Ms. Wegner sees a more enlightened approach to international adoption

Read this refreshing article by Ms. Wegner first on the Voices for Vietnam Adoption Integrity blog and then noticed that she is the newest member at Ethica.

I think about Little Guy (as a hypothetical, of course; he is practically an adult at this point). Under the current internationally-accepted definition, he would be classified as a “single orphan”, having lost his mother.

He would *not* be eligible for international adoption.

With the new law, he might be. And although he might get a new family overseas, he would be ripped away from the only biological family he has.

At my core, I am not okay with this.

Blogging and All That Comes with It

Admittedly, it’s been quite a while since I offered up any substantial blog post. In fact, there’s a noticeable gap in posts on this blog from October 2008 to May 2009. You could almost call it my own Lost Weekend.

To quote from the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

I plan to fill in the blanks as the year goes on.

Epitome of ‘White Privilege’

There was ‘Joe the Plumber’ from Ohio last year…

Now, there’s Katy Abram from Pennsylvania this year…

Seems to me that if you appear to be just a down-home, all-American with a palish skin tone and a big mouth, you automatically qualify to have your half-baked opinions broadcast to the public.

This is obviously not the first incarnation of White privilege we’ve seen of in this country, nor will it be the last.

It’s just sad how American society continues to be so lemming-like even after close to 300 years of trying to right some wrongs.

So Yung Kim’s Editorial in Conducive Magazine

Trading In Babies

Transnational adoption is a thriving global business. Its success and lack of regulation created a profit motive for child trafficking. Writer, activist, and adoptee filmmaker, So Yung Kim recommends reorganizing the transnational adoption industry in order to protect the rights of children. Domestic and international adoptees are already coming together to discuss options and partner on policy issues. Kim also proposes more coalition building between adoptee groups and other collectives fighting for the basic rights of all people.

Hilbrand Westra’s editorial in Conducive Magazine

Hilbrand Westra, chairman of United Adoptees International, has recently had an editorial published in Conducive Magazine:

Saving children from starvation and death will always make news headlines. In the case of adoption, especially intercountry adoption, this is far from the reality most of the time. What once was presented as a last resort for children without parents has become a global enterprise where children seemingly are sold to the highest bidder under the supervision and agreement of involved nations.

UAI is a veritable warehouse of adoption news and views.

Jane Jeong Trenka’s essay in Conducive Magazine

An essay by Jane Jeong Trenka, author of a new book, Fugitive Visions, has just been published in Conducive Magazine. It has the great title of Transnational Adoption and the “Financialization of Everything”.

Here’s an excerpt:

When people talk about the “reform” of intercountry adoption, it is often couched in terms of eliminating the monetary incentive that drives it.  If this truly can be done, mass transnational adoption as we know it, which transports tens of thousands of children a year to foreign countries, would be almost completely wiped out.  Transnational adoption would only exist for a very few special cases, as recommended by international conventions.  The mass production of adoptees would give way to real social welfare programs that support unwed mothers with childcare, education, and adequate monthly stipends for daily necessities in countries like South Korea.  People who claim to care about children and unwed mothers would heavily support family preservation programs instead of opening new exploitable markets in places like Ethiopia as soon as other “sending countries” start to shut off the supply.

Trenka is also a member of TRACK (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea), a Korean adoptee advocacy group based in Seoul. The group is dedicated to ensuring Korean adoptees have equal representation in the decision-making process of adoptions from South Korea to foreign countries, as well as open access to their birth and family history records.

Follow the link to their petition, Adoptee Right to Participate in Korean Adoption Law Revision, and sign it if you got a second.

Brutality in Brno

The video above shows Vietnamese students, who attend Charles University in Prague, having a good time at a party. This is in direct contrast to what happened to Hoang Son Lam in Brno, Czech Republic in January 2009.

According to English-language news accounts, Lam was arrested after a “a night-time house search”, taken to a local jail and then struck repeatedly and finally stabbed to death by a police officer, while two other officers stood by and watched. I haven’t found very many specifics about the reasons for the house search or Lam’s arrest.

The Vietnamese have had a long presence in eastern Europe, dating back to the Cold War when the Vietnamese government and other Eastern Bloc governments exchanged academics and laborers in the spirit of Socialist Brotherhood.

However, ever since the Wall fell in 1989, the Vietnamese who stayed in Europe and tried to eek out a living there and those who emigrated there over the years have always been in a precarious position, economically, legally and socially. And, like many an immigrant group before them, there have been those who have assimilated successfully, based mainly on securing positions in higher education and rapid bi-lingualism, and those who haven’t, based mainly on their perceived temporary usefulness as exploitable labor and unwelcome Otherness.

For all their accomplishments in their respective adopted countries, the Vietnamese immigrant is still looked upon as the thorn in the side of society. Most people can overlook this awkwardness and go on about their lives; other people, like this police officer, think they should take the law into their own hands and snuff out the life of someone who deserved nothing less than justice.

Bauxite Fight

It’s disquieting how certain people in authority squash healthy public debate because they know they will never win the argument based on facts and logic. Authorities like these hide behind their euphemisms like “law and order” and “keeping the peace” and have the supposed offenders locked behind bars or cruelly executed.

Authoritarian, there it is.

So, when I heard about a lawyer named Lê Công Định in Vietnam who was charged with conspiring “with domestic and foreign reactionaries to sabotage the Vietnamese state” I had to look into it. This information popped up on my radar via the U.S. State Department email list that I subscribe to.

Here’s what the main point of contention is: Bauxite Mining

Bauxite is an aluminum ore used to make aluminum. As we all know, aluminum can be found in many of our everyday products. So, we should know how valuable of a commodity it is.

And, that brings me to the fight between Mr. Lê Công Định and the authorities that is taking place in Vietnam. The authorities seem to be more interested in short-term gain than long-term national interests.

Lê Công Định had the audacity to represent people who disagreed with the authorities’ plan to have areas of the country mined for bauxite without putting much forethought into the dire environmental and human consequences.

Now, here’s where the conspiracy charge comes from: Lê Công Định is said to have been associating with Nguyen Si Binh from the People’s Action Party of Vietnam and possessed literature from a Vietnamese-American group called Viet Tan (Vietnam Reform Party). Of course, the socialist Vietnamese government will label any movement outside of itself as “reactionary”. Now, that’s not to say any one of these groups don’t necessarily fit into the political reality of reactionary thought and practice. But, that’s a whole other can of worms to deal with later.

Viet Tan does present a pretty convincing argument, though, concerning the environmental degredation that is naturally caused by bauxite mining. Take a look at its PowerPoint presentation:

BAUXITE MINING IN VIETNAM: AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

So, what will become of Mr. Lê Công Định? We’ll just have to wait and see. But, now that he’s on the State Department’s radar perhaps more people will become wise to how authoritarianism, whether it be in Vietnam or the U.S., is a blight on all of us.