By Chris Eberhardt, December 29th, 2010
Chris Eberhardt was an India China Institute Fellow at the New School in 2008. He is now conducting his dissertation research in China
A fellow of the India China Institute (ICI) has been arrested. He was privately eating dinner with others in Beijing, celebrating that Liu Xiaobo had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. After hearing that the ICI Fellow had been arrested, I decided to read an article by Liu Xiaobo that was published in 2006 in the journal Social Research titled “Reform in China: The Role of Civil Society.”
The work reminded me of Neither Gods Nor Emperors by sociologist Craig Calhoun, who analyses the student protests of 1989 that culminated in demonstrations on Tiananmen Square and the military response. What I see in both works is an effort by the Chinese people to challenge China to be better at what it claims to be, linking back to movements that emerged when the dynasty system collapsed in the early 1900’s.
While Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, China was celebrating the founding of the People’s Republic. During the celebrations I went multiple times to Tiananmen Square. One night I saw a couple posing in front of flashing lights (pictured), behind which was Tiananmen Gate and Chairman Mao’s picture. I imagine that this man was probably wearing similar clothing when Mao was still alive. Every time I see a man wearing the blue hat and suit, it gives me pause. In Beijing, I am most likely to see people dressed like this fresh off the train or lined up by the thousands at 6am (2hrs early) on Tiananmen Square to view Mao’s remains.
I always wonder to myself how these people who line up for hours to view Mao, sleepy-eyed and just off a bus, understand a China where students pay almost as much or more than my rent to buy name brand clothing. It is these people who come from the heartland of China who are still thought of as the backbone of the country, still composing the majority of the population.
Perhaps it is not as well known, but . . .
Read more: Intellectuals and the Common People in China
By Vince Carducci, December 29th, 2010 
Vince Carducci is a doctorial candidate in sociology at the New School. In his post, he highlights an important development in trade policies–one that was ignored by the mainstream Western press.
Brazil is fast setting the pace for both developed and developing nations by declaring itself the world’s first “Fair Trade” nation, an announcement that comes on the heels of the election of its first woman president. Scholars and advocates have taken note. But while Dilma Rousseff’s election has been reported, the Fair Trade story has gone unnoticed in the mainstream Western media.
On November 17, President Luis Ignacio “Lula” da Silva, whose tenure ends at the end of this year, signed a decree formally establishing a National System of Fair Trade. At the same time, he initiated a national business incubator network to encourage grassroots economic development. The actions continue the evolution begun in 2004 with the establishment within the Ministry of Work and Employment of the National Secretary of Solidarity Economics to liaise with federal government bureaus, local municipalities, and civil society organizations in developing policies and programs that foster economic and political equity and social inclusion in Brazil.
What is “Fair Trade?”
To better understand this event, one must distinguish between the concepts of Fair Trade and solidarity economics. Fair Trade is more commonly known to American consumers and entails a specific set of exchange practices. These include: pricing floors, living wages, long-term financing guarantees and purchasing agreements, profit sharing, community reinvestment, and the like, the costs of which account for the extra two bits or so one pays at the local coffeehouse for an “ethically sourced” cup of cappuccino.
Fair Trade is sometimes called alternative trade because it seeks to circumvent prevailing market transactions, especially those espoused under neo-liberalism and the process of globalization. For reformers like Joseph Stiglitz, Fair Trade is a viable model for international development in that it advances “trade not aid” as the solution to growing global inequality. Yet Fair Trade has also been criticized as a new form of dependency, tying the livelihoods of Third World producers . . .
Read more: Brazil Leads the Pack on “Fair Trade” Policies
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 28th, 2010
Deliberately Considered is an experiment. My hypothesis is that the web  offers a relatively untapped possibility for serious deliberation about difficult issues, not just enclaves for the like minded and platforms to denounce political adversaries. New serious perspectives outside the frames of conventional reporting and analysis can develop.
We already have interesting confirmation of the hypothesis in the many posts and discussions in our first months of operation. A discussion that developed in response to my post on the Afghan women’s soccer team, I think was particularly illuminating.
I started with an examination of an instance of the politics of small things. This opened a discussion of the big issues on the question of war and peace, and to my mind the discussion came to a strong insightful ending with a reply that used the perspective of everyday life to address the big issues under discussion.
There were notes on all sides of the issue, from Michael who critically but sympathetically reflected on the American position, to Alias who denounced the NATO effort in no uncertain terms, and opinions in between, including mine. But Mariam Yasin, offered another perspective completely. That of a person against all wars and as someone whose position in the conflict provides a unique perspective:
“There are too many stories of family and my family’s acquaintances killed by Americans, Soviets, and Taliban. This is not to mention the dispersal of Afghans; Afghans just want to be left alone. My family’s house was not shelled by Taliban, but by the Americans and coalition forces. Fortunately no one was hurt that time.”
She made telling observations in her two replies:
“Though I would have to agree that women have regained new means of re-entering social and political life in Afghanistan, I believe there is too much ignored by the strong focus on women and women’s rights…
The struggles faced by Afghan men are ignored and effaced because, as we know, Afghan men are terrorists. However, their mere “inclusion” in society and presence in public life is also a matter of life and death. Those without beards, for instance, risk imprisonment or even immediate execution. Men and . . .
Read more: Afghanistan War Revisited
By Irit Dekel, December 26th, 2010 
Irit Dekel is a graduate from the New School currently on a postdoctoral fellowship at Humboldt University of Berlin.
Visiting the exhibition Hitler and the Germans: National Community and Crime at the German Historical Museum, I found very little new about Hitler and even less about “the Germans.”
I did find interesting the display and discussion of the national community as connected to perpetration. However, the presentation of crime, or perpetration, lacked individuals and their daily choices and was instead filled with examples of the masses looking for security and stability. The exhibition was celebrated in the local German press as revolutionary simply for showing so much of Hitler, and for connecting his rule to the German people.
It is not a small thing, this act of naming, and the exhibition does that, but then compiles exhibits: posters, photos, Hitler’s aquarelles, busts and books and Nazi advertising in materials that were mostly used for propaganda.
There was a fear expressed in the press around the opening of the exhibition that right wing extremists and Neo- Nazis would come and admire it, now in the open. Those worries were dismissed as the curators assured the prospective visitors that Hitler is not presented spectacularly, and so those loathed groups, which also “probably do not go to museums,” would not come.
Here is the first time where presumption about class, education, racism and origins from the former east could be easily detected but not explicitly discussed.
The mix of thinking about what is presented in the exhibition together with how it will be consumed was at the center of the exhibition’s review in the German press (see, in German, a review in the Spiegel). The curators Prof. Dr. Hans-Ulrich Thamer, Dr. Simone Erpel, Klaus-Jürgen Sembach made sure that whenever a photo of Hitler is shown with his gaze directed at the camera, the affect of dimming light and photos of Nazi crimes will flicker in the background, so that the visitor is always reminded of the crimes together with whatever else they might feel or think of 1933-1945.
An interview for the center-left weekly Die Zeit focused on the historical . . .
Read more: Hitler and the Germans: National Community and Crime
By Iddo Tavory, December 19th, 2010
Today we post the controversial Rabbinical open letter in Israel prohibiting as a matter of religious obligation the renting or selling of property to non-Jews, translated and with reflections on its meaning by Iddo Tavory. It has caused great controversy in Israel and beyond (link and link), including at DC as it challenges the meaning of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state. -Jeff
The Translation:
In response to the query of many, we respond that is forbidden, by Torah-law, to sell a house or a field in the land of Israel to a non-Jew. As Maimonedes wrote: “as it is written (Deuteronomy 7:2) ‘thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them’ which means you shall give them no title to land. For if you do not give them title, their staying shall be temporary.” (laws: 77; 10, 4). And on that topic, the Torah warned in numerous places, that it causes evil and make the many sin in intermarriage, as it is said “For they will turn your sons away from following Me” (Deuteronomy 7:4), which is blasphemy (Maimonedes, 12:6). And it also causes the many to otherwise transgress, as the Torah has warned: “They shall not live in your land, because they will make you sin against Me” (Exodus 23: 33). And the sin of he who sells, and he who profits from it, is upon the heads of those who sell, God shall have mercy.
And evil upon evil, that he who sells or lets them rent an apartment in an area in which Jews are living, causes great damage to his neighbors, and for them it is said “and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell.” (Numbers 33: 55). For their way of life is different from that of Jews, and some of them harass us and make our life hard, to the point of danger to our very lives, as has become well known on several occasions. And even outside of Israel they have forbidden to sell them in Jewish neighborhoods for this very reason, and all the more so in the land of Israel, as it is elucidated in the [Jewish book of law] Shulhan . . .
Read more: The Israeli Rabbis’ Letter: a Translation
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 16th, 2010
As has been discussed in DC already, the notion of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state presents serious problems. (Roadblocks to Peace and Two-Sided Response) While recognition of the Jewish State has been used as a condition for peace talks, the enactment of the Jewish character of the state (something that implies much more than Israel as a Jewish homeland) has challenged the democratic rights of the twenty per cent of Israel’s population that is of Palestinian origin.
 A religious edict forbidding Jews from renting or selling property to Arabs and other non-Jews is a most recent example that has caused great controversy. My Israeli friend and DC contributor, Nachman Ben Yehuda, was quoted about the Rabbis edict in The Globe and Mail of Toronto: “Their ultimate goal is a theocratic state….In the meantime, they want to enforce division between the ultra-Orthodox and everyone else.”
But things look even more critical from the Palestinian point of view which became apparent to me when I came across an email note from Amal Eqeiq, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship who is studying in Seattle. We worked together planning a research project on the politics of small things in Israel-Palestine. In her note, she makes clear that the democratic legitimacy of Israel is at stake. I present her message today, unedited, hoping it provokes serious deliberations.
So, 50 Rabbis signed up a religious call- Psak Halacha – asking Jews to NOT rent for Arabs. Yes, I understand that they don’t represent everybody, and that they are taking advantage of religion for political gains, and that there are different opinions, and that it is not legally binding, and that some lefties will protest in the name of human rights and for keeping face, and, and, and…”Amal, don’t take it personally,” BUT, WHAT THE FUCK?
Here is my observation about the (always guilty) Israeli media.
Haaretz says the letter is addressed for non-Jews (link) …they don’t say Arabs only…and I ask “really Haaretz?! 3anjad!! Thank you for watering down apartheid rhetoric. As a non-Jew, I feel much better now.
And of course, there is Yediot Ahronot with . . .
Read more: Israel: Jewish and Democratic?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 14th, 2010
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo on this year’s  International Human Rights Day, December 10,2010, reminded me of a Human Rights Day past, on December 10 1984, when the Polish dissident, Adam Michnik, received his honorary doctorate from the New School for Social Research in a clandestine ceremony in a private apartment in Warsaw. Such ceremonies not only honor achievements of the past, they also have possible practical promising consequences. Something I observed as an eyewitness then; something that may be in China’s future now.
As China revealed its repressive nature in its response to the prize, the dignity and critical insight of the dissident was revealed in Liu’s own words, as Liv Ullmann read his “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement to the Court.”
The same pattern occurred in awarding Michnik’s doctorate, though in his case it was a two part story.
Part One: Michnik was scheduled to receive his degree in a university ceremony in New York on April 25, 1984, commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the University in Exile (what would become the New School’s social science graduate school in which I am a professor) by honoring human rights activists from around the world. Because Michnik was imprisoned as part of a martial law crackdown on independent thinkers and political and labor activists, Czeslaw Milosz accepted the honorary degree on his behalf and read from his “Letter for General Kiszczak”, in which Michnik declined an offer of exile as the condition for release from prison.
The Polish Nobel Laureate for Literature read the democratic activist’s passionate denunciation of his interior minister jailer and Michnik’s justification of his commitment to human rights: “the value of our struggle lies not in its chances for victory but rather in the values of its cause.” He explained in the letter how his refusal of a comfortable exile was an affirmation of these values, keeping them alive in Poland.
Part Two of the story actually occurred on International Human Rights Day of 1984. It suggested and led to much more.
I was in Warsaw for the unofficial ceremony presenting Adam Michnik . . .
Read more: Human Rights Day
By Elzbieta Matynia, December 3rd, 2010 
The ambivalence around the WikiLeaks mission and especially its recent disclosures are understandable (see Jeff’s previous post). On the one hand, it does make us feel that we no longer have to live in a fog called the diplomatic game, that we need no longer be treated like children who for their own protection are excluded from family secrets, and that we the citizens of the world deserve not to be patronized and paternalized by our own governments, and need not concede so much discretionary power to our government officials.
On the other hand, as someone who is living at this moment in post-apartheid South Africa, and works in the archives (of which only a small part is available to the broader public), and who has studied the processes that led to the dismantling of Soviet-style autocracy in Central and Eastern Europe, an apparently widespread schadenfreude about exposing everything to everybody brings shivers. Two very different, but in both cases repressive, regimes in Poland and in South Africa, would not have ended peacefully as they did, if not for lengthy and secret conversations that laid the groundwork for the official public negotiations. Imagine that the secret meetings between Church officials, leaders of the outlawed Solidarity movement, and General Jaruzelski’s government in Poland had been exposed in 1987…….Or that the “talks about talks”, and the meetings between exiled leaders of the ANC and certain members of the ruling nationalist party, had been exposed by WikiLeaks.
Nelson Mandela in 1937
In each case, the negotiations that led to fundamental systemic change and the launching of democratic rule were preceded by an overture, made of many secret meetings. The South African overture began roughly with a meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, where most of the ANC leaders lived, and was followed by twelve clandestine gatherings in England, gradually building a fragile trust between the key enlightened Afrikaner intellectuals and ANC leaders. . . .
Read more: Privacy and Progress
By Martin Plot, December 2nd, 2010 
It’s mystifying to read The New York Times’ coverage of my other polity, Argentina, where the editorial positions seem to be the exact opposite to those of their coverage in the US. On the one hand, in American politics, the attacks on Obama and the Democrats as “totalitarian,” for having attempted and achieved a modest reform of the healthcare system are presented as borderline madness by the Times. But on the other, the progressive, democratic, and successful reformist governments of Nestor Kirchner—from 2003 to 2007—and Cristina Fernandez—since 2007—are accused of “authoritarianism.”
Moreover, the sources quoted when making such accusation are often mediocre conservative political commentators and journalists that would hardly be taken seriously in the US—at least, I think, in The New York Times. In no way less problematic, but perhaps more understandable, due to their sharing social circles with members of financial global institutions, the journalists’ assertions often come straight from “risk consultants” in financial firms. It is never made clear, however, that these are political adversaries of the democratically elected administration and significantly less appreciative of the working of democratic politics, to say the least, than the Argentine government.
While this strange phenomenon at first may seem difficult to understand without resorting to conspiracy theory, a closer examination of Argentine and American politics explains the apparent reporting anomaly. In Argentina the working of democratic politics involved during the period serious conflicts about major issues—such as repealing amnesty laws giving impunity to the 1976-83 human right violations, appointing the most prestigious and independent Supreme Court in the country’s history, astonishingly reducing the national foreign debt in tough negotiations with international financial groups and the IMF, building a strong and democratic Union of South American Nations, and passing transformational laws de-monopolizing media markets, universalizing marriage (gay marriage,) extending social security benefits to millions of uncovered senior citizens, streamlining the path toward citizenship for hundred of thousands of Latin American immigrants, and creating a universal subsidy for children. In contrast, in the United States, we have come . . .
Read more: The New York Times in the Americas
By Elzbieta Matynia, November 8th, 2010 
 Remember the South African miracle? That peacefully negotiated –for the most part — the end of the apartheid system, and the hope it conveyed to people not only in African predatory states, but in so many other parts of the world as well? Yes, dictatorship, even of the most vicious kind, could be dismantled peacefully, people could gain both rights and dignity, and plan a better future for their kids. This began almost 20 years ago.
Remember TV’s incredible bird’s-eye views of people standing in miles-long lines to vote? Remember Mandela with his awe-inspiring gravitas undiminished by TV lights, bringing a new humanity to our living rooms? Remember our admiration for the South Africans hammering out what was clearly the most progressive constitution in the world?
I am not going to tell you that this is all gone, because it is not. But even if it seems to have gotten reinvigorated, democracy here, like any new democracy, whether in Eastern Europe, Latin America, or anywhere else, is still fragile, and today it faces a major test.
Ironically there is a well-advanced effort by the ANC government to introduce a new piece of legislation that would dramatically restrict media freedom , and that — in an uncanny echo of Orwellian doublespeak — has been given the name Protection of Information Bill. The bill endows the ruling party with the power to decide what information is “unfit” for consumption by the larger public. This launch of censorship, which for many reeks of the apartheid era, is effectively designed to stop any state information that could be classified as harmful to the “national interest,” which, as both media and public know, includes potentially embarrassing information about both past and present. If one reads the proposed bill it becomes clear that there is hardly anything in South Africa that could not be defined in terms of national interest. Moreover it is up to politicians to decide what should be defined as a national secret. This legislative initiative is coupled with a newly proposed Media Appeals Tribunal “to strengthen media freedom and accountability,” which recommends draconian penalties: e.g., from 3 to 25 years for . . .
Read more: In Johannesburg: The Struggle for Democracy all Over Again
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