A Lesson in Khmer

by Kevin Hattie

There is undoubtedly something different about people here (in Laos), different being the only word I can think of even if it fails to grasp the true meaning of what I'm trying to say. It is no secret that different societies contain their own unique norms and values, with some similarities to be found thanks to geography, historical colonialism and modern globalisation. There is a hint of French-ness about Vientiane and the reason for this is no secret, but what will happen to cultures like this one when globalisation and the notorious Americanisation seeps through its borders and attempts to create another Asian New York or London?

There is a question I have been asking myself since I arrived here: how much development does this part of the world want? And does this development necessarily mean the loss of tradition and culture? Coming from one of the most developed parts of the world I know from experience that living in a modern industrial and technologically advanced society does not guarantee happiness(it can even lead to disillusionment and unhappiness). I believe and I stress the emphasis on "I" and "believe", that education, free from state or corporate agendas is a right all should have access to. I also believe food and adequate housing are necessary for living a dignified life. Health care should be free and available to all people and furthermore there should be a safety net for people who do not have an income that allows them to meet the demands of everyday living. Cambodia and Laos do not provide all these things to their people and along with the political stage the economic distribution of both countries is anything but exemplary. It is important in a certain respect to try and learn about the social order in the country you are visiting but this is all I want to say on the subject of development and politics for now. Instead I feel compelled to discuss something altogether more human. This includes what I have observed from others and what I have learned upon personal reflection. 

I am fortunate to have gone beyond mere tourism in my travels so far, living with the local people in South America and here in South East Asia. I have come to understand Khmer culture through participation in the education system, attending a wedding and countless conversations with the local people about their lives, hopes and dreams. I know through observation that I am materially better off back home in Scotland than the people I am living and working with here, but as those who have travelled to such regions will testify, spiritually we are impoverished by comparison. 

I am here in Asia as a volunteer English teacher for hope agency. Despite my intention to help children further their education,  I find myself playing the role of student on a much more regular basis. I have learned how little I 'need' to make me happy and also the importance of community and solidarity. In Bakod village where I am based in Cambodia,  people would not survive without each other. The government has neglected the area, leaving locals to fill in pot holes on the dirt track roads as well as erecting their own homes and farming the land. It is a defiant example in the face of people like Ayn Rand who believed that the working people of any society would struggle without private tyrannies and their self congratulating 'entrepreneurs'. My empirical experience is that people are capable of running their own lives and when the need for solidarity presented itself and the political classes are absent, people pull together and answer the call. 

Learning about a culture so different from my own has been an enlightening experience.  Looking inwardly I have to try and honestly assess the inevitable change that occurs in a person who travels afar. Back home in Scotland as the push for independence and hopefully a fairer society reaches a crucial stage, people can appreciate that no matter the outcome we are fortunate to be part of our society and enjoy the stability we do compared with places like Palestine at present. That being said we have our problems at home and poverty which shamefully still exists in Scotland should never be accepted as an inevitable outcome of our economic system. We need to find the same solidarity that the villagers of Bakod have found in order to build their lives and keep extreme poverty at bay. In doing so we will not only be able to tackle physical problems such as poverty and injustice but we will also make inroads in fighting the psychological problems and spiritual poverty that is common to all capitalist, consumer based societies. 

Alienation, depression and anxiety that comes from feeling like an outsider in society and feeling like more of a consumer and worker than human being can be overcome and we can move towards a society that is more humane in nature. My own feelings of hopelessness and frustration have dissolved as I spend time with people who care about others. If I were part of the ruling oligarchy that controls so much of the worlds resources, wealth and power, I would be making sure people keep buying the favourite line of the political right: that human nature is inherently selfish and we are all in it for our selves, and keeping people away from the little pockets of hope in the world where it is made clear through actions and not false prophecies that human beings can live in harmony as equals. Thanks to the people of Bakod village in Cambodia, most of whom are children, this dreamer has found enough hope to fuel his desire to see peace, justice and respect not only in Scotland but the world. Until that day comes I can only try to embody the spirit of Bakod village with my actions, beginning with a show of faith in my own community and voting Yes in September. 

Utopia

 Review by Kevin Hattie

                                                 

On Thursday 20^th of December 2013, ITV and its Scottish sister channel STV aired a documentary film by Australian investigative journalist John Pilger. Anyone familiar with Pilger’s work will be aware of the truly shocking nature of previous documentaries such as: War on Democracy, Death of a Nation and Stealing a Nation. However, despite the fact that his previous work has created a ‘nothing shocks me anymore’ mind set, the setting of this latest documentary and given it was filmed only last year (2012), has perhaps hit those viewing it in the UK harder than many of the older documentaries.

Australia is a country with close ties to the UK. It is a country that still shares the royal family, and displays a Union Jack in the top left hand corner of the national flag. Many of the people are descended from British settlers many generations ago and there are a large number of British people living in the country having moved recently. It is perhaps this connection which we feel to Australia that makes John Pilger’s documentary as hard hitting as it was. There is no doubt that had this particular situation come to light in any country it would have been equally as shocking, but through decades of inaccurate media coverage the people of Britain have come to believe that Apartheid is a thing of the past, and exclusive to under developed countries with despotic governments.

Firstly, it is important to state that Australia is a country with some wonderful features, friendly people and vast natural beauty. It is none the less important to ask questions of the image that most people have of the Island continent. Racism is something that leaves an ugly scar on a countries image but Australia still has an open wound. The aborigine population have been subjected to slavery, genocide, rape and robbery in a country that seems to forget about its original people. War memorials speak of Australia’s heroes in the WW’s with intense detail, but they seem to forget the first war that the country experienced; that of the aborigines against the British invaders. The only place the aborigine people are represented at this particular museum is in stone carvings on the wall alongside Animals such as Lizards and Birds. This rejection of the true history of Australia’s past mixed with the dehumanising effect of the stone carvings leaves the viewer in disbelief. Surely a country as developed and as modernised as Australia would not lack the ability to see how offensive and racist it is to display such things?

From the lack of truth about Australia’s oppressive history, which includes a former concentration camp turned luxury island resort with no mention of the islands previous use, to modern day apartheid. The aborigine population see none of Australia’s wealth trickle down to them. 1 in 3 of the native people die before the age of 45 and the incarceration rate in northern Australia for Black Australians is 10 times higher than Apartheid South Africa. Specific cases of police brutality and lack of care resulting in deaths of aborigine men, with no convictions, puts faces to the statistics. 2 of the men interviewed during the program died during the filming. Living conditions no doubt played a major role. Shacks with a mattress on the dirt floor reminded the viewers of sub Saharan Africa and the poverty that exists there. Keeping in mind Australia is one of the richest countries in the world, this fact is even more inexcusable.

John Pilger at one point during the documentary set out to interview citizens of Australia in Canberra who were celebrating ‘Australia Day’, a day that celebrates the history and formation of the country. Asking questions about how the native people will feel on such a day, Pilger received mixed responses ranging from confusion to right out racist ignorance. One man had the audacity to say if they come to this country they should learn to live our way. Obviously the fact that these people he refers to were there first escaped this gentleman.  This statement however summed up nicely the very attitude that has plagued this earth allowing such racism and intolerance to exist.

It is a refusal to accept other cultures and differences that have caused great divisions in the world since people started moving freely across it. Schools promote homogeneity, capitalism excludes anybody and any group of people that it does not see as value producing and nationalism is thrown around to keep people supporting profit making, illegal wars such as the Afghan war. The above statement from the Australian gentleman on the streets of Canberra is the very attitude which allows the oppression and murder of whole groups of people based on their race, religion and/or culture. The aborigine people do not ask that the white people that inhabit Australia leave and return to their ancestral homes in Europe. All they ask is that they get the opportunity to live in dignity, and to be allowed to celebrate their ancient culture which has survived oppression and genocide. They are more than happy to live side by side with their white Australian brothers and sister in doing so. 

Opinion: Kevin Hattie

 "School Days - the best days of your life." Really..?

To speak of our education system today, is to speak of a multiverse where the experience of attending school can vastly differ from person to person, even among those who attended the same one. This isn’t totally surprising as people experience many of the same things in different ways. Take for example a work of art, one person may fail to see past the denotation of such a thing but for someone else a world of endless possibilities may be opened up. Unfortunately I don’t buy the idea that the differing experiences of people in education is in anyway related to perception and someone’s own unique way of looking at the world. After some deep thought about my own experiences of school, and discussion with a couple of people who had similar experiences, I have come to wonder if there is a common feature among those who find the experience pleasant and those who perhaps dreaded a weekday for thirteen odd years.

‘School is the best time of your life’. This is a phrase that justifies other phrases such as ‘if I had a penny for every time….’ Due to the sheer number of times a child will probably hear this phrase uttered by a parent or older person trying to encourage them to enjoy the experience. I have no doubt the feeling is genuine among the older generation who remember their school days fondly, perhaps not because they truly enjoyed it at the time, but because they didn’t have the weight of responsibility that adult life has brought them, and also the fact that the whole world lay ahead of them. I for one never accepted this opinion, and have come to place it alongside other myths such as; if you are bad Santa Claus won’t come to you and the Tories favourite: ‘We’re in this together’. It is suffice to say that I consider school to be something rather different from those who romanticise it. 

For me the classroom was not so much a place of learning, but a place of suppression. Maybe I have the wrong idea of what education should be like but I like to think that the school should fit around the pupils and not the other way about. I believe that to give the impression that authoritative figures deserve ‘natural respect’ as opposed to earning it, is a convenient way to teach young people that our politicians deserve the same free ticket to gaining obedience. Maybe again I have the wrong idea but should information given by these authority figures be accepted without questioning out in wider society? No, so why should pupils be expected to accept what a teacher says without questioning them? To challenge a teacher on something was to cross the line in my school. We got the whole ‘I have a degree in this subject’ lecture as if that was enough to squash any possibility of the person being wrong.

Critical thinking and questioning things is for me the most important part of learning. We as people have to be able to make our own minds up about things and to always be true to our values as individuals and as a collective humanity. We can’t allow for the media to have us so indoctrinated with a particular way of thinking that for them it is almost effortless to influence public opinion and to get people to go along with a particular agenda. If you stand back and look at what capitalism has created in this world, you soon realise it is something so unnatural that it has to stop or else we will cease to be. Boris Johnson and David Cameron might celebrate the culture of greed and wish for it to be weaved into the school curriculum somewhere, but if you truly believe that possessions are the defining aspect of a human being then you clearly have sold your soul for short term vices.

‘Work hard and you’ll get a well-paid job’.  Another myth perhaps, given that this so called meritocracy that we live in see’s investment bankers on seven figure salaries while someone genuinely useful, like a nurse or an engineer will be worrying about the rising prices of fuel and food. But put this aside and look at another reason why this phrase should be discouraged. ‘Well paid’, why is this the most important aspect of a career? The government have been quick to encourage people to leave behind the more creative subjects and to look at something which contributes more directly to the economy. Well firstly the creative industries bring a lot of money into to this country, and secondly people should be encouraged to find fulfilment on a spiritual level before they have to worry about ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’.  

School and universities should be places where society develops its thought and its collective consciousness. Not somewhere to go so you become more ‘employable’.  Why should working class people be told to make themselves more useful to the policy makers of society? Education seems to be just that, a place where the workers go to be taught how to be workers. A lack of decision making in the classroom leads to a lack of decision making in the workplace. I would encourage people to study what interests them and to question what they learn. I would encourage people to believe in the power they have in their hands to bring about change in society. It seems however the education system would encourage people to passively accept certain norms and values and to learn through repetition and retention of meaningless information which has not been questioned. It is a sad fact today that the education system of our country encourages a heteronomous society and promotes homogeneity over diversity of the individual, the reasons for this may lie somewhere in the fact that those who have their hands on the levers of power require things to remain as they are and for true human nature and freedom to be oppressed as this is the only way to maintain this pathological ideology of capitalism. If you step outside the rules created to maintain the status quo you will be marginalised and the ‘best time of your life’ may not quite live up to its billing. This is why some of us hated school, not because we are lazy, stupid, hard to motivate or mentally ill, but because we refuse to get in line and conform to the values that would see us willingly participate in a criminal ideology. 

"We went to war in order to be heard..."

SSP Campsie's Kevin Hattie on the Zapatista Movement.

Latin America throughout history has been involved in a battle for its soul. The Spanish invaders were the first to try and claim the continent for its own gains but by no means the last. Today the enemy does not arrive over the horizon in a fleet of war ships, but it flows southwards in the air from Washington. 

Mexico is perhaps one of the best known and most visited countries in Latin America. It is famous for its culture, hats, alcoholic beverages and its incredibly hot food. Unfortunately these days the war on the drug cartels and the US’ fight against immigration tarnishes the image of a country that encapsulates the hospitable and easy going nature of many of Latin America’s people. Without doubt however, contrary to the news reports, the biggest problem in the region is not people heading North of the US/Mexico border, it is the Neo Liberal Capitalism that is heading South. 

An example of neo-liberal policy is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Apart from opening the Mexican market to cheap mass-produced US agricultural products, NAFTA spells an end to Mexican crop subsidies without a corresponding end to US ones, and drastically reduced the income and living standards of many southern Mexican farmers who cannot compete with the subsidized, artificially fertilized, mechanically harvested and genetically modified imports from the United States. The signing of NAFTA also resulted in the removal of Article 27 Section VII in the Mexican Constitution which previously had guaranteed land reparations to indigenous groups throughout Mexico. One group who are opposed to this ideology and openly stand against it are the Zapatista Army of National Liberation(EZLN). 

The Zapatista’s as they are commonly known have an aspiration to do politics in a new participatory way, from the bottom up instead of from the top down. They have been described as Libertarian Marxist and wish to see not only power but wealth spread more equally in their society. Mexico’s political system has been criticised as being flawed as it has a purely representative nature and is disconnected from the people and their needs. It is a country that is deeply divided through wealth and the gap is only getting bigger under the current regime. 

The EZLN have primarily used non violent action as a way of demonstrating their cause. Their social base is mostly rural indigenous people but they have some supporters in urban areas and internationally. Their main spokesperson is Subcomandante Marcos. Unlike other Zapatista spokespeople, Marcos is not an indigenous Maya. The group takes its name from Emiliano Zapata, the agrarian reformer and commander of the Liberation Army of the South during the Mexican Revolution. 

Along with many demonstrations in Mexico’s southern states ranging from farmers to teacher protests the EZLN came up with the ‘Zapatista Idea’. The Zapatista idea is the use of tactical media to draw public attention to a political cause. Used as a form of political activism, the Zapatista idea is the notion that “the important thing is the spectacle that you make out of an event in the media, as opposed to the event itself”. The concept derives from the Zapatistas’ ability through new media to communicate and generate universal solidarity in Mexico and worldwide. An example of the use of new media technology is through the Chiapas Media Project

The “communications revolution has generally shifted the ‘balance of power’ from the media to the audience”. This has allowed the Zapatista idea to flourish, opening up new channels and providing a powerful forum for political participation by citizens on a scale like never before. “Digital, networked media allow for faster, diverse, two-way communications between users who have both more control and more choice” as they become simultaneously users, producers and agents of social change.

The hope of many of Mexico’s poor and indeed normal working class people lies with the Zapatista movement. In a country where the poor have had no voice for so long, there is suddenly hope. A hope that they will be recognised as human beings along with the corporate elite in Mexico City. A hope that the rural and indigenous population will be given the opportunity to live in comfort and security. For all across the continent there has been a battle for the very soul of the people. A battle which will determine the future of great cultures like the Mayan one, a battle which will either bring justice to the impoverished or more misery for the forgotten people. It is fitting that Mexico, the country of the Zapatista movement, shares a border with America, because it very well could be the battlefront in a war of ideas. YA BASTA! (Enough is Enough)


We don’t want to impose our solutions by force, we want to create a democratic space. We don’t see armed struggle in the classic sense of previous guerrilla wars, that is as the only way and the only all-powerful truth around which everything is organized. In a war, the decisive thing is not the military confrontation but the politics at stake in the confrontation. We didn’t go to war to kill or be killed. We went to war in order to be heard.

- Sub Comandante Marcos