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kataang-dungeon · 3 years

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Beautiful No Matter What

When a new beauty trend starts to increase in popularity, Katara struggles with her image of herself.

Rated: M

Word count: 1891

Read here on ao3.

ooo

It starts out as a new trend, mostly in the larger cities where more people reside, and in the areas where news comes quickly. Katara hears it first in Ba Sing Se, because of course she does. Of all the places she has been, this city is by far the most baffling. She guesses that she should not be surprised when she hears the first giggles and whispers on the streets.

"Oh Liling, your breasts are so big! They look so much better than mine," exclaims a rather prissy-looking woman. "I bet Diu will love them, especially in that dress you're wearing tonight."

At first, Katara thinks it is ridiculous. She thinks nothing of it. Then, she passes the winding districts in the Lower Ring on her way to help heal at a clinic with neglected funding. She sees drawings and pinups for sale in back corners, lewd imagined pictures of women with breasts popping out of their blouses, cleavage bigger than she has ever seen in person. Men salivate over them, turning in coin for a picture or two, and some of the wealthier ones even commissioning paintings of women in provocative poses through their servants.

She hates it, thinks it is demeaning to women. She scoffs at the idea. Still, she cannot help but notice that as the months pass by, more and more women walk with their chests puffed out, backs straighter, shoulders high. Everywhere she and Aang travel, she sees padding in local markets and shops for enlarging breast size and giving the illusion of a heftier bosom. Dresses with extra pieces of fabric sewn into the front become heavily advertised.

By the time half a year passes and summer arrives, the trend has even reached Kyoshi Island, a feat that Katara thinks could have never happened. Girls in their battle armor compare sizes and snicker when something looks particularly flattering on one of them. Katara is shocked when she hears one of Suki's girls say, "I only like women with breasts big enough for me to squeeze, of course!" when she is asked for her preferences. "If they're too small, it's not fun at all!"

She is not bothered by it except for at that moment, ever so briefly. She thinks that this could not be the new standard of beauty now, not when no one has cared about this before. But she supposes seven years after the war should be enough for people to find other things to worry about.

Aang latches onto her hand as the two of them walk through the streets of the capital city in the Fire Nation. The caldera rises around the buildings and pavement, casting a perpetual shadow upon them that serves as permanent shade in such a hot country.

She is content, her arm swinging with Aang next to her. They pick a place to eat that serves Aang’s favorite spicy potato curry.

She hears it then, the whispers that she dreads, the judging ones. They have followed her for years since she and Aang began dating. Sometimes, it is Aang they criticize. An Air Nomad taking a Water Tribe woman as a significant other, and he is bald at that. Other times, it is her they make snide remarks at. “That Water Tribe wench is only with him because he’s the Avatar. She’s taking advantage of his status,” is something she has heard.

Usually, they do not bother her. They bother neither of them. She and Aang love each other too much for things so trivial as what other people think to cause them to wedge apart.

But Katara listens anyway when a gaggle of people at a nearby table make their presence known.

“How crude of the Avatar to take such a hideous woman to bed,” laughs someone. The voices sound like they belong to young adults or teenagers, and perhaps of noble birth.

“Yeah, imagine Shi bringing that home!” laughs another. “Her boobs are the size of my pinky finger!”

“A piglet couldn’t even suck on one,” adds someone else.

She sees how Aang reacts first. His fingers start to curl, and she can tell he is trying to hold his anger in. The other table is not exactly subtle. But before he can say or do anything, Katara stands, her chair toppling over behind her.

A fire burns in her chest, her cheeks are hot with embarrassment, and she storms out of the restaurant without another word.

She makes it back to the palace, unaware that she has thrown open the doors to their chamber until she has already gone to the bathroom to furiously untangle her hair from its braid. She hears footsteps run behind her, and then Aang stands behind her. She can see the worried expression on his face in the mirror.

“Katara,” he starts, but she cuts him off.

“I’m going to bed,” she states, finally throwing her hair tie on top of the countertop. She pivots into their room and grabs her sleep clothes.

“It’s still sunset,” Aang speaks again. The door to their bathroom shuts. “Please, Katara. You know they were out of line. You’re—”

She swivels around to face him, mouth in a scowling line. “You heard them. I’m ugly and my breasts are too small and—”

Aang tries to grab for her flailing hands. Her sleep clothes fall to the floor. “You never cared about looks before,” he says. His eyebrows are scrunched together. “And you know that no matter what you say, you’re still the most beautiful person in the world to me.”

A tiny part of her wants to burst with affection for him because she knows he is right, and she knows he means it. Yet, all those months of being shown that she is not desirable enough, that she isn’t pretty enough—sinks into her head and suddenly all she knows is that all those things are true. And if they are true, she is not enough for him.

She wants more than anything to be enough for Aang.

Tears prickle at the corners of her eyes before she can stop them. She hastily begins to wipe them away, but Aang is there again. His hands on her face, thumbing her cheeks.

“You’re beautiful, Katara,” he murmurs. So soft. “I promise.”

Her breath heaves. “But what if I’m not?” she asks no one in particular. “I am small-chested, and people are more attracted to larger chests and—”

“And nothing,” Aang insists. His eyes are upon her. They sparkle with adoration. “It doesn’t matter to me. You’re perfect just the way you are.” He pauses to press a kiss to her forehead. Then, lowly, he says, “I can show you exactly how perfect.”

Their gazes meet, and she remembers just who she is with.

He guides her in a slow circle, a gentle dance. The sun sets through the window, and they move to their own tune. His hands are on her shoulders, asking for permission. She shudders when he makes his promise to her again, that she is beautiful no matter what.

He slides the fabric of her tunic down one of her arms and kisses her shoulder. He slides the other sleeve down to her elbow and his lips are on the crook of her neck. Her tunic pools on the floor and she is left with her trousers and undergarments on.

He looks at her, the fading sunlight lining his face, his strong jaw, and there is desire there. She feels it.

Still, she crosses her arms over her chest, covering the bindings that hide her breasts from him. She should not be afraid to bare herself to him. They have done this and more before. The lingering notions of shame grasp at her thoughts. She looks away.

“Katara,” Aang says. He brings her face closer to his until they are but a breadth from each other.

And that is all it takes.

He moves her so that she sits on the edge of the bed. His fingers find the fasteners of her bindings and unlatch them. In his hands he cups the sides of her, trails butterfly kisses in between her breasts, hovers over her stomach.

His touch is magic, melts something inside of her that she did not know was festering. He makes her feel like a panda lily that blossoms in its rarity on the cone of a volcano. A pinprick of loveliness even in the depths of destruction.

He lavishes her with his fingers, moves up her torso so that he kisses every part of her. He gently sucks on her nipples, one at a time, until they are swollen and wet and turgid with want.

His teeth graze her chest, and she feels him smile into her. He enjoys this, and it fills her with glee.

“Do you see how perfect you are?” he mutters, “How lovely you are?” The tip of his tongue then subsequently peeks out to the side of her breast.

She bites her bottom lip, trying not to moan her delight.

He has always made love to her well, but something about this time is different. He focuses solely on her, emphasizing the parts of her that she had started to hate. When he touches her, it is both with ease and affection. He does not move to remove her trousers, and somehow, that makes her want him more.

“Aang I—” she begins, quivering, “Please.”

His hands are on her back, and he finally moves so that she is laying down on the mattress. His body is so close to hers that she can feel his hardness against her leg.

His nibbles her breasts again and she groans.

“Tell me how beautiful you are,” he gently commands. He kisses her wrist, the inside of her elbow, her thigh. He moves up again, so they are looking each other in the eye. “Tell me,” he practically begs.

She shivers and shakes her head. “I can’t.”

Aang sucks a nipple again, teasing at the drawstrings of her trousers. He glances upward, waiting for her reply.

Katara feels the warmth building in her core, the wetness between her legs. She sees the pleading in his expression, the ripe and raw emotion in the way he looks at her. He holds himself back from her, and it is all she can take. She wants more.

She rises in a rapid motion until she crashes against him. Her arms are around his neck, her lips locked against his. She pulls away only for a second to say, “I’m beautiful,” before she is on him again.

She says it because she needs him. She says it because if anyone can see the magnificence in anyone it is Aang.

They fall to the floor, and he laughs because he has won. She believes him wholeheartedly now as her underwear and trousers disappear below her knees, and he adores her again. The way he loves her at this moment makes her remember that this is one of the many reasons she too loves him.

Aang makes her love herself.

When her back arches and she is thrumming with pleasure on the floor that evening, she forgets for a moment that anyone could make her feel inadequate when she has a man that can make her feel everything but that.

#body worship #fornication scrolls #mod mooning

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ask-iamnotanalicorn · 3 years

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Previous: The Discord Timeline

The Industrial Devolution Timeline:

The road to economic domination was creeping and insidious.

First, Nightmare Moon returned. Celestia and Cadance were able to subdue her, locking her in a (very comfortable) prison while Celestia sought a way to free her sister of the evil influence warping her mind. With the monarch so distracted and Princess Cadance struggling to take up the slack, a few opportunistic entrepreneurs began getting their roots into the market.

Then the Crystal War began, dividing Celestia’s and Cadance’s attention even further. The Changelings attacked, sowing destruction and distrust until Cadance defeated their queen. Tirek cut a swath through the countryside before being stopped, increasing the economic struggles. It was as if a domino of assaults on the Equestrian daily life had started, with none able to stop the ever-larger dominoes from toppling.

Celestia was terribly injured during the final fight that destroyed King Sombra. Luna finally overcame her rage and the parasitic magic fueling it, but went into seclusion out of shame and a desire to tend to her wounded sister. Cadance’s focus was split between post-war rebuilding in Equestria, assisting the confused, freed, and much-distrusted crystal ponies with stabilizing their crippled city, and tending to her own first child. With their leaders so distracted and the country still reeling from so many attacks, ponies desperately reached out for any kind of financial and necessities stability.

Perfectly fertile soil for the country’s most hostile economic takeover in its history.

Flim and Flam’s tactics were simple yet effective: move in wherever large numbers of companies had collapsed and fill the void with simple, cheap necessities that anypony could afford. As their finances grew, they began to expand, beating out surrounding competition with their rock-bottom prices until they could either buy out or crush their competitors. They continued this strategy further and further out, their influence spreading like hives across Equestria until hardly any retailers of food, drinks, household goods, small machine parts, and pretty much every other goods reseller below industrial level still operated. (Although who knew what the future might hold for FlimFlam Industries?) Once competition decreased to almost nill, they raised their prices to just barely affordable, swelling their already full pockets.

By the end of the Crystal War, they had such a grip, so much financial and political power, that even if the princesses should realize the toxic hold this company has on the market, it will be a long road back to rebalancing the economy. The country has, regrettably, come to rely on Flim Flam Industries, and their stranglehold would not be easily broken.

Sales always dreamed of being a traveling salespony. He’d even gotten a taste of it before the war. But now... well, there was no one to sell for. Companies kept dying out from under him. And if it weren’t bad enough that FFI already sold cheap, unexciting product options, the further lack of competition gave them even less incentive to TRY. They could cut costs on everything from packaging to flavor to color options; there was absolutely no consideration for variety or improvement or innovation. Soon everything in those blasted pop-up depots came in bland, uniformly labeled containers, with names like FLOUR and SOAP and TOWELS. There was no ART to it, and worst of all, no heart. And certainly no need for a door-to-door sales technique - not when F&F Depots were on every corner and people already had little choice but to get their goods from them.

So that’s how Sales ended up here, running one of those blasted depots. It is barely salesponyship, but it was still the closest thing he could find to his special talent. Meanwhile pollution and unchecked labor laws are creeping out from the cities, and farms are being consumed for their timber and factory locations. Quills & Sofas went under, leaving Sales’ father without a job and one more worry for Salespitch. Everypony prays that Celestia would heal, that Cadance would realize the depths of what was happening and make some move to stop it, that even the once-evil Princess Luna rumored to be tending her sister in the castle would take a stand. But for now, FFI is taking full advantage of the rulers’ distraction and obliviousness to tighten their hold on the country’s economy. Sales works and keeps his head down; it’s too great an issue for one pony to tackle, especially a pony whose only real talent is talking.

He tries to remind himself that things could be worse. Despite crummy wages and the soul-deadening monotony of just grabbing standard crap off a shelf when asked, Sales IS making a living. He makes an effort to keep his depot looking like the pony who works there actually cares (a façade FFI has long since abandoned.) Black took up work as a stocker in the store, so at least they get to hang out. Pollution isn’t as bad in Featherhorn (yet), although the deforestation and smog have been spreading nearer. But Sales just can’t get around the fact that there’s a briefcase-shaped hole in his soul where good, honest, smart salesponyship was meant to be. It’s hard not to be bitter and miserable when your purpose has been almost completely taken away from you. Still... if Sales can find a way to get a new company going without being ground under Flim and Flam’s hooves... maybe he can go back to doing what he loves, and the world will feel a little more right again. Fun Facts About The Flim Flam Timeline:

- I got my idea for a total economic takeover from a book 6 of the Pendragon series, “The Quillen Games” by D.J. MacHale. Its setting is a world where a single corporation has such control that they even own the people to an extent, but I didn’t want to go THAT dark (although this is still darker than my initial draft), so I stopped at just owning all of the selling outlets. Lack of competition in capitalism breeds complacency, leading to high prices with minimal improvement or variety. (That book may have also stuck in my mind because it was the first time an author so thoroughly pulled the rug out from under me that I was too depressed to finish the series. I can’t HANDLE that kind of catastrophic reversal, MacHale!!!)

- Sales’s dad, Sales Patter, lost his job as Head of Sales at Quills & Sofas after the company was eaten by FlimFlam Industries. He currently lives at home taking care of Pitch Perfect while Pitch Forward does her best to bring in funding through her competitive high-diving sponsorships. Sales and Black contribute money as well, although Black has a surprisingly well-stocked savings account that he refuses to explain to anyone.

- Flim and Flam offered Sales a job as their company spokespony, mainly because they loved the idea of having an ‘alicorn’ as their mascot. Obviously he turned them down, but he did still grudgingly accept a position at the Featherhorn depot since it’s the closest thing he can find to what he’s good at. (Flim and Flam do still like to give people a show, especially when it comes to the smoke and mirrors they must use to keep the wealthier populace and government from paying too much attention to some of the ways FFI cuts their spending - at the expense of their workers, mostly.)

- I’ve seen others do this timeline harsher; there’s a fimfiction that had an interesting take on Celestia being injured in her fight with Nightmare Moon and then IMPRISONED by Flim and Flam’s company so it could take over, which led to an ever-rising problem with pollution, underage workers, poor labor laws, and backhoof politics. Some of that does exist in this timeline, but I went with a severe injury and seclusion in the palace. The Princesses are still AROUND, but being carefully shielded from the truly dark nature of some of Flim and Flam’s machinations. It may just take someone getting their attention drawn to the right things to start the ball rolling...

- Sales and Patter do team up to create a small startup company, selling goods made by Featherhorn’s citizens to the local area. Black uses his connections as a Royal Service agent to sneak them into the palace, where they get an uber-rare meeting with Princess Celestia, who is blessedly awake enough to recognize the little AI and hear their plight. She convinces Luna, who has been taking care of her this whole time, that something needs to be done. Luna is grossly undereducated about modern economics and business practices, but she pulls Cadance in, and while Cadance works on investigating these horrible labor practices they’ve reported, Luna begins brushing up on her education and offers some protection to Sales’ little company. She does, in fact, find some obscure ancient laws that give them a leg up in the fight against FFI when they inevitably try to buy out, sue, and/or bankrupt Sales’ and Patter’s company into the ground. But they start making some headway.

- It’s a long road back to a balanced market, and much of the work will be done by the Princesses. But the inspiration ponies draw from the changes they see starts the dominoes again - this time, in the direction of positive change.

Next Week: The Wasteland Timeline (finale!)

#mlp ask blog #pony ask blog #my little pony #flim flam brothers #IANAA #salespitch #celestia #cadance #luna

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socialclimber101 · 3 years

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TECHNOLOGY AND ITS SOCIAL IMPACT

Hi Everyone! Let me share with you my insight about the advantage and the disadvantages of technology in our society. I'll also be tackling how to address certain issues by telling true to life stories and understanding present situations of society and technology's impact on it.

TECH LEARNING NOT for Everybody

Fourteen-year-old Jenny Mae Santiago, a grade 11 student, struggles to acquire digital devices and stable internet connection for her modular online classes. Jenny Mae’s parents could not afford to buy her a new mobile phone since their budget is limited. To add to that, they only use old keypad phones as their primary means of communication. Jenny Mae has five (5) siblings and most of the time, she is the one who takes care of her younger siblings’ while her parents are away. Her mother works as a candle maker and her father is a construction worker. Their monthly income is just enough for their daily needs.

Fortunately, their neighbor borrowed an extra android phone for her to use for online classes. But she needs to buy her own sim card and its weekly credits/load. She sells, graham balls through online platforms to provide her weekly load. The promo load with internet costs about 100 pesos ($2) good for 7 days.

Jenny Mae is part of the 28 million Filipino students who have been greatly affected by school closures intended to minimize the spread of COVID-19 and to avoid putting the children at risk as they are one of the identified high-risk groups. Just like Jenny Mae, many students are experiencing inequality in treatment due to poverty; this eventually affected their education since they have no capacity to provide the necessary gadgets for their study.

The deployment of new technologies can exacerbate inequalities instead of reducing them, even in contexts of broad accessibility. Gaps in education can widen, for instance, if new technologies primarily benefit those pursuing tertiary education, or if they disproportionately improve the learning outcomes of children in wealthier households. (World Social Report, 2020)

Technology can be one of the finest tools for fostering sustainable development and new learnings. However, it can also be a hindrance to achieve every child’s dream. It may be cool for those who have more privilege, but for some… it may be the end of their chances of becoming educated.

So how does the world of technology help individuals who cannot afford to buy gadgets? How does it affect those who are the disadvantaged sectors? If technology is provided, do they have strong signal in their area and do they have enough funds to be able to keep subscribing to mobile data?

OPPORTUNITY in TECHNOLOGY

A Twenty-year old Jayson Bartolo, fresh graduate from a state university in Manila, received a phone call from a BPO company for an initial interview. Jayson took the opportunity to go to his first interview. One of the requirements of the company was to have knowledge in Computer Programming. Luckily, Jayson has all the skills and the education for it. He told to the interviewer that he had computer programming subjects during his college days and even flaunted that he has good grades on that subject. Considering that he was a BS Information Technology graduate, he is clearly very much familiar in computer programming and other IT related jobs. So… A week after his interview, he was informed that he got the job.

Nowadays, we know that technology has been found to be very useful; most especially in making personal jobs easy and keeping people productive. Automation helps us accomplish our jobs instantly and save time and energy for other things.

Digital innovation and artificial intelligence are opening up opportunities in sectors such as education, health and banking, with far-reaching implications for equality. The use of the Internet and mobile phones, for instance, is enabling more people in developing countries to access financial services. Open online courses can help democratize access to education. Mobile health applications make health-care delivery and monitoring systems available to underserved areas and populations. Improvements in data availability brought about by new technologies can enhance governance and facilitate participation, helping individuals and groups to voice their opinions and organize on behalf of common causes. (World Social Report, 2020)

Millennials most likely took advantage of the uses of technology in their everyday lives. They spend most of their time in checking their social media accounts, looking at their friends and families’ updates. But for the lucky ones, they were able to use this as a means of finding opportunities. Some use social media to build online businesses that include but are not limited to selling food, gadgets, and beauty products. Some are investing by making more inspiring and not-so inspiring videos to earn through monetary payouts in various social media sites like Facebook and Youtube.

OPPORTUNITY VS INEQUALITY

In the world of work, emphasis has focused largely on the potential implications of technological change for job destruction. Yet technologies usually replace specific tasks, rather than entire jobs. Often ignored is the fact that new technologies also generate new jobs and tasks, including those necessary to use, test, supervise and market new products and services. (World Social Report, 2020)

In reality, the individuals who are highly skilled in the field of technology has the most advantage in earning bigger than regular workers. It may affect those who are in the low-skilled and blue-collar jobs, and worst --- it may result to job reductions because of the change in demand for specific and technical positions. Mainly because, shifting to the use of technology in certain sectors can be a danger to the individuals who are working manually. It would probably lead into massive unemployment due to having so much qualifications in terms of tech skills.

Labour-saving technology such as automation can be a substitute for manual workers and can take over their jobs in an instant. This could be good news for other companies because of lowering their budget to just maintenance fees and increasing productivity in completing tasks. But this could also be the end of the career of many individuals because of the lesser need for manpower.

#technologyvsinequality

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Tuesday, March 30, 2021

‘Vaccine passports’ are on the way (Washington Post) The Biden administration and private companies are working to develop a standard way of handling credentials—often referred to as “vaccine passports”—that would allow Americans to prove they have been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus as businesses try to reopen. The effort has gained momentum amid President Biden’s pledge that the nation will start to regain normalcy this summer and with a growing number of companies—from cruise lines to sports teams—saying they will require proof of vaccination before opening their doors again. The passports are expected to be free and available through applications for smartphones, which could display a scannable code similar to an airline boarding pass. Americans without smartphone access should be able to print out the passports, developers have said. U.S. officials say they are grappling with an array of challenges, including data privacy and health-care equity. They want to make sure all Americans will be able to get credentials that prove they have been vaccinated, but also want to set up systems that are not easily hacked or passports that cannot be counterfeited, given that forgeries are already starting to appear. Other countries are racing ahead with their own passport plans, with the European Union pledging to release digital certificates that would allow for summer travel.

Remote Work Is Here to Stay. Manhattan May Never Be the Same. (NYT) A year after the coronavirus sparked an extraordinary exodus of workers from office buildings, what had seemed like a short-term inconvenience is now clearly becoming a permanent and tectonic shift in how and where people work. Employers and employees have both embraced the advantages of remote work, including lower office costs and greater flexibility for employees, especially those with families. Beyond New York, some of the country’s largest cities have yet to see a substantial return of employees, even where there have been less stringent government-imposed lockdowns, and some companies have announced that they are not going to have all workers come back all the time. In recent weeks, major corporations, including Ford in Michigan and Target in Minnesota, have said they are giving up significant office space because of their changing workplace practices, while Salesforce, whose headquarters occupies the tallest building in San Francisco, said only a small fraction of its employees will be in the office full time. But no city in the United States, and perhaps the world, must reckon with this transformation more than New York, and in particular Manhattan, an island whose economy has been sustained, from the corner hot dog vendor to Broadway theaters, by more than 1.6 million commuters every day.

Billions of Cicadas Soon to Emerge From Underground (NYT) A few months of quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic? That’s nothing for a swarm of cicadas that have been underground since 2004. In the time that the United States has seen the Boston Red Sox break an 86-year World Series drought, five presidential elections, a deadly pandemic and an insurrection, these creatures have been minding their own business, burrowed in the soil. Now billions of cicadas, from a group known as Brood X, are expected to emerge in the next few weeks, just in time to help orchestrate the soundtrack of summer. Brood X is expected to emerge in about 18 states, scientists say.

Against the odds, Cuba could become a coronavirus vaccine powerhouse (Washington Post) Cuban leader Fidel Castro vowed to build a biotech juggernaut in the Caribbean, advancing the idea in the early 1980s with six researchers in a tiny Havana lab. Forty years later, the communist island nation could be on the cusp of a singular breakthrough: Becoming the world’s smallest country to develop not just one, but multiple coronavirus vaccines. Five vaccine candidates are in development, two in late-stage trials with the goal of a broader rollout by May. Should they prove successful, the vaccines would be an against-the-odds feat of medical prowess — as well as a public relations coup — for an isolated country of 11 million that was added back to the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism in the final days of the Trump administration. Cuban officials say they’re developing cheap and easy-to-store serums. They are able to last at room temperature for weeks, and in long-term storage as high as 46.4 degrees, potentially making them a viable option for low-income, tropical countries that have been pushed aside by bigger, wealthier nations in the international scrum for coronavirus vaccines. If Phase 3 trials are positive, Cuban authorities said this week, they would move to a vast “intervention study” that would inoculate almost all the residents of Havana, or 1.7 million people, by May. By August, they would aim to reach 60 percent of the national population, with the rest getting doses by year’s end.

Ukraine wants to show Biden it’s serious about ending ‘oligarch era.’ That’s not so easy. (Washington Post) The word of the moment in Ukrainian politics is “de-oliharkhizatsia” or de-oligarchization: a renewal of the long-held goal—and sometimes only faint hope—to free the country’s political system of domination by the ultrarich. Whether President Volodymyr Zelensky can deliver may set the tone for relations with the Biden administration. “The threat from within [Ukraine] is corruption . . . a lack of institutions that can effectively manage the country,” said Antony Blinken, now secretary of state, during his confirmation hearing in January. “If that threat continues, [it’s] going to be very difficult for them to build a viable democracy.” But Zelensky, a 43-year-old former comedian, has made only limited headway against the oligarchs’ grip since his election two years ago. The oligarchs’ power in Ukraine reaches deep into areas such energy, mining and media—giving a clique of billionaires the clout to shape political and policy decisions. Ukraine is on notice that greater Western aid and international loans are contingent on trimming back their influence. A $5 billion loan deal from the International Monetary Fund is on hold as the Ukrainians try to convince IMF officials that they are serious about tackling corruption.

Inside Myanmar’s Army: ‘They See Protesters as Criminals’ (NYT) Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, which says it has a standing force of up to half a million men, is often portrayed as a robotic rank of warriors bred to kill. Since ousting Myanmar’s civilian leadership last month, setting off nationwide protests, it has only sharpened its savage reputation, killing more than 420 people and assaulting, detaining or torturing thousands of others, according to a monitoring group. On Saturday, the deadliest day since the Feb. 1 coup, security forces killed more than 100 people, according to the United Nations. Among them were seven children, including two 13-year-old boys and a 5-year-old boy. In-depth interviews with four officers, two of whom have deserted since the coup, paint a complex picture of an institution that has thoroughly dominated Myanmar for six decades. From the moment they enter boot camp, Tatmadaw troops are taught that they are guardians of a country that will crumble without them. They occupy a privileged state within a state, in which soldiers live, work and socialize apart from the rest of society, imbibing an ideology that puts them far above the civilian population. The officers described being constantly monitored by their superiors, in barracks and on Facebook. A steady diet of propaganda feeds them notions of enemies at every corner, even on city streets. The cumulative effect is a bunkered worldview, in which orders to kill unarmed civilians are to be followed without question. “They see protesters as criminals because if someone disobeys or protests the military, they are criminal,” said Captain Tun Myat Aung, an officer who defected to the ranks of the anti-coup demonstrators

Thai police vow more protest arrests after nearly 100 detained (Reuters) Thai police on Monday vowed to arrest more people participating in anti-government protests after detaining nearly 100 at a demonstration a day earlier, citing a law restricting gatherings to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Another protest demanding the release of jailed activists is planned for late Monday afternoon, raising prospects for another confrontation with activists calling for an end to military dominance of politics and reform of the powerful monarchy. Dozens of people have been detained at protests in recent months under disease control and public order laws, but Sunday’s protest represented one of the largest number of arrests at a single rally.

Metro Manila, outlying provinces go on lockdown (AP) Philippine officials placed Metropolitan Manila and four outlying provinces, a region of more than 25 million people, back to a lockdown Monday at the height of the Lenten and Easter holiday travel season as they scrambled to control an alarming surge in coronavirus infections. Only workers, government security and health personnel and residents on urgent errands would be allowed out of homes during the weeklong restrictions, which prohibited leisure trips and religious gatherings that forced the dominant Roman Catholic church to shift all its Holy Week and Easter activities online. The renewed lockdown brought President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration under fire for what critics say was its failed handling of the pandemic.

Lebanon could sink like Titanic, parliament speaker says (Reuters) Influential parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri said on Monday that Lebanon would sink like the Titanic if it could not form a government. Prime minister-designate Saad al-Hariri and President Michel Aoun have been at loggerheads over a new cabinet for months, dashing hopes of a reversal of Lebanon’s deepening financial meltdown. Parliament was due to discuss a $200 million emergency fund to pay for fuel for Lebanon’s electricity company. The energy ministry has said there are no funds to pay for imports beyond March. The Zahrani power plant, one of Lebanon’s four main electricity producers, has shut down after its fuel ran out.

Pleas for more aid to Syria (AP) At age 19, Fatima al-Omar is at her wits’ end. In the last year alone, she lost her home to fighting in Syria’s last rebel-held enclave and her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She became the sole breadwinner for her mother, three siblings and grandmother as they moved around between shelters. Then the coronavirus struck, aggravating conditions in northwest Syria just as new fighting had uprooted 1 million people—the biggest wave of displacement in the country’s 10-year war. By late 2020, al-Omar contracted COVID-19, costing her the last job she had picking olives. She hasn’t been able to find work since and is now at risk of another eviction. Despite the worsening humanitarian situation across war-ravaged Syria, it’s been getting tougher every year to raise money from global donors to help people like al-Omar. The aid community is bracing for significant shortfalls ahead of a donor conference that starts Monday in Brussels and is being co-hosted by the United Nations and the European Union. Pledges were already dropping off before the coronavirus pandemic mainly due to donor fatigue. Officials fear that with the global economic downturn spurred by the pandemic, international assistance for Syria is about to take a new hit just when it is needed most. Earlier this month, a U.N. appeal for aid to Yemen, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, was less than 50% funded, in what U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called a disappointment. According to the U.N., 13.4 million people in Syria, more than half the country’s pre-war population, need assistance. That’s a 20% increase from last year.

Whatever Floats the Boat (Foreign Policy) The Ever Given, the super container vessel that ran aground in the Suez Canal last Tuesday was successfully refloated in the early hours of Monday morning following days of excavation attempts. A team of high-powered tugboats appeared to have ultimately made the difference, after days of work from excavators and dredgers to free the ship after it became wedged in the Egyptian sand. The boat will now head north for further inspection. Meanwhile, navigation is to resume “immediately” afterward, according to the Suez Canal Authority. Mohab Mamish, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s adviser for the Suez Canal, said it will take roughly a week to clear the remaining ships out of the canal once the Ever Given is under way. Dealing with the backlog that has accumulated north and south of the canal will likely take more than twice as long. The refloating heads off more economic damage for Egypt, which was losing roughly $15 million in fees for each day the canal was not operational.

While the world tore its hair out over the Suez, Russia saw an opportunity (Washington Post) Russian officials are seizing on the Suez Canal blockage saga to promote its Northern Sea Route, an ambitious infrastructure plan being pushed by President Vladimir Putin that aims to capitalize on the polar ice melt from global warming by opening up Arctic shipping and development. Russia’s Energy Ministry said Monday that the days-long blockage of the canal by Rotterdam-bound Ever Given showed that its Northern Sea Route (NSR) and gas and oil pipelines were reliable, secure and competitive “in comparison to alternative routes.” Russia last year released a sweeping plan to open up the Arctic shipping route, which includes building a fleet of dozens of nuclear icebreakers and other ships, mapping natural resources in the region and developing airports, ports and railways in northern Russia. In 2020, Russia’s meteorological agency said the ice cover in the Arctic sea route had reached a record low.

As Militants Seize Mozambique Gas Hub, a Dash for Safety Turns Deadly (NYT) As gunshots rang out across a port town in northeastern Mozambique on Friday afternoon, nearly 200 people sheltering inside the Amarula Palma hotel confronted a devastating reality: The armed insurgents outside the hotel’s doors had all but taken control of the town and there was no one coming to save them any time soon. For two days, hundreds of insurgents in the gas-rich region had been laying siege to the coastal town of Palma, firing indiscriminately at civilians, hunting down government officials and setting buildings ablaze as security forces tried in vain to repel them. The violence sent thousands of people fleeing, with some rushing to the beach, where a ragtag fleet of cargo ships, tugboats and fishing vessels was ferrying people to safety. But at the hotel, with daylight hours dwindling, the local residents and foreign gas workers who remained faced an impossible choice: Either wait inside, defenseless, for a promised evacuation in the morning, or try to make it to the beach. In a desperate dash, dozens of people crammed into a 17-vehicle convoy and left the hotel for the oceanfront. Only seven vehicles completed the trip. Militants ambushed the convoy after it left the hotel grounds, setting on the occupants of the cars. Many arrived at the beach bloodied. Many never made it at all. American officials said 40 to 50 foreigners alone were feared dead in the attack. By Saturday night the insurgents had completely overrun the town, leaving scores of people unaccounted for and feared dead.

Tree mortality (The Guardian) Since 2010, 129 million trees are estimated to have died in California’s national forests alone. Around the globe, research has suggested that the tree mortality rate in some temperate and tropical forests has doubled or more in recent decades. While normally the life cycle of forests dictates that the ecosystem regrows after forest fires, this is no longer the case. Across the globe, researchers have found that large areas of trees and other plant life have stopped regrowing following wildfires. Forest mortality researchers say while this does not mark the end of the forests, it may well be the end of many forests as we’ve known them. Iconic species such as Giant Sequoias and Joshua trees are succumbing to the effects of climate change in remarkable numbers, while massive ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforest and Siberia’s boreal forests are also suffering. The main factors for increased forest mortality include a hotter climate and increased vulnerability to insects and disease. Researchers have acknowledged ambiguity in their tree mortality predictions, but widespread health problems in forests are prompting a broad and looming sense of disquiet.

#headlines #news

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mikaokii · 3 years

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The Social Dilemma

Technology and social media play a huge role in my daily life as a millennial. This is my way of being updated on the things happening around me especially now that we are experiencing a pandemic and we can’t go out and hang out with our friends and other relatives. Before watching the documentary I used to think that I could not last a day without using my gadgets for social media, most especially because it is very accessible in all sorts of types of gadgets, but after watching the documentary, I could say that I’ll be trying to lessen my screen-time for non essential things. I could see myself being vulnerable into believing fake news being disseminated on social media like the main character being portrayed on the movie. Some of the fake news that are spreading online are very believable and realistic, to the point that you will sometimes believe the fake news so easily. We can easily be manipulated into believing these fake news, which now makes me think twice before sharing these fake news, we should always verify first before believing and worst, sharing these fake news because we can also victimize those who are also not knowledgeable into believing something that is not really true.

As I do the SWOT-PEST analysis, I have realized that the political, economic, and social factors indeed influence my life. For instance, the government and the implementation of the laws made me aware of my surroundings as a citizen of this country. Aside from that, with what is happening in the Philippines in the present generation, the conservation of human rights also made me more conscious of my surroundings nowadays. When it comes to the economic aspect, it also affected me on how I satisfy my needs. In this time of pandemic, I have had several challenges finding ways to pay for some things because I do not have allowance since we are currently online. For the social factor, I must say that I have less time spent on social media nowadays because of school. I am currently affected by this change in terms of my mental and social aspect such as having confidence to communicate with other people. These, especially nowadays, are being affected by the technological factors that I have listed on my PEST analysis. Firstly, there are a lot of technological advancements that are happening recently. This affects the political factors since news can easily reach millions of people around the world. As a result, this technological advancement made me more aware as to what is happening in the country. On the other hand, the economic factors are also affected by the technology since the online market has been spread in cyberspace. This change helped the people to have income at home. Lastly, the social factors are also affected by the technology because social interactions, even if it is lessened because of school works, have been allowed by the technology to happen. It made the world a small place because people from home can talk and communicate with other people be it through chat, email, or calls.

The documentary presented how technological advancement connects and at some point controls us. It presented how people make use of cyberspace excessively. In some aspects, the realizations that I have are similar with what the documentary stated. There are times that being computer literate can be a threat for people because there is no room for improvement. There are also times that as we go through social media, fake news hinders us to walk away from ignorance. That is why computer literacy should not be just limited to proper usage of sites and things, but it should be to the proper way of searching for legitimate sources of information. We should be the one that controls the media, and not the other way around. As I look on the effects that technology brought me, I have realized that technology is there to help us, not to hinder us from learning. With that, proper usage of cyberspace is the key to a better and meaningful life. The social dilemma should make us realize that matter.

Technology plays an important role in our life especially now that we are in the middle of the pandemic. The emergence of the internet has helped people to communicate and make their money through cyberspace. However, despite all the positive things that technology brought to us, there are still negative effects that it had also because of the addiction of people. The documentary showed how the media took control of our lives since the internet is with us in whatever we do. That is why proper handling of things, especially in the face that we show in social media is necessary for us to lessen its effects.

Based on what I’ve watched, the future use of technology could lead into something that can manipulate everyone into believing something that is not true, for the sole purpose of the big industries to create more wealth through advertisements. At first, I believe that it is fair because they are just trying to build their company’s wealth, but I further realized that they do not have the ability to control what kind of content they are disseminating, which creates a space for fake news and propagandas. I also believe that the government will continue to use social media for their citizens to believe in what they want because it is deemed effective for the past few years and this is very alarming. Us citizens should wake up and start being aware of what really is happening and the bad effects of social media. We should start in our small little ways to fight back against these unethical practices that are being used by the big social media companies. I do believe that by starting small, we can achieve something big.

"If you’re not paying for the product, then you’re the product." This line can mean that if something that you’re using is free, they are most likely selling you to different companies through advertisements. With most social media being free for its users, they usually sell your information and also your browsing activities through algorithms to companies and even politicians for their own benefit, to the point wherein they do not control and just disseminate fake news just to be paid. "There are only two industries that call their customers 'users': illegal drugs and software." For me, this line is trying to compare us being the users of social media to those who use illegal drugs. They can both be addictive without us knowing that we’re already hooked and can barely remove social media in our daily lives. "Social media is a marketplace that trades exclusively in human futures.” We came to a point that we’re already selling our lives by devoting most of our time using social media apps. The worst part of this is that we’re not even getting paid. Only those big companies selling our information and those who want us to believe in things that are sometimes not even the truth, are the ones having advantage, leaving our society falling apart. "The very meaning of culture is manipulation." I see this line telling us that when there’s a culture being practiced in a certain community, we tend to be manipulated into practicing their beliefs. We are being forced into fitting ourselves in that culture like what millennials do these days. Everyone wants to be updated to the point wherein we should follow the trend on social media even though it does not even benefit us. We get nothing from being updated, we are just giving away our information and making big companies wealthier.

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theliberaltony · 4 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

President Trump could be in trouble. A lot could still change between now and November, but historically, the strength of the economy is correlated with the electoral strength of the incumbent president, and right now, the economy doesn’t look especially good.

Between mid-March and the end of May, more than 38 million Americans applied for unemployment insurance. And even though the job market has shown some signs of improvement, many Americans are still out of work, and in June more of the people who lost their jobs were laid off permanently. And if the economic recovery progresses slowly — or halts and starts backsliding — it’s likely to drag down Trump’s reelection chances. At the very least, the downturn takes away what had been perhaps his strongest re-election argument.

Even in more normal election years, many voters still worry about the economy. The American National Election Studies, which has tracked public opinion since 1948, has for many years now asked voters what they think is the most important problem facing the country. And in the last three presidential election cycles, Americans have named the economy as their top concern, making it the most frequently cited issue. In 2008 (the last time we had a presidential election amid an economic crisis), 42 percent of Americans said the economy was the most important political problem. Since then, the share citing the economy as their top issue has dropped — it was 32 percent in 2012 and just 11 percent in 2016.

So far in 2020, polls show that anywhere from 1 in 5 to 1 in 3 voters rate the economy as their top concern. But let’s return to 2020 in a moment. So what do we know about these voters?

To be clear, everyone is an economic voter to some extent, according to Michael Lewis-Beck, a professor of political science at the University of Iowa who studies economic voting and comparative politics. His research has found that the economy frequently ranks as the country’s most important problem unless there’s a big war going on. “It’s always at or near the top of the average voter’s agenda,” Lewis-Beck told me. Many voters factor the state of the national economy into their vote even if it’s not the most important issue to them.

But that doesn’t mean all voters prioritize the economy equally. In fact, according to our analysis of ANES data, there are two key traits that tend to correspond with being an economy-minded voter: higher income or a college education. These voters are also more likely to identify as Republican than as Democratic and are more likely to be white or Hispanic than Black.1

First up, as the table below shows, those with household incomes of $100,000 or more have consistently said the economy is the most important problem facing the country at higher rates than those in households making less. In 2008, for instance, only 36 percent of households making less than $50,000 said the economy was the top problem, whereas 51 percent of households making $100,000 or more said the same. In 2016, when all groups were less likely to say the economy was their top concern, that pattern wasn’t as stark, but it was still there.

Wealthier voters tend to prioritize the economy

Percentage of voters who said the economy was the most important problem facing the country

Household Income 2008 2012 2016 $100,000+ 51.1% 37.4% 13.4% $50,000 to $99,999 47.0 35.9 11.3 Less than $50k 35.9 27.7 9.7

Source: American National Election Studies

Next, education. These differences are less pronounced than differences by income level — education levels produce at most an 11-point gap in the last three presidential election cycles. But as you can see in the table below, those with at least a bachelor’s degree or some college education have consistently been more likely to name the economy as their top concern than those with a high school diploma or less. The gap here also narrowed quite a bit in 2016.

More educated voters say the economy is the top problem

Percentage of voters who said the economy was the most important problem facing the country

Level of education 2008 2012 2016 At least a bachelor’s degree 47.3% 37.2% 12.5% Some college or an associate’s degree 44.0 31.3 11.7 High school graduate or less 36.6 28.0 9.1

Source: American National Election Studies

And though the pattern here is a little less consistent here than with either income or education, race and ethnicity also reveal something about which voters care most about the economy. White and Hispanic voters are consistently more likely to put the economy at the top of their list than Black voters. And in 2016, a slightly higher percentage of Hispanic voters than white voters said the economy was their No. 1 issue. Lewis-Beck has found similar trends in his own research, too, describing Hispanics as close to being single-issue voters on the economy.

More white and Hispanic voters worry about the economy

Percentage of voters who said the economy was the most important problem facing the country

Race 2008 2012 2016 White 44.1% 32.3% 11.5% Hispanic 43.1 37.6 12.3 Black 31.9 24.2 6.4

Source: American National Election Studies

There are also meaningful differences between Democrats and Republicans. Larger shares of Republicans than Democrats have rated the economy as the most important issue facing the U.S., although as you can see in the table below, partisan differences were never huge and were much less pronounced in 2012.2

Republican voters tend to put the economy first

Percentage of voters who said the economy was the most important problem facing the country

Party 2008 2012 2016 Republicans/lean Republican 45.6% 33.4% 14.5% Pure independents 35.5 29.3 10.8 Democrats/lean Democratic 40.3 31.0 8.0

Pure independents are those who didn’t lean toward either party.

Source: American National Election Studies

Ultimately, what we know is this: The group of voters who prioritize the economy tends to skew wealthier and more educated — and, often, white or Hispanic and Republican. But the group’s exact size and makeup changes from election to election. For instance, in 2016, just 11 percent of voters said the economy was the most important issue, and that small group overwhelmingly broke for Trump — 60 percent backed him, while only 32 percent backed Hillary Clinton. Whereas in 2008 and 2012, more voters thought the economy was the most pressing issue (42 percent and 32 percent, respectively), but they broke for the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama — 51 percent to 46 percent in 2008 and 51 percent to 47 percent in 2012.

So what do we know about these economy-minded voters and which way they may be leaning in 2020?

First, it’s hard to know exactly how many voters think the economy is the top issue this year, as we don’t have a ton of recent polls. But in three polls from June that asked people about the most important issue affecting their vote, we know that: (i) roughly a quarter of Americans are are naming the economy as the top issue, and (ii) Trump still has an advantage with these voters, leading Joe Biden by varying degrees:

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 20 percent of voters chose the economy as the most important problem facing the country, and these voters narrowly backed Trump, 44 percent to 41 percent.3

An Economist/YouGov poll found 22 percent of voters rated “the economy and jobs” as the most important issue to them, but this survey had Trump with a 44-point lead over Biden (70 percent to 26 percent) with this group.4

And in an Axios/SurveyMonkey poll, Trump had a 27-point lead over Biden (56 percent to 29 percent) among the 33 percent of adults who said that jobs and the economy mattered most to them. More respondents named the economy than any other issue.5

Trump’s advantage with this group of voters makes sense, as polls show they are more likely to be white, higher income and Republican-leaning (just as the ANES survey found in past years); they’re also far more likely to have voted for Trump in 2016, at least according to the SurveyMonkey poll. “Fully 50% of Trump voters single out jobs and the economy as the most critical set of issues right now, more than double the proportion of Biden voters so focused on these concerns,” the pollster wrote of its results. “For Trump voters, no other issue reaches into double-digits.”

But it’s not clear how much this advantage among economy-minded voters actually helps Trump. That’s because these voters are already likely to be a part of Trump’s base, according to Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University. “Voters who prioritize the economy tend to be Republicans, so they’re already inclined to support the president,” said Abramowitz.

The economy might also be a less powerful influence on people’s vote choice now than it has been in the past due to increased partisanship and the fact that opinions of Trump are pretty baked in at this point, so the state of the economy might not change many minds. All of which means that who you’re supporting may say more about whether you rate the economy as your top concern rather than the other way around.

Abramowitz was also skeptical that this “economy-minded” group of voters will expand into a broader coalition because some voters will consider other issues — like the pandemic — more pressing than the economy this year. Voters’ concern about this issue may already be reflected in the fact that health care was either the first or second most popular choice in all three of these recent polls.

As we are already seeing, current events may increase the salience of issues that weren’t on as many voters’ radar in past elections, such as racism and police brutality. As Ipsos wrote about their findings, “Similar to the first two weeks in June, the percentage of respondents who say ‘other’ remains higher than average at 17%. When asked to specify, racism, police brutality, partisanship and the current administration are common themes being reported.”

In fact, Abramowitz told me, he thinks there’s a chance that Trump could even lose some ground among economy-minded voters. For instance, voters already disinclined to support Trump likely didn’t need an economic downturn to sour on the president — the economy was just one of many factors that shaped their opinion. Take Trump’s overall job approval rating: It continues to hover in the low 40s, and his deficit against Biden in national polls is bigger than ever. So if the coronavirus pandemic worsens — cases and deaths are rising in some places right now — it’s possible that this will hurt Trump’s perceived handling of the crisis and drive away some economy-minded voters who were open to voting for him.

Bottom line: It’s not clear what role the economy might play in 2020. In the last three presidential elections, the economy has been the most commonly named top issue for voters (although the share of voters saying its the country’s biggest problem has changed from cycle to cycle). Historically, white voters and voters with higher incomes or more education have been more likely to rank the economy higher than any other issue.

But there’s no reason to think the size and makeup of the economy-minded voters group will look like it has in recent general elections. College-educated white voters have moved dramatically toward Democrats in recent years, and many Americans disapproved of Trump even when the economy was booming. Which means that while this group looks a lot like Trump’s base right now, that could be because non-Trump voters are prioritizing other issues, rather than because Trump is gaining supporters among people who are focused on the economy. So it’s still possible that Trump wins these voters but loses the general election. The questions now are: If economic conditions are still bad come November, how much does that actually hurt Trump? And, of course, how many voters will prioritize the economy over other issues, like police brutality and systemic racism, the COVID-19 pandemic or other major issues?

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Likhitha Butchireddygari

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theuncannytruthteller · 5 years

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THE UNFORGETTABLE NIGERIAN: WEALTH, WEALTH EVERYWHERE

Alhaji Alhassan Dantata (1877 - August 17, 1955) was a Nigerian businessman who was the wealthiest man in West Africa at the time of his death.

HERITAGE

Dantata's father was Abdullahi, a man from the village of Danshayi, near Kano. Dantata was born in Bebeji in 1877, one of several children of Abdullahi and his wife, both of whom were traders and caravan leaders.

Bebeji was on the Kano to Gonja (now in northern Ghana) and Kano to Lagos routes. The people of Bebeji, at least those from the Zango (campsite) were great traders. Bebeji was considered a miniature Kano. There was a saying which went “If Kano has 10 kolas, Bebeji has 20 halves" or in Hausa: "Birni tana da goro goma, ke Bebeji kina da bari 20".

The town attracted many people of different backgrounds in the 19th century, such as the Yorubas, Nupes, Agalawas, etc. It was controlled by the Sarki (chief) of Bebeji who was responsible for the protection of Kano from attack from the southwest.

Alhassan was born into an Agalawa trading family. His father Madugu Abdullahi was a wealthy trader and caravan leader while his mother was also a trader of importance in her own right enjoying the title of Maduga-Amarya. Abdullahi, in his turn, was a son of another prosperous merchant, Baba Talatin. It was he who brought the family from Katsina, probably at the beginning of the nineteenth century, following the death of his father, Ali.

Abdullahi already had a reputation of some wealth from his ventures with his father and therefore inherited his father’s position as a recognized and respected Madugu. Like his father, he preferred the Nupe and Gonja routes. He specialized in the exchange of Kano dyed cloth, cattle, slaves and so on for the kola of the Akan forest. Surprisingly, he had added cowries brought to the coast by European traders to the items he carried back to Kano.

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE

Abdullahi continued to operate from Madobi until 1877 when having just set out for a journey to Gonja, his wife delivered in the Zango (campsite) of Bebeji. The child was a boy and after the usual seven days, he was named Alhassan. Abdullahi purchased a house in the town and left his nursing wife and child to await his return from Gonja. On his return, he decided to abandon Madobi and moved to Bebeji. Some say that the house that contains his tomb is still held by the family. The date of his death is unknown, but it was probably about 1885 when Alhassan was between seven and eight years of age. By then he had brothers and sisters – Shuaibu, Malam Jaji, Malam Bala, Malam Sidi and others.

The children were too young to succeed to their father’s position and to manage his considerable wealth. They all received their portion according to Islamic law. Maduga Amarya was known to be such a forceful character that nobody in the Zango would take her to wife. She therefore decided to leave the children in Bebeji, in the care of an old slave woman, while she moved to Accra where she became one of the wealthier Hausa traders.

The slave was known as "Tata" from which circumstance young Alhassan became known as Alhassan Dantata because of her role as his ‘mother’ (" Dantata" means "son of Tata”).

Alhassan was sent to a Qur'anic school (madrasah) in Bebeji and as his share of his father’s wealth (as so often happens), seemed to have vanished, he had to support himself. The life of the almajiri (Qur’anic student) is difficult, as he has to find food and clothing for himself and also for his malam (teacher) and at the same time read. Some simply beg while others seek paid work. Alhassan worked and even succeeded at the insistence of Tata in saving. His asusu, “money box” (a pottery vessel) purchased by Tata and set in the wall of the house can still be seen.

When he was about 15 years of age, Alhassan joined a Gonja bound caravan to see his mother. He purchased some items from Bebeji, sold half of them on the way and the rest in Accra. When he saw his mother, he was very delighted hoping she would allow him to live without doing any work since she was one of the wealthier local traders. After only a rest of one day, she took him to another malam and asked him to stay there until he was ready to return to Kano and he worked harder in Accra than he did in Bebeji. After the usual reading of the Qur’an, Alhassan Dantata had to go and beg for food for his malam, and himself. When he worked for money on Thursdays and Fridays, Alhassan Dantata would not be allowed to spend the money for himself alone, his malam always took the lion’s share (this is normal in Hausa society). After the visit, his mother sent him back to Bebeji where he continued his studies. Even though now a teenager, Tata continued to insist that he must save something everyday.

When he was still a teenager, great upheavals occurred in the Kano Emirate. This included the Kano Civil War (1893-1894) and the British invasion of the emirate (1903). During the Kano Civil war, Alhassan and his brothers were captured and sold as slaves, but they were able to buy back their freedom and return to Bebeji shortly afterwards.

Alhassan remained in Bebeji until matters had settled down and the roads were secure, only then did he set out for Accra, by way of Ibadan and Lagos (Ikko) and then by sea to Accra and then to Kumasi, Sekondi and back to Lagos. Alhassan was one of the pioneers of this route. For several years, he carried his kola by sea, using steamers; to Lagos where he usually sold it to Kano bound merchants. By this time, he was relatively wealthy.

In 1906, he began broadening his interests by trading in beads, necklaces, European cloth, etc. His mother, who had never remarried, died in Accra around 1908 and he thereafter generally restricted his operations to Lagos and Kano, although he continued to visit Accra.

CAREER

Thus far in his career, with most of his fellow long distance traders, he continued to live in one of the towns some distance from Kano City, only visiting the Birni for business purposes. Before Alhassan settled in Kano permanently, he visited Kano City only occasionally to either purchase or sell his wares. He did not own a house there, but was satisfied with the accommodation given to him by his patoma (land lord.). It was during the time of the first British appointed Emir of Kano; Abbas (1903-1919) that Alhassan decided to establish a home in Kano. He purchased his first house in the Sarari area (an extension of Koki). At that time there were no houses from the house of Baban Jaki (at the end of Koki) up to Kofar Mazugal. In fact the area was called Sarari because it was empty and nobody wanted that land. Alhassan built his first house on that land and was able thereafter to extend it freely.

In 1912, when the Europeans started to show an interest in the export of groundnut, they contacted the already established Kano merchants through the Emir, Abbas and their chief agent, Adamu Jakada. Some established merchants of Kano like Umaru Sharubutu, Maikano Agogo and others were approached and accepted the offer.

Later in 1918, Alhassan was approached by the Niger Company to help purchase groundnuts for them. He was already familiar with the manner by which people made fortunes by buying cocoa for Europeans in the Gold Coast. He responded and participated in the enterprise with enthusiasm, he had several advantages over other Kano business men: he could speak some English because of his contact with the people on the coast, thus he could negotiate more directly with the European traders for better prices. He also had accumulated a large capital and unlike other established Kano merchants, had only a small family to maintain, as he was still a relatively young man.

Alhassan had excellent financial management, was frugal and unostentatious. He knew some accounting and with the help of Alhaji Garba Maisikeli, his financial controller for 38 years, every kobo was accounted for every day. Not only that, Alhassan was hard working and always around to provide personal supervision of his workers. As soon as he entered the groundnut purchasing business, he came to dominate the field. In fact by 1922 he became the wealthiest businessman in Kano. Umaru Sharubutu and Maikano Agogo were relegated to the second and the third positions respectively.

When the British Bank of West Africa was opened in Kano in 1929, he became the first Kano businessman to utilize a bank account when he deposited twenty camel loads of silver coins. Shortly before his death, he pointed to sixty “groundnut pyramids” in Kano and said, “These are all mine”.

Alhassan became the chief produce buyer especially of groundnuts for the Niger Company (later U.A.C). It is said that he used to purchase about half of all the nuts purchased by U.A.C in northern Nigeria. Because of this, he applied for a license to purchase and export groundnuts in 1940 just like the U.A.C. However, because of the great depression and the war situation, it was not granted. Even Saul Raccah lost his license to export and import about this time because he did not belong to the Association of West African Merchants. In 1953-4 he became a licensed buying agent (L.B.A) that is, a buyer who sells direct to the marketing board instead of to another firm.

However, Alhassan had many business connections both in Nigeria and in other West African countries, particularly the Gold Coast. He dealt, not only in groundnuts, but also in other merchandise. He traded in cattle, kola, cloth, beads, precious stones, grains, rope and other things. His role in the purchase of kola nuts from forest areas of Nigeria for sale in the North was so great, that eventually whole “kola trains” from the Western Region were filled with his nuts alone.

When Alhassan finally settled in Kano, he maintained agents, mainly his relations, in other places. For instance Alhaji Bala, his brother, was sent to Lagos. Alhassan employed people, mainly Igbo, Yoruba and the indigenous Hausa people, as wage earners. They worked as clerks, drivers, and labourers. Some of his employees, especially the Hausas, stayed in his house. He was responsible for their marriage expenses. They did not pay rent and in fact, were regarded as members of his extended family. He sometimes provided official houses to some of his workers.

TEMPERAMENT AND CHARACTER

People’s opinion of Alhassan Dantata differed. To some people, he was a mutumin kirki (complete gentleman) who was highly disciplined and made money through hard work and honesty. He always served as an enemy to, or a breaker of hoarding. For instance, he would purchase items, especially grains, during the harvest time, when it was abundant at low prices. He would wait until the rainy season, (July or August) when there was limited supply in the markets or when grain merchants started to inflate prices.

He then moved to fill the markets with his surplus grains and asked a price lower than the current price in the markets by between 50 – 70%. In this way, he forced down prices. His anti- hoarding activities did not stop at grains and other consumer goods, but even to such items as faifai, igiya, babarma (Mat), dyed cloth, shuni, potash, and so on. However on the other hand, according to information collected in Koki, Dala, Qul-qul, Madabo, Yan Maruci e.t.c, Alhassan was viewed as a mugun mutum (wicked person). This was because some people expressed the view that Dantata undercut their prices simply to cripple his fellow merchants.

BUSINESS INTERESTS

He founded, with other merchants (attajirai), the Kano Citizens’ Trading Company, for industrial undertakings. In 1949, he contributed property valued at ₤10,200 (ten thousand, two hundred pounds) to the proposed Kano citizens trading company for the establishment of the first indigenous textile mill in Northern Nigeria. Near the end of his life he was appointed a director of the Railway Corporation.

In 1917, he started to acquire urban land in the non- European trading site (Syrian quarters) when he acquired two plots at an annual fee of ₤20. All his houses were occupied by his own people; relations, sons, servants, workers and so on. He never built a hotel for whatever purpose in his life and advised his children to do like wise. His numerous large warehouses in and around Kano metropolis were not for rent, rather he kept his own wares in them.

RELATIONSHIP WITH WOMEN

Because of his Islamic beliefs, Alhassan never transacted business with a woman of whatever age. His wife, Hajiya Umma Zaria, (mother of Aminu) was his chief agent among the women folk. The women did not have to visit her house. She established agents all over Kano city and visited them in turn. When she visited her agents, it was the duty of the agents to ask what the women in the ward wanted. Amina Umma Zaria would then leave the items for them. All her agents were old married women and she warned her agents to desist from conducting business with newly wedded girls. Umma Zaria dealt in the smallest household items, which would cost 2.5 d to sophisticated jewels worth thousands of pounds.

WAY OF LIFE, FOOD AND HEALTH

Though Alhassan became the wealthiest man in the British West African colonies, he lived a simple life. He fed on the same foodstuffs as any other individual, such as tuwon dawa da furar gero. He dressed simply in a white gown, a pair of white trousers (da itori), and underwear (yar ciki), a pair of ordinary local sandals, and sewn white cap, white turban and occasionally a malfa (local hat). He was said never to own more than three sets of personal clothing at a time. He never stayed inside his house all day and was always out doing something. He moved about among his workers joking with them, encouraging and occasionally giving a helping hand. He ate his meal outside and always with his senior workers like Garba Maisikeli and Alhaji Mustapha Adakawa.

Alhassan met fully established wealthy Kano merchants when he moved to Kano from the Kauye, like Maikano Agogo, Umaru Sharubutu, Salga and so on. He lived with them peacefully and always respected them. He avoided clashes with other influential people in Kano. He hated court litigation. He was in court only once, but before the final judgment the case was settled outside a Lagos court (it was a ₤10,000 civil suit instituted by one Haruna against him). He lived peacefully with the local authorities. Whenever he offended the authorities he would go quietly to solve the problems with the official concerned.

Alhassan enjoyed good health and was never totally indisposed throughout his active life. However, occasionally he might develop malaria fever and whenever he was sick, he would go to the clinic for treatment. Because of his simple eating habits, ordinary Hausa food two or three times a day and his always active mode of life, he never developed obesity. He remained slim and strong throughout his life. Alhassan had no physical defects and enjoyed good eye sight.

Alhassan was a devout Muslim. He was one of the first northerners to visit Mecca via England by mail boat in the early 1920s. He loved reading the Qur’an and Hadith. He had a personal mosque in his house and established a qur’anic school for his children. He maintained a full time Islamic scholar called Alhaji Abubakar (father of Malam Lawan Kalarawi, a renowned Kano public preacher).

He paid zakkat annually according to Islamic injunction and gave alms to the poor every Friday. He belonged to the Qadiriyya brotherhood.

Soon after the First World War he went on the pilgrimage to Mecca, via Britain, where he was presented to King George V.

EDUCATION INTERESTS

Alhassan Dantata respected people with qur’anic and other branches of Islamic learning, and helped them occasionally. He established a qur’anic school for his children and other people of the neighbourhood. He insisted that all his children must be well educated in the Islamic way. He appreciated also, functional western education, just enough to transact business (some arithmetic, simple accounting, Hausa reading and writing and spoken English).

Alhassan backed the establishment of a western style school in the Dala area for Hausas (i.e. non-Fulani) traders’ children in the 1930’s. The existence of a school in Bebeji (the only non-district headquarters in Kano to have one in the 1930’s) was probably due to his influence, although he could neither read nor write English. Alhassan could write beautiful Ajami, but could not speak or write Arabic, although he could read the Qur’an and other religious books with ease (this is very common in Hausa society). Most of the qur’anic reciter's could read very well, but could not understand Arabic. Alhassan Dantata knew some arithmetic-addition and subtraction and could use a ready reckoner. He also encouraged his children to learn enough western education to transact business, the need of his time. He established his own Arabic and English school in 1944, Dantata Arabic and English school.

POLITICS

He never became a politician in the true sense of the term. However, because of his enormous wealth, he was always very close to the government. He had to be in both the colonial government’s good books and maintain a position very close to the emirs of Kano. He was nominated to represent commoners in the reformed local administration of Kano and in 1950 was made a councillor in the emir’s council- the first non- royal individual to have a seat at the council. Other members of the council then were: Madakin Kano, Alhaji Muhammadu Inuwa, Walin Kano, Malam Abubakar Tsangaya, Sarkin Shanu, Alhaji Muhammadu Sani, Wazirin Kano Alhaji Abubakar, Makaman Kano Alhaji Bello Alhaji Usman Gwarzo, and the leader Alhaji Abdulllahi Bayero. Alhassan therefore was a member of the highest governing body of Kano in his time. He was also appointed to mediate between NEPU and NPC in Kano in 1954 together with Mallam Nasiru Kabara and other members. He joined no political party, but it is clear that he sympathised with the NPC.

DEATH AND LEGACY

In 1955, Alhassan fell ill and because of the seriousness of the illness, he summoned his chief financial controller, Garba Maisikeli and his children. He told them that his days were approaching their end and advised them to live together. He was particularly concerned about the company he had established (Alhassan Dantata & Sons). He asked them not to allow the company to collapse. He implored them to continue to marry within the family as much as possible. He urged them to avoid clashes with other wealthy Kano merchants. They should take care of their relatives, especially the poor among them. Three days later, he passed away in his sleep on Wednesday, 17th August, 1955 at 78. He was buried the same day in his house in Sarari ward, Kano. At the time of his death in August 1955, he was the wealthiest man of any race in West Africa.

It was and is rare for business organizations to survive the death of their founders in Hausa society. Hausa tradition is full of stories of former successful business families who later lost everything. In Kano city alone names like: Kundila of Makwarari, the wealthiest man at the end of nineteenth century, Maikano Agogo of Koki Ward, Umaru Sharubutu also of Koki Ward, Baban Jaji, Abdu Sarki of Zaitawa Ward, Madugu Indo of Adakawa, and others too numerous to mention here, were some of them.

Only Alhassan of Kano was likely to leave able heirs to continue his business in a grand way. The reason for this was that his heirs were interested in keeping the family name going and the employment of modern methods of book keeping, the only local merchant to do so at that time. Alhassan Dantata’s entire estate was subdivided according to Islamic law among the eighteen children who survived him. Alhassan’s descendants include Dr Aminu Dantata (son), Sanusi Dantata (son), Abdulkadir Sanusi Dantata (grandson), Dr Mariya Sanusi Dangote (granddaughter), Alhaji Aliko Dangote (great-grandson), Alhaji Tajudeen Aminu Dantata (great-grandson) and Alhaji Sayyu Dantata (great-great grandson). #HistoryVilleTHE UNFORGETTABLE NIGERIAN: WEALTH, WEALTH EVERYWHERE

Alhaji Alhassan Dantata (1877 - August 17, 1955) was a Nigerian businessman who was the wealthiest man in West Africa at the time of his death.

HERITAGE

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE

The slave was known as "Tata" from which circumstance young Alhassan became known as Alhassan Dantata because of her role as his ‘mother’ (" Dantata" means "son of Tata”).

CAREER

TEMPERAMENT AND CHARACTER

BUSINESS INTERESTS

RELATIONSHIP WITH WOMEN

WAY OF LIFE, FOOD AND HEALTH

He paid zakkat annually according to Islamic injunction and gave alms to the poor every Friday. He belonged to the Qadiriyya brotherhood.

Soon after the First World War he went on the pilgrimage to Mecca, via Britain, where he was presented to King George V.

EDUCATION INTERESTS

POLITICS

DEATH AND LEGACY

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pierrehardy · 4 years

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COVID-19 x Poor Countries

This is a short post on the effects of the Covid-19 on poor countries. This is an essential focus because even though richer countries are being ravaged, historically, it is the poorest that gets the worst of it. Poor countries cannot whip out $2 trillion [1] like what the US did. As John Nkengasong said, the director of Africa CDC, for poor countries, this is a “national security crisis first, an economic crisis second, and a health crisis third.”

I’ll keep it short and concise so you can get a clear picture quickly, but I’ll include sources at the end to serve as a reading list if you want.

First, I will enumerate the problems that the pandemic is causing in poor countries. Second, I will TRY to look at the “bright side” of things. Third, the possible solutions. And lastly, I’ll end with two examples of doing their part in taking this seriously.

Problems

Poor people cannot social distance. It’s simply impossible if you live in the slums. [2]

Hand washing is a difficult habit to form if you live in a place with no running water. [3]

The poor cannot isolate themselves at home. These are people who live day to day, and without going out to work, they will not have food to eat. If the government forces them to stay at home, a riot is bound to happen. What the virus can’t kill, hunger will. [4]

Some countries, usually the better off, are becoming nationalists and shutting down their exports. The last thing a global pandemic needs is for global trade to get gummed up. [5][6]

The spread of fake news. Most notably, the two kinds: religious fake news and quack cures. For example, Tanzania’s president refuses to close down churches because he believes the virus is Satanic and cannot survive in a place of worship. [7] He is not alone in thinking this way. Another is the false information that garlic, ginger, and lemon can cure the virus. This is false and does nothing but drive up the prices for these goods. [8]

There has been a rise in xenophobia among countries as they start to attack foreigners and immigrants. [9]

There have been opportunistic autocratic wannabees that are taking advantage of this mess. They will use the virus as an excuse to ban political rallies, postpone elections, and increase the surveillance of its citizens. [10]

Several companies and businesses cannot survive this and would need credit to stay alive. [11] This can mean a lot of lost jobs.

Lastly, which is the worst problem, is the fact that poor countries are, well, poor. The healthcare system of poor countries can barely function without a crisis, the pandemic makes it worse [12]. And for a quarantine to work in a poor country with a population that needs to work every day to feed their families, they require social safety nets in the form of food or allowance from the government. Similarly to businesses affected by this, they need a lifeline of credit from the government to stay alive. In short, it is expensive, and poor countries can’t afford it. [13]

To make it worse, the sources of income of poor countries are taking a hit too. Many of these countries rely on tourism [14], which is obviously dwindling [15]. They count on commodities like raw materials and oil, whose prices are fallings. [16] (To clarify, the low price of oil is not primarily caused by the virus but by the price war that Saudi Arabia and Russia are having. [17] It is likely that this will last beyond this pandemic). Remittances can also get affected, as overseas workers can’t work too [18]. To top it off, foreign investors are fleeing from developing countries and into safer investments, aka richer countries [19]. This caused a depressing outcome of making credit cheaper in wealthier countries and more expensive to poorer countries. This pandemic is shaping up to be worse than the 2008 financial crisis.

Bright Sides (there is none, really)

Most poor countries have younger populations (only 5% of Africa is old while in Europe, it’s 24%). So if you’re morbid, you may find comfort in this. But not too much since most of the youth in poor countries are malnourished and don’t have a robust immune system.

Most people in poor countries are in rural areas, where it is less dense and is better for social distancing. But again, a caveat is that it’s only a matter of time before the virus arrives in rural areas.

Most poor countries are hot, and the infection spreads slower in warm countries. Then again, findings for this are inconclusive at worst, and the effects are modest at best. [20]

Nations hit with a health crisis tend to keep the excellent hygiene habits they were forced to form.

Possible Solutions

The simplest one that is absolutely necessary is transparent information. That means no cover-ups, no downplaying, no arresting of people exposing unsavory news. [21]

There’s no going around it. The richer countries must help the poorer countries, either through credit or forgiving debt. [22] Three main motivations for rich countries: (1) Compassion, (2) if you leave the poor to deteriorate, the poor will inevitably reinfect you, and (3) whoever helps the poor now will dictate their allegiance in the future. The poor will remember who helped them.

Positively, the rich world is doing just that. The IMF readied $1 trillion in aid. [23] The G20 pledged to inject $5 trillion to the world economy. [24] China has been active in giving assistance [25], and so is its richest man, Jack Ma, in donating testing kits, protective suits, and masks. [26]

Positive Examples: Brazil and Africa

The president of Brazil does not take the Covid-19 seriously. Nonetheless, congressmen ignored the president’s downplaying of the virus and declared a state of calamity anyways. LGUs have locked down several cities and turned football stadiums into hospitals. Universities and private labs have dedicated their efforts to producing testing kits with private companies supplying the required materials for free. A brewery in Brazil has also started manufacturing hand sanitizer. Activists have been roving around with loudspeakers, telling people to stay in their homes. They have also proposed turning empty schools into quarantine centers and with renting mansions to house the elderly in a far off district. Even the gangs of organized criminals have imposed curfews in their territories and stopped selling drugs in open-air markets. They’re doing all of this while being heckled by their president, whose approval ratings have tanked as a result. [27]

In Africa, the governments’ actions were much swifter compared to Europe. Sierra Leone declared a state of emergency for the whole year, even before confirming a single infection. Uganda locked down schools even before being infected. South Africa locked the country down earlier than most European countries. They also immediately beefed up testing facilities. They now have 40 countries capable of testing, from only 2. This can all be attributed to Africa’s experience with epidemics (like Ebola). [28]

To summarize: basically, poor countries are especially vulnerable to the pandemic. They would likely require the assistance of wealthier nations to survive this and still have a livelihood afterward. Keep in mind the nine main problems we face so that we can form a more informed solution. Thanks for reading, I hope you learned something new today.

References

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/world/coronavirus-news-live.html

[2]https://www.rediff.com/news/special/how-can-there-be-social-distancing-in-slums/20200324.htm

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51929598

[4] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/28/social-distancing-is-a-privilege/

[5]https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-eu-limit-exports-medical-equipment/

[6] http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-03/25/c_138913230.htm

[7]https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/tanzanian-president-criticized-refusing-close-places-worship

[8]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/04/who-pushes-back-on-coronavirus-misinformation-and-bogus-cure-claims.html

[9]https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-covid19-xenophobia-racism/607816/

[10]https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-and-autocrats-never-let-pandemic-go-to-waste-11585400400

[11]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/business/economy/coronavirus-business-credit-access.html

[12] Personally visited the Philippine General Hospital in the past.

[13]https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-is-advancing-on-poor-nations-and-the-prognosis-is-troubling-11585149183

[14]http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20130320-how-tourism-can-alleviate-poverty

[15] https://www.unwto.org/tourism-covid-19-coronavirus

[16] https://www.fastmarkets.com/commodities/coronavirus

[17]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/the-saudi-crown-prince-s-plan-to-win-the-global-oil-war

[18]https://think.ing.com/snaps/philippines-remittance-growth-hits-4.1-in-2019/

[19]https://www.wsj.com/articles/emerging-markets-take-hit-as-investors-flee-for-safety-11584529200

[20]https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/12/asia/coronavirus-flu-weather-temperature-intl-hnk/index.html

[21]https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/news/commitment-transparency-pay-off-as-south-korea-limits-covid-19-spread/

[22]https://www.ipsnews.net/2020/03/rich-countries-must-protect-developing-nations-coronavirus-pandemic/

[23]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/16/imf-says-its-ready-to-mobilize-its-1-trillion-lending-capacity-to-fight-coronavirus.html

[24]https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/g20-leaders-pledge-usd-5-trillion-united-response-to-coronavirus-crisis/articleshow/74835666.cms

[25] https://time.com/5812015/china-medical-aid-pakistan/

[26]https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/16/africa/jack-ma-donate-masks-coronavirus-africa/index.html

[27]https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2020/03/26/brazils-president-fiddles-as-a-pandemic-looms

[28]

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/03/26/africa-is-woefully-ill-equipped-to-cope-with-covid-19

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124globalsociology · 4 years

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Neocolonialism

By Cassidy and Emily

Definition

Neocolonialism impacts every country and international corporation in the world, and is a process by which “developing countries” are colonized and controlled through capitalism and other oppressive systems by “developed countries”. It is also the way by which “developed countries” exploit and extort “developing countries” through economic means, which in turn leads to a widening gap between “developed” and “developing” countries.

Colonialism, occurring predominantly at the end of the nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century, was a process through which “more developed”- wealthier- countries took control of the land of other “under-developed countries” for their own economic and political gain. During the mid-twentieth century, there was a global movement against colonization that largely led to the decolonization of many previously colonized nations.

Neocolonialism, occurring in this time period after the global push towards decolonization, is when these “more developed nations” (previous colonizers) continue to intervene in these “under-developed nations” (previously colonized) through largely economic (though also political) domination and control.

Neocolonialism occurs when countries and corporations try to reap a profit by continuing to economically exploit communities that they colonized in the past- which leaves these communities vulnerable to further attacks due to systemic institutionalization of their marginalization- by privatizing goods needed to survive.

Example: American company selling out to Bolivia for water privatization in the 2000s.

Cornering markets to make it so that there are no safe jobs that pay a living wage, in order to fund hegemonic capitalist ventures- and many other subversive and exploitative practices.

Marginalizing endeavors that make it hard for previously colonized communities to gain any sort of economic mobility in the face of this oppression. The lived experience of those oppressed under neocolonialism is difficult due to the many structural political, social, and economic barriers put in their way.

Important Figures

Walter Rodney: Prominent scholar who focused on neocolonialism, especially on how European powers essentially prevented African countries from benefiting off their own resources and wealth, and used these resources to their own advantage. Rodney argues that every development in Europe is created by the exploitation and underdevelopment of Africa, which mirrors the neocolonialist theory that previous-colonizers will always continue to exploit the previously-colonized even in the “postcolonial era”.

Kwame Nkrumah: President and Prime Minister of Ghana from 1957-1966 collectively; led Ghana to independence from Britain in 1957; coined the term neocolonialism, argued that neocolonialism is “used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world”

Analysis

When the concept neocolonialism was first introduced in the 1950s, it was rejected by most major scholars due to its radical view on the world and the implications of politics. It has grown more accepted as time has gone on, and can be compared and contrasted with other commonplace theories such as Realism or Constructivism, Marxism, Postcolonial theory.

Example: Neocolonialism can also be demonstrated through the forced dependence of “developing countries” on “developed countries”; an example of this type of relationship would be Cuba as a “dependent” of Russia during the Cold War era, and the current “dependence” of Africa on China.

Neocolonialism is a process that affects both nations that were previously colonized and that were previous colonizers today, and arguably influences the majority of global political action today.

Neocolonialism argues that the world is unequal because previous-colonizers will continue to exploit and oppress those who were already previously-colonized, re-entrenching the harmful effects of colonialism in today’s society.

Questions

How does neocolonialism differ from colonialism? Do you think that neocolonialism creates more or less power for developed countries than colonialism? Why?

Why do you think neocolonialism is not really seen as a form of colonizing countries by some people? Can you think of any examples of neocolonialism besides the ones already given?

What are some ways that neocolonialism affects the everyday lives of people in “developing countries”? Of the government?

How can “developed countries” work to decolonize their involvement and relationships with “developing countries”? Is it possible at this point in time/in the future?

Essential Readings

Uzoigwe, Godfrey N. “Neocolonialism Is Dead: Long Live Neocolonialism.” Journal of Global South Studies, vol. 36, no. 1, Spring 2019, pp. 59–87.

Morgan, Jason. “Target Africa: Ideological Neocolonialism in the Twenty-First Century.” Human Life Review, vol. 45, no. 1, Winter 2019, pp. 80–84.

Gassama, Ibrahim J. “Africa and the Politics of Destruction: A Critical Re-examination of Neocolonialism and Its Consequences .” Oregon Review of International Law , vol. 10, no. 2, 2008, p. 327-360.

Qiao, Guoqiang. “Introduction to A Critical Response to Neocolonialism.” CLCWeb, vol. 20, no. 7, 2018, pp. CLCWeb, Dec 2018, Vol.20(7).

Further Readings

Jae-Sung Kwak. “From Neocolonialism to Neoliberalism: Sung-Hyong Rhee’s Latin American Politics.” Asian Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, June 2013, pp. 33–48.

Manning, Patrick, and Jamie Miller. “Historical Writing in Postcolonial Africa: The Institutional Context.” International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 52, no. 2, May 2019, pp. 191–216.

Bissio, Roberto. “Bandung in Latin America: The Hope for Another World.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 19–26.

Lang, Martin J. “Written Out of Their Own Story: The Rhetorical Colonialism of Journalistic Practice.” Communication Studies, vol. 66, no. 1, Jan. 2015, pp. 85–102.

Footnotes

Nkrumah, Kwame. “Introduction.” Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, International Publishers, 1966.

#submission #publicscholarship #global sociology #neocolonialism #decolonize #colonialism

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vintagemermaidscove · 5 years

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The Merthur Fic

That I don’t have time to write...

Chapter 1

Arthur and Merlin are wrapping up a quest at a small neighboring kingdom. Mercia had made plans to take it over with little fuss, but Arthur led a small army to defend the land. Merlin is being tended to in the infirmary after being bucked from his horse near the end of the battle. The widowed Queen, some 80 years old, is presenting Arthur with a token of her affection- as her kingdom is only wealthy enough to just sustain itself, she has no way of properly paying him. Instead she presents as a gift a family heirloom. A braided silver ring that is rumored to have the power to ‘reveal to a ruler all he must know to keep himself and his kingdom safe and happy.’. Arthur believes the woman to be quite mad, but she is sweet and old so he accepts the gift, even putting it on at her insistence.

Arthur collects Merlin (Gwaine and Lance make a couple of cracks about ‘picking up the wife’) and they set out to return to Camelot.

Chapter 2

Uthur receives Arthur upon his return with the usual amount of warmth. He dismisses Merlin so the two may discuss kingdom matter and Arthur feels a pang at his departure. (Annoying as he is, he somehow always manages to cheer Arthur up.)

After the meeting he wanders down to the kitchens, too restless to sleep and hoping someone will be up who can make him a spot of tea. He finds Gwen doing a bit of experimental baking, and they chat. Things have been awkward between the two of them lately, and for some reason in the dead of night he finally is able to talk about it.

He admits when they first met he was quite fond of her and wanted something to happen. She says she would have liked that, but as time went on and Arthur did nothing, she assumed the interest had passed. Then Lance came along, and for a while she thought he might be jealous, but again he did nothing.

Arthur says he wanted to be jealous, even put on the act of it as if it might make it true. She is beautiful and wonderful, and would make a fine queen, so Arthur wanted to want her. But he couldn’t make it so. Gwen smiles and pats his hand, taking no offense. She assures him that when he meets the right person, he won’t have to think so hard about it. He’ll just know.

Chapter 3

The next day Arthur puts the knights through their paces, claiming their performance against the Mercian army was mediocre at best. He tracks Merlin as he walks around the edge of the practice field, subconsciously doing his best to impress him. Uther appears suddenly and calls Arthur over to chastise him for overworking his men. He thinks he ought to be spending more time instructing them and himself on strategy and less on brute force.

Furious at once again being unable to please his father, Arthur takes the long way back to the men and in doing so overhears his knights in conversation.

Percival is griping and doesn’t get how Gwaine can stay so cheery. “Simple mate. You’ve lived here all your life, so you’ve only ever known one king and one prince. But I’ve been around. I’ve seen truly sadistic kings work their knights to death for no good reason, and I’ve seen lazy and stupid princes who don’t give a cup of piss for their kingdom’s safety. Sure, he’s a prick at times, but Arthur’s a good man. He’ll be a bloody good king. So, if he wants to drag me out for training at the crack of dawn or send me to protect some speck of a kingdom, you can bet I’ll do it with a smile. Cause I’ve seen the alternative.”

Lance nods and agrees. Arthur is thrown by the kindness of these words and doesn’t move. Gwaine adds that even so there is one thing he’s being especially idiotic about. All the knights agree, and Leon asks if there’s anything that can be done. Lance says you can’t force things like that, he’ll do something when he’s ready. One knight asks if it’s even allowed in Camelot, since he knows in some kingdoms it isn’t even legal. Merlin appears and asks them what their talking about and they all clam up. Arthur emerges and pretends not to have heard anything.

Chapter 4

During his bath Arthur asks Merlin about what his father said. Merlin says plainly that the knights are perfectly well informed about strategy, but if he does want them studying more it’d be best to do it in winter. Use the last of the summer weather to their advantage. Arthur admits this is passably good advice. Merlin teases him about just how much he knows that Arthur doesn’t ask about. Arthur jokes that he’ll make every effort.

Chapter 5

After supper Morgana pulls Arthur aside and says she heard Uther chewing him out early. (What? I like watching the knights spar, I am only a woman.) She wanted to show him something that might make him feel better.

She brings him to Uther’s study, sure by now he’ll be asleep, and reveals a hidden key and chest. Inside are letters he has written to his deceased wife- many of them about Arthur and Morgana. She’s read them all of course and thinks there are a few he might benefit from reading himself. When asked why she is doing this for him, she informs him that she wants the two of them to get along, because she’s planning on leaving Camelot. She wants to study her magic and knows doing so is impossible here. Maybe before she leaves she can mend some fences.

Arthur reads what his father wrote about him- that he is too hard on Arthur for a reason but doing so breaks his heart because he knows it means they will never be close. But his love for his son and Camelot is so great he is willing to make the sacrifice.

Arthur returns the letters and key to their places and goes to bed. He feels small and alone and desperately wishes he had someone to hold. He tries conjuring up different women in his mind but none of them fit, so at last he gives up, hugs an extra pillow to his chest and tries to fall asleep.

He dreams of dragons, and a flipping coin.

Chapter 6

The next week they receive news that a visiting king from an island kingdom will be coming through Camelot on his way to the coast, and since the two countries have no formal relationship Uther has invited them to stay in the castle.

Arthur groans internally- visit nobles always make Merlin jumpy and odd, even more so than usual.

The king and his delegation arrive- they are wealthier than expected, and quite kind, with colorful regalia and dark skin. The king introduces himself, his advisors and most surprisingly, his husband. Uther is shocked and the entire room gets uncomfortable. The visiting king stiffens, having now seen this reaction a few times on the mainland, and says if he and his husband offend they will find accommodations elsewhere.

Arthur swoops in and assures them there is no problem- their cultures are different, but not at all incompatible, and there is nowhere they would rather have them be. The kitchens have prepared a feast in their honor, and everyone is encouraged to settle in to their quarters before it begins in an hour.

Arthur begins to speak but his father cuts him off. He says he did good work for the sake of diplomacy, but it would be best that after they leave that Camelot do no more business with their country. Arthur tells his father not to be so rash- they know next to nothing about these people.

Uther

-They are strange, they cannot be trusted.

Arthur

-You speak out of fear. Think! Every other nation will be doing the same. They will go back to their homeland with no allies- what if they had us?

Uther

-They have nothing to offer.

Arthur

-You don’t know that!

Uther

-You’re being idealistic and childish.

Arthur

-No father. I am trying to act in the best interest of Camelot. I am trying to be the king you raised me to be.

Uther

-You’re not king yet.

Arthur

-No but like it or not one day I will be. One day Camelot’s fate will rest in my hands. I know you love this kingdom father- I know because I do to. I would die to keep her safe. So please, before you make of the mistake of acting on fear, let me try. Let me talk with these people. You are the one who taught me how to take measure of a man’s heart. Do you not trust your own instruction?

Uther agrees with Arthur not to make any snap judgements, and Arther leaves to go dress for the feast. He bumps into Merlin who was clearly eavesdropping. He doesn’t even have time to scold him before the servant is throwing his arms around him in a hug. He has tears in his eyes.

Chapter 7

The feast goes well, though Uther claims a headache and does not attend. Arthur thinks this is for the best, as he is able to charm the king and prince and learn all about their island- they are in fact quite rich in resources and without allies on the mainland, as they have only just begun to design vessels large enough to travel for months at sea. Morgana attends and is delighted by the company as well, taking the advances of a female body guard in more than perfect stride. Arthur can practically see her scheming to join their traveling party and makes a note to himself to make plans to help her do so.

That night he gets fairly drunk and on his way to his bedroom somehow ends up in Merlin and Gaius’s quarters. He asks Merlin what he thought of their guests, and what Gaius knows about ‘those’ kinds of relationships. Like, whether or not they can even work.

He wants to kiss Merlin but Merlin tells him he’s drunk and confused. Arthur says he may be one, but he’s certainly not the other. Merlin sends him back to his room anyway.

He lays in bed angry- not because Merlin refused him, but because it was clear he thought he was only making advances because he was drunk and didn’t take him seriously. Arthur vows he will get sober and woo him properly- that will show the gorgeous little twat.

Chapter 8

The next evening the traveling party departs, with the promise that they are always welcome in Camelot. Uther wishes them goodbye as well. Morgana presses a letter into Uther’s hand, and gets into the caravan. She clearly enchants him to stay still and be unable to yell. Arthur and Merlin try to fight laughter.

Later in the halls, Merlin asks if Uther has started on the war path. Arthur assures him it will be fine. Morgana’s letter was very clear, and Arthur smoothed things over as best he could. Now it will just take time for Uther to adjust.

He switches topics to he and Merlin, bringing up their conversation from before. Merlin tries to laugh it off, but Arthur is in no laughing matter and makes clear advances.

Merlin panics and runs, making Arthur think he has made a terrible mistake.

Chapter 9

He wanders the castle, feeling terrible. He never even thought through the possibility that Merlin wouldn’t be interested. He didn’t know how being attracted to men was supposed to work, but if he could do it, couldn’t other men? And even if all men couldn’t, this was Merlin. There was something about the two of them that just felt sort of…inevitable. Arthur wanders into the knights’ barracks, where they’ve set up a sort of clubhouse pub. Arthur often drops by in a ‘we’re all off the clock’ fashion. The men are having an average night of beer and socializing, and Arthur drops in and begs for a drink.

Gwaine takes front position and asks what’s up. Arthur gets a bit drunk and then explains that he made a move on Merlin and messed things up. He’s angry with himself for being an arrogant prat, assuming Merlin would be interested. Gwaine and the boys politely inform Arthur that….well duh! Of course, Merlin wants him! The boy has been in love with Arthur since day one, everyone knows that. They assure Arthur that if Merlin said no, it wasn’t because he didn’t want Arthur- it was because he felt for whatever other reason that he wasn’t allowed.

Arthur knows then what he has to do. He tells the boys that this will go down in history as the worst week of Uther’s life.

Chapter 10

“Are you telling me, that after everything this week. After the closest thing I have to a daughter went gallivanting off with no plan whatsoever, that my only son is in love with his manservant?!”

Arthur explains to Uther that he just wants to know the steps needed in pursuing a relationship with Merlin. They fight a bit and Uther tells him that there really isn’t any precedent for this- if it were a woman he’d be telling him he’s a prince, so as long as he treats the woman with respect he can do as he likes.

“Then let’s treat this the same way.”

“I hardly think this is the same.”

“It is father.” Steely cold gaze. Firm stare. No room for argument.

Uther says he won’t be allowed to be his manservant anymore. And depending on how the relationship progresses certain changes will need to be made- Merlin’s wardrobe, accommodations, title, etc.

Arthur says he understand. He’ll work on finding Merlin a more suitable position- letting him apprentice of Gaius full time or work in the archives.

As he leaves he can hear Uther venting to Ygraine.

Chapter 11

Arthur combs the castle looking for Merlin but can’t find him anywhere. He goes to ask Gaius where he might be. Gaius says he’s gone to talk with an old friend and not to worry. Arthur sits, exhausted from his search. Gaius gently asks if Arthur is quite sure he knows what he’s doing, Arthur assures him that he’s never been surer of anything. He is unfortunately quite in love with the oaf.

Gaius says in that case, he may need to prepare for the possibility that Merlin has a life and secrets of his own that, as his Prince and employer, Arthur knew nothing about. Gaius loves Merlin like a son, and respects Arthur deeply. He would be quite displeased if Arthur got angry with Merlin for not being the simple man he thought he was.

Arthur is very confused by this advice but feels his love for Merlin like a solid thing in his chest, and decides he is not worried.

Chapter 12

That night Merlin returns to Arthur’s bedchamber for his nightly duties, acting flustered. Arthur chides him a bit (out of habit) then switches tactics, sitting him down and explaining that he doesn’t have to worry. He’s spoken to Uther and their relationship won’t be hindered or scandalized. Merlin can stay employed in the castle and continue his work with Gaius. Merlin gets angry at Arthur’s presumption, and that he just decided to go ahead with this without speaking to Merlin. “Did it ever occur to you there might be some other reason? Maybe I find you repulsive- ever think of that?” They go back and forth before Merlin is forced to reveal his sorcery. Arthur is shocked, Merlin makes to storm out, but Arthur tells him to stay.

“All this time…why haven’t you killed me?” Merlin laughs and has to explain to Arthur that magic has nothing to do with evil. “I’ve actually spent most of my time working to save your life. Not for any ounce of credit mind you…”

They go through a short bit about how their destinies are tied together (a dragon told me) and Arthur laughs for the first time- he always suspected as such.

Arthur wants confirmation that Merlin does truly in fact want him (honestly mate, where are your priorities right now?) and they kiss. Arthur assures him that this is one thing they just cannot tell his father. Merlin wholeheartedly agrees.

Chapter 13- A year or so later…

It’s Uther’s Feast day and Morgana has come home for a visit. She travelled with the islanders for a while before splitting off to spend some time in a desert oasis with some shamans. They told her about a mythic library in the East- that’s where she’s headed next.

Merlin is in fact no longer Arthur’s manservant, but head librarian and archivist for a college Arthur founded. On the surface it is meant to fund the arts, but Merlin and Gaius also use it to seek out possible magical practitioners and give them a safe place to study.

At the feast Arthur gets tipsy and Merlin takes him up to bed before he can embarrass himself. They flirt (Arthur complains they don’t see each other enough, Merlin reminds him they have sex and sleep together nearly every night. Arthur says exactly. Merlin rolls his eyes. They talk about the college a bit and Arthur’s own attempts to ease Uther’s zeal for sorcerer killing- Arthur promises to restore magic to its former glory as soon as he is in charge. Merlin tells him his heart is in the right place, but he fears too much damage has been done. Arthur persists in his confidence, stating finally ‘I cannot believe my own husband doesn’t believe in me!” “Am I your husband? Someone forgot to tell me.” “Oh, you will be my husband Merlin- just you wait. And since this is an unavoidable eventuality, I’ve decided I may as well start using the term now. So, you’ll just have to get used to it.” Merlin smiles and agrees, and the two fall asleep.

#patroclesdefensesquad #merthur #fanfic outline

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baronvon0 · 5 years

Text

A distorted sex ratio is playing havoc with marriage in China

A shortage of brides is bending Chinese society out of shape

IN PI VILLAGE, on the outskirts of Beijing, a man in his late 50s who gives his name as Ren is mixing cement for a new apartment building. As he shovels, he gives an account of bride-price inflation. When he married, his parents gave his wife 800 yuan, which seemed like a lot. Twelve years ago one of Mr Ren’s sons married. His bride got 8,000 yuan. Recently another son married, and Mr Ren had to stump up 100,000 yuan ($15,000). He is likely to be mixing cement well into his 60s.

Like India, most of China is patrilocal: in theory, at least, a married woman moves into her husband’s home and looks after his parents. Also like India, China has a deep cultural preference for boys. But whereas India has dowries, China has bride prices. The groom’s parents, not the bride’s, are expected to pay for the wedding and give money and property to the couple. These bride prices have shot up, bending the country’s society and economy out of shape.

The cause, as Mr Ren explains, is a shortage of women. Without human intervention, about 105 boys will be born for every 100 girls: boys and men are slightly more likely to die, so by the time they reach reproductive age the number of men and women should be roughly equal. But many Chinese couples have tipped the scales. Driven partly by China’s now-abandoned one-child policy, they have used ultrasound scans to determine the sex of fetuses and then aborted some of the girls. By 2010 there were 119 boys under five years old for every 100 girls. Two demographers, John Bongaarts and Christophe Guilmoto, estimate that China is missing more than 60m women and girls.

In the province of Shandong, in eastern China, the child sex ratio skewed early and drastically. It was highly unbalanced by 1990, and by 2010 had reached 123:100. Moreover, not all Shandong girls hang around awaiting marriage proposals from local boys. The province lies between Beijing and Shanghai, so it is easy for the province’s young women—said to be unusually tall and beautiful—to migrate to the great metropolises in search of work and boyfriends. The result is a severe shortage, and bride prices that are barmy even by Chinese standards.

In Zhongdenglou, a tidy village in western Shandong, 30-year-old Deng Zhikuan runs a grocery store. When he married, ten years ago, bride prices in the village were between 2,000 and 3,000 yuan. Now they run between 200,000 and 300,000 yuan, although Mr Deng hears that as much as 500,000 has been handed over (50,000 yuan would be a respectable annual salary thereabouts).

Past it at 25

Other villagers give similar figures. It is a buyer’s market, complains Qiang Lizhi, a newly married man who runs a café nearby. A 47-year-old man, Deng Xinling, says that men are now considered shopworn if they are unmarried at 25. By contrast, no woman is thought too old to marry; even widows have no difficulty in finding husbands.

China’s growing sex imbalance is driving boys’ parents to desperate lengths. Some add another storey to their houses, not because they need the space but because a woman might be impressed. They give money to their sons to buy gold jewellery and pay for extravagant wedding photo shoots. They start saving early, then go into debt. China has a sky-high household saving rate: couples squirrel away 38% of disposable income, compared with 10% in notoriously frugal Germany. Two academics, Shang-Jin Wei and Xiaobo Zhang, estimate that half the increase in China’s saving rate between 1990 and 2007 can be attributed to the rising cost of marriage in a society with too many men.

Some fear that worse is to come. The unmarried male population is concentrated both geographically and socially. China’s women are taking advantage of their scarcity value to marry men from wealthier backgrounds, leaving many poor, illiterate rural men on the shelf (see chart). In a country where respectable adulthood is tied to marriage, the outcome could be a large pariah population and an epidemic of prostitution, abduction and organised crime in the countryside.

But if rural China were heading for social Armageddon, there ought to be some sign of it already. There is not. The inhabitants of Zhongdenglou tell stories about brides being imported from other countries, especially Vietnam—but these stories turn out to come from the news media. They seem to view single men with pity and scorn rather than alarm—“people will laugh,” says Mr Qiang. Understandably, many unmarried men disappear, migrating to jobs in the cities in order to build up their savings. By the time they give up on marriage, in their 40s, they are too old to cause much trouble.

Perhaps the most likely outcome is that China will endure a painful, decades-long marriage squeeze before the problem solves itself. Silly bride prices are an economic signal to which families are already responding. Lihong Shi, an anthropologist at Case Western Reserve University in America, says that many rural Chinese families have already come to view sons more as economic burdens than as security for their old age. If one believes Chinese statistics, the sex ratio at birth has fallen from a peak of 121 boys to 100 girls in 2004 to 114:100 in 2015.

Besides, as China becomes more mobile, patrilocal customs are breaking down. Married couples often live far from their aged parents and support them by sending money home. It turns out that daughters can look after their parents just as well as sons—and, according to Ms Shi, are thought to be better at the daily practicalities. Couples who failed to produce a boy 20 or 30 years ago, and endured the mockery of their neighbours, are having the last laugh.

This article appeared in the Special report section of the print edition under the headline "A distorted sex ratio is playing havoc with marriage in China"

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southeastasianists · 6 years

Link

IMAGINE THAT THE LANGUAGE YOU speak with your friends, with your family, with people on the street, a language unique to your country and objectively very interesting and cool, is, officially, considered lesser and unworthy. This kind of thing has happened around the world throughout history: African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) speakers in the United States, for example, have also had their language marginalized and demeaned by the ruling power. Now, it’s happening in Singapore.

Singapore is an immigrant country with four official languages: English, Malay, Tamil, and Mandarin. Officially, English is the most commonly spoken language in Singaporean homes, having recently and just barely edged out Mandarin. Unofficially? That’s completely wrong. Because what’s likely the actual most common language spoken does not appear on the census. That language is called Singlish.

Singlish can broadly be categorized as a creole, which is a full language that arises suddenly, usually with one language as its base, but with unique grammatical features and many words from at least one other language. This kind of language comes about when people who don’t speak the same language are suddenly living in the same place. Many creoles came from the slave trade: one person speaks one language, another speaks a second language, and they’re both moved to a place where they have to work together and live together and communicate. The base language is usually the language of the ruling class or imperial power; it’s a language that those two slaves need to understand a little, but they bring elements of their own languages into it. At first, this kind of language is classified as a pidgin, which is sort of a shorthand that exists solely for necessary communication alongside other full languages. But in some cases, it evolves into a full language of its own, one that can handle all the tasks any other language handles, at which point it’s called a creole.

Singlish has its base in English, because Singapore was a British colony for most of its modern history. But the vast majority of the population came from countries where English was not the dominant language, mostly mainland China, Malaysia, and India. Thus Singlish was born.

“Singlish itself, in its full-blown version, can get quite hard to understand [for non-Singaporean English speakers],” says Jakob Leimgruber, a sociolinguist and assistant professor who wrote his thesis on Singlish. Singaporeans are rarely monolingual, and conversations can often include bits and pieces, or full sentences, in multiple languages, which can make trying to isolate Singlish a bit tricky. But, despite the fact that Singapore is made up of multiple ethnic groups who speak different languages, Singlish itself is “remarkably consistent,” says Leimgruber, across the entire populace.

At least, it’s consistent across all ethnic groups. Socioeconomically, it’s more likely that poorer and/or older Singaporeans would speak Singlish more often; younger and wealthier Singaporeans are more likely to be able to switch between Singlish and more widely understood varieties of English. But Leimgruber says that few, if any, Singaporeans would be completely unfamiliar with Singlish, largely due to the country’s compulsory military service, which places people from all economic backgrounds together.

The language includes lots of loanwords from the other major languages spoken in Singapore, especially Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. These are really, really common, to the point where sometimes it can sound as if the speaker has simply switched languages mid-thought. And there are some pronunciation things; words that end with a lot of consonants, for example, tend to get simplified, so a word like “texts” would be pronounced more like “tex.” But it gets much more interesting than that; it has a whole mess of totally distinct grammatical features that make it unusual.

An easy one to understand is the word “lah,” which is what’s known in linguistics as a tag. It’s attached, often but not exclusively, to the end of sentences. It’s roughly similar to the Canadian “eh,” and various other English words or phrases used around the world (“right,” “you know,” “innit”). It is ubiquitous in Singapore, as associated with Singlish as the Canadian “eh” is with Canada, although interestingly there is no pause between the end of the sentence and “lah,” as there is with “eh.” Imagine it as just…not having a comma. “So you’d just race into it lah”? Singlish has so, so many of these lightly modifying tags: leh, mah, lor, hor, har, ar. They all convey slightly different things about the relationship between the speaker and listener, or the way the speaker wants the listener to interpret what was just said.

Interestingly, the Singaporean government does not have a firm definition of what “standard English” means.

Singlish speakers use the present tense when referring to people who are alive, or probably still alive. In English, you might say, “I went to Thailand last year, and the guide spoke fluent Spanish.” In Singlish, it would be, “the guide speaks fluent Spanish.” The thinking is that the guide continues to speak Spanish; whether you are in Thailand does not affect the guide’s ability to speak Spanish.

Then there’s the word “kena,” which is pronounced something like “kih-NAH.” There are words like this in Asian languages such as Malay and Hokkien, but not really in English. It’s a grammatical word used to mark the passive and usually right before or even instead of a verb; it means something, some verb action, happened to the subject of the sentence. Interestingly, it’s only ever used for negative things; you could say “the teacher kena scolded him,” but not “the teacher kena praised him.” “Tio” is similar, though it can be used for positive actions as well, like “She tio money on the ground.”

The English word “then” has, in Singlish, been changed to “den,” and its meanings have been pretty radically changed. It can be used to describe an action that will happen in the future, as in ”I den talk to you.” It can be used in about a dozen other ways, meaning “therefore,” as a link to a previous sentence, or alone as a sarcastic sort of “oh yeah?” meaning. The pronunciation might subtly change as well, by lengthening or dragging out the final consonant, to indicate the way in which the word is being used.

“Den” is one of many examples of ways in which Singlish sort of sounds like English, but actually packs a whole other bunch of meanings into it. If you were to just translate “den” as “then,” you wouldn’t really be getting it; you can’t use “den” in some places you’d use “then,” and vice versa, and it sometimes means something other than what “then” would mean.

Singlish also uses a lot of reduplication, which is repeating the same word. English doesn’t do this much; it might have a phrase like “very, very big,” in which the repetition is used to amplify the word “very.” “Very, very big” is even bigger than “very big,” which is bigger than “big.” In Singlish, that’s not at all how reduplication works. Take a sentence like this: “Your son short short.”

For one thing, that’s not a typo; Singlish, like Hebrew and a few other languages, simply doesn’t use the verb “to be.” (Singlish also often omits articles like “the” and “a/an.”) But the reduplication thing: “short short” doesn’t mean “very short.” Instead the reduplication of the word is a dampener, taking the whole phrase to something more like “short-ish.” This kind of reduplication can be used with both adjectives and verbs; you can take a walk walk, which would be a very mild stroll.

Anyway, that’s just a brief survey, and it might even underplay exactly how different from English Singlish really is. Leimgruber says Singlish is mostly mutually comprehensible with English, but I’m not so sure. Take a look at the Singlish dub ofBeauty and the Beast.

Singlish is spoken across all ethnic groups in Singapore, even across economic strata. But the government hates it. Since the year 2000, the Singaporean government has been conducting a campaign called the “Speak Good English Movement,” which is specifically designed to discourage the use of Singlish and encourage the use of standard English.

Interestingly, the Singaporean government does not have a firm definition of what “standard English” means; they aren’t strictly teaching British Received Pronunciation or New England Prep School English or Australian English or anything else. By “standard,” they seem to simply mean “English that can be readily understood by English speakers outside Singapore.”

The campaign is not overtly violent or racist in the same way marginalization of Irish Gaelic or AAVE speakers was and is. The Singaporean government does outreach, posting signs around public transit telling people the “correct” way to pronounce words, hosting writing competitions for kids in school, that kind of thing. “These words are very similar and many often get them confused, but do you know when it’s more appropriate to use a particular word? Put your grammar skills to the test and see how you fare!” reads one quiz. Is it “The mother put her children to sleep at night” or “the mother put her children to bed at night”?

The government’s reasoning is that English is the international language of commerce, and that Singapore has an inherent advantage because, it being a former British colony, English is already widely spoken. But if instead it’s Singlish that people are speaking, this could make for a serious obstacle to international financial success.

Since the early 1980s, the idea that any one language can be “correct” or “good,” while others are “incorrect” or “bad,” has been widely panned by linguists. Bill Labov, pioneering linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, was among the first to study AAVE as a regular language, one with rules that can’t be broken and unique features and an evolution, rather than as some mangled form of standard English. Since then, the idea that all languages are just, you know, different, rather than good or bad, has been the norm. Singapore’s shunning of Singlish is, from that perspective, retrograde and maybe even offensive.

Singlish itself is pretty well-studied, though a lot of the publications—dictionaries, for example—are more jokey than serious academic works. And Singaporeans have not risen up to protest the marginalization of Singlish. “There’s much less of an advocacy for Singlish in Singapore,” says Leimgruber. There are some—again, jokey—organizations, like the Speak Good Singlish Movement Facebook page. (“Harlow, welcome to the Speak Good Singlish Movement. Our Gahmen has been damn siao on, trying to tell us to speak good engrish, good chinese. This is the Facebook Singlish Speaker’s Corner, let it all out my friends. Don’t be paiseh.”)

But Singaporeans seem fairly comfortable switching between Singlish and Singapore-inflected English, or Mandarin or Malay or any of the other languages spoken in Singapore. Leimgruber says that Singaporeans don’t disagree that some mutually comprehensible form of English is important to learn, and in many situations (speaking to foreigners, job interviews) will switch to English. The degree to which people are aware of the differences between Singlish and English varies; most Singlish speakers will probably not use the many Mandarin or Malay words when speaking a more standard English, but some of those grammatical differences would likely remain.

But, says Leimgruber, Singlish is not really in any danger of dying out, despite the government’s hopes. (He says that in cases where the government really feels the need to connect with the populace, like in elections, government officials will sometimes lapse into Singlish.) It’s as close to a unique national language as Singapore gets lah?

#Southeast Asia #Singapore #Singlish #Linguistics

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