The best movies I saw in 2014

The films I liked most this year – unlike my favorite books of 2014, most of them actually are 2014 films (the English release at least) – tended to fit with the books I liked and to fall into two major thematic categories: existentialism and the arrogant-vindictive personality.

My taste in movies is maybe even more idiosyncratic than my taste in books, which is why I typically have trouble recommending either.* But with that warning out there…

First, the three movies I’d broadly classify as “existentialist.” Ida



directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, has been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and for Achievement in Cinematography. I haven’t seen any of the other Foreign Picture nominees and so can’t speak to whether it deserves to win over them, but independent of the specific competition it certainly deserves the award. The cinematography is also outstanding. Beautiful film.

The documentary The Last of the Unjust



directed by Claude Lanzmann is also haunting and heartwrenching.

Both movies – one fictional and one about a real person – address the Holocaust and its aftermath. They pose the starkest existential questions about the impossible dilemmas of people who retain some freedom of choice even as they’re victimized by oppressive political systems. They both present situations (I’ve read several interviews with Pawlikowski about Ida, and don’t know that he’d necessarily agree with this fully, but it’s my interpretation) in which there’s no escape that isn’t a political decision and in some sense a contribution to injustice. They’re both compassionate toward their subjects.

My third favorite is also an existential film, but an unusual one. While Ida and The Last of the Unjust follow in the existentialist tradition of presenting people in moral limit situations (what Sartre called “the literature of great circumstance”), Éric Rohmer’s A Summer’s Tale,



like his other works, is a refreshingly lighthearted exploration of existential themes – in this case, a study in bad faith. (I don’t think I’m reading too much into his work here: according to this obituary, Rohmer himself declared “I never talk about Sartre, but he was still my starting point.”**)

I recommend this movie to people who already know they like Rohmer’s films or who expect based on the preview that it would be to their taste. I don’t think they’re an acquired taste, but that people either love them or hate them based on very personal preferences. I generally find them both enjoyable and thought-provoking, but I like films with a lot of talking, especially those set at the beach. For some reason, I’ve also tended to see them in very pleasant circumstances (I saw this one on a cheery summer day in New York, left the theater and strolled along Central Park while some sunlight still remains,…), which probably also colors my opinion. But I’m certainly not alone in my fondness for them – he made popular movies for decades.

My other favorite films of 2014 looked at the arrogant-vindictive type described by Horney. One I’ve already discussed here: Alex Holmes’ Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story. The second is an HBO documentary - Nixon by Nixon: In His Own Words. Even if you think you know the extent of Nixon’s viciousness, you’ll probably be surprised by this film. At the moment you can watch the whole thing here:



If that video is taken down for whatever reason, just look it up on YouTube. Even, again, taking into account what’s known about his vindictiveness, and even setting the man in his time, I’m still struck by the extent of his arrogance and meanness; the depth of his misogyny, racism, and anti-Semitism; his projection (man, the projection!); and his utter contempt for democracy. I also think the film does a great job of presenting the central material – the audio recordings – in a clear manner that’s not too gimmicky or obtrusive; in other hands, that could have gone very wrong.

The Good Doctor



isn’t a 2014 film and I wouldn’t include it among the best I saw last year (nor would I necessarily want to see it again), but it’s an interesting fictional psychological character portrait.

* I will say that I finally watched The Hunger Games and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire recently and enjoyed them both. I probably won’t ever get around to reading the books, but the movies were engrossing and I look forward to the next ones. So it’s not that I dislike mainstream or popular films reflexively or as a matter of principle. It’s just that those I do like tend to be few and far between.

** I’ve seen a few references to the quote but not the source, so I can’t confirm it.

Media coverage of Pavlo Lapshyn, the far Right in Europe, and secularism

In a recent post about the far Right in Europe, I discussed the sentencing of white supremacist murderer and terrorist Pavlo Lapshyn. The threat from movements of the far Right comes not only from the actions of individuals in their ranks but from sympathetic and even encouraging responses from governments. It also comes from distorted public views of these actions, and those views are powerfully influenced by media coverage (or the lack thereof). Steve Rendall at FAIR describes the imbalance in US media coverage of the murders of Mohammed Saleem and Lee Rigby:

This story of terrorism hardly registered in US news media. According to the Nexis news database, Mohammed Saleem and Pavlo Lapshyn were mentioned in just 10 US newspaper and news wire stories, most of them brief Associated Press and States News Service wires (e.g., Associated Press, 10/25; States News Service, 19/25). The New York Times was alone among major newspapers, running a detailed report on October 23.

Saleem’s story can be contrasted with that of British Army Sergeant Lee Rigby, murdered by Islamist assailants in a London street a few weeks later. Rigby and his killers, Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo, were mentioned in 570 US newspapers and news wire stories.

There's more than one reason for that. Rigby's killers stayed at the murder scene and were videotaped talking about killing the soldier. But it's hard to deny that one reason Rigby's story got [more] than 50 times the coverage of Saleem's is that it fits a false and damaging media narrative about who are the perpetrators and who the victims of such horrific acts.

This neglect is one part of the problem. Another is the reluctance even to acknowledge non-Muslim terrorism, especially when the victims are Muslims. Steve Rose suggests that the refusal to call Lapshyn’s intent and actions what they plainly were provides

further proof that terrorism is an empty term, a label reflexively applied when the perpetrator has a specific religious identity. As a result, supporters of the English Defence League can continue to claim, ‘That all the terrorists at the moment are Muslim’, which is another falsehood.

Until we stop dehumanising Muslims to feed the illusion of our own moral and cultural superiority, we will not learn from this tragedy. Nor will we reflect on our own capacity for terror on those we oppose. Nobody has the monopoly on terrorism. It has no nationality or religious faith, it crosses borders and cultures.

Yet, like any fundamentalist, Lapshyn's utopian vision was built on the aggressive removal of the 'Other'. He hoped his campaign would cause Muslims to ‘leave’ a section of Birmingham. In isolation, that idea is closer to the mainstream than many admit.

Public acknowledgment of rightwing violence and campaigns of terror is badly needed. In one incident, last week in France, someone painted Nazi graffiti outside the home of Abdallah Zekri.

Earlier in October, a heated conflict surrounding the slaughtering of conscious animals as part of the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha, the “Feast of the Sacrifice,” led to the burning of a mosque in Gdansk, Poland.*

Zekri and others are making the connection between the campaigns against Muslims and those against Jews, past and present (it helps when the racists make it so obvious). The Jewish community in Gdansk issued a statement associating the mosque attack with Kristallnacht, the 75th anniversary of which is in a few days:

Representatives of the Jewish community of Gdansk, Poland, said the torching of a mosque had “frightening connotations” of the Nazi-inspired Kristallnacht pogroms against Jews.

The association was inescapable, three of the city’s Jewish leaders wrote in a statement Thursday. “On the eve of the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, during which synagogues were burned in the Free City of Gdansk, the burning of the mosque must bear frightening connotations,” the statement said.

Unidentified individuals started the fire early Wednesday morning. It consumed the mosque’s door and some of the equipment, resulting in damages to the tune of $16,000.

“In the face of this cowardly act of barbarism, Jews of Gdansk cannot stand idly by,” wrote the authors of the statement, Michal Samet, Michal Rucki and Mieczyslaw Abramowicz. “We express our deep indignation against the attack on the temple and the sadness of the fact that it took place in Gdansk.”

There are other disturbing developments. Last week, (alleged) secularists held a joint event with Catholics protesting the construction of a mosque in the French city of Metz:

The demonstration was initiated by Génération Patriotes and enthusiastically supported by Résistance Républicaine. You might think this is an odd alliance, as Résistance Républicaine is a front organisation for Riposte Laïque, a militantly secularist group, while Génération Patriotes is fiercely religious. The one claims to be advocating a hardline version of laïcité, while the other aggressively upholds the Christian heritage of France.

However the French far right has been redefining laïcité to incorporate the promotion of Christianity, precisely in order to facilitate unity in inciting hatred of Islam. The forthcoming Résistance Républicaine demonstration in Paris has been called to defend laïcité ‘and our other traditions’. In addition to supporting the 1905 law which established the separation of church and state, it has adopted the slogans ‘Hands off Christmas!’ and ‘Hands off our Christian holidays!’

Fortunately, the Metz event seems to have been about as well attended as a Washington ex-gay rally, but again, the danger doesn’t just lie with the campaigns themselves but with the responses of the powerful and the shaping of public attitudes. The key insight in Pitt’s post is the recognition that “the French far right has been redefining laïcité to incorporate the promotion of Christianity.” (Something similar seems to be going on with…whatever the hell this is.)

I don’t think he has it quite right, though, when he suggests that this redefinition is being attempted “precisely in order to facilitate unity in inciting hatred of Islam.” That’s part of it, but the other aspect is that they’re confident that their religion, as the historically dominant one, will come out ahead to the extent that this view of religion as national tradition – and therefore deserving of public privilege and power even in a nominally secular society - comes to hold sway. Their confidence isn’t misplaced. There are a number of examples in the US and Europe of this sort of cooptation of secularists, who willingly or unknowingly participate in campaigns that tend not only to foster hostility and even violence toward Muslims but also, often, to expand the influence of rightwing Christianity.

There are of course plenty of real religious secularists. But there are also many religious people on the Right who want to use an ersatz secularism to promote both anti-Muslim bigotry and their own religion and its role in government. Genuine secularists should make it clear that our secularism is universal and that secular policies should be developed and applied without partiality to any religion, including when it’s defined as local tradition or heritage.

* I oppose the slaughter of animals in this or any religious ritual, as part of a general rejection of hurting and killing animals. I don’t, as should be well known to anyone who’s read what I’ve written over the years, believe that people should be given a pass or legal exemption on the basis of religion. Causing suffering and killing animals for religion should end just like causing suffering and killing animals for other human purpose.

Focused campaigns such as this, though, are often useful to opportunists looking to exploit the situation to stoke prejudice against marginalized people and spread racist tropes about how barbaric and primitive they are. Further, many who join these campaigns lack a comprehensive understanding of the scale and realities of factory farming and its links to halal slaughter. In voicing our objections, animal activists have to be cognizant of the cultural context into which our protests fall and their possible effects within that context.

Here’s a good example of how to address the issue without furthering bigotry, from treekisser and the very funny Vegans Must Be Stopped:

treekisser:

Today commences the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha, during which millions of sheep, goats, camels, and other animals have been or will be ritually slaughtered for the occasion. (http://huff.to/19LhGk0)

The concept of sacrificing another being, in this case by slitting the throat of a fully conscious animal, always boggles my mind. Setting aside my personal distain for organized religion, it just doesn’t seem logical. Taking someone else’s life is their sacrifice, not yours. If you believe a magical person in the sky requires you to spill blood to prove your devotion, spill your own.

To the millions of animals mercilessly slaughtered today, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for the pain you experienced while your life bled away. I’m sorry for the fear you endured while witnessing family members be killed in front of you. I’m sorry humanity’s superstitions have manifested themselves in a way that costs the lives of so many human and non-human animals every day. Rest in peace.

(**Because this is the internet, and the internet breeds miscommunication and misinterpretation, I should clarify that this is not an anti-Islam post. I’m equally saddened by the 45 million turkeys being slaughtered this month in preparation for Thanksgiving).

EDIT: Based on the comments left so far, apparently I need to clarify a few more things. When I refer to superstition and believing in a magic person in the sky, I’m referencing all religion, not Islam. I realize their are nuances of all religions that I don’t understand, and I don’t pretend to. My overarching point is the sadness and futility of all the lives lost as a consequence of religion/tradition. Today, the focus is on Eid Al-Adha. Next month, you’ll see my same level of outrage regarding slaughter in preparation for Thanksgiving and Christmas. For tradition, for religion, for superstition, for taste preference, for holidays, for sport, for culinary adventures, or for fashion, I will never be okay with needless killing.

To think you had the nerve to actually get people to think about the concept of the killing of animals for ritual purposes in the name of religion is most upsetting. Where does such an outrageous appeal for peace towards sentient life have a place in religion? You should be ashamed of yourself.

Also don’t tell us that you have the same problem with other cruelty caused by other religions as people will not believe that because they will simply not want to, and that should be good enough for you.

I’ll have you know that chopping the head off an animal is an incredibly humane thing to do. Just look at all the people telling you so, and you can bet your bottom dollar that all of these people saying so, have had their heads chopped off, so they know exactly how little pain is involved in the action. They’re not just speaking out of their ass. It’s very scientific.

It’s much more humane than just not doing it in the first place. I hope when somebody non-consensually kills me, they do so in such a peaceful manner.

Also, as other people have mentioned, they give the meat to the homeless, because as well all know that homeless people cannot and will not ever eat plant based foods, so that would just be ridiculous to give them that. Almost as ridiculous as purposely breeding a creature with the pre-meditated reason of killing them, when you can just use that land to grow crops.

I can only hope that you have thought about your actions here. When it comes to disrespecting beliefs that are based on religion, you should be quiet.

I hate it when people give me shit for committing cannibilism under the name of my God, Zandabar, the Underwater Peanut Butter God. I know all of these people who want respect for their actions based on religion, would completely, in turn, respect my religious beliefs and not criticize me in any way, especially when they know nothing of my religion, and my God and I can justify my actions by merely saying My god says it ok, so shut your mouth,

If any of you are upset by my actions under the name of my religion, let me just say that when I do what I do, I make sure to give blessings, show praise, talk about miracles, and a add a bunch of other flowery, theatrical, meaningless, and empty words to justify my behavior, since I can plead ignorance to independent thought.

The far Right in Spain and across Europe

A couple of recent articles discuss the state of the far Right in Europe.

The first (marred somewhat by anecdotal and unsourced claims and references) focuses on Spain, but situates developments there in the larger context. Andrés Cala describes “a rising public nostalgia for the Franco era in Spain” forming part of “a broader resurgence of extreme right-wing ideology in Europe and globally” (I’ve briefly discussed Greece and Poland):

Renewed sympathy for fascism in Spain…stirs troubling memories because the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s was an early victory for European fascism. Spain also was the last European state to cast off fascism in 1975.

Another point of concern is that nationalist, populist and fascist movements have historically found fertile ground during times of economic pain, like that felt across much of the world since the Wall Street crash of 2008. In reacting to the financial crisis – and in grappling with the public’s anger over lost jobs and lost benefits – mainstream democratic parties have seen their legitimacy questioned and their political support drained.

In Spain – and to a lesser extent in some other European countries – the immediate danger is not so much from a handful of incipient reactionary movements, but rather from the underlying official permissiveness from more mainstream conservative parties, like the Popular Party, bordering on patronage.

…[T]he severe economic recession that spread across the world after the Wall Street crash – and the EU’s austerity-oriented policies imposed in response – hit Spain especially hard with the country’s unemployment rate soaring to around 27 percent. The loss of jobs and the failure of the democratic political structure to devise an adequate response created an opening for the rightists to revive nationalistic and other traditional cultural messages that had underpinned Franco’s politics.

Though the Popular Party is generally considered conservative – not extreme right – it absorbed the pro-Franco fascist “base” after that movement lost its political representation in parliament in 1982, seven years after Franco died. That extreme right now amounts to about 10 percent of the Popular Party’s constituency, according to some studies.

The numbers of far-right members are high enough so that the Popular Party is politically unwilling to chastise fascist sympathies and thus alienate a significant portion of its support. But the party is making a dangerous bet that the pro-Franco faction will not gain effective control of the Popular Party and thus fully hoist the banner of fascism again.

Police estimate there are about 10,000 Spaniards involved in violent extreme-right groups. But the concern is not so much over these very small violent groups. These are mostly contained, experts agree. The bigger worry is that Franco’s political heirs retain significant influence within the ruling Popular Party and – amid the euro crisis – they could gain greater political clout.

…In Spain, the chief concern is that an increasingly desperate public will be attracted to the historical glow that is being created around a mythical era of successful fascism under Franco.

“It’s true that this is not Greece or France, where the extreme right has become a political power,” Félix Ortega, a sociology professor and expert in public opinion in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, told me recently. “But you never know, especially if it seems that the PP tolerates it.”

This was especially disturbing as I read it at the same time I was beginning Paul Preston’s The Spanish Holocaust:



The second article describes a plan to unite the far-Right parties ahead of the European elections:

Europe's far-right parties are set to contest next year's European elections on a common manifesto, according to French National Front leader Marine Le Pen.

At a press conference in the Strasbourg Parliament on Wednesday (23 October), Le Pen, flanked by Franz Obermayr of the Austrian anti-immigration Freedom party, told reporters that she was hopeful of persuading nationalist candidates from across the EU to run on the ticket of the European Alliance for Freedom (EAF).

Despite the comedic frustrations of holding together an assortment of racist nationalists,* even short-lived coalitions should be a cause for concern.

In this connection, I should note that white supremacist murderer and terrorist Pavlo Lapshyn has been sentenced to 40 years in prison in Britain:

Lapshyn found Mohammed Saleem, 82, going home after praying at his local mosque. The student approached him from behind and plunged a hunting knife into him three times with such force that one wound went through to his front.

Lapshyn's campaign began in April 2013, just five days after his arrival from Ukraine, where he had won a prize to gain work experience in Britain. When the PhD student was arrested in July, police found three partially assembled bombs in his Birmingham flat.

After Saleem's murder, Lapshyn started placing homemade explosives outside mosques on Fridays, the main day of Muslim prayer.

The device he planted in July, which had 100 nails wrapped around it to maximise the carnage, was aimed at worshippers at the Tipton mosque, where 300 were people were expected to attend prayers.

Prayers that particular Friday were held an hour later, thus avoiding mass casualties. The device was so powerful it left nails embedded in tree trunks, police said.

…After sentencing, Louise Gray, a lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service counter-terrorism division, said: "Pavlo Lapshyn is a dangerous man with a dangerous agenda. Just a day after his arrival in Britain from the Ukraine he was researching rightwing supremacist websites, including those linked to convicted racist murderers in Russia."

* The author mentions that

difficulties maintaining discipline and a failure to agree on common programmes have dogged previous attempts to unite the far-right.

The Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty (ITS) group was set up in 2007 but only lasted ten months before collapsing when three MEPs representing the Greater Romania party walked out in protest at inflammatory remarks made by Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the Italian dictator, about Romanian people.”

Chilling

Several years ago, I went to a lecture by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman at a European university. I really just happened upon it, but I’d read some of his books and even used them in teaching and the topic of the talk was related to what I was working on at the time, so I went.

The lecture was well attended and interesting, although as I recall I had several criticisms. I took notes, as I usually do, which I’ve saved. Last week, I was thinking of some of his arguments and how they might relate to what I’m currently writing about. Before going to look for my notes, I did a quick search online to see what he’s published on the topic since.

I was shocked to discover that I'd missed the news of an incident at a lecture by Bauman at Wroclaw University in June. Several people captured on video the intrusion of rightwing thugs chanting, according to people who posted videos on YT, “Get the fuck out!” and “Both the hammer and the sickle for the red horde!”* (I have no idea what the members of the audience are chanting back at them or what Bauman is saying when he begins to speak.)







*Referring to Bauman’s Communist past.

I loved this movie

This post was going to be the second of a two-part combination, the first being about a movie I hated. I’ve found myself procrastinating on that one, though, probably because I haven’t been much inclined this week to write about art that makes me angry, so I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the film I enjoyed first!



I was surprised at how much I liked this movie, since I’d gone into it with such high expectations. I’d wanted to see it since I first heard it was showing in New York, and seriously considered making the trip for the express purpose of catching it in the theater. I’m glad I didn’t, especially since as good as it is at 51 minutes it’s quite a short film. This is an entirely appropriate length, but I would have had a hard time justifying the time and expense to see something the length of a television show which I’d eventually be able to watch online.

While I had only the trailer and a couple of reviews to go on, I knew that it was 1) a political documentary 2) about the Cold War 3) featuring rabbits. Given this, I couldn’t conceive of any way I’d dislike it. So my high hopes looked to make some disappointment inevitable, but fortunately that wasn’t the case - I was delighted.

Rabbit is, on one level, a traditional animal fable – the director Bartek Konopka describes it as a work in the new “fairy tale-allegory-docu” genre. The music, narration, and occasional anthropomorphic elements* contribute to this reading. And it seems from what I’ve read – which isn’t that much, to be sure, since I can’t read the languages involved – that the filmmakers approach it primarily at this level: they mean to tell the human story through the device of the rabbits. And it works on this plane, using the story of the rabbits to examine the human politics of security, fear, and freedom.

Happily, though, it doesn’t seem to be possible today to make a traditional animal fable or allegory, and that’s probably especially the case in the medium of film. This is apparent in the fact that the reviewer in the Guardian felt compelled to ask the director if he’s a [ahem] “rabbit-lover.” Because the rabbits aren’t animated or particularly anthropomorphized,* and because the movie tells the story (even if all of the footage isn’t entirely authentic) of actual rabbits, you can’t easily look through them to humans – see them as a pure representation or symbol of human experience. Watching the close-ups of their faces, viewing their responses to frightening events, seeing them hiding together underground, it’s difficult to accept them as mere vehicles for the human story. On one hand, it’s difficult not to sympathize with the rabbits as rabbits and not just as anthropomorphized human stand-ins. On the other, it’s hard to avoid drawing connections between their rabbit experiences (of terror, curiosity, joy…) and those of human animals, thus helping us to understand our own experiences more fully.

Further, in documenting the treatment of rabbits by humans to illustrate the treatment of humans by other humans, the film can perhaps advance our thinking about the connection between the practices of and rationales for oppressing animals and the practices of and rationales for oppressing humans. This could lead to a better understanding of both, including of the forms of deception - and self-deception - that facilitate our perpetuation of and acquiescence in these systems.**

At yet another register, the film might have some genre-subverting qualities, calling into question both the nature documentary and the animal fable. The conventions of the nature documentary are upended in Rabbit. These documentaries are often constructed so as to erase both the documentarians’ presence and the wider human interactions with and effects on the wild animals filmed. (When humans are featured, it’s in the role of the sympathetic scientist and expert.) Putting disruptive and destructive human actions front and center, the movie reveals the nature documentary itself as in some sense a means of obfuscation and the erasure of domination.***

By upsetting some of its conventions, Rabbit could possibly challenge the ancient genre of the animal fable itself. The movie doesn’t hollow out the rabbits’ experience to deny them their independent existence. It questions humans (literally, I mean - they interview people) about their own actions toward the rabbits. It plays on double meanings that reveal shared identities, as when someone describes border guards shooting people “like rabbits.” This might possibly encourage people to think critically about the symbolic function of traditional animal fables. In some sense, they could be seen as the artistic “exploitation” of animals, used fictionally as mere human allegories and denied respect as beings independent of their usefulness to human narratives.

I have no idea how much of this was consciously intended by the filmmakers. It’s possible that it’s a subversive result that you could only get from an artist who’s sensitive to the effects of their artistic choices but isn’t intending to produce a work “about” animals or how we treat them. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter. At worst, it’s a clever, original, and insightful political film.

*The movie’s weakest moments in my view are those in which the rabbits are most anthropomorphized, as when the narrator says that each rabbit family was provided an equal burrow. In contrast, they’re sometimes discussed in species-centric terms, like when they’re described as especially “timorous” (that’s a word you don’t hear often enough); this actually makes their shared qualities with humans far more visible than the anthropomorphic bits do.

**I’m reminded of the parallels between East German propaganda about happy, contented workers and the propaganda of the contemporary animal exploitation industry. (The film’s final scene, which I won’t spoil, leads to similar linkages and questions.)

***Hey, at least I’m not talking about “the human gaze.”

Abortion rights developments in Uruguay and the EU

Recent developments in Europe and Uruguay reflect some progress in the realization of reproductive rights globally. The European Court of Human Rights has condemned Poland’s treatment of a 14-year-old who needed an abortion after she was raped, and a law was passed in Uruguay in October making abortion legal in the first trimester of pregnancy. Both of these stories mark positive developments in a country and a region that have become battlegrounds where women fight the Vatican’s denial of their most basic rights and where the Church will never retreat peacefully.

It’s important to recognize the people fighting for reproductive rights there (and here, for that matter), and to note that it does appear that the movement for reproductive rights is gaining momentum in Latin America especially. But reading the stories of girls and women in these two reports reminds you just how much suffering misogynistic cultures and laws are causing real people. I urge everyone to read them, especially the report about the Uruguayan law and its regional context.

Gay rights in Poland and the RCC

I talked in a recent post about the efforts of the Catholic Church to deny reproductive rights in Poland. I've learned of another WikiLeaks US cable from 2009, this one concluding that "Polish society and the Polish Government have a long way to go toward ending discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation" and citing the RCC as a major "source of anti-gay views":

Gays and lesbians face discrimination in the educational system, in the workplace, when renting or buying property, and in access to health services. Some have been subject to or threatened with physical violence on the basis of their sexual orientation....

---

The Catholic Church plays a significant role in the formation and propagation of anti-gay attitudes in Polish society, especially in rural areas. In a society that is 94 percent Catholic, the Church is widely recognized as a political and moral force. While the Polish Episcopate has condemned violence and discrimination against gays and lesbians, this message is often ignored - and sometimes contradicted - by parish priests in small towns and villages, some of whom present homosexuality as a deviant condition. Moreover, the Church continues to label homosexual acts as sins and calls on homosexuals to practice abstinence. Most Polish opponents of gay rights cite "Catholic values" and "natural law" to support their views. In November 2008, for example, users of the internet forum "Fronda" launched a boycott campaign against IKEA in response to its gay-friendly advertising. The campaign was named "I'm a Catholic and I don't shop in IKEA."

I'm troubled that the story of these cables and the dismal situation of sexual and reproductive rights in Poland (this article places it within a broader context of pro-natalist policies in the region that have disproportionately harmed women) has appeared of late almost exclusively on rightwing Catholic blogs and sites - I found the most recent cable through a link to something called LifeSiteNews, which I won't link to. It does seem to be under discussion to some extent elsewhere. A conference earlier this week was apparently organized to foster acceptance of the role of the Church in Polish politics: "'The goal of this conference is a mutual discussion about what is missing in our current political system and what values politics should serve,' conference organizer Wladyslaw Zuziak was quoted as saying by the Catholic News Agency." At the event, though, German president Christian Wulff warned against people with "convictions that divide people into 'us' and 'them' based on culture, religion or nationality" coming to power and that "fanatical Christianity can bring suffering."

Abortion in Poland, the US, Venezuela

Sometimes it’s good that I don’t read all of my feeds in real time, only getting to some posts after the urgency of the situation they describe has passed. That was the case with a post by HRW a few days ago – “Poland: Reject Blanket Ban on Abortion.” I was relieved to find that the law had failed. On the other hand, the state of reproductive rights in Poland is dismal. Abortions are only legal under three circumstances: the pregnancy poses a threat to the health or life of the woman or results from rape, or the fetus is severely deformed or sick. And even under these circumstances, it seems they’re nearly impossible to obtain. Legal abortions numbered a mere 583 (in a population of 11 million women of childbearing age) in 2010. It’s estimated that well more than 100,000 abortions actually occurred, not counting those obtained in foreign countries; these were illegal and expensive (a veritable racket), beyond the reach of many poor women.

It’s difficult to estimate the suffering and death this has caused, and it’s especially perverse given that abortion was legal under Communism. The denial of human rights to women in Poland does not simply reflect cultural attitudes. It results from the long-term targeted interference of the Catholic Church in the country’s politics. As Wikileaks documents have revealed, the Vatican has looked upon Poland as a place to realize their authoritarian, misogynistic fantasies in the 21st century and a fortress against secular Europe. I hope this law’s failure signals that the Vatican is losing its grip on Poland and that the country will make progress on reproductive rights.

Unfortunately, many US states are determined to outdo them. The Guttmacher Institute reports that

In the first six months of 2011, states enacted 162 new provisions related to reproductive health and rights. Fully 49% of these new laws seek to restrict access to abortion services, a sharp increase from 2010, when 26% of new laws restricted abortion. The 80 abortion restrictions enacted this year are more than double the previous record of 34 abortion restrictions enacted in 2005—and more than triple the 23 enacted in 2010. All of these new provisions were enacted in just 19 states.

Venezuela provides an example of how revolutionary social change, even that which challenges the Church and leads to important gains for women in some respects, can leave behind women’s most basic human rights. I was unpleasantly surprised to read in Revolutionary Doctors Brouwer’s description of a local health committee meeting:

…There was a short discussion about birth control, with everyone lauding the free contraception available in various forms at each walk-in clinic and asking for even more information to be provided by both doctors and health committee volunteers. No one, however, brought up the subject of abortion, which generally is not accepted by most lower-class Venezuelan women. For this reason, I was told, the Cuban doctors, who are used to providing abortion on demand in their own country, do not proselytize about the subject to their Venezuelan patients. (KL 1489-1493).

It should be noted that this was several years ago, but it’s probable that Brouwer is underestimating the strength of desire for reproductive rights in the country even then. Women continue to be sacrificed by politicians and governments who claim to be fighting for justice. It should be discussed in this context, as the criminalization of abortion is not just a denial of human rights but a serious public health concern. Estrella Gutiérrez reports that unsafe abortions are the second leading cause of maternal mortality in the region. The Catholic hierarchy hates Chávez anyway and would like nothing better than to get rid of him (as they helped do with Aristide). I don’t care if many politicians, including Chávez, see themselves and their movements as in part inspired by Christianity. No church should have any role in government policy.

The Day for the Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean is the 28th of this month, and I plan to post more at that time. There is movement, and I’m optimistic for the expansion of reproductive rights globally, including in the three countries just discussed. But a major element in effecting that expansion has to be getting religious, and especially Vatican, influence out of policy.

A Film Unfinished

From the description:

The Holocaust confronted humanity not only with inconceivable horrors, but also for the first time, with their systematic documentation. More than anything else, it is the photographic documentation of these horrors that has changed forever the way in which the past is archived. Atrocities committed by the Nazis were photographed more extensively than any evils, before or after. Yet since the war, these images, created by the perpetrators have been subjected to mistreatments: in the best of cases they were crudely used as illustrations of the many stories; in the worst, they were presented as straightforward historical truth.

At one point in the documentary, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto watches a staged scene from the propaganda film in which a woman in an elegant apartment moves a vase of flowers from a table to a sideboard. "What on earth?" she asks. "Where did one ever see a flower? We would have eaten the flower."