Hungarian values

These days, states like to define their “values” — either, as in Europe or Australia, to limit immigration, or, as in Asia, to evade criticism of human rights violations. The “values” expressed in European or Australian citizenship tests are largely very similar: freedom of expression, respect for democratic institutions, equality of the sexes and of sexual minorities, non-coercive childrearing, reasoning instead of violence, and so on. Not bad, though who would have thought that the Christian Democratic Party in the conservative German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg would initiate citizenship tests that include questions like “In this country, it is accepted that people who are openly homosexual hold public office. Do you agree with this?”  The correct answer is “yes.” Considering Baden-Wuerttemberg’s sociodemographics, it is likely that a large proportion of current citizens would, however, answer “no,” and the question is simply an imagined way of ferreting out supposedly homophobic Muslims. That is perhaps part of the reason why conservative parties embraced these values, rather than, say, faith in God or the importance of family — an alternative set of “European values” espoused by the Vatican and its Eastern European allies, who are not worried about deeply religious immigrants. (Not just because there are few of those, but also because Eastern European politicians are less concerned about the niceties of keeping them out.)

In our recent book Maxikulti, Joana Breidenbach and talk about two Brussels politicians adamant about defending European values. Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister and author of a number of liberal “citizens’ manifestos” that defend openness, tolerance and individualism in the face of the xenophobic moral panic that has followed the rise of home-grown Islamist terrorism. For Maciej Giertych, a member of the European Parliament representing the League of Polish Families (whose presidential candidate he also was), European values are morality, faith in God and respect for parental authority.

Another Eastern European politician who publicly shares these values is Zoltan Balog, chairman of the Human Rights Committee (!) of the Hungarian Parliament and “spiritual adviser” to the opposition leader, Viktor Orban, who is expected to win the 2010 election. In a recent interview, he explained that “it is not right to accept uncritically everything that people want to sell us under the pretext of human rights.” For example, it is not right that “the mayor of Berlin can only win with a large majority by getting out in front of people and declaring that he is homosexual,” or that soccer players are not allowed to pray on the field because that is an imposition of their religion on others. Balog went on to explain that although the state must be distinguished from religion, it “cannot be separated… from it” because “although they are not the same, they belong together.”

It is obvious that Giertych’s or Balog’s “European values” are close to the “American values” of the U.S. religious right or to the “Asian values” of Mahathir Mohamad, Lee Kuan Yew or the Chinese Communist Party than to the “European values” of the citizenship tests.  I wonder why this does not receive more public scrutiny — especially considering that Balog’s job is supposedly to ensure that those consensual European values of tolerance and respect for individual rights prevail in Hungary. In this capacity, he is presumably in constant touch with his Brussels counterparts. Yet these fundamental disagreements on the nature and limits of rights and tolerance within the EU’s mainstream institutions remain quite hidden.

The global food crisis II

Following on from Nursel’s recent post, I’d like to draw readers to a recent New York Times article about the “global food crisis”. According to the article, rising commodities prices, especially fuel and food prices, are producing unprecedented stress and anger across the globe, resulting in unrest and even riots. The article includes disturbing descriptions of people in Haiti eating concoctions made in part from mud in order to still their hunger pains. It is worth being reminded that what is experienced as a bit of additional pain at the checkout for the world’s wealthy can be an issue of survival for the world’s poor.

The article states:

“It’s the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, the economist and special adviser to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. “It’s a big deal and it’s obviously threatening a lot of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes, and I think there’s more political fallout to come.”

Significantly, the article also acknowledges the interconnectedness of the global economy in that rising prices have “pitted the globe’s poorer south against the relatively wealthy north, adding to demands for reform of rich nations’ farm and environmental policies”. The production of biofuels putting upward pressure in prices is mentioned, though the competition between animals and humans for grains is not.

Given the likely future impact of rising fuel prices, climate change, the expansion of economies such as China and India on food production and prices, the fact that the situation appears already to be so bad is worrying indeed.

See also the NYT’s index of articles on food prices.

Beeman on Anthropologists in Iraq

Brown University anthropologist, William O. Beeman, recently published Lethal Field Work: Anthropologists Cry Foul Over Colleagues’ Aid to Iraq Occupation in Le Monde diplomatique (the link is to an English version on Alternet). Beeman is probably one of the anthropologists who most successfully publishes in the popular press, drawing on his fieldwork in the Middle East to comment especially on US foreign policy in regular columns. In this article, he covers the basic outline (very basic) of the recent controversy over the Human Terrain Systems (HTS) in the US military.

One of the principal proponents of cooperation is Montgomery McFate, a Yale PhD anthropologist and senior fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace. In a seminar on 10 May 2007, McFate presented a plan that was influential in establishing the HTS project. She pointed out that the U.S. military spends almost nothing on social science research that would be crucial to the success of operations, and recommended an approach to closing the cultural knowledge gap.

The article really does not add much to the anthropological discussion of anthropology’s potential role in Iraq, certainly nothing beyond what’s already been covered on this site and on others, like Savage Minds. In fact, the article is so general that the only reason I provide a link to it is to note that this mostly internal discussion in our field is only leaking out in very limited forms. I’m left perplexed by the article, frankly. Either Beeman does not know about, or chooses not to write with any recognition of much more extensive debate in our field, including some much stronger opinions than those he relays: basically, that there is a conflict, with some anthropologists doing HTS-related work, even when not experts in the regions involved, and other anthropologists criticizing them and pushing for a resolution to prohibit intelligence gathering for counter-insurgency by anthropologists.

I usually like Beeman’s columns, but this one left me flat. If this is how discussions within our field are being relayed to those outside it, then the effect of any critiques of these programs is liable to be negligible. The debate sounds polarized and, oddly, comes out muffled, balanced between those who want to use anthropology to reduce casualties and those who worry that anthropology will be used as a weapon. Do we use anthropology for good or for evil? Is that really all this debate is about, because if that’s it, then it’s a pretty easy debate to resolve: I’m for good and against evil. But I think that if the debate is reduced to this flat of a discussion, the general public isn’t going to really understand why its still going on. ‘What are you guys carrying on about? Just use anthropology to decrease casualties and don’t assassinate people. What’s your problem?’

In this case, I think a simple moral framing actually robs the public account of much that is engaging in this debate. The methodological, pragmatic, structural, and other difficulties of doing serious ethnography, and of using anthropological knowledge in these settings, the likelihood of becoming ethically compromised, of having data compromised by its use, and the epistemological challenges of anthropology in war are, in my opinion, also amenable to popular accounts. And these all make the simple, do-we-use-anthropology-as-a-weapon-or-to-save-lives framing, actually more interesting because it becomes clear the question is not so simple.

Group removed from hostel for being Aboriginal

A day after posting about ‘white flight’ in Australian schools, I read that a group of Aborigines from Yuendumu were asked to leave an Alice Springs hostel because they were “scaring” the other guests, most of whom appear to be foreign backpackers. Most of the criticism has been directed at the hostel management for asking the group to leave, and rightly so. However, if it is indeed true that this group of people was removed after complaints from other guests, it says something about the hypocrisy of international tourism. Most of the backpacker staying a the hostel would almost certainly have come to Alice Springs in order to, at least in part, have some sort of experience of ‘traditional Aboriginal culture’. A group of actual Aboriginal people staying at the same hostel, though, is enough to send people running to the reception to make a complaint.

‘Pure racism’: Aborigines chucked out

March 11, 2008 - 8:22AM

I felt like I wanted to cry because it made me feel like I wasn’t an Australian, like I wasn’t wanted there.

The Royal Life Saving Society Australia has accused an Alice Springs backpackers’ hostel of racism after it kicked out a group of indigenous guests.

The Aborigines from a remote community taking lifesaving classes in the central Australian town were allegedly asked to leave the Haven Hostel after checking in because of complaints by other guests, ABC Television reported last night.

The hostel’s management later said the mostly young leaders’ program members from Yuendumu were not allowed to stay because the hostel catered specifically for international backpacking tourists.

But society chief executive Rob Bradley said the hostel was guilty of “pure racism”.

“It was a very feeble excuse about a complaint having been made but looking into that, there was no compliant, there was no reason, it was just pure racism,” Mr Bradley told ABC Television.

“(There’s) total shock and dismay that something like this can happen in Australia today.

“It was just an absolute disgrace.”

The group of mostly women were taking the classes in preparation for the opening of a swimming pool in Yuendumu, located about 300km north-west of Alice Springs.

“They said that it was because of the colour of our skin and they didn’t like us,” group member Bethany Langdon said of the hostel management.

Fellow member Sharelle Young said: “They should apologise to us face-to-face and just say sorry.”

Ms Langdon and other members of her remote community are reportedly considering legal action against the Alice Springs hostel’s management following their weekend ejection.

“When we booked in, the manager, she gave us the keys to the rooms and we went and put our stuff in the rooms.

“We all went outside and the manager came out and told me that we weren’t suitable to stay there,” Ms Langdon told ABC Radio today.

“They said (it was) because we were Aboriginal. Other customers were making complaints that they were scared of us.

“I felt like I wanted to cry because it made me feel like I wasn’t an Australian, like I wasn’t wanted there.”

Mr Bradley said the incident soured the occasion for the Yuendumu community.

“We have worked over a long period of time to build the partnerships, to build the trust with 11 indigenous communities around the NT,” he told ABC Radio.

“This is a big stumbling block. I hope it doesn’t put people off.”

The territory’s anti-discrimination commissioner, Tony Fitzgerald, said the women could have a strong case.

“If the story is true, it’s disgraceful but it is not the only story exactly like this that we have heard anecdotally at the commission,” he said.

“The challenge for us is to convince people who do suffer this sort of unfair treatment to make a complaint so that we can investigate it and follow it through.”

The Haven Hostel released a statement saying: “Haven Hostel is a backpackers’ hostel catering for international backpacking tourists, which the group was not.

“So (alternative) accommodation was sought and arranged with their consultation, on their behalf. We also offered to pay for that night’s accommodation.”

The group found another place to stay in Alice Springs to complete the training, the report said.

AAP

“Medical Adoptions”

The school year started today at Macquarie and I’m trying to juggle obsessively revising the reading list for the Honours Seminar I’m running this semester and obsessively revising the budget of my ARC application, so I really do have better things to do than write little ditties for this blog, because Obsessive Revising really ranks very high on my list of Important Things To Do. But I simply can’t resist with this one.

Let me back up to tell you that a couple of weeks ago, my brother-in-law wrote me from Toronto to tell me that he’d met an anthropology graduate student who was doing his research on organ trafficking.

Tourism, culture, economies, and refugee status

Via the BBC, this story about Burmese refugee Kayan women who are being denied the right to emigrate to New Zealand by Thai authorities who allegedly want to keep them in Thailand because the “long necked” Kayan women are a popular draw for tourists.  The UNHCR representative calls it “a human zoo” and urges a tourist boycott.

Lakota Indian activists secede from the US

Numerous Native American activists, including former American Indian Movement leader, Russell Means, presented a kind of declaration of independence for the Lakota Sioux on 19 December, 2007, to the United States State Department. Here’s the account of developments from Lakota Freedom, the website which seems to be an official newsource from the delegation:

Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday’s withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie Wyoming.

“This is an historic day for our Lakota people,” declared Russell Means, Itacan of Lakota. “United States colonial rule is at its end!”

“Today is a historic day and our forefathers speak through us. Our Forefathers made the treaties in good faith with the sacred Canupa and with the knowledge of the Great Spirit,” shared Garry Rowland from Wounded Knee. “They never honored the treaties, that’s the reason we are here today.”

The four member Lakota delegation traveled to Washington D.C. culminating years of internal discussion among treaty representatives of the various Lakota communities. Delegation members included well known activist and actor Russell Means, Women of All Red Nations (WARN) founder Phyllis Young, Oglala Lakota Strong Heart Society leader Duane Martin Sr., and Garry Rowland, Leader Chief Big Foot Riders. Means, Rowland, Martin Sr. were all members of the 1973 Wounded Knee takeover.

Biofuels and Indigenous Peoples

Thailand’s The Nation reports on the impact of biofuels on the world’s indigenous peoples.   Of particular concern is the impact of deforestation and monocropping that the demand for biofuels is producing. Here’s an excerpt:

Indonesian activist Abdon Nababan of the AMAN group said the impact of growing oil palm plantations had seriously hit indigenous people in his country - socially, culturally and ecologically.

“Often, human rights violations occur,” he said.

“The climate pact in Bali must take the rights of indigenous people into consideration more seriously than today. We cannot solve one problem by creating another problem,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chairman of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

GFC’s Lovera said biofuel itself was good if implemented properly. But to promote biofuel for export or for emissions trading would cause huge consequences for indigenous communities and the ecology, he said.

“It will be okay if you promote biofuel in the right place, in communities to replace the use of fossil fuel, but not for export and without the effects on food security in the community, as fuel crops are also food crops. All these conditions could not be met in reality,” he said.

“Carbon trading could be done among real renewable energy industries like wind, tidal and solar, not in the ‘grey’ area like biofuel,” he said.

It’s an important point, I think, that biofuels are not necessarily bad, it’s just the way they’re being used.  I can imagine that on a particular scale they would be very useful, not only to reduce greenhouse emissions but to free certain communities from dependence on the oil economy.  I also think that production of biofuels from waste products of other industries is probably legitimate.  It is the trend towards biofuel crops that is pushing up the price of the world’s staple food products and leading to even greater pressure on forests than was previously the case.

Read the full article.

Jovan Maud

Online campaign against torture

Amnesty International have begun an online campaign called Unsubscribe Me against the use of “stress positions” and other methods outlined in CIA handbooks as legitimate methods of interrogation that don’t constitute torture.  The video AI has produced, which involves subjecting a real actor to stress positions over a period of six hours, would suggest otherwise.

Warning: this video will hopefully disturb some viewers.

Guantanamo Manual Leaked Online

Wired is carrying the news that Wikileak.org, a website that encourages corporate and government whistle-blowers to post documents online anonymously, has last week published the U.S. government manual for Guantanamo detainees, the Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures. It’s not a classified document, but unlike the publication of the military’s Counterinsurgency Manual by the University of Chicago Press, this one was not intended for public consumption.

Here is the link to the PDF. However, I cannot get the wikileaks website to work to see the document myself. Overwhelmed by traffic or blocked by nefarious secret forces? If you’re really keen to see it, you can download it as a bit torrent (8.4 MB). (Bit torrents usually get bad press for facilitating copyright infringement but this is reminder of something legal that they’re good for.)

L.L. Wynn