sunnunderthesun

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Why I have stopped expecting kindness from my country's "educated" majority

The grasp of neoliberalism on India has only tightened since the cartoon, depicting India gaining independence from British colonialism to end up being caged by American neoliberalism, was posted by a revolutionary political activist, shortly before he had gained prominence as one, and now an electoral candidate, on a social media platform ten years ago. Commenting on the picture, the young activist had rightly predicted that the country would be serving neoliberalism and the United States regardless of which political party won the elections.

Despite being informed about how abstaining from unnecessarily using the services of unscrupulous companies can, in the long run, protect human lives in the Global South, a significant number of educated people in my country, India, remain in denial. Some react aggressively, claiming that “capitalism has lifted millions out of poverty”.

The other day, I randomly asked ChatGPT if billionaires are mentally ill for enabling modern slavery instead of choosing to end world hunger. It instantly flagged my question as inappropriate, much the same way people, who can’t sacrifice their harmful habits for humanity, shout me down when I try to inspire them to participate in the boycott movement or, at least, not wear expensive branded garments on a march against the government’s oppression towards the poor.

Yes, in the face of unemployment, increasing violence against women, and the lack of a safe personal space in this overcrowded poor country, a vast majority of the citizens, including the self-proclaimed communists who believe that Marx would have adjusted his theories to synchronise with the “advantages of capitalism” if he was alive and functional today, don’t shy away from protesting against the government and judiciary. Their idea of honesty may lie only in boldly confessing the nepotism or bribery that has led them to acquire a world-class education, a stable source of income, illegally constructed properties, or some degree of fame, while bargaining with the poor over a few pennies after using their services.

However, not everyone involved in corruption is greedy, some are just trying to save lives, as we may have observed during the worst hours of the pandemic. But how does need become a greed to the extent that an educated person takes refuge in cognitive dissonance to justify not standing against Western imperialism when children in Sudan are eating soil in the hope of surviving the war-induced famine?

Capitalism, which, in practice, doesn’t thrive without cronyism, generously rewards unethical behaviour and punishes integrity. Companies profit greatly from the exploitation of the labour of migrants, such as in the wine and luxury industries; the people and nature of resource-rich nations like Congo; and the last-mile deliverers of their respective programmes, such as healthcare programmes funded by charitable organisations. Companies would, for example, suffer heavily – from considerable financial losses to political and economic retaliation from the pro-settler colonial lobbyists and governments of nations profiting from genocides – if they divest from settler colonial nations like Israel.

In corporate offices, the “leaders”, deeply entangled in corruption that leads to the violation of human rights of the underprivileged, especially those in the Global South, leave their respective employees with no choice but to follow suit. The ones who go against the “leaders”, when what they have been hired to do starts feeling too inhumane for them to work on, face job losses.

This free-market economic system promotes ill-health and mass ignorance chiefly by the widespread implementation of strategies – aggressive marketing of brands collaborating with high-profile cultural icons, social influencers and thought leaders, events and other trusted companies – targeting our evolutionary prestige-bias, probably unique to humans, and mirroring tendencies. It’s not unnatural of us to consume social media, knowing well that the companies owning them are enhancing our vulnerability by unlawfully selling our private data, or waste time streaming widely televised shows that increase materialism and reinforce our inherited unscientific beliefs instead of eradicating them because our favourite celebrities encourage us to and the well-off highly-educated people we look up to do the same.

As the government fails to meet the basic needs of the increasing population, people, experiencing scarcity and a tougher competition for survival, are likely to engage in immoral activities without worrying about the future consequences. Our perceptions of scarcity vary. To one scarcity is not knowing how to fund their next meal. To another scarcity is the lack of an income that would enable them to start a family. But, scarcity or not, the more illegal acts are incentivised, the less concerned people are about ethics. When all the members of a group are benefitted from the unethical actions of one of them, they tend to remain quiet about it. This is one of the reasons too many people look the other way when it comes to acting against a political party whose officials protect their immoral interests, or the war-mongering governments that employ and house their youth who wouldn’t otherwise have found work in their own country, or the companies that, in addition to employment opportunities, provide us with free or cheap products of instant gratification.

Western-style diet maybe considered a hallmark of status or a temporary relief from anxiety, but it’s composed of excessive added sugar, salt, fats and trans-fats, and artificial ingredients that have the potential to impair our cognitive abilities. Studies have linked the consumption of ultra-processed foods and drinks to systemic inflammation which can cause impulse control disorder and poor decision-making. While the urban upper class is increasingly opting for more ultra-processed foods and using branded ingredients to cook if they ever do, the middle and lower classes battle deficiency of essential micronutrients and overnutrition from having cheap processed meals as a home-cooked balanced diet is expensive and not a status symbol. When meals that challenge our self-control are almost instantly available at the touch of a button, they degrade our mental and physical well-being further, especially for those who already have an impulse control disorder. With the worrying rise of alcohol consumption, whether it can be attributed to the growing economic disparity or a religious requirement or societal pressure or simply a compulsion, rises the lack of empathy among its addicts.

Corruption is, from what we may observe on a daily basis, meticulously figuring out and using the opportunity to harm others for personal financial gain. Those who are able to uphold their morality in spite of temptations, whether morality is an outcome of having a combination of the right genes and an environment facilitating a good hormonal balance that maintain a robust prefrontal cortex or something else that scientists can't comprehend yet, encouraging others to be human can be a debilitating task as neoliberalism feeds them with more and more products eroding away their ethical self-control and turning them into the capitalists' puppets who continue to support the destruction of human lives while lying to themselves, You can't save the whole world!

Copyright ©️ Briksha

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Ambroise Paré, one of the fathers of surgery and modern forensic pathology, writes about sex change

Source: The works of that famous chirurgeon Ambrose Parey

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What Friends of the Congo suggests you do

It's undeniably true that too many people are heavily reliant on the services provided by the technology companies. But they can still stand up for the rights of the Congolese adults and children entrapped in slavery that the companies keep profiting from. We got in touch with Friends of the Congo last month to learn more about this.

On April 16th, 2024, Friends of the Congo replied, Up until a few weeks ago, we were calling on people to sign our petition and write letters to the companies calling on them to do right by the people at the bottom of the supply chain in the Congo by settling the lawsuit that was brought against them by Congolese children. See more on the lawsuit here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7171121597053956096/ . Unfortunately, the case was struck down in the court and the judges ruled in favor of the companies.

We are revisiting our strategy and will come out with a declaration and a way forward. In the meantime, we encourage people to do the following:

Learn more about what is happening in the Congo, especially at the bottom of the supply change. This is a good start: https://friendsofthecongo.org/primer

Spread the word among your network and encourage people to join our efforts at http://freecongo.org

Reach out to climate justice organizations and labour unions in the auto industry and encourage them to take up the cause of the Congolese workers and activists at the bottom of the Green Energy supply chain

Invite our speakers to your communities to share more in depth how people around the world can help

Hold off on the phone upgrades, write letters to the companies, join in demonstrations and rallies (we usually post them on our Instagram page @congofriends) and propose other ways we can pressure and shame the companies.

[sunnunderthesun]

Heat

On a frigid evening,

Elegant figures

Descended from a high-rise dwelling

For a candlelight march

To honour

A slaughtered furry stray

And denounce the nation’s law

That let the marginalized killer

Get away.

But the protest was muffled

By the wails of several critters –

Beaten, drugged, dehorned and skinned

Alive –

As the flickering lights illumined

The leather-clad demonstrators.

Copyright ©️ Wrong 2024

[sunnunderthesun]

"We organized the very last show in 2023..."

Whether to address societal issues or personal traumas of people, forum theatre coupled with psychodrama have been used by NGOs in a number of tormented African nations.

The Brazilian theatre practitioner, Augusto Boal, is known as the creator of forum theatre – an interactive form of theatre in which the audience becomes “spect-actors” when they intervene and change the course of the play. Psychodrama occurs as the actors portray their real-life struggles and explore their anguishes. Spreading messages of awareness and resilience through masquerade and embryonic dramas has been around in Africa since times immemorial. But Boal’s method of forum theatre is now being applied in an effort to unite Africans in regions of tension.

In the book Art and Conscientization (2015), Claus Schrowange writes about his experiences of developing and organising plays with groups in Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo “for the promotion of peace, human rights, and sustainable development”.

According to him, “The ideal Forum Theatre performance is indoor with 20 to 100 spectators, in a hall of the size of one to three classrooms. The larger the audience, the less intense the program. ... Actors should not use microphones, not even during open air performances. Microphones destroy the natural voice which is necessary to project emotions to the audience. ... Our actors only wear uniform T-shirts, most of the time in black and white, with black trousers or skirt. They remove wristwatches, necklaces, earrings and any other item that attracts unnecessary attention. In order to open the senses and energy flow and make better use of their body, they always perform barefoot. ... The play is the heart of the activity. Our goal is to leave the audience astonished, inspired, confused, and enlightened at the same time. We motivate them to become active in their daily lives and within their limited means and powers, to act against all kinds of injustice, violence and Human Rights abuses. ... The actors don’t need to be experts in theatre, but they have to be open to discover themselves and share their real emotions on stage. Actors should act in the language they are using in their own daily life. When it is not possible, more emphasis should be given on the non-verbal expression and the verbal part should be reduced to a minimum.”

However, theatrical attempts to unite different African communities, especially those engaged in decades-long violence against each other, aren't easily welcomed. In areas prone to violence between militant groups and government forces, many adults and children end up becoming soldiers to survive in the absence of employment or education opportunities. The children get drugged and the women and girls are raped by armed men. The forcibly-displaced surviving civilians have deep emotional scars and distrust for NGOs.

“Africa independence was a masquerade, and most of the scourges that devastate this region are consequences of government irresponsibility, and the lack of some politicians’ awareness. They promulgate laws and change them, but they don’t ensure that the entire population has understood them: the first victims of this situation are not enlightened. This is the environment in which our Theatre of the Oppressed group is working,” writes Eliezer Kasereka who, along with his friend, once violently protested against plays organised by Schrowange in Kiwanja because his Theatre of the Oppressed mixed Rwandans and Congolese when there were allegations that Rwanda supported the rebel groups operating in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. But Schrowange and his group were able to influence Kasereka into experiencing “the power that Theatre of the Oppressed has to change minds and heal hearts”.

Since the beginning of 2016, Joseph Tsongo, the founder and CEO of Amani-Institute ASBL, and his friend Eliezer Kasereka, supported by the NGO APRED-RGL, began to use “participatory forum theater in psychodrama style” to help the child soldiers, who had managed to escape from the deadly clutches of armed groups, reintegrate into the society that feared them. They used to host theatre workshops at least once a week in the north-eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Last month, we contacted Mr. Tsongo to learn when the last forum theater was held by him, considering the present crisis in the country. On April 2nd, 2024, he said, ...we organized the very last show in 2023 due to the deteriorating security situation in the region, as well as due to a lack of necessary resources. (His original reply in French: En effet, nous avions organisé le tout dernier spectacle en 2023 et cela en raison de la détérioration de la situation sécuritaire dans la région mais aussi par manque de moyens nécessaires.)

In this regard, worthy of mention is Milo Rau’s solution-driven political theatre, The Congo Tribunal, involving the “victims, perpetrators, witnesses and analysts of the Congo War in Bukavu/Eastern Congo”. It explores the war in Congo – triggered by the West-sponsored Rwandan Genocide (1994) and fuelled by the powerful capitalists’ greed for the country’s natural resources necessary to run the technology of the 21st century – that has claimed the lives of over six million Congolese people. Based on The Congo Tribunal, Rau’s opera called Justice is “the first lyric work on the crimes of transnational companies ever” developed with the victims of the Glencore copper mine accident at Kabwe, aiming to raise funds for them. Justice will be taking the audience "to the heart of the Congolese mining industry", at Tangente St. Pölten Festival in Austria on 30th April, 2024.

However, the Congolese people, struggling with the harsh realities of civil wars and continuous exploitations by the economically powerful nations, need much more international attention than they are receiving now.

[sunnunderthesun]

Congolese cinema and Patrice Lumumba

It’s no surprise that African cinema, especially Congolese cinema, isn’t a part of the syllabus of film studies at several universities outside Africa, and Patrice Lumumba hasn’t yet found a space in most history and political science textbooks used by the Western-centric education system in many wealthy and developing countries (including mine).

There is only a handful of scholarly work on Congolese cinema available in English, and most of them are focussed on the evangelisation of the Congolese people, in Belgian Congo, by the male missionaries through mobile film screenings using the “cinema van” built by the British before World War Two to spread propaganda among “primitive peoples”.

Gansa Ndombasi addresses the lack of available information about Congolese cinema and lays out its history in his book La cinéma du Congo démocratique (2008).

The filmmakers of the films screened in Belgian Congo – which used to be the personal property of King Leopold ll after the European countries divided the African continent among themselves at the Berlin Conference of 1885 until Belgian government took over the administration of Congo from him in 1908 and turned it into their colony – showed black characters as “so Manichaean and caricatured that local populations could not identify with them”. The films, religious and nationalist in nature, including the imported Hollywood, Bollywood, and East Asian films – shown to the Congolese community between the early 1960s and 1997 were strictly governed by the interests of Mobutu, the then (1965-1991) head of the state who facilitated the West's access to Congo’s resources as he assumed his dictatorship over Zaire, a name he adopted for the nation. Film commentators, who translated the film’s dialogues into the local language and helped the community understand the story of the film they were being shown, existed well into the post-colonial period since the colonial times. The period following the end of Mobutu’s rule was marked by an increase in Revivalists’ religious films and independent films co-produced by the unrepressed Congolese diaspora with countries like France and Belgium. Ndombasi has called this cinematic period “Cinéma Congolaise” when Zaire became the Democratic Republic of Congo and, unlike the other two male-dominated periods of filmmaking, women began to make documentaries and short films. Recently Macherie Ekwa Bahango made her debut feature film, Maki'La (2018), on the lives of the marginalized street children and violence against women in Congo.

Both French Congo and Belgian Congo gained independence in 1960, but a Congolese feature film wasn’t produced until 1987; the 1980s being the period when NGOs started flocking to Africa. Some of those charitable organisations are accused of trying to establish “market-friendly human rights” and profiteering the resistance of the people in the exploited conflict-plagued continent.

The first Congolese prime minister and a visionary pan-Africanist whose anti-colonial revolution was crucial in freeing Congo from Belgium, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered in 1961 along with two of his colleagues, by the “agents of imperialism and neocolonialism” because the three martyrs “put their faith in the United Nations and because they refused to allow themselves to be used as stooges or puppets for external interests”. During the cold war, Lumumba’s plans to nationalize Congo’s resources to enhance the country’s economic growth was unfavourable to the West, especially because Congo provided the uranium used in the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – an outcome of Einstein’s fateful letter. Lumumba’s assassination committed with full support from the United States and Europe, in his aim to prevent the “economic reconquest” of the resource-rich Congo by the United States, Belgium, and the United Kingdom, he sought the help of Soviet Union when the United Nations refused to aid the Congolese government in “restoring law and order and calm in the interior of the country”. But he was no communist. In his own words (translated into English): In Africa, anybody who is for progress, anyone who is for the people and against the imperialists is a communist, an agent of Moscow! But anyone who approves of the imperialists, who goes out looking for money and pockets it for himself and his family, is an exemplary man; the imperialists will praise him and bless him. That is the truth, my friends.

In the book Lumumba in the arts, Matthias De Groof writes, "In Congolese society, the impression is that Lumumba is the only one who managed to hang on, to survive and to stay in people's memories through the popular and humorous speeches in which people imitate political figures, for example. When a painter portrays Lumumba, he knows that he will sell the painting, which isn't the case for other national figures." Lumumba (2000) is considered to be the first African feature film on him that portrays his life, political stance and assassination, followed by the documentary called Lumumba, la mort d'un prophète in 1990, by Raoul Peck, a Haitian director who had spent his childhood in Zaire. The father of Congolese independence has inspired a number of foreign films, among other forms of art.

To get an idea of how challenging it is to shoot a movie in the Democratic Republic of Congo at present, last week, we got in touch with Congo Rising, a US-based production company who was preparing to make a major film on Patrice Lumumba in 2021. Congo Rising's Margaret Young informed us, It’s a huge challenge! We have a call scheduled with our publicist on Thursday and a call with Roland Lumumba, Patrice Lumumba’s youngest son, on Sunday. Things are definitely NOT nailed down. The project is still alive, but there are lots of questions which must be answered.

As the Congolese people now battle the devastating consequences of the ongoing armed conflict and slavery, it is crucial that we, the common people with a conscience, do everything in our power – boycott the corporate giants getting richer by enabling modern slavery, promote the enormous creative potential of the Congolese people and amplify the unedited version of their resistance against their exploiters – to stop contributing to their sufferings.

[sunnunderthesun]

The book of questions

Sometimes all we need is a book that exists only to encourage us to think about what's important. Published in 1898, Life's Questions, by Ernest Temple, is a book of over one hundred pages containing nothing but timeless questions – some of them so deep that they may seem a bit absurd.

Following are two pages of questions from the book that people, who are suffering from cognitive distortions as a result of patriarchy and its economic counterpart called capitalism, may benefit from reflecting on, especially when there's an upcoming election.

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We need to talk about Sudan and its poetry

Oh, German Hitler

Oh, Italian Mussolini

Your chair will never ever stay again

You are just like

a foreign piaster

with no value in our market

The above excerpt is the English rendition of the song famously sung by the Sudanese singer Aisha Musa Ahmad, during World War Two, to encourage active Sudanese soldiers fighting the Axis alliance in the hope of gaining independence from British rule.

It is only towards the end of the last decade, during the Sudanese revolution, that the Eurocentric mainstream news sources began to shine a light on Sudan’s centuries-old oral tradition of poems, songs, storytelling, and chants which have always been an integral part of the Sudanese people’s peaceful protests against any form of oppression. While the works of notable Sudanese writers like Tayeb Salih and Mahjoub Sharif have brought international recognition for Sudan's written literature since the latter half of the twentieth century, much of the nation's oral poetic battle cry of resistance, strength, and resilience still remains unheard of in most parts of the world.

When asked why the internet hardly has any English-translated Sudanese poems written before the present century, a staff of ArabLit informs me that not many poems from the early or even mid-20th century exist, especially online, as translations from Arabic to English was mainly an academic endeavour until recently.

My search for Sudanese folklore on Google brings up just a handful of websites, books, and social media channels focussing on, mostly, contemporary Sudanese diasporic poems and stories, translated into or written in English, but it’s too challenging to find an English-translated poem by a native Sudanese poet on the search engine’s high-ranking webpages that list “must-read poems” or “great war poems” of this century and earlier.

On some archival websites, fragmentary specimens of Sudanese folklore can be found in a couple of late twentieth-century research papers on Sudan’s oral tradition, the journal called Sudan Notes and Records that was started by the British imperialists in an attempt to gain more control of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and the racist memoir called My Sudan Year in which the cultural anthropologist Ethel Stefana Drower writes, The Sudanese is a rhymester rather than a poet. He makes rhymes and rhythms on every possible occasion, but, like all of Arab blood or partly Arab blood, he is seldom capable of producing lofty lyrical poetry. The boatmen, as they tug together at a rope, or pull their oars through the water, make chanteys, but these are rarely imaginative or poetical in the Western sense of the words.

I learn from a librarian at the Library of Congress that their only available digitalized collection of Sudanese poetry is not translated from Arabic to English. However, they couldn’t clearly tell me the reason behind the dearth of English translations of Sudanese folklore, especially the ones from over a hundred years ago, on the internet.

Efforts of individuals like Dr. James Dickens and the library activist Israa Abbas to preserve and promote recent Sudanese poems and songs, both in English and Arabic, may inspire the mainstream international literary publications, that also happen to be Western-centric, to consider publishing a powerful Sudanese poem or two sometime. Observing the educated masses' continued disregard for the ongoing destruction of lives and invaluable university archives in conflict-ridden Sudan, it’s hard to predict when the internet will show more cultural inclusivity.

[sunnunderthesun]

Second Life's music clubs: An extension of toxic nationalism

Hatred for Muslims and Palestinians is rising in the USA as the nation continues to strongly support Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Based on my experiences of clubbing in the online game called Second Life, I can confirm the average American clubber’s apparent indifference towards the loss of civilian lives as a result of the ongoing war in the Muslim-majority countries.

The clubs I frequent are owned by Americans, and most of the members of those clubs happen to be Americans. Every day the clubs’ traffic goes down drastically when it’s past 12:00 a.m. in San Francisco. The only people one can come across at those clubs during the early morning hours are Europeans, Australians, New Zealanders, one or two insomniac Americans, and, rarely, Asians. One important rule of every music club in Second Life is not to ever bring up politics and religion in the chatbox or on air. Violation of this rule may even lead to a ban from the venues.

A DJ can be heard playing songs hailing the British monarchy, and the staff can ask everyone to kneel their avatars for the King of England on special occasions at clubs that are supposed to be inclusive. But, one mention of the word “Trump” is enough to incite an ugly fight between Trump’s lovers and haters who are almost always present in the clubs. These clubs’ respective managers make sure that no conversation about any election ever takes place in the public chat box. However, I have noticed that clubbers can safely hark back to the September 11 attacks, 2015 Paris attacks, the Orlando nightclub shooting, the Noitre-Dame fire, or any such event that has impacted the West. The club owners possibly find it reasonable for someone to start discussing a crisis that has affected them or their loved ones. Since early 2022, many clubs and their members have been exhibiting their support for Ukraine. Some people speak of having dressed their avatars in clothes whose colours resemble that of the Ukrainian flag. Some have been spotted sporting a “Pray for Ukraine” tag above their respective names. Many clubs display the Ukrainian flag or a blue and yellow heart-shaped board that reads: Pray for Ukraine.

But where’s the support for Palestine and Yemen? Where’s the concern for the ongoing genocide against civilians in the Muslim-majority countries? A few weeks ago, a club hopper, who claimed to be intoxicated, randomly began to blame the others around them in an international club for not showing an ounce of sympathy for the Palestinians. The club’s host immediately warned them that they would be banned from the club if they didn’t stop “talking politics” while a staff member of the very club was sporting the hashtag "standwithisrael" typed against an image of the Israeli flag on their profile. People come to this place to escape their RL (real lives). So it's best to avoid topics that can disrupt the ambiance here, the host explained. The club hopper ended up being kicked out of the club for being vocal about the club’s lack of compassion for Palestine.

Second Life has too many such music venues where, according to my ten years of observations, it’s humane to talk about the suffering of the West, only when that suffering is not caused by people originally from the West, but political to empathise with the victims of war in the Middle East and Africa. Unless bigotry is eradicated from the developed nations, I doubt Second Life’s major cultural locations will be any more welcoming to the surprisingly few individuals who enjoy live Western music, share their worries about the poverty-stricken war-torn nations, and refuse to accept double standards just to fit in with most others in the virtual world.

[sunnunderthesun]

"If the Earth were a globe..."

[sunnunderthesun]

Must it be this difficult to survive as a Community Health Worker?

The Ministries of Health in the Global South and billionaire-run charitable organisations reportedly face "several constraints" when it comes to paying the community health workers, most of them underprivileged women, they're heavily reliant on in executing their respective big-budget healthcare programmes. But the organisations actively promote their concern for the health and wellbeing of other impoverished women.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has granted funds to Women in Global Health "to research the status of women's leadership in the health sector in Nigeria, Kenya and India". However, the foundation hasn't yet been able to move on any further from "thinking critically" about how to support the community health workers.

Only 25% of women occupy leadership positions in health globally when over 65% of jobs in the health sector are held by women. About six million female health workers hardly receive any financial compensation for their life-saving services. Despite being the only source of primary health care to the poorest sections of the society, many community health aides have no access to transport facilities that would enable them to deliver their services in a timely manner without having to exhaust themselves by walking long distances to visit the targeted households. In regions plagued by conflict, these workers find it even more challenging to help the sick in the absence of essential supplies and transport.

Philanthropists, "in collaboration with" the governments of the respective countries their charitable programmes are put in place, find it cost-effective to budget healthcare programmes without giving the community health workers their due. These overburdened and unsalaried health workers, having no proper formal training, enough personal protective equipment, and protection against gender-based violence, are left to explore ways to lobby politicians from their remote locations in the hope of beginning to receive a living wage.

When frustrated community health workers go on a strike to claim their deserved remuneration, poverty-stricken adults and children are badly affected. The world's largest community health workforce, the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), are still keeping up their fight for a fixed minimum wage and other basic benefits that any person performing tasks on behalf of the government should be entitled to.

We have social entrepreneurs commercialising Africa's issue of inadequate access to healthcare to solve it. It's disturbing to imagine a community health worker trying to interest the caregivers of a sick child into purchasing a solar lamp and other products in exchange for a diagnosis. These community health workers, at the mercy of the entrepreneurs who are slow to hire and quick to fire, will lose their only source of income – about 20 USD a month – if they fail to become successful salespeople. These workers, also labelled as "agents" by the social entrepreneurs, end up spending their hard-earned money on purchasing their respective employers' products to sell to the poor at a near-market price. Even the charitable organisations that take pride in giving the community health workers financial (based on "the geographic differences in labour costs") and non-financial incentives are simply the enablers of wage slavery.

However, a Coalition of these organisations began in 2019 after claiming to have demonstrated that salaried (the amount of the salary being as low as 10 or 20 USD per month) and digitally equipped community health workers can stop preventable deaths in the outlying parts of Africa where more than 80% of the community health workers still remain unpaid.

The essence of health aides has been known since the late 1800s when Russia's Feldshers treated people in the rural regions in the absence of physicians. But the the idea that the community health workers deserve a salary for their back-breaking work just started being popularized, through "in-depth research" and "advocacy", by the Coalition which is now composed of about five thousand community health workers, for-profit companies and corporations, and other non-governmental organisations.

But why do these social entrepreneurs, investing in micro-franchising Africa's health sector by training and monitoring the community health workers using advanced technology, avoid paying their employed workers a living wage? Well, they simply blame the World Bank for asking the respective governments of the countries they work in to avoid inflating the workers' wage bill...

For many rural healthcare workers who are merely treated as volunteers in the least developed nations, joining hands with the Coalition, that emphasizes on a goal of technologically upgrading the services of the community health workers, may be their only way towards getting any recognition, even if it's a monthly stipend of 30 USD, from their respective governments. At a time when many care workers of the USA, the country that dominates the international financial institutions like the World Bank, would rather wait tables at an eatery than work in the health sector, it's probably too early to imagine a bright future for the community health workers in economically poor countries. The question is, when will the few individuals in power face "constraints" that prevent the inequitable distribution of wealth in this world?

[sunnunderthesun]

Fiction: Another Job Interview

In an overcrowded bus, Robi’s demeanour stands out. Anxiety appears to swallow him up. The fine arts graduate is on his way to take his eighth job interview that year after being rejected by uncountable employers in the last thirteen years. He gets off the bus when it stops in front of a private office building, and heads towards its open gate. As he’s about to enter the premises, he feels lightheaded because his blood sugar level starts going down.

Three well-dressed men, standing at the gate, approach him. One of them asks Robi, “Here for an interview?” A shaky Robi nods. “Well, you must pay us a thousand rupees to be able to get in,” says another. Robi rummages through his backpack, takes out a small bottle of sugar cubes and chugs the sugar down with water. “Young man, are you listening to us? Pay us the thousand rupees and we’ll be out of your way,” says the third stranger. Regaining his vigour, Robi begins to explain to the men, “You have no idea how desperately I need this job. I am stone broke and in debt to a couple of relatives who funded my medical expenses five years ago. I don’t have any siblings to help me with anything. I beg you, let me go...” But the men remain unmoved by his story. They tell him to give them the money or forget about the interview. Robi phones his friend who reluctantly sends the men money through an internet banking website. Robi is then let in for the interview. The receptionist at the office directs him upstairs to the boss’ chamber where the interview has been scheduled to take place. The boss, a lady in her early fifties who reeks of unimaginable wealth, welcomes him and asks him to close the door behind him. There is no one else present in that spacious room besides her and Robi.

“You don’t seem nervous,” says the lady with a grin.

“No. I have been through this many times before. May I sit?”

“Yes, you may.”

She then takes two minutes to examine Robi’s physical appearance as he sits there in front of her, observing an awkward silence. “I have brought some of my best works with me today. Do you want to see them?”

She only smiles which Robi takes as a yes. He places before her his weighty file of traditional paintings done by him over the years and some photographs of his sculptures.

She clumsily runs through those pictures and asks Robi, “What makes you think that I will be impressed by your drawings when I have talented digital artists producing attractive illustrations anytime I need?”

“Well… I believe digital art cannot ever replace traditional art’s aesthetic value. I think you agree with me on this because in your job advertisement you had specifically asked for traditional artists to apply. You definitely can’t find my kind of efficiency in a purely digital artist.”

“Your answer’s not too bad. For your information, I am an award-winning digital artist who just hasn’t found the inspiration to create new artwork in a while… Anyway, I was wondering how much you know about my magazine to be willing to work for it.”

“I read that this magazine was started over twenty years ago, and ... it has been quite successful so far in producing meaningful articles and pictures that a lot of people care about.”

“Three years ago, one of our former female employees posted on her social media accounts that she had faced sexism here. Were you aware of that?”

“No. I wasn’t.”

“You should have been. It is important to research into the place and people you are willing to associate yourself with. But, now that you know, what do you think of it?”

“I… I think… I don’t know about her experiences here. But, if hired, I will do my best to… to make sure that my behaviour or conduct never becomes the reason for anyone’s unhappiness in the workplace.”

“I like you. I do.”

“Thank you, ma’am! All I need is an opportunity to prove how valuable I can be to your company.”

“Mr. Robi De, why don’t we go through the details of the responsibilities I’d like you to have here?”

“Oh… you have no idea how much I have been looking forward to this!” Robi's eyes glisten with surprise and delight.

For the next two hours, the boss slowly explains to him the duties of an illustrator in her company and enlightens him on its history.

Half an hour before lunch break, she tells a hopeful Robi, “I doubt you will be able to perform all these tasks and become an indispensable employee. You need to come to me after you have gained more work experiences elsewhere.”

“No, ma’am, you have to believe in me... Just give me a chance to show you how much…”

“Look, young man, you have only worked as a freelance artist so far. You have no idea how things are done in a big workplace like ours. I cannot let anything … anything go wrong here. How much do you know about the corporate culture anyway?”

“This position I have applied for is supposed to be an entry-level one requiring minimum work experience… Did you… did you expect a newbie to know it all?”

“This room has only one door through which we enter and exit, and it’s right behind you. Thank you for being here. I hope you succeed someday.”

"Why did you waste so much of my time just to tell me all about this damned place? Why didn’t you reject me earlier? I could have gone home to my sick old parents who need me often! I have left them alone with a new caregiver to come here for this interview, and now after tricking me into keeping you company for three hours, you’re telling me I am not needed here!”

The lady exhibits a calm indifference during Robi’s rampage before heading out for lunch. Robi remains in her room for over an hour until she returns.

“I don’t pay people for keeping me company,” she says upon seeing the resolute man standing at her desk fifteen minutes past the lunch break.

“How much more do you need? Do I have to bribe you for this job?” asks a desperate Robi, fighting his frustrations.

The lady sits down in her chair quietly, sips water from her bottle, and gently wipes her lips with a handkerchief. “What do you mean?” she asks carelessly.

“Weren’t the men who made me shell out a thousand bucks earlier yours?”

“I have no idea about what you’re saying, young man. Listen, you need to leave before you get yourself into trouble.”

“Oh yeah? What are you going to do?” Robi, furious, inches closer to her.

“The chief minister’s nephew is a dear friend of mine. All I need to tell him is that you tried to rape me in my own office because I refused to hire you.”

Upon hearing those words, Robi instantly breaks into a cold sweat and his heart rate rises. He can’t utter another word. Struggling to breathe, Robi grabs his phone from his pocket to dial some number in vain. The boss, still comfortable in her cushioned chair, watches him drop unconscious on the carpet in front of her.

Then she thoughtfully opens Microsoft Paint on her iPad. Using only her fingers, she attempts to draw the still man to perfection.

Copyright ©️ Briksha 2021

[sunnunderthesun]

A few words on art...

Without jumping into the abyss of divergent ideas on what art is, it's safe to state that a creation is only art if at least one of us conscious creatures believes it to be.

The art field is so wide and also the use of medium so no I don’t think you have to be born with extraordinary talent to create great art, Niklas Elmehed opined when I asked him if the ability to become a successful artist is inherited or painstakingly learnt.

But, who is to ascertain what art is great? My recent visit to a local craft fair opened my eyes to more than one way of perceiving a work of art as one of the exhibited handicrafts, a woolen bouquet, indifferent in my view, pleased a blind man to the extent that he couldn't stop expressing his delight upon minutely feeling the crochets with his hands.

Must an artwork be "great" for its artist to be considered successful? The constant exposure and easy access to uncountable masterpieces, by both living and deceased artists, on the internet has caused me to become immune to what is generally regarded as "great art". Now I find myself turning to The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) for sheer amazement which artistic tours de force fail to evoke in me lately.

How to identify bad art? Michael Frank, the curator-in-chief of the Museum of Bad Art, says, Here at the Museum Of Bad Art (MOBA) we collect art that we believe was created in a serious attempt to make art but in which, either in the execution or original concept, something has gone terribly wrong. Rather than simply amateurish, the resulting image must be, for one reason or another, compelling to be considered museum-worthy. Some of the most interesting pieces in our collection are ones that show that the artist had some technical skill, but made some questionable decisions such as over-the-top imagery. Tolstoy might have agreed with him.

However, good or bad, protest art – especially persuasive cartoons of contemporary relevance – keeps resensitizing me to the burning socio-political issues the repetitious news evokes my apathy for. And, there will always be a necessity for such art.

[sunnunderthesun]

Is this the best UNICEF can do?

"That David Beckham was in our Bollywood king's house yesterday," said a young man to another, both randomly browsing some social media platform on their respective phones, standing close to me on a crowded train running past acres of farmland, poorly illuminated shanties, unmaintained roads with potholes, and a landfill to reach a village.

"Don't waste your time reading about them!" commented an angry elderly voice from the crowd, responding to the young man, on the train. "For those ultra-rich losers to exist, we have to remain in poverty. They know that too well." Then the other passengers slowly joined in on the conversation that soon turned political.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused several working class people to see through the glitz of the country's gluttonous billionaires and multimillionaires – some of whom happen to be high-profile Bollywood actors earlier treasured as the nation's "superstars". The poor were left at the mercy of complete strangers – vulnerable COVID-19 volunteers battling against time to make arrangements for uncountable patients' immediate needs – during the trying hours of the pandemic's first and second waves as a number of "celebrities" kept flocking off abroad. When wealthy veteran professionals of the entertainment industry, along with business tycoons and other moneyed individuals, donated to an opaque charitable fund (the public has no idea about what may have happened to that fund), created by the nation's government following the pandemic, that would also generously reward the donors with tax deductions, the majority were steamrolling under loss of income, crippled healthcare services, and corruption as the indomitable COVID-19 ravaged the country. Innumerable common people, many of them with breathing difficulties, requiring urgent medical attention queued for hours outside overcrowded hospitals while a privileged person with mild COVID-19 symptoms could be hospitalized "as a matter of abundant precaution".

The appointment of different globally celebrated personalities as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador has always remained controversial. Elitism is glorified when someone with a net worth of millions visits a third world country to "help focus worldwide attention on the work of the United Nations". Beckham's latest trip to India was nothing but a parade of the A-listers' sense of entitlement. The Indian mainstream news sites have outdone each other to inform the public about Beckham partying with the prosperous families that run the Bollywood film industry (and influence India's politics) today, his meeting with the few opulent Indian cricketers, the cuisine he savoured, and his sugar-coated words for India and its elites who had hosted him at their respective places. His brief interaction with the Indian youth and families receiving help through programmes supported by the UNICEF can be found on social media by those who really want to know the purpose of his sudden presence in India. However, the unmistakable widening economic inequalities has bolstered the growth of a socially aware class (one has to mingle with human beings at various economic levels of the Indian society to know them) that can't stand the existence of the wealth hoarders, let alone show any interest in their affairs.

[sunnunderthesun]

You lose the fight

against cowardice

the instant you inflict

a collective punishment.

Copyright ©️ Wrong 2023

[sunnunderthesun]

Still waiting for someone to win a paranormal challenge...

I have never been able to trust anything, including paranormal incidents or powers some people claim to have witnessed, that cannot be scientifically explained. Belief in ghostly things is absurd when nobody, NOBODY, nobody on earth has won any of the paranormal challenges created by skeptics offering handsome monetary rewards to those who can prove the evidence of paranormal or supernatural. Inspired by Abraham Kovoor's paranormal challenge which is now continued by the Indian Rationalist Association, the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge and many similar challenges were introduced by rationalists all across the globe. Several preachers of the existence of supernatural elements interested in proving themselves right have tried to win the paranormal challenges in vain. Some of those self-proclaimed paranormal experts were rather desperate for the rewards. The JREF employees once received phone calls from angry "ghosts" (well, a rejected applicant pretending to be the ghosts who would like to assist him in telekinesis...) threatening to file charges of harrassment against the organisation for not being allowed to take the test.

Australian Skeptics is ready to pay 100,000 Australian dollars to "anyone who claims to have psychic or paranormal powers to demonstrate their ability under proper observing conditions". The confederation's editor and executive officer Tim Mendham informs, We have been running tests for our challenge for more than 40 years. In fact, Australia Skeptics started following a test of water diviners in 1980. We have people applying for the challenge every week, but most are not residents of Australia, so they don’t qualify. Many others have trouble pinning down exactly how to scientifically test their skills. But, overall we have tested about 200 people. We have an initial test to see how their skills work and to see if they are effective. This is followed by a more rigorous test along scientific protocols for the $100,000. The test procedures and expected outcomes have to be agreed by both sides prior to proceeding to ensure that the applicant and skeptics are confident the test is a fair trial of their skills. If the participants are not happy with the test set-up, then we do not proceed. So far no-one has passed the first test.

Some non-profit organizations, conducting their respective paranormal challenges, are known not to interfere with religions. Does religion not fall under the supernatural category in a paranormal challenge? Centre for Inquiry's J. Dellinger replies, The Center for Inquiry is an organization dedicated to reason, science, and secular values. As such, we regard religion and “the supernatural” as largely the same, in that they are belief-based perspectives with no grounding in science or empirical fact. For purposes of the Paranormal Challenge, we do not make a distinction when testing applicants based on whether their claimed ability is or is not related to a religious belief. The same standard of testing and evaluation applies in any case.

However, I don't think alternative medicines such as Homeopathy should be challenged under the category of pseudoscience or any other for the same reason religious rituals specifically aren't. Homeopathic medicines' preparation processes, especially the level of dilution of individual potentized homeopathy medicine, vary, more or less, from one pharmacy to another. The quality of raw materials (compounds mentioned in the Materia Medica) for trituration may not be the same for all licensed pharmacies either. For example, a Bryonia 30C from one pharmaceutical company doesn't even taste the same as the Bryonia 30C from another (I have tasted them and you can do it too). Unlicensed pharmacies may not even follow the country's official Homeopathic pharmacopoeia and protocols of preparing Homeopathic medicines. And there are a number of Homeopathic pharmacopoeias with their respective revised editions that aren't largely accepted. So, it seems rather difficult to come up with a test that can prove how effective Homeopathy is as it's inconsistent just like religion. Moreover, rationalists would do more harm than good by shaking one's faith in Homeopathy if it's nothing more than placebo effect because placebo effect can indeed make patients feel better. We can't draw a conclusion about homeopathy based on a homeopath's ability to tell if a vial contains pure water or homeopathic medicine. A better aim would be to direct people's attention towards the benefits of evidence-based medicine without bashing alternative medicine. What's the difference between believing in a course of treatment whose effectiveness can't yet be scientifically proven and being religious?