The Devil's Ballroom: Living in the uninhabitable

‘The Devil’s Ballroom’ was how Roald Amundsen described a part of the Antarctic due to its precarious and often deathly ice and crevasses. One hundred years ago this month, Amundsen and his Norwegian team became the first humans to reach the South Pole. Leaving many failed attempts in their wake, he struggled across 500 miles of ice to reach the pole exactly five weeks before his great rival, the British explorer, Robert Falcon Scott. Nowadays when we read or see things about Antarctica it is generally to do with one of two things...endless footage of penguins on shows like the BBC’s Frozen Planet or else books and documentaries about the Age of Polar Exploration. What seems virtually neglected to me is the ongoing experience of the people who actually live there now. At any one time there are between 2,000 and 5,000 people living in Antarctica. Most of these people are of course researchers and scientists. Apart from the work that they are doing, what is their experience of living in the coldest, driest, windiest and most uninhabitable place on Earth? My interest in this subject was first sparked a year ago when I came across an advertisement in National Geographic magazine: ‘Cleaner wanted: Antarctica. Please send CV to...etc.’ I had to ponder this for a while because I don’t think many of us see Antarctica as a place with real people. We are suffused with images of its extraordinary wildlife but surely people can’t live there...?

This giant continent, twice the size of Australia, was the last place on Earth to be explored. For centuries it existed only in myth. In antiquity it was known as Terra Australis (Southern Land) but nobody was totally sure it existed until a sighting from sea by a Russian expedition in 1820. However, Antarctica was simply too difficult an environment to conquer for many decades. In some ways it was the Moon of the late nineteenth century- How can we possibly conquer this strange planet, this ethereal netherworld? The great Anglo-Irish explorer, Ernest Shackleton once said, ‘I seemed to vow to myself that someday I would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till I came to one of the poles of the earth, the end of the axis upon which this great round ball turns’. Since the days of polar endeavour, Antarctica has become a vital centre of scientific research. Today there are several thousand people living there, mostly working in the various scientific stations. Most people come to stay for one summer (October to March) and one winter (April to September) but many will remain for two years or more.

Most of the people who work in stations such as Halley (UK) or McMurdo (USA) are oceanographers, glaciologists, climatologists and lots of other ‘ologists’. But of course there are plenty of support staff too like the cleaner mentioned above, cooks and technicians (to apply for work, visit the British Antarctic Survey website (www.antarctica.ac.uk/employment). McMurdo station houses several hundred people in two and four person bedrooms. Due to the twenty four hour daylight in the summer, the windows are sealed with aluminium foil. There is a large cafeteria which only serves non-fresh food due to the deficiency of any vegetation (the last supply of food for the winter season arrives in February). The rule in the cafeteria is ‘All you can eat but eat what you take’ due to the challenge of waste disposal. Because of strict conditions, waste is put in an on-site incinerator where the residual ash is collected and removed from the continent by ship. Many of the stations have a sauna, not for luxury purposes (there’s no spa!) but rather to allow the field scientists to warm up after their days work. The coldest temperature on earth was recorded in Antarctica in the early 1980’s: -89 °C.  In one of the Russian stations there is an Orthodox church with a priest who works on a one year contract before being replaced by his successor. There appears to be a strong sense of community in these bases. Many of the people living there are separated from their families. This must make things very difficult especially since they are essentially stranded for the entire winter. However, the spirit of ‘everyone mucking in’ is what prevails. In Rothera, one of the many British stations, everybody must take their turn on night duty. The purpose of night duty is to ensure that the electricity supply to the computer systems that are engaged in ongoing scientific analysis is maintained. Most of the stations have pubs which, not unlike our part of the world, is where most of the socialising is done. In fact, in the British stations there is a semi-formal station dinner on Saturday nights which is the eagerly anticipated event of the week. In the winter season the people who remain onsite are literally closed off from the rest of the world. The last airplane leaves in February and physical contact with the rest of the world is impossible until October. Darkness pervades for twenty four hours a day for several months. This can have an alarming affect on people’s personalities, often leading to conflict. This lack of sunlight can cause a chemical imbalance in the brain called T3 Syndrome. Regulars to Antarctica call it ‘Going Toast’. In some cases this has led to clinical insanity. A doctor always remains in residence. Why do people want to live here? For most it is because their work brings them. For others like Justin, a former chef in one of the Antarctic stations, he says, ‘Having a compass to point 360 degrees offering  endless choices of directions in which to travel provides comfort to those questioning their paths, indeed having a GPS makes it even easier to assess your whereabouts  in our world. The big question is not so much where I am…it’s where I’m going’.

The most intriguing area is the Argentinean Base, Esperanza, located on the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Antarctica is similar to the shape of a baby jellyfish. Esperanza is at the end of the ‘tentacle’. This appears to be the area of the continent that most resembles what we know as a village. Built in 1952, there are 43 buildings in total, including 15 very pretty orange and yellow houses. The South Americans seem to take Antarctic habitation more seriously than their neighbours as many of the scientists bring their entire families with them to live here. As a result there is a school in Esperanza with two teachers. It even has its own radio station! The motto of this base seems to sum up the whole notion of habitation in this strange place: ‘Permanence- an act of sacrifice’.

Antarctica is a very curious place politically. Who owns Antarctica? The Antarcticans? Well, of course there are and have never been any native people. Anyone who lives there comes from another sovereign state. In essence, nobody owns Antarctica. In order to deal with a continent that is so valuable but which nobody can lay absolute claim to, the Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1959. This document has now been signed by 48 countries. The treaty ensures that Antarctica maintains its function as a place of science and natural beauty, that nuclear and military activity are prohibited, and that mineral mining is prevented. Even though the treaty doesn’t recognise any territorial claims, there are currently eight countries which have ‘appropriated’ slices of the cake for themselves. Australia was greedy and grabbed the largest slice. Others include Britain, Chile, Argentina and France. Some of the claims actually overlap which has led to diplomatic conflict in the past. In my research I discovered that some countries have gone to extreme lengths to assert their sovereignty over their wedges of land. Up to 2009 there had been eleven babies born on the continent, all of them in the Argentinean and Chilean areas. Critics suggest that some of these births have been a deliberate attempt to embolden national territorial rights.

Because nobody has sovereignty over Antarctica, the legal situation is relatively ambiguous. Everybody must stick to the boundaries defined in the Antarctic Treaty. However, the laws enshrined in this don’t seem to cover the types of legal issues which would normally arise in a regular Western country, like theft, murder etc. Therefore, some of the eight countries that claim territorial sovereignty apply their own country’s laws to their ‘wedges’. For example, any crime committed within 50 kilometres of an Argentinean base must be judged under the Argentinean legal system in Tierra del Feugo, a nearby island dependency of Argentina. The United States places their own marshals in Antarctica to ensure that US law is upheld in the areas around their bases. Because there is no single system of legislature to govern the entire continent there have been some tricky cases. In 2000 an Australian astrophysicist, Rodney Marks died of methanol poisoning in Antarctica. It was deemed questionable as to whether this man was murdered or whether he took the poison out of his own free will. Due to the jurisdictional conflicts at play in Antarctica it was impossible to issue warrants for American witnesses to the death. Because it happened during the Antarctic winter, there was no way in or out of the South Pole so his body was kept in a freezer for several months until an airplane could safely reach them. It has been impossible to determine whether there was foul play or if a prank went wrong or indeed to reach any solution to this case due to the absence of an inclusive legal system. To this day nobody knows the circumstances of Marks’ death. The case has been closed. At the time, the media labelled it ‘the first murder in Antarctica’. If serious incidents like this occur in the future there will need to be an international consensus on a legal system for the continent.

Antarctica is an anomaly. It is the fifth largest continent in the world. Nobody owns it. It has no native people. People live there but not for longer than a few years. It survives politically on the international cooperation framework laid out in the Antarctic Treaty. As we see from the Rodney Marks case, sometimes this international cooperation fails to exist. It is a microcosym of the world. People from a diverse number of countries are working side by side, extending the breath of human knowledge. From the American station, McMurdo Base, there is a view of Captain Scotts hut which he sheltered in with his team for a period in the early 1900’s. There is a reference to a contractor working in Antarctica in 1998, known as ‘Nero’,  on the blog Big Dead Place. He says ‘As I looked at the primitive hut with a stomach full of bacon burgers, a cold Guinness in hand, a Marlboro hanging from my mouth, and a towel clinging from my naked body as I had just stepped from the sauna, I tried to imagine Scott and his crew looking up at me. Their bellies bloated, their skin burnt by cold, and a pot of smoking seal blubber bubbling on the stove: their historic struggle mocked by my comfortable state’. While living conditions remain difficult and alien to us, they have changed immeasurably since December 1911, when Scott and Amundsen crawled very slowly across those vast plains of icy wilderness in search of the last great unknown: the South Pole.

Some sources and links:

British Antarctic Survey: www.antarctica.ac.uk/

Australian Antarctic Division: http://www.antarctica.gov.au/

Cool Antarctica: http://coolantarctica.com/Community/mcmurdo/mcmurdo_base_antarctica.htm

Chef on ice: http://chefonice.com/

Big Dead Place: http://www.bigdeadplace.com/

Live South Pole webcam: http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/spwebcam.cfm

Antarctica Online: http://www.antarcticaonline.com/culture/culture.htm

Men’s Journal Magazine: http://www.mensjournal.com/death-at-the-south-pole

How can gay rights exist without the seperation of church and state? Well...they can't.

A 17th century painting of Mahmud and Ayaz. The love of the Sultan (in red) for his Turkic slave (in green) is part of Islamic legend. Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art

In Hillary Clinton’s recent speech to the United Nations she delivered America’s most comprehensive endorsement of gay rights to date.  ‘No practice or tradition trumps the human rights granted to all’. Indeed, the UN itself passed its first ever resolution recognising the human rights of gay people worldwide by 23 votes to 19 this year. For many years the emphasis in this issue has been placed on the notion of rights. There is a fundamental lack of clarity here.  The term ‘human rights’ is consistently bandied about in popular culture but we must ask ourselves forthrightly what exactly a ‘right’ is and where it comes from. Currently, in many countries ‘rights’ must fit within the parameters of religious doctrine or in the specific case of some Muslim countries, Sharia Law. Therefore the notion of a ‘right’ in one culture may well differ significantly to that in another. Only when the interplay between government policy and religion can be clarified can we begin to see the necessity of a concrete separation of church and state, which has to be the biggest obstacle of all with regard to LGBT tolerance. Gay rights or a lack of gay rights are a direct consequence of this relationship. 

A ‘human right’ is a right that is believed to belong to every person. The whole notion of human rights is something that is constantly evolving to encompass more and more groups. In the early nineteenth century these rights did not extend to those embroiled in slavery. Until the second half of the twentieth century these rights did not extend to black people in many countries. Amnesty International would argue that women’s rights are paltry or non-existent in several Muslim countries (excluding more progressive states such as Turkey of course). For example, stoning still exists as a form of punishment (for women) in cases of adultery in Iran. The countries which endorse the most extensive human rights are the countries which are the most secular. These countries may have religious citizens but their governments create their agenda on a non-religious framework. France has a complete separation of church and state. Many liberals criticize the French model as going too far in the sense that its government is almost trying to neutralise any hint of religiosity by banning the public wearing of the burqa. The British government recognised civil partnerships several years ago while the Church of England dithered on the issue. The Irish government, for so long in thrall to the whip of the Catholic Church, has undergone a seismic shift away from that formerly potent influence. Who would have thought in sixties Ireland that one day divorce would be legalised in this country, let alone civil partnerships! The Catholic influence still manages to sway government policy on abortion however. Ireland is among a very small handful of European countries that has remained steadfast on this issue. 

What we see here is a very clear pattern: the greater the separation of church and state, the greater the extension of human rights. Ireland is a perfect example of this. With the collapse of the Catholic Church’s power in the second half of the twentieth century, we have seen an enormous increase in rights for all people in this country (the right to divorce, the right to be homosexual, the protection of children’s rights). The United States also follows this model. As late as 1952, homosexuality was still listed as a disorder in the American Psychiatric Association. Things began to change with the increase in distance between religiosity and policy and scientific evidence that homosexuality is a healthy interplay of biology and environment and therefore a normal variant of sexuality. 

The major problem is that the countries in which gay rights are at their most negligible are the countries in which there remains an active relationship between church and state. This is very true in the case of several Middle Eastern Islamic countries.  Just as the discrimination of gay people in historic  Europe stemmed from the teachings of the Bible, so the redundancy of rights in places like Saudi Arabia and Iran stem from the teachings of the Qu’ran. In her speech, Hillary Clinton calls on all countries to recognise the rights of gay people. However she also states that our religions ‘are a source of inspiration and compassion toward our fellow human beings’. There is a serious dichotomy at play here. It is not possible to have rights for gay people while also following strictly the teachings of Catholicism or Islam. Both of these religions are very clear on their stance towards homosexuality. While the two religions accept that same sex desires exist naturally, they both severely condemn the carrying out of any homosexual activity. The Qu’ran says "Kill the one that is doing it and also kill the one that it is being done to". Following from this, countries which derive their laws from the Qu’ran such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauretania, Sudan and Yemen all still carry the death penalty for homosexual activity. Since the 1979 revolution The Boroumand Foundation has recorded 107 executions of citizens for homosexual activity in Iran. Many human rights organisations would put this figure in the thousands.  This policy is in accordance with Sharia law. Therefore how could a country like this possibly even consider giving ‘rights’ to gay people if it remains strictly religious? The absolute vilification of homosexual activity is entrenched in the doctrine which in turn feeds the law. The Bible says "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives” (Leviticus 20:13 NAB). However, Christian countries, with the exception of a few such as Uganda, don’t derive their laws (on homosexuality) from scripture any longer of course. Therefore, if we want human rights for gay people we cannot rely on a country whose government policy and laws derive heavily from the teachings of the Qu’ran or the Bible. This is why Hillary Clinton’s focus in her address to the United Nations is misplaced. She and others talk endlessly of rights for homosexuals. Rather the focus should be on encouraging the aforementioned countries’ governments to steadily erode their relationship to religion. Western countries have succeeded in granting human rights to gay people through a progressive attrition of religion’s role in determining their government’s policies and laws. Rights for gay people will never exist in countries such as Iran until they abandon religious dogma. This has successfully been achieved in Europe and look at the fulfilment and happiness it has brought to hundreds of thousands of people across this continent. This could not have been achieved without the bravery and willingness of leaders to abandon Christian teaching on this issue. Rights cannot be tackled until the church/state problem is dealt with. 

The perennial liberal question arises as to how we can support gay rights while being against Islamophobia.  It can be difficult to resolve the inherent conflict between advocating human rights and appearing derogatory towards another cultures belief system (I suppose the quote from Clinton above was her attempt to ingratiate herself with the religious right). Not for a moment am I suggesting that Islam is redundant. What I am suggesting is that there doesn’t need to be a dilemma here. What could be advocated is a system where religious beliefs are respected but government social policy is exempt from the tentacles of dogma. As Gary Younge said in a 2010 Guardian article, ‘Gay rights are human rights...they should be subordinated to no religion’. If Hillary Clinton and the US State Department want to truly progress the liberal agenda and further the rights of gay people then this is the issue they should be tackling, especially in countries such as Uganda, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Instead she says ‘it is rare that our religions are in conflict with the protection of human rights’. This could not be further from the truth.