November 27, 2013, Year 4, Issue 40

the CEU Weekly

An independent newspaper by CEU students and alumni

Hungarian Expression

Original: Jobb ma egy veréb, mint holnap egy túzok.

English equivalent: A bird in the hand is worth two in

the bush.

Look inside for: News from Hungary PAGE 2-3 Sławomir Mrożek PAGE 3 Amazing Archives PAGE 4 The Hungarian Chagall? PAGE 5 Professional Debate PAGE 6 Student Opinion PAGE 7 International Restaurant Day PAGE 7 Rockn Budapest on a Budget PAGE 8 Interview with Vincent Liegey Page 9 Buy Nothing Day and Cartoon PAGE 10 Upcoming Events PAGE 11 Puzzle PAGE 12

To the left: 1. Marc Chagall: La Vie, 1964. Saint Paul de Vence . 2. Imre Ámos: Burning Synagogue, 1938. Hungarian National Gallery. Source of the reproductions: MaNDA (http://mandarchiv.hu)

Above: The international Buy Nothing Day is on Saturday, No-vember 30th this year. As the holiday season is approaching, it‘s a good moment to stop and think about what we spend our time and energy on. Source: Adbusters—Canada On the right: Vincent Liegey, based in Paris and Budapest, has become one of the most prominent speakers of the Degrowth movement. Source: www.projet-decroissance.net

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the CEU Weekly

HUNGARY NEWS November 27, 2013, Year 4, Issue 40

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Violence against remembrance

On Sunday, November 3 a bust of Mik-lós Horthy, Hungary’s head of state from 1920-1944, was unveiled in front of a church on Szabadság tér. The event was organized by Márton Gyön-gyösi MP, deputy group leader of the far-right Jobbik party and Lóránt Hegedűs Junior, pastor of Hazatérés Temploma (Church of Homecoming) of the Reformed Church. Those attending the ceremony were met by hundreds of counter-demonstrators, many wearing a yellow star. The event sparked heavy protests both domestically and internationally. Several pastors of the Reformed Church also voiced their con-cern and the church district commenced a disciplinary inquiry into Hegedűs’s actions. Miklós Horthy is a highly controversial figure. Not only discussed by historians alone for his ambiguous role in the Interwar period, he has increasingly become the object of an emotional and politi-cized debate. While some celebrate him as a national hero others condemn him as war criminal and mass murderer. Elected Regent

of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1920 the last commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian navy remained in office until October 1944. To revise the Treaty of Trianon after the First World War Horthy steered the country into an alliance with Nazi Germany, eventually entering the war on its side in 1941. Most problematic is Horthy’s role in the genocide of Hungarian Jews. Following the occupation of the country by the Germans in March 1944 Horthy remained in office and allowed the deportation of over 437 000 Hungarian Jews from rural Hungary, leading to their extermina-tion. In July 1944 Horthy intervened in the deportation of the Jews of Budapest, a fact often used to defend him. The far right is trying to portray Miklós Horthy as a great statesman and the bust adds to a small but growing list of renamed streets/squares and statues for Horthy initiated on the local level. Two cases taking place in 2012 created considerable noise. The first was the deci-sion of the town council to rename a square Horthy-park in the small town of Gyömrő. Despite loud protests on the national level a local referendum on the matter held in January this year was rendered invalid due to low voter turnout. The second was the case of lawyer Péter Dániel, who had covered a wooden Horthy statue with red paint to draw attention to the problematic role of Horthy. The statue had been erected on the initiative of the dep-uty mayor of Kereki village two days before. Dániel was later sentenced to a fine. >>> Page 3

While numerous new statues of Governor Miklós Horthy (1920-1944, see Jan Bröker’s article below) have been recently inaugu-rated, the statue of Miklós Radnóti – a Hungarian Roman Catholic poet of Jewish origin who was a victim of the Holocaust –was de-stroyed and his books burnt. The man who drove his car into Rad-nóti’s statue in Győr states that it was an accident due to his drunkenness. It is somewhat difficult to believe that his driving while being drunk exactly in the vicinity of Radnóti’s martyrdom particularly during these days was a mere coincidence. However, the presumption of innocence is due unto him. Regarding the burn-ing of Radnóti’s books, a Nazi group explicitly takes the responsi-bility. Heinrich Heine postulated in the 19th century that "where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human be-ings" ("Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen"). Indeed, historical experience shows that the act of book-burning (biblioclasm or libricide) is rather often a prelude to persecution and massacre of human beings. It was the case with the burning of the Qur’an by the Spanish Inquisition, with burnings of the Talmud in medieval France and also with the burning of books written by Jewish authors in Germany in the 1930s. Libri-cide is such a grave act, that books are often saved from burning when the very authors request so, as happened to some 80 poems of Emily Dickinson, the manuscript of Aeneid of Virgil, and the manuscripts of Franz Kafka. There is even precedent of military

officers saving books from other soldiers: in the begin-ning of the Battle of Monte Cassino Colonel Julius Schlegel and Captain Maximilian Becker, German officers, transferred the Monte Cassino Archives to the Vatican. On November 9 near to Miskolc, a Nazi or-ganization, “Hungarian National Front Line” (its original name was “Hungarian National Socialist Action Group”) organized a meet-ing titled “Night of Self-purification”, where several volumes of Radnóti’s poems were burned. November 9 is the assumed date of the poet’s martyrdom. Although it is not known on which day in early November 1944, it is widely known in Hungary, that Rad-nóti, one of the best Hungarian poets of 20th century literature, was murdered by Hungarian guards as a Jewish forced laborer.

László L. Simon, cotemporary poet and head of the parliament’s

commission for culture and media, appointed by the governing

Fidesz party, condemned this action declaring that Hungarians

have learned from their history that whoever is annihilating books

is likely to continue with the annihilation of people. Not only politi-

cians protested, but also civilians of Budapest expressed their out-

rage over such symbolic violence by gathering around a (still

standing) statue of Radnóti and reading aloud his poems.

Ágnes Kelemen, Nationalism Studies, Hungary

Images: www.hirado.hu, www.litera.hu

The Bust of Contention

November 27, 2013, Year 4, Issue 40

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Sławomir Mrożek and the Grotesque

HUNGARY NEWS

The Örkény István Theatre (located near Deák Ferenc tér) plays the 2-hour drama Tango written by the Polish writer, Sławomir Mrożek. The piece was debuted in 1964 and shows the odd face of com-

munism in a grotesque and absurd way through the life of a Polish family.

Arthur, the only son of an artist family, studies medical science and philosophy at university. His values and morals are exactly the opposite of the values that his family represent. Arthur is conservative, he likes discipline and order, whilst his father and mother are reckless artists, representing the revolution-ary generation of the 1960s. In this sense, Arthur embodies the socialism/communism and his parents

manifest capitalism and liberal values.

The son decides to take control over the family by forcing them to wear 19th century clothes and to speak in “old-fashioned” way. At mid-play is Arthur’s marriage with a young, liberal girl, whom Ar-thur decides to marry in order to prove that the value of family and marriage should again be of importance in the middle of the 1960s. He is getting crazy about his own ideas and becomes more and more frustrated, because his family cannot embrace his philosophical thoughts and they feel trapped in Arthur’s madness. The outcome of the drama is presumable from the very beginning, but I

do not want to spoil the end of the story.

If you want to get a glimpse of the absurdity of Eastern European communist societies in the 1960s and 1970s and how it looked like in contrast with the “Western” world, then I would definitely recommend reading Mrożek’s plays and short stories. They also resemble the Hungarian atmosphere of the decade. Mrożek’s works are similar to Gogol’s and Kafka’s grotesque 19th and early 20th century world. If you like absurdity and “impossible” actions in literature, you will not get disappointed reading Mrożek’s sto-

ries.

Eszter Kajtár, School of Public Policy, Hungary

However, the most recent unveiling of a bust for Horthy is also a byproduct of an ongoing rehabilitation of the Interwar period that is partly tolerated and partly actively promoted by the gov-erning center-right Fidesz party. The restoration of Kossuth square to its 1944 state, the inauguration of the statute for Prime Minister István Bethlen and several other measures point to a selective re-habilitation of the period. But when it comes to the emblematic figure of Horthy himself Fidesz has remained rather voiceless. Antal Rogán, mayor of Budapest’s 5th district and leader of the Fidesz parliamentary group, disapproved of a statue for Horthy and deemed the unveiling a “provocation” by Jobbik. But more concerned about international reactions than the statue itself, Rogán argued that this would serve as yet another vehicle for criticism of Hungary by “the western European left-wing media.” Personally condemning the inauguration, János Lázár, state secre-tary of the Prime Minister’s Office, stated that it is the historians’

task to judge the past. In fact, quite a number of historians have repeatedly voiced their concern and have also been drawing at-tention to the ambiguous role of Fidesz in the rehabilitation of the interwar period. But Lázár might have other historians in mind. A government decree from October 25 stipulates the foundation of “Veritas Historical Research Institute.” The institute will operate under the auspices of the very same state secretary. Besides the already telling name, the decree defines the institute’s aims as “strengthening national spirit,” producing an “undistorted” view on the past 150 years and analyzing and presenting “successful models of government” from the past. It remains to be seen what the ‘undistorted’ perspective on Horthy will be.

Jan Bröker, History

Image by the author.

Source: www.pieniadz.pl

Source: www.merlin.pl

November 27, 2013, Year 4, Issue 40

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the CEU Weekly

CULTURE

Opening ITS; An eye-opening journey into the politics of the past, today.

Last month I had the pleasure of attending a

week-long conference in London, hosted by the

Weiner Library on the subject of the use of the

records of the International Tracing Service (ITS)

in advanced Holocaust study. I was shocked by

what I learned there about ITS, and I share the

story of the Archive and it’s opening here with

the CEU community.

Some of you may be familiar with the United

States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washing-

ton DC. The Museum has worked to collect ma-

terial concerning the Holocaust from over 40

different countries on every continent and now

contains some 60-65 million documents. There is

one archive, however, that contains over 100

million documents relating to the fates of at

least 17 million victims of Nazism. These include

13 and a half million concentration camp docu-

ments, transport and deportation lists, Gestapo

records and prison records, as well as 11 million

pages of forced and slave labour documenta-

tion. Add to that 3 million Displaced Persons

registration cards and files, thousands of first-

hand testimonies of liberated concentration

camp survivors and millions of files containing

enquiries from around the world seeking infor-

mation about loved ones. This extraordinary

repository is the ITS Archives, and for 6 dec-

ades, it was kept under lock and key.

The story behind the opening of the ITS archives

only a few short years ago is an extraordinary

one, and one I still struggle to believe. The gov-

ernments of 11 democratic countries (9 in

Europe, as well as the United States and Israel),

in co-operation with the International Committee

of the Red Cross (ICRC) – who administered the

isolated buildings containing the documents –

were responsible for keeping the archive out of

the hands of a dying generation of survivors, as

well as researchers and educators. It sounds like

a bad conspiracy theory, and yet, that was the

shocking reality.

These were the documents Allied forces col-

lected in the process of liberation, and during

the post-war occupation of Germany and Aus-

tria. As Paul Shapiro, the Director the Holocaust

Museum revealed to us; thousands of files con-

tinued to be deposited into the ITS Archive right

up until 2006, sometimes by governments who

knew that if they put documents there, no one

would ever see them. Even the location of the

ITS Archives resonates with Holocaust-related

history. Bad Arolsen, Germany, is a rural region

that escaped heavy bombing during the Second

World War, and had been the site of an SS

training facility. As Allied forces approached,

they used empty Arolsen buildings as a dump-

ing ground for hundreds of thousands of files;

the same files that survivors were not allowed to

access and from which researchers were pro-

hibited from viewing.

Much of the credit for opening the archive goes

to Paul Shapiro, who was kind enough to relive

the decade he dedicated to a very political

struggle to enable access to ITS. At a meeting

of the 11 member ITS governing board in Paris

2001, Shapiro first attempted to mobilise the

Commission into opening the archive. He was

shocked by the response, which was character-

ized by endless circular debate and even the

consideration of anonymising all information the

archive contained relating to dates, names and

places – precisely the kind of information survi-

vors wanted and needed. Suggestions like

blanking out names and even the argument that

any ITS user would have to purchase their own

indemnification insurance, were undoubtedly

calculated to prevent anyone from actually ac-

cessing the archive. With an extraordinary

backlog of 450,000 requests for information

from a dying generation of survivors still pend-

ing reply, the Commission still felt no urgency to

act, and met only once a year.

Shapiro’s request for even a list of the collec-

tions at ITS met a stone wall. The ICRC denied

that such a list existed – in what was later re-

vealed to be a flagrant lie – in order to avoid

any potential public pressure and even told

Committee members they would deliberately

slow the process of answering survivor queries if

they formally backed opening the archive. Nor

would the German government agree to re-

lease a list. When asking for information,

Shapiro approached first the Commission, who

referred him to the ITS director, who then re-

ferred him to bosses in Geneva, who then re-

ferred him to the German Interior Ministry, who

then referred him back to the Commission- a

perfect circle of unaccomplishment. Shapiro was

with the only option of setting staff members at

the Holocaust Museum to dedicate personal

time to looking into the contents of ITS.

Meanwhile, the media was the only logical

place to turn. In May 2005, a small article on

ITS was published in the Minneapolis Star Trib-

une, that then went viral. Eventually, influential

German paper ‘Die Zeit’ agreed to publish a

full-page article entitled ‘The Other Memorial’,

identifying ITS as being as important as the

memorial to murdered Jews about to be un-

veiled in Berlin that year, and labelled its inac-

cessibility a “scandal”. Internet petitions gath-

ered thousands of signatures in only a few

days. By June 2005, at the next meeting of the

Commission, media exposure finally forced seri-

ous discussion on opening ITS. Still however, 4

countries; Poland, the UK, the Netherlands and

Israel, remained silent on the issue, which

worked against the effort. Germany even sough

to assert national control, claiming that no other

country had rights to the documents at ITS, de-

spite the fact that over half of the archives con-

tents were Allied property and the rest the war

booty of the Third Reich (which is to say nothing

of the question of the moral ownership of survi-

vors). Shapiro himself became the target of

absurd, leading questions, including ‘did he

want to reveal there were Jewish homosexuals

in the camps?’ ‘Wouldn’t opening the archives

reveal that some Jews collaborated with the

Nazis?’ The ITS’ official website went so far as

to characterize Shapiro’s efforts as ‘legally and

morally reprehensible’.

Nevertheless, a media storm was brewing and

a growing number of editorials, including in

publications such as the NY Times and Washing-

ton Post, started to talk about ITS. As Shapiro

put it, the train was coming down the tracks and

there would be no stopping it. France, Luxem-

bourg, Greece, the UK, the Netherlands and the

US all indicated support for opening the ar-

chives. Israel, Poland, Belgium and Italy re-

mained silent or opposed. The position of Ger-

many remained uncertain until Chancellorships

changed. With the election of Merkel, German

support was finally announced. An astonishing 6

weeks later (after so many years of battling) a

draft agreement to open the archive was ini-

tialled by all Committee countries. 3 weeks

later, the long-time director of ITS was fired. In

November 2007, the final member state rati-

fied the agreement, a shocking 62 years after

the end of WWII and far too late for far too

many survivors.

When I was introduced to the ITS archive in

October, I was amazed to learn about its po-

tential. It tells story after story; not grand strat-

egy, but the human factor – and the terrifying

routine of genocide and inhumanity. Its postwar

documentation is unprecedented, and rich in so

many survivor accounts and statements. It also

contains proof of identities being changed after

the war, information which knowledgeable re-

searchers would have picked up as frauds had

they not been barred from seeing the records.

>>> Page 5.

CULTURE November 27, 2013, Year 4, Issue 40

the CEU Weekly

Page 5

I had the privilege of meeting a Holocaust survivor, who was able to

learn through the records at ITS of the fates of his two sisters, whom he

had assumed had perished in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. As ITS re-

vealed, they had in fact died months later in an air raid, and were bur-

ied at a grave site that this particular survivor was now able to visit

every year, and finally place roses on the graves of his family.

Hearing about the story of the ITS archive I was struck by how significant

it is. Most obviously, it reminded everybody of the importance of infor-

mation, and truth, for survivors and their families, as well as the memorial

significance of not letting the stories of over 17 million human beings

remain hidden and forgotten. The scholarly and educational potential of

ITS is immense, and a goldmine for advanced research. The ITS archive

also provides a fresh reminder of the fact that historical documentation is

an essential tool, in this case one that could, should, have been tapped in

order to provide justice for the victims of National Socialism. The fact it

was not, should be read as a warning that even good governments can

fail to give adequate support and attention to powerless voices. On a

general level, ITS is 100 million documents that will now serve for all time

as a potent weapon in the face of any Holocaust deniers or minimisers. It

resonates into the present as a graphic portrayal of the failure to act, as

well as the dangers of resurgent anti-Semitism. As ITS clearly shows, suf-

fering during the Second World War did not stop with the Jews – well

over half of the contents of ITS deal with the fates of non-Jewish victims.

Anti-Semitism is dangerous for Jews, and is dangerous for everyone else

– something we have a particular need to remember today.

Imogen Bayley, History, New Zealand,

The Hungarian Chagall?

Where his name appears, the success of the exhibition is guaran-teed; Marc Chagall’s works have attracted and amazed audi-ences for a long time now. The art historians of the Hungarian Na-tional Museum intend to use Chagall’s fame and appeal to intro-duce a lesser known Hungarian artist, Imre Ámos, who lived during the first half of the twentieth century. Until January, the museum will host these two integrated exhibitions: a chronological display of 65 works by Marc Chagall selected from the Musée du Luxem-bourg's Parisian show, and a thematic overview of the last artistic period of the Hungarian painter, Ámos. Thus, the visitor gets a spectacular experience, even more than from most travelling exhi-bitions. You are able to become acquainted with some local as-pects of modern art with Jewish origins, while also enjoying the genius of the Russian painter. But is there really a connection between the great master and his Hungarian contemporary? They met only once for a short hour, when Ámos and his wife stayed in Paris in 1937 and they visited Chagall’s studio. Chagall encouraged the young artist, and the meeting had a determining impact on Ámos. He had already known Chagall’s work from magazines, but in Paris he had his first chance to see the originals. However, if we examine the exhibited works at the National Gallery, they don’t have very much in com-

mon upon first glance. After be-ing lost in Chagall’s bright-colored optimistic dream world and trying to decode his dense symbolic language, Ámos’ smaller canvases, painted with melancholic earth tones, seem to reflect a totally different world: pain, deformity and threatening prophecies of the future. What Chagall and Ámos shared is their Eastern-European Jewish identity – they both came from traditional communities in the countryside. They both revital-ized and to some extent Christi-

anized the old Hasidic traditions and legends by the means of modern painting. For example the threefold motive of the rooster – which can be the sign of remorse, the symbol of artistic creativ-ity or the harbinger of the future – appears on works by both painters. In Chagall’s world, the harmony of animals and human beings remains present, while we can observe the disenchantment in Ámos’ works. The cock before the burning synagogue foretells

the horrifying events which changed the world in the 1940s, when harmony was lost for a long time. The differences in the fate of the two painters determined the dissimi-larity of their artistic visions. Chagall was born in nineteenth-century Russia, twenty years earlier than Ámos. Chagall survived two world wars, revolutions, endless years of exiles in Paris and New York, and lived almost a hun-dred years, whereas Ámos died in a German concentration camp be-fore turning forty-years-old. Due to these con-trasts, the comparison of their art makes a dramatic impression. It is really exciting to ex-amine how differently they reacted to the horror of the Second World War. In Chagall’s paintings, however dark the situation is, there is always hope for a new beginning. In his compositions, de-struction is juxtaposed by the idyll of love and the figures of the flying lovers who survive even in the worst of times. On the con-trary, the tragedy of Ámos’ personal life seems to be reflected in the brutality of his pictures. Even if Imre Ámos was not the “Hungarian Chagall”, the twin exhibitions offer an exciting two-fold experience of art: the bright side is presented by Chagall, while Ámos’ works shed a light on the dark side of the world.

Alexandra Kocsis, Medieval Studies, Hungary

Chagall - Between War and Peace. Ámos Imre, the "Hungarian Chagall" - In the Vortex of War 1937-1944 Hungarian National Gallery, 13 September 2013 - 5 January 2014 Source of the reproductions: MaNDA (http://mandarchiv.hu)

Marc Chagall: La Danse, 1950-1952. Pa-ris, Centre Georges

Imre Ámos: War, 1940. Hungarian National Gallery

the the CEU Weekly

DEBATE

Page 6

November 27, 2013, Year 4, Issue 40

Should environmentalists cooperate with corporations in order to achieve their goals?

Proposition - Alexandru Moise (POLS ‘14)

At first it might seem strange to have this debate at all. After all, what we seem to have here are two actors with different interests. Environmen-talists want to reduce pollution, decrease waste and invest in green energy. Corporations are only interested in profit and this can never be achieved in an environmentally-friendly way. But is it really this simple?

It rarely is. The fact of the matter is that climate change is a serious problem, one we cannot solve without engaging with the ‘prime pollut-ers’: corporations. The problem is that they have not responded at all to the current confronta-tional manner in which they are engaged. Fines don't come close to their profits and protests in their mild form do not have much impact and in their ex-treme form discredit environ-mentalists. Moreover, attempts to raise awareness in consumers are ineffective if consumers do not have information about the company whose products or services they are purchasing.

The problem runs even deeper on the side of compa-nies, but not for the reasons you might think. The fact of the mat-ter is that companies are not out to destroy the environment. Rather, because of their short-term incentives of maintaining profitability and market posi-tion, they are unable to invest in long-term efficiency. Because consumers do not have ade-quate information, they cannot reward companies who are en-vironmentally friendly. The result is that even if companies de-sired to be green, the way in which the incentives are set up prohibits them from doing so.

The obvious solution then is to change these incen-tives through cooperation be-

tween environmentalists and corporations. What environmen-talists need to do is set up a system by which they would en-dorse companies that agree to a set of environmentally-friendly measures such as reduc-ing waste, investing in safety standards (British Petroleum could sure use it!), or green tech-nologies. We see this type of mechanism in action with the Fair Trade initiative. Only in this plan environmentalists would endorse entire green companies rather than specific products. This will not allow companies to just dish out "green" products but incentivize them to rethink their approach to profit!

Why would they do this? We have already seen that people are willing to pay more or purchase from a par-ticular firm if it conforms to their moral code and if they have the necessary information, as in the case of hybrid cars or Fair Trade. Knowing that consumers will reward them will completely change the incentives for com-panies, allowing and actively encouraging them to reform their practices. What we'll be doing is making "profitability" itself green. Moreover, this will also incentive companies to de-velop a positive, green image. We already see that corpora-tions are incentivized by this as they spend enormous amounts of money through corporate social responsibility. Now, will this make every single company green and completely solve all our problems? Obviously not, but it will make the kind of profound impact that is out of reach with the current tactics employed by environmentalist movements.

Opposi t ion - Zsófia Murányi (POLS ‘14)

While the idea itself is laudable, it is also deeply problematic in a number of ways. First, the success of any such cooperation hinges on consumer awareness, and second, there are dangers for any movement advocating for change that are inherent in the nature of a con-sumerist society. Co-optation can do more harm than good, and I will argue that it is best if environmentalists don't go down that route.

The basis of the sugges-tion is to increase corporations' need for a good reputation – reputation that only environmen-talists can give them. However, this only works if consumers do indeed place great value on environmental friendliness and if they know what this actually means. In many countries, includ-ing Emerging Europe, most con-sumers are still unaware of or unmoved by the importance of waste reduction, environmen-tally friendly production stan-dards or sustainability, so very few will care about the “good” companies while there are oth-ers out there selling cheaper products.

If, on the other hand, consumer awareness is higher (and perhaps it is not overly optimistic to suggest that current trends point in this direction), then this idea, really little more than greenwashing, is a wasted opportunity. If people are will-ing to listen, environmentalists should not be afraid to advo-cate for fundamental change instead. Let's take an example I encoun-tered recently – a canned en-ergy drink which emphasized on its packaging the importance of binning the can into the appro-priate selective waste basket. The product was meant to as-

sure everyone that they would, by this simple action, do right by the environment and could therefore feel good about themselves. This is where I say: not enough! Clearly the most environmentally friendly option would be if the product did not exist at all!

I can already hear the outrage by energy drink enthu-siasts but the point I am making is this: we are already being sold the idea that saving the environment while maintaining our current habits of consump-tion is possible. This compla-cency risks doing too little too late. Environmentalists in our part of the world should con-tinue speaking out and advocat-ing for fundamental change in people's minds.

However, the message that the root of the problem is overconsumption itself is some-thing corporations don't want to hear. No other incentives could possibly offset this, as it is fun-damentally antithetical to the logic of profit. If environmental-ists were to cooperate with cor-porations, their message would inevitably be tamed, defanged. Consumer capitalism has a way of co-opting and corrupting so-cial movements – something we can see happening with liberal feminism, for instance. A sports clothing brand will preach fe-male empowerment in its ad-verts to sell more running shoes – all while abusing female workers with cattle prods in its sweatshops.

Corporations' voices are too strong, too powerful – if environmentalists join them, they will be drowned out. The current state of affairs may seem dis-couraging, but in this case work-ing within the system rather than against it is not the way to go.

Zsófia Murányi and Alexandru

Moise, CEU Debate Socieety

This is the first piece of a series of publications of professional debates, launched by the CEU Debate Society and The CEU Weekly.

The views expressed below do not necessarily reflect the writers’ personal opinions but are rather roles taken up in the context

of a debate.

the the CEU Weekly

OPINION November 27, 2013, Year 4, Issue 40

Page 7

Obstacles with Sport Clubs

Two weeks ago DeStress week was organized by the CEU Student Life Office. The goal of the initiative was to reduce the amount of stress that students are experiencing because of their examina-tions and upcoming finals. While they did a good job overall, they forgot one very important thing - that the best way of tack-ling stress is with sports! Unfortunately this lapse is not an isolated event, and in fact CEU has generally not been proactive about creating good conditions for students to exercise. Case in point… I organize a volleyball and soccer club for the students of the Department of Public Policy. At the moment it is already the end of November and we still do not have regular time slots for the clubs in the gym. This issue remains unresolved because the Student Life Office states that the CEU Sports Center is another institution, and the CEU Sports Center states that it is not possible for them to orchestrate regular time slots. This means that we must go to the Sports Center and book a new time each week. You can hardly imagine how frustrating that is! Usually by the time I go to book sport times for the clubs, most time slots have already been taken. Even when something is free, it is almost always on a Friday, when most students do not have class. Moreover, the booking system only allows you to schedule one hour per person, per week. So if I want to book two times for two different clubs in a week, I am prohibited from doing so, even though the bookings are for two entirely different groups of peo-ple! At first, I tried to be persistent and booked one time for one club, and asked somebody else to book another time. There are however many negative implications from this policy. For ex-

ample, as mentioned before, you can book only one hour per week in the gym. If you have played volleyball before, you un-derstand that one hour is hardly sufficient for a training. Volley-ball is a technical game that is not so intense and before you start you need to have a good warm-up. So with this system, it is im-possible that the volleyball club can function properly. Besides that, I cannot still understand why is it not possible to book times for Mondays and for Wednesdays. The Sports Center al-ways states that it is full, so there are really just three days avail-able for booking. When the Sports Center is opened from 15.00 to 21.00 it means 6x1 time slots are available during one day. For the whole week it means 18 time slots. It is just unrealistic that these 18 time slots are always full and it is not possible to give regular time slots for the sports clubs. How should our clubs then function? Recently someone from the Student Life Office saw that I have organized a volleyball club and contacted me. He asked which days of the week we were playing, and at what time. I had to state with an embarrassment that we do not really have regular times, and explain to him that our club is not really func-tioning at the moment – all because of these policies! For me and many of my friends here, sports are an im-portant part of our lives. Exercise is also one of the best ways of reducing stress from our intensive studies. Unfortunately at the mo-ment sports clubs cannot function properly because of the vague and unclear booking system that we have. It is pointless to encour-age students to join and establish different clubs when the condi-tions for sustaining these clubs are not created.

Karl Haljasmets, Public Policy, Estonia

Last weekend dozens of locals who share a common taste for cooking delicious home-made meals opened the doors of their own apartments to celebrate the final 2013 acknowledgement of International Restau-rant Day. Restaurant Day is known as the world’s biggest food carnival and encour-ages food enthusiasts to pick a cooking theme and set up a restaurant in their own home or community space for one day. Res-taurant Day is celebrated four times each year, and the concept has been well re-ceived here in Budapest. Restaurant Day has become popular with locals who often reward their taste buds by completing a home-cooked “food crawl” of sorts within their own city. It has become

common for partici-pants to pop into one location for an early lunch, travel to a second setting for snacks or drinks, and then round off

the night with a dinner at an additional location. Food bloggers, chefs, and cook-ing enthusiasts register on the international

restaurant day website a few weeks be-fore the day so that locals know the cook-ing theme they choose, and also where to go to taste their offerings. Last weekend I was fortunate enough to have the time to visit two sites for dinner and dessert. A well timed tip from a friend led me to the kitchen of local food blogger Katalin Vida, whose trip across Georgia last summer inspired her to try her best at mastering some of the unique local dishes she tasted there. My only experiences with Georgian inspired food before this were at a well known restaurant in the heart of Moscow, where I fell in love with the very vegetarian friendly menu offered there. I can say that I was reminded of the love-at-first-bite meal in Moscow when I tried Kata’s stuffed eggplant and paprika, along with the three different types of baked bread that she prepared. After leaving the Georgian inspired feast, I had just enough room left in a very satis-fied stomach to venture to the Szatyor As-sociations headquarters in the 8th District. Szatyor’s mission is all about showcasing

the best of local and seasonal foods in Hungary, and their autumn spices inspired desserts and drinks did not disappoint, and rounded off my restaurant day perfectly. I encourage everyone to start preparing for the first Restaurant Day of 2014, which will be held on February 16th. Start check-ing the International Restaurant Day web-site for the locations that will be open for tasting in February, or perhaps take the holiday period to master a few recipes which you may want to display in your own kitchen restaurant. More information: http://www.restaurantday.org www.szatyorbolt.hu

http://babramegy.blogspot.hu

Logan Strenchock, Environmental Studies alumnus, USA

Image: Bálint Németh

Restaurant Day: a Big Hit in Budapest

the the CEU Weekly

~Rockn Budapest on a Budget~

Page 8

November 27, 2013, Year 4, Issue 40

Our New Section: ~Rockn Budapest on a Budget~

Most of us have some degree of financial limitation, and even though Budapest is cheaper than much of Europe, it’s easy to end

up with only lint in your pockets halfway through the month. We all know that sucks. I propose however that with a little plan-

ning, foresight, and willingness to get off the beaten path, even the poorest of us can live an extravagant life here. Therefore,

starting with this issue, I will be writing a regular column entitled ~Rockn Budapest on a Budget~. Check it out, and please give

me a heads up about any relevant events which I should share!

Friday Buy Nothing Day

One person’s trash is another’s treasure. It is

this principle that will be on display during

the CEU Swap which takes place in the

Monument Building Room 203 from noon till

5:30 (17:30) this Friday. From their post:

“Bring useful items in good condition that you

are willing to part ways with. For each item

you “donate” to the swap collection, you will

receive a token which will allow you to ex-

change it for another item.

Image: Adbusters—Canada

Latino Party: The Dorm

Not living at the dorm, it’s rare that an event promises to be so epic as to propel me out there. I’ll

be banging down the doors this weekend however, as Friday’s Fiesta Latina promises all of our

favorite things; tequila, dancing, and beautiful people. Leave your text books at home!

Saturday Art Market Budapest This event is held at MILLENARIS PARK, is free to get into, and will showcase some of the most cutting edge contemporary artists in Europe. It takes place on the Buda side, right off the Szell Kalman metro stop and 4/6 tram line. See here for more details: http://www.artmarketbudapest.hu/

Graham Patterson, Department of Public Policy, USA

Editorial note: you can read more about the Buy Nothing Day on page 10 and see information on the Art Market Budapest on Page 11. Sources of images: elephantjournal.com, followbackfest.blogspot.com, www.artmarketbudapest.hu

the the CEU Weekly

INTERVIEW

Page 9

November 27, 2013, Year 4, Issue 40

A Degrowth Project – to question the mantra of growth

The CEU Weekly met with Vincent Liegey, co-author of “Un projet de Décroissance”, to discuss the degrowth movement, relocalization and the questioning of norms. CW: Could you summarize degrowth as an idea for someone who has never encountered it? Vincent Liegey: I would say that there are several definitions for degrowth. The first one is a provocative slogan. We try to open a debate where we question a lot of the beliefs that are not questioned anymore in our societies, particularly in the West. We mostly question what we call the "growth religion", this implicit belief that through growth you will solve all problems. The second definition is the name of a new political or intellectual way of thinking which is coming from quite a wide diversity of sources and I think it is very important because with this interdisciplinary approach we really try to connect all the crises which are in fact interconnected. Most of the time, when you are listening to mainstream politicians or intellectuals, whether they speak about economics, then environmental issues, then social issues, they are not able to put all of it together. Through the degrowth approach we really try to question, on the one hand, the physical limits to growth, as infinite growth on a finite planet is totally impossible. On the other hand, there are cultural anthropological limits to growth, so the fact that we have a very, very high level of consumption, production, basically “good growth”, in our Western societies, but we are not so much happier. Actually, we are less and less happy and need to reappropriate the sense of life, of well-being and democracy. All together we really try to construct a desirable, democratic transition to get rid of the growth addiction, to be able to solve the energy and environmental problems we are facing and to start constructing new types of societies which would be based on more well-being, autonomy and relocalization. It’s about how to construct societies of prosperity without growth. TCW: Would you say that this is a good moment, with the Financial Crisis and the Euro Crisis, to discuss these changes?

V. L.: On the one hand, it is a good time; on the other hand, it is not. It's not a good time because before the beginning of the financial crisis in the Western World in 2008 we spoke more and more about environmental issues. Since then, we mostly speak about the economic and social consequences. It is more difficult to speak about degrowth because we also address environmental issues. On the other hand, we are facing such a wide crisis and we have been in this crisis since 2008 and all the classical answers to this crisis do not work anymore. You can see that with the mainstream economists and politi-cians who say we need to solve the public debt, and we need growth to do that, and it never happens. So there is a space to speak about alternatives be-cause it is such a deep crisis. With the crisis and the austerity plans there are people who are pushed so deep in misery that in order to survive they have to reinvent new ways of production, of survival, to ex-change things, to take decisions together. In fact, in places like Greece or Spain where young people

cannot find jobs they start to reappropriate local production, local economic systems to produce food, to create new systems where you exchange services. The point is to get rid of the religion of economics as soon as possible, to put the economy back in its place, to stop the craziness of defending the high value of the currency, and to have the wrong belief that we have to repay the public debt but we will never be able to do so. We should question what is money creation, what is the public debt, where is it coming from, how to reappropriate central banks, how to democratically and politically reappropriate economic tools, and in this way implement a transition to new models of society.

Julia Michalsky, History, Germany Photo: Frédéric Stucin Editorial Note: The rest of the interview with Vincent Liegey will be available on the CEU Weekly Blog on December 4. More informa-tion in English on degrowth and the book Vincent co-authored can be found at www.projet-decroissance.net/?cat=35. Special Announcement: As part of the Buy Nothing Day that SCI is celebrating at CEU November 27 – 30, Vincent Liegey will give a special lunch lecture on degrowth on Wednesday, 27.11.2013 at 12:40 in the Gellner Room.

the the CEU Weekly

COMMUNITY

Page 10

November 27, 2013, Year 4, Issue 40

What’s the Fuss About Buy Nothing Day?

Have you every heard about Buy Nothing Day? Buy Nothing Day is an international day of (in)action against conspicuous consump-tion and over-consumption. BND was first celebrated in Canada in 1997, and has been acknowledged each year since, typically coinciding with the largest shopping day of the year in North America (known as the “Black Friday” shopping holiday) in the final weekend in November. BND encourages people to rethink their consumption patterns, and realize their ability to live happy, or even happier lives by decid-ing not to fall victim to the temptations of mindless consumption. The BND movement takes every effort to promote that only 20%

of the global population is responsible for consuming 80% of the earth’s natural resources, and asks people to take a day to think about the social and envi-ronmental repercussions of such inequality.

Reading this you are likely pondering the commonly asked ques-tion: “How does changing my buying habits for one day even mean anything?” The point of BND is not to force everyone to adopt frugal lifestyles, and someone should not expect that a sin-gle day of altered behavior would immediately induce change in the global economic system. Rather, supporters of the movement and other anti-consumption initiatives encourage people first to simply acknowledge the power that we posses to distance our-selves from the advertisements, fashion trends, quests to have the newest electronic devices, etc. and realize that life can and will

go on quite happily if we made less frequent, and more informed purchases. BND is often celebrated with public displays of solidarity against mass consumption, with protestors organizing scripted “credit card cut-ups” and “zombie walks” in retail locations such as Walmart. Additionally, instead of causing disturbances in stores, BND advo-cates also celebrate the self made holiday by setting up commu-nity building events where people exchange goods they already possess as part of free item swaps, or cook large meals together with ingredients they contributed. BND will be commemorated this year at CEU on Friday, Novem-ber 29th. A “Used and Useful Item Swap” will take place from 12pm-5pm in the monument building room 203. We encourage you to take a self-inventory of the underused, but still useful items you may possess, and to bring them to this event, where you will have the chance to swap anything your brought for another do-nated item you may need. All unclaimed items at the end of the swap will be donated appropriately.

Logan Strenchock, Environmental Studies alumnus, USA

Cartoon by Eriksson

the the CEU Weekly

UPCOMING EVENTS

Page 11

November 27, 2013, Year 4, Issue 40

Upcoming Events

Budapest Art Market – International Contemporary Art Fair Don’t miss the most important event of contemporary art galleries in Budapest! This year, the Budapest Art Market focuses on the new, emerging “stars”, the young talents of the Eastern and Cen-tral European art world. The four-day show includes a special ex-hibition on the topic of migration, and presents the material of several galleries from twenty countries with film screenings and performances in the former industrial building complex of Mil-lenáris. Dates: 28 November – 01 December 2013 Location: Millenáris, 1024 Budapest, Kis Rókus utca 16-20. More information: www.artmarketbudapest.hu

Quarter6Quarter7 Festival - Hanukkah Festival

Series of community programs – exhi-bitions, concerts, city walks, perform-ances, forum theatre events, gastron-omy, talks and workshops – focuses on the subcultures, minorities and artistic communities of the Jewish quarter. Ex-plore the daytime face of the party district, get involved to the cultural diversity and get to know the local specialties!

Dates: 27 November – 05 December2013 Location: Various in the 6th & 7th district More information: www.negyed6negyed7.com

Expat's Night Their favorite café invites foreigners who chose Budapest to live, work, and study here for an informal discussion. Ádám Takács, adjunct professor of the Atelier, Department of European Social Sciences and Historiography (ELTE), asks expats about the city and its “native” inhabitants. An event organized by the Quarter6Quar-ter7 Festival. Dates: 29 November Location: Massolit Books & Café, 1072 Budapest, Nagydiófa utca 30. Mor information: face-

book event page

Contemporary Drama Festival (CDF) The CDF is organized bi-annually to introduce new Hungarian and interna-tional contemporary dra-mas to the audience. This year, you can choose

among 28 performances, most of them with English subtitles or simultaneous translation, played by Hungarian independent thea-tre companies in various locations. Dates: 27 November – 2 December More information: www.dramafestival.hu

11. Anilogue Film Festival Anilogue is an annual international animation festival taking place in Budapest, Hungary and Vienna, Austria. The festival is packed with feature premieres, sneak previews, workshops, a competition of European animated short films and numerous special programs. Dates: 28. November – 01. December 2013 More information: www.anilogue.com

Wine and Cheese Festival It's time to taste the season's first new wines! Winemakers from all over Hungary proudly show off their new wines, paired with ar-tisanal cheese at the annual New Wine and Cheese Festival.

Dates: 30. November – 01.December 2013 Location: Agricultural Museum, City Park

More information: www.ujboressajtfesztival.hu

Alexandra Kocsis, Medieval Studies, Hungary

Julia Michalsky, History, Germany

Image: www.eventful.com

Image: visitbudapest.travel

Image: visitbudapest.travel

he Weethe CEU Weekly

PUZZLE November 27, 2013, Year 4, Issue 40

This is a student-alumni initiative that seeks to provide CEU with a regularly issued newspaper. We publish our articles and additional materials on our blog as well: www.ceuweekly.blogspot.hu Editor in Chief: Ágnes Kelemen Authors of this issue: Imogen Bayley, Jan Bröker, Karl Haljasmets, Eszter Kajtár, Ágnes Kelemen, Alexandra Kocsis, Erik Kotlárik, Julia Michalsky, Alexandru Moise, Zsófia Murányi, Graham Patterson, Olha Pushchak, Logan Strenchock

Proofreading and language editing: Imogen Bayley, Philippe-Edner Marius, Graham Patterson, Ruth Pinto

Page 12

YOUR CORNER

Want to get published?

Send your article at ceuweekly@ceu.hu

Train Your Brain! Üdvözöl a CEU Weekly rejtvény! The sign above says: “Welcome to CEU Weekly Puzzle”. As we always invite you and encourage taking part in this logical competition we de-cided to use different languages welcoming you to do it. And of course, Hungarian was our first choice :-) This week we have another challenging task. We want to introduce you our four fellow students Allison, Beth, Carl, and Danny. They share an apartment somewhere on Buda Hills. The constant problem they encoun-ter is doing their laundry. They found out that sorting the socks always takes too much time, because it is hard to tell which socks belong to whom. So they decided that each one of them would always wear the same color socks to save laundry-sorting time: green, blue, red, and yel-low.

Use the clues to find out which student got which color socks. 1. Allison refused to wear yellow or green socks. 2. Beth refused to wear green or blue socks. 3. Carl chose blue. 4. Danny picked the color that both Beth and Allison refused to wear. In order to win and get a free lunch voucher please send us the answer on ceuweekly@ceu.hu From now on we draw the name of the winner from those 10 who send the good solution earliest. The time of drawing is December 1. Good luck!!!

Olha Pushchak, Ukraine, History alumna

**The materials of the puzzle are taken from www.discoveryeducation.com