and a producer in her own right, said that she decided to get involved with this film because of the importance of its subject matter and the necessity for it to be accessible to a wider audience.

The main subject matter of Russia 88—Russian nationalism and its racist tendencies—is a topical one. The names of the real victims of Russian Nazi groups are displayed on the screen just after the closing shot of the last scene – over a hundred people were killed in racially motivated attacks in 2008. And the film’s pseudo-documentary style actually does have genuine documentary elements to it: as part of the narrative, the members of the fascist group, dressed in neutral clothing, calmly interview members of the public outside bus stations and inside trains, asking people whether they believe in “a Russia for Russians.” The film’s director Pavel Bardin said that the film crew “wanted honest responses from people, and so the actors stepped out of character so that the public would not feel intimidated.” Most of those questioned agreed that Russia should be primarily for Russians, and that Russian jobs should be filled by the country’s citizens.

Pseudo-interviews with the gang members reveal an attempt to understand the reasons behind people’s involvement in fascist activities. Most do not have clear answers, but the group’s leader, named Blade, does. “I decided this when I became very afraid. I suddenly realized how many of them there are in this country. And there is no space for me. They are taking my jobs, they are after my sister, using her to register at her apartment,” he says in the film. The “they” he is referring to, of course, are non-Russian immigrants.
The creators of Russia 88 hoped that the film would address the wider phenomenon of xenophobia in the country. The explosion in Russian nationalism is partly the work of the government. As more immigrants flock to Russia, the country’s ethnic Russian population diminishes and its demographics change, the government tries to boost patriotic morale by promoting national pride and discouraging anything that would make Russians ashamed of their country.

Bardin said that the film elicited various reactions from real fascists, but most agree that the film’s portrayal of skinheads is realistic. “There were only a few details that these people thought were not authentic, such as the kind of clothes that fascists wear. Now they look very neutral, and do not wear any identifiable fascist clothing,” he said. In the film, the characters wear the tight trousers, boots and braces sported by British skinheads in the 1970s, and their band plays homage to the Oi! music movement of the same era. Some of the characters’ clothing bears references to the American white nationalist David Lane.

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By Ram Puniani

Terror against minorities as happened against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 and Christians in Orissa in 2007 is not simply an episodic act of violence; rather it is the unveiling of a policy by one of the major political parties in India. There is a reason why such sordid acts are not coming to a halt and there is a compelling need why it must.

The after-effects of the anti Christian violence (2007) in Kandhamal district of Orissa are not over, so to say. Recently the Archbishop Cheenath of the state said that the elections in the Kandhmamal district should be postponed as the refugees living in the camps are not able to return. The reason is that many of them who returned were threatened by the local Bajrang Dal workers and associates. They were told to renounce Christianity, convert to Hinduism pay the fine, withdraw the cases and vote for the candidate who they will be told to, obviously BJP candidate. Many of those who tried to return with such hostile conditions awaiting them if they return, came back, some to the camps others to unknown destinations.

Meanwhile BJP candidate of the area, Ashok Sahu, when he came to know about his likely arrest for “Hate speech”, first absconded for few days and then was arrested just three hours before the campaign was to be over (14th April 2009). He told his followers to keep calm; else the elections will be postponed, as being demanded by the Archbishop. One also recalls a similar situation in the post Gujarat violence. There, while state Government claimed that normalcy has returned, the Chief election commissioner James Michael Lyngdoh was visibly upset when he saw the condition of the Muslims living in the camps and their inability to be able to be part of the electoral process.
In Orissa the violence has taken a heavy toll of the amity of the region. The violence which began August 2007 continued till December. It resulted in death of close to 6-7 hundred Panos (Christians) and 90 Churches, 100 other Christian institutions were destroyed. The pretext was that Swami Laxamananand, the VHP swami working in the area has been murdered by Christians. At the same time the Maoist group claimed that they own the responsibility for the act. Since some pretext was needed to launch the attacks, the claim of Maoists was not considered and the VHP, BJP and company kept harping that it is the Christians who have committed the crime. As such the matter is tragic but simple. Whosoever has committed the crime should be punished. Why the whole Christian community has to be targeted and attacked for the act of some group or an individual.

Since at that time BJP was part of the ruling coalition it had its way. The death procession of swami was taken through a long circuitous route. The idea was to communalize the atmosphere in maximum area. This again is quite akin to Gujarat. After the Godhra train tragedy the dead bodies were taken in a procession to Ahmedabad, with VHP, BJP workers shouting provocative slogans. The whole hell was encouraged-permitted to be unleashed. Here also a long route was deliberately taken and police and other state authorities acted as the bystanders when the mayhem broke out. Surprisingly the VHP’s Praveen Togadia was permitted to go to the area while the Central Minister of State for Home affairs was not permitted to visit the area.
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(Submitted by Feroz Mehdi)

By Jeremy Harding

Last September, as dust and debris from the tellers’ floors began raining onto the empty vaults below, a note of satisfaction was sounded by bankers in the Arab world. Financial institutions sticking to the tenets of Islam, they announced, were largely immune from the debt crisis. Devout Muslims may lend and borrow under certain conditions; they can even buy and sell debt in the form of ‘Islamic’ bonds, but most other kinds of debt trading are frowned on. Al Rajhi Bank, based in Saudi Arabia, and the Kuwait Finance House posted impressive profits in 2008. Both have come under some nervous scrutiny in 2009 but their ability to weather the recession that has set in behind the credit crunch is not at issue.

Unlike most banks in the Middle East, Al Rajhi Bank and KFH are ‘sharia-compliant’ businesses, which means simply that they try to abide by the evolving body of rules known as the sharia – ‘the path to the headwater’ – which govern the lives of Muslims. The sharia serves mostly as a guide to personal conduct, though some rules are drafted into the legal codes of majority-Muslim states. It’s founded, we’re always told, on revealed truth from the Koran and exemplary stories from the Hadith, the sayings and doings of the Prophet. But the real influence of the sharia lies in the way this material is constantly read and recast by modern Islamic scholars, reinventing old traditions or asserting new ones. Whatever they take it to be, growing numbers of Muslims are keen to stay on the path when it comes to banking and finance. The global Muslim population is upwards of 1.3 billion – roughly one in every five people on earth – and, with a religious revival of twenty or thirty years’ standing, the way of Islam is now a crowded thoroughfare. It is plied by a great diversity of travellers from different parts of the world; some have money to burn, others next to none, but anybody with a modicum of wealth is nowadays a potential opportunity for banks offering sharia-compliant retail services: current accounts, straightforward financing schemes and home-ownership plans.

The term ‘Islamic finance’ wrests a lot of activities down to a catch-all definition. The same is true, in the financial universe, of the words ‘sharia’ and ‘Islam’ itself. Sharia is not a single, coherent jurisprudence for Muslims; there are various schools of interpretation and marked disagreements within each of them. ‘Islam’, a broad term of convenience for most non-Muslims, is a power-point word in the City: it tells bankers and traders that every day for a few minutes they should shut out the din of the money that merely talks and tune in to the money that prays. But why bother, given that sharia-compliant finance is probably worth less than 1 per cent of the total value of the world’s stocks, bonds and bank deposits? This was reckoned at about $170 trillion in 2007; it’s much less than that now of course, but even so, with a value of around $700 billion, Islamic stocks, bonds and bank deposits remain a minority affair, just as Muslims remain a minority in global terms.

What fascinates the markets about Islamic finance, however, is its dramatic growth in recent years and confident predictions that it’s set to expand at 15 to 20 per cent every year. Its allure for moderately prosperous, pious Muslims – and quite a few non-Muslims recoiling from the debt crisis in anger and disgust – is different. They admire what they see as a promise to achieve stability and transparency, and a sense of proportion about money: look it in the eye, tell it you like it, but admit that you have lingering doubts about the transcendent value of paper. That’s an unsophisticated position, but since the credit crunch not many people trust the sophisticated keepers of the modern money culture; in this sense the rise of sharia-compliant products is also a challenge to the unofficial, polytheist faith of offshore Britannia: the worship of markets in general and financial markets in particular.

One of the central differences between the Islamic and conventional approaches to finance is that our own cults – which may well see a revision before the end of this crisis – ascribe supernatural powers to money. Cult specialists are at great pains to understand and control how it works, but admit that it does so in magical ways that go beyond the effects of human commerce (for the markets, too, have magical attributes, including innate goodness). Whatever we want from money, we suspect, as devotees, that in the end it will always behave as it sees fit. Our awe of it is a bit like a rapt meditation on the way the shower of gold behaves – shimmering and falling – when it cascades over Danaë in her cloister in Argos. In the story, it’s merely the form chosen by Zeus for her seduction, but in our meditation, there is no Olympian in disguise and no intention to seduce, just the metal shimmering and falling, in consummate self-expression, as deity and dogma. Islamic approaches – there are quite a few – are much closer to Nonconformist and Anglican traditions, where the divinity stands to the side of money, reminding the faithful that he is one thing and mammon another. Money, in this view, is an object of caution rather than superstition – and, in spite of its dangers, a useful tool for anyone who wants to build a respectable world, with God’s instructions pinned to the wall above the workbench.
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(Submitted by reader)

By Rick Nauert, Ph.D. Senior News Editor

Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on April 23, 2009
Watching television is often associated with a negative health connotation of couch potatoes munching on chips and drinking beer.
Now a new study suggests illusionary relationships with the characters and personalities on favorite TV shows can provide people with feelings of belonging, even in the face of low self esteem or after being rejected by friends or family members.

The findings are described in four studies published in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
“The research provides evidence for the ’social surrogacy hypothesis,’ which holds that humans can use technologies, like television, to provide the experience of belonging when no real belongingness has been experienced,” says one of the study’s authors, Shira Gabriel, Ph.D., UB assistant professor of psychology.

“We also argue that other commonplace technologies such as movies, music or interactive video games, as well as television, can fulfill this need.”
Shira’s co-authors are Jaye L. Derrick, Ph.D., postdoctoral associate and adjunct instructor of psychology at UB, and Kurt Hugenberg, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at Miami University.

The first study, of 701 undergraduate students, used the Loneliness Activities Scale and the Likelihood of Feeling Lonely Scale to find that subjects reported tuning to favored television programs when they felt lonely and felt less lonely when viewing those programs.

Study 2 used essays to experimentally manipulate the belongingness needs of 102 undergraduate subjects and assess the importance of their favored television programs when those needs were stimulated. Participants whose belongingness needs were aroused reveled longer in their descriptions of favored television programs than in descriptions of non-favored programs, the study found.

Study 3 of 116 participants employed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and an eight-item measure of feelings of rejection to find that thinking about favored television programs buffered subjects against drops in self-esteem, increases in negative mood and feelings of rejection commonly elicited by threats to close relationships.

Study 4 asked 222 participants to write a 10-minute essay about their favorite television program, and then to write about programs they watch “when nothing else is on,” or about experiencing an academic achievement. They were then asked to verbally describe what they had written in as much detail as possible.

After writing about favored television programs, the subjects verbally expressed fewer feelings of loneliness or exclusion than when verbally describing either of the two control situations (essays about programs watched when nothing else is on, academic achievement). This is evidence, say the researchers, that illusionary or “parasocial” relationships with television characters or personalities can ease belongingness needs.

It remains an open question, say the researchers, whether social surrogacy suppresses belongingness needs or actually fulfills them, and they acknowledge that the kind of social surrogacy provoked by these programs can be a poor substitution for “real” human-to-human experience.

“Turning one’s back on family and friends for the solace of television may be maladaptive and leave a person with fewer resources over time,” says UB’s Derrick, “but for those who have difficulty experiencing social interaction because of physical or environmental constraints, technologically induced belongingness may offer comfort.”
Source: University of Buffalo
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by Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai

no, our people are not magical
nor do we work extraordinarily
harder than anybody else

jackie chan did fail out
of primary school, spent
his childhood meditating
back flip to foot to back flip,
a boy growing into man
in constant motion

no, we tend not to learn it
in our families

but the steps of chiang kai shek
memorial are lined each morning
with hundreds of grey haired supplicants
to tiao wu, their aging joints turning
beneath the grey of sky and sun

it is not the most important part
of our culture

but who wouldn’t fall in love
with the helix of bruce lee’s waist,
muscles firm and corrugated
like the rows of rooftop tiles
bearing the lightness of rain
and the lightning of his touch

Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai/s website is Yellowgurl

YELLOWGURL EVENTS MAY 09- For details, check out: Events

By Christopher Ketcham

The French have taken to bossnapping — “sequestering” their bosses while keeping them comfortable and safe — to protest economic unfairness.

In answer to their own economic crisis, the French have taken up “bossnapping.”

Here’s how it works: An executive of a company, perhaps the CEO, stands before a group of his employees, puts his hands together, sighs, and then, with regret as smooth as brie, explains the fact that downsizing is needed to meet the exigencies of economic crisis (read: the preservation of profits in downturn).

The employees get pissed off — and bum-rush the boss. They trap him in his office, barricade the door, feed him espresso and baguette, and demand a fair deal.It’s a sort of soft-touch storming of the Bastille.

And lo, it works. A few weeks back, this happened at the FM Logistics Co. in Woippy, France, as 125 workers charged into a meeting of five company managers and held the poor creatures hostage for a day. At least 475 workers at FM Logistics, which is owned by Hewlett-Packard Co., were facing the specter of “redundancy” as HP sought to move its printer packaging operations to the cheaper labor pool in Malaysia.

By midnight, the company had turned tail, promising “new proposals on redundancy talks,” according to Reuters. The news service quoted one of the bossnappers: “We’ve had enough. We have been negotiating for a year, if you can call it negotiating, and we haven’t managed to make ourselves heard.”

• At 3M’s pharmaceutical factory in Pithiviers, 50 miles from Paris, workers exploded upon hearing that 110 of them were to lose jobs. They surrounded the manager and forced him into his office, where he was held hostage for 24 hours until 3M agreed to resume negotiations.
• The president of Sony France in March was locked in his office by employees who barricaded the doors and windows with tree trunks.
• Angry factory workers at the Caterpillar plant in Grenoble took four managers hostage on April Fool’s Day.

In the last month across France, at least a dozen such incidents have been reported, with no less than five CEOs of major corporations held in what the French are calling, with typical delicate aplomb, “sequestration.” In each case, the sequestered bosses have been well-fed and well-treated — though sometimes, alas, forced to sleep on the floor.

I called my family in France — my ex lives in Paris with our daughter — to get the home-fire take on these outrages.
“Most people are for it,” my ex told me. “Because of les inegalites” — the inequalities of the rich doing well as the rest of the country immolates.

I e-mailed her sister-in-law, a schoolteacher, who wrote back, “These bossnappings seem to be peaceful most of the time, and I’m not so shocked. Workers are totally desperate, and I don’t blame them for wanting to be heard, as long as no one is hurt.” (She also noted that she personally knows a company boss in the south of France who has taken to keeping a bedroll and extra food in his office, just in case.)
A poll this month found that 45 percent of French agree with the practice of bossnapping, while only 7 percent condemned it. A second poll found that 55 percent of French believe that “radical protest” under the current circumstances was justified, while 64 percent said that bossnapping should be depenalized. And perhaps most compelling is that authorities are listening: In most cases, they are declining to prosecute the bossnappers.

It’s lovely to behold all this, and even lovelier to think my daughter is growing up weaned on the grand French tradition of raising hell. The habit goes back to the revolution — its call signs, Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite — to the Paris commune, the resistance, the Soisante-Huitards toppling the republic.

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by Carol Eisenberg

Harriet Miers, former White House counsel and unsuccessful U.S.
Supreme Court nominee, has returned to her old law firm, but with a new portfoliio – as a registered agent for the Pakistan People’s Party and the Embassy of Pakistan.

Working for the public affairs arm of Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell LLP, Miers filed papers to represent both Pakistani entities with the U.S. Justice Department, according to Legal Times’ blog.

“On her foreign agent registration short form for Locke Lord Strategies, a subsidiary of Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell, the former Supreme Court nominee cites her work as part and parcel of Locke Lord’s effort to ‘promote better understanding of the country’s recent political, social, and economic developments’ and line up state visits to Washington,” the blog reported.

The firm’s relationship to Pakistani leaders long pre-dates her involvement, however.

One partner of Locke Lord Strategies, Mark A. Siegel, was a decades-long adviser and close friend to Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto, who was slain in December. She died two months before the publication of a book on which they had collaborated, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West.

Despite her death, Bhutto’s party won a large number of seats in Pakistan’s National Parliament, and formed a coalition government with the Pakistan Muslim League (N). A short time later, the Embassy of Pakistan signed a $900,000 contract with Siegel, according to Roll Call. The firm is believed to represent the political party pro bono.

Siegel, for his part, has longstanding ties to the Democratic Party, serving in the administration of former President Jimmy Carter, as the executive director of the Democratic National Committee and as former chief of staff to Democrat Steve Israel, a Long Island congressman.

Other clients of Locke Lord Strategies include the American Veal Association, the Louisiana Sheriff’s Association and the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System.

See the web of connections of the companies and people involved.
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(Submitted by reader)

By: Voranai Vanijaka

Last Monday, I read a report on an etiquette course for novice monks. Introduced by leading preacher and writer Phra Wor Wachiramethi, the course aims to “prevent gay expressions” among monks.

The course is deemed necessary, as there have been too many news reports of homosexual monks using cosmetics, carrying pink bags and wearing their robes in a stylish, fashionable way in public.

Not to mention, monks actually having sexual relations with men in their monasteries. Gasp!

The course will be taught at the Triam Sammanen School – the country’s first Buddhist missionary school, located in the compound of Wat Krueng Tai in Chiang Rai’s Chiang Khong district.

After falling off the chair, rolling on the ground gripped by hysterical laughter for about five minutes (who doesn’t appreciate a good laugh on a Monday morning, eh?), I forgot about the story.

On Thursday night, I attended a concert/fashion show by Elle magazine, which is also owned by Post Publishing. (Who said this company is all stuffy, old and conservative, eh?) Needless to say, there were no shortages of “gay expressions” at the party. Though these expressions, it seemed to me, were that of fun and happiness, enjoyment, a zest for life.

Of course we must differentiate between “gay expressions” among laymen and among monks. The former is a matter of human rights, guaranteed by democratic principles. The latter however, hasn’t anything to do with human rights or democracy.

The core principle of Buddhism is cessation of desire. Using cosmetics and carrying pink bags are fulfillments of desire, rather than cessations. Hence, it is wrong according to Buddhist principles.

I am proudly a slave of many desires. I cannot have an Italian dinner without red wine. I screamed profanity when Manchester United scored five goals in 30 minutes to beat Tottenham Hotspur.

And like most men, if I were to pick up Elle, it’s not necessarily to read the excellent articles, but to look at delicious models. Hence, I don’t pretend to be a monk – and neither should those men who shaved their heads and wear yellow robes.

I have no idea what could cure homosexual monks of “gay expressions”. Will they chant and pray, burn incense until the gayness goes away? I don’t know, but I’m sure the venerable monks will try their best.

If the venerable monks were to ask me for a solution, which of course they never would, but I have to write a Sunday column and the epic struggles of Thaksin Shinawatra is rather dry and stale this week, so let’s pretend that I was asked.
If they were to ask me, I would say the solution is simple: Can’t extinguish the burning flame of desire? Defrock them. They don’t deserve to be monks.

But you see, such solution would never be accepted, because it will open a big can of worms. If we start to defrock monks because they don’t follow the principles of Buddhism and are enslaved by desires, then many temples will be emptier than the bottle of whiskey on my table at the end of the Elle party.
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HOW many viewers, we wonder, tuned in to Tazzen Mandizvidza’s mind-numbing birthday interview with President Mugabe. It was journalism at its worst.
Mandizvidza failed to ask a single challenging question and instead asked Mugabe everything a politician in the spotlight would be delighted to answer.
One example will suffice: “The economic meltdown in the West shows ‘Looking East’ was the right policy in the first place.”

Not so much a question, more a grovelling statement. And the interview must have broken the record for how many times it is possible to say “Your Excellency” in one programme!

There was nothing on multiple farm ownership or why Iron Mask Farm is proving insufficient for its owner’s needs.

And the list of estates Mugabe rattled off as belonging to British interests must have been drawn up 30 years ago. Indeed, throughout the interview there appeared to be a certain cognitive dissonance as if the president was visiting from another planet. The claim that “we brought democracy here” (not the British) will have elicited a sceptical murmur of doubt from those who recall the State of Emergency that Mugabe kept in place until 1990.
…
More than 700 passengers escaped unhurt when a Bulawayo-bound train collided with a herd of elephants, the Herald reported last Friday.
“Grateful passengers hailed the train driver as a hero after he calmly steered the locomotive, averting disaster.”
May we ask why our NRZ “hero” didn’t notice the herd of elephants on the line? The incident took place in broad daylight so they would have been clearly visible.
The train driver was “hailed” for “remaining calm” and “steering” the train to safety.
Did he have a choice? Were there other routes the train could have taken?
As it was, three elephants including a baby were killed because the train driver didn’t see them. A hero indeed.
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