You’re in a foreign country. Water, food, and supplies are rationed. The Government deliberately starves people yet everyone is unquestionably loyal to the political party in power—the only party in power. This may seem like an Orwellian dystopia, but for those living in North Korea, it’s reality.

On April 6th, 2010, Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) and its Dartmouth chapter, the North Korea Project (NKP), hosted a screening of the documentary Inside North Korea. Inside North Korea differs from other documentaries in that it tries to vividly show the lives of North Koreans, albeit only the privileged ones, as opposed to Kim Jong Il’s craziness or the lives of the refugees. Considering the dearth of information about the most secretive nation in the world and its people, a peek into the lives of North Koreans was a rare chance to understand the political situation in North Korea.

But of course, North Korean officials did not grant such a rare chance graciously. In the documentary, Kim Jong Il invites Dr. Sanduck Ruit to treat 1,000 North Koreans suffering from cataracts in order to maintain the loyalty of his people. Ruit, a Nepalese eye surgeon, regularly travels to third-world countries to heal penniless patients. Because North Korea is hostile to foreigners entering the country, especially American journalists, National Geographic Explorer host Lisa Ling accompanies Dr. Ruit into North Korea disguised as a member of his medical team. Six North Korean officials accompanied Lisa Ling and her cameraman, escorting Ling, Ruit, and their crew from Kathmandu, Nepal to Pyongyang, North Korea and back. Any suspicious activity endangered the entire medical team.

Despite the constant supervision of the officials, the footage Ling and her cameraman filmed officials is nothing short of shocking. Ling paid particular attention to the extent in which North Koreans were brainwashed to believe in the greatness of their Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. Ling’s cameraman was almost kicked out of North Korea when he lay down to get a single shot of the 82-feet statue of Kim Il Sung. The officials warned in rage that no human being is worthy to take a picture of the Great Leader while lying down.

In another scene, the officials allowed Ling to visit one of Dr. Ruit’s patients, a privileged North Korean citizen. But in the house, Ling didn’t find family photos or pictures of beautiful landscapes. Instead, numerous portraits of the Dear Leaders Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung decorated the walls. Ling asked the family members a few questions about Kim Jong Il. When asked what the hardest part of being blind was, the patient replied without hesitation that her blindness prevented her from admiring portraits of the Great Leader. When Ling asked what were the origins of North Korea’s willingness to stand apart from the entire world, one family member replied, “Our unity is stronger than nuclear weapons, and we serve the greatest leader in the world.” Finally, Ling inquired whether Dear Leader Kim Jong Il could ever be wrong. The family responded with confusion. They genuinely could not grasp the idea of their Dear Leader ever making a mistake or doing something wrong.

The most shocking part of the documentary came towards the end. All 1,000 patients were waiting in an enormous room with a large portrait of each Dear Leader. They had all finished their surgeries in the past week, and waited for Ruit to take the bandages off their eyes and bring light back into their worlds. Ruit walked up to each patient, greeted him or her warmly, and took off the bandages. What ensued was a scene not witnessed in even the most extreme personality cults. Each patient determinedly walked up to the portraits of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, bowed to them, and delivered a brief speech vowing to dedicate his or her life to the well-being of the Dear Leader and vanquish all enemies of Kim Jong Il, including Americans. After each speech, a thunderous roar of applause and cheer followed. Many in the crowd were moved to tears. I couldn’t help recalling George Orwell’s 1984 and Winston Smith’s four last words: “He loved Big Brother.”

Is North Korea a brutal dictatorship? Perhaps. When we normally think of North Korea, we naively conjure up the image of an insane Kim Jong Il oppressing poor, starving people. But Inside North Korea shows that it’s more than just that—Kim Jong Il brainwashes his citizens in order to further his political agenda. He intends to be worshipped as God. It’s hard to imagine an entire population of a state worshiping and defending an individual, especially in America where extreme, blind loyalty to anything is feared and frowned upon. But the message of Inside North Korea is clear: there are millions of people who now genuinely believe in the North Korean political system and are ready to defend the system with their lives. Due to this devotion there is the possibility, often overlooked, that the self-sustaining system of North Korea may continue even after the death of Kim Jong Il.

This message sounds obvious, but it isn’t—the way our governments normally approach North Korea is through unsuccessful attempts at sanctions or coercion through the United Nations. North Korea occasionally or temporarily yields to our demands depending on its needs and wants, but soon reverts back to threatening to test missiles. Of course, I’m not saying that our government is not doing anything productive, but we should also make efforts for longer lasting change in North Korea. And to bring about that long-lasting change, we need a bottom-up, grassroots movement that can change not just Kim Jong Il and his co-conspirators, but also the brainwashed cataract patients whose only wish is to open their eyes up and admire the portrait of Kim Jong Il. That means we need more people like Dr. Ruit who are willing to reach out to North Korea through their expertise and directly interact with North Koreans. We need more Lisa Lings who are willing to venture into North Korea and bring to the outside world more information about what really is going on there, so that we can plan our actions. In order to make this happen, we should take North Korea more seriously than simply giving it an indifferent glance while reading newspapers over morning coffee. We should care.

April 1st is Census Day in the U.S., and as the US Census Bureau continues to collect data, some conservative politicians like Representatives Michelle Bachmann (R- Minn) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) are concerned that census questions may be “too personal” and “invasive.” They think the census counts as “government intrusion.” But their criticism is more likely aimed at how the census has changed over the past two centuries, and their claims are less substantiated by fact than by paranoia (C’mon, your telephone number is “too personal”? Yeah, right!) Though silent on the issue, these conservative politicians are probably more peeved by the increasingly LGBTQ-friendly policies adopted by the US Census Bureau in order to make sure that data on LGBTQ people is collected. Bachmann’s argument that the census isn’t private enough is in opposition to society’s push to do the right thing and “queer the census.”

LGBTQ people must be aware of the covert homophobia laced throughout Bachmann and Paul’s condemnation of the census. Although their attack on the census may be a shallow ploy to win political points and galvanize the conservative base, it’s ultimately demeaning to the community. It’s a position whose logic suggests that we can’t count LGBTQ people, which makes gathering hate crime statistics even more difficult.

Ever since the census was first conducted in 1790, it has always asked questions beyond the number of people living in each household. Bachmann and Paul, in particular, have argued that the census can only ask people how many people are living in their house; anything else is unconstitutional. But this claim has no merit whatsoever.

The first census, for example, asked for respondents’ sex and free or slave status. In 1840, the census asked for the number of blind, deaf, and “insane or idiotic” persons living in each household. And in 1850, it asked for respondents’ race and occupation. 2000 marked the first year multiracial people were counted. The census has always been an indication of the socially progressive direction the U.S. is taking.

Data collected by the Census is also used to shape much-needed policies that promote equality. Data related to race is used in our judicial system in order to help rule on cases related to discriminatory voting practices. Asking demographic questions is not invasive; the census has proved, then and now, extremely effective in rolling back past social bigotry. Yet despite the many gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people around the country, they are still not accurately represented in the census..

As it stands, there is no question on the census that asks about a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. However, the US Census Bureau for the 2010 Census has enacted some LGBTQ-friendly policies. For example, same-sex couples living together can mark themselves as either “married” or as “unmarried partners,” whichever they consider
themselves in spite of legal obstacles. Previously, if same-sex couples living under the same household marked “married,” the Census would automatically modify their answer to “unmarried partners”—or in some cases modify the gender of one partner. Additionally the US Census Bureau has urged transgendered individuals to mark the sex with which they identify, rather than their “legal” gender.

Although these policies are steps forward for the queer community, they ultimately fall short. Like their heterosexual counterparts, LGBTQ people are far more likely to be single than coupled. Bisexual people in mixed-gender relationships are simply treated as heterosexual. Transgendered people are just ignored. To bridge the gap, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force put together the Queer the Census campaign, which seeks to add a question about sexual orientation and gender identity to the census in order to get a larger, more accurate picture of the number of LGBTQ individuals in the United States.

Of course, even if this question were asked, the census would still underreport the number of LGBTQ individuals on both local and national levels. Given the shame and oppression LGBTQ people face in society, LGBTQ people sometimes choose to stay in the closet. But any number of LGBTQ people, even if it represents less than one percent of the population, means that we know where we stand in terms far more concrete than any approximation can offer. As the old saying goes: “We’re here, we’re queer, get over it.” The census is long overdue to heed this call.

As society has changed, the census has reflected a long history of both demographic and, whether implicit or not, sociological change. We no longer count the number of slaves in our country; they simply don’t exist. And with same-sex marriage now being performed in five states and in DC, same-sex couples can self-identify honestly with state and country. It’s progress, and it’s happening. Let’s keep this going.

We speak a dangerous language. Globalization has turned English into a linguistical monster, squashing indigenous languages untiltill the cultural knowledge that is embedded and transmitted through language quietly peters out. It used to be colonialism, now it’s globalization in the form of a rapidly increasing Western influence. And it’s not only English, but also Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Indonesian, and Thai to name a few—; national languages are unfailingly the culprits. Of the world’s estimated 6,909 languages, half of these are endangered, and of the endangered, 473 languages are nearly extinct, with only a few elderly speakers still alive.

David Bradley, born in the U.S., educated in London, specialist in Asian minority languages, and now based in Australia, has a personal accent that sounds part English and Australian and part completely foreign. It is the speech of someone who is knowledgeable in English, Burmese, Thai, Chinese, French, Italian and a variety of Asian minority languages including Lahu, Gong, Lisu “and so on” and has written numerous dictionaries and phrasebooks. His guest lecture, “Resilience Linguistics: Revitalizing Indigenous Languages” on April 6th,” highlighted an almost-extinct language, Gong, with only 50 fluent speakers in Thailand, all over the age of 60.

Gong is swiftly breaking down in what Bradley calls the “release phase” of his four-phase system for indigenous languages: growth, conservation, release, and reorganization. Many other languages are also found in this precarious situation of losing their linguistic heritage. Pursuing such needs such as land, health, education, and economic and social progress almost always necessitates an indigenous community to operate in the national language.

Other unique factors have also played into Gong’s endangered status. The ethnic Gong were largely uprooted by the government and resettled from western Thailand to two villages in the more easterly Uthai Thani and Suphanburi provinces. Yet many ethnic Gong in various other villages have been submerged and the language was lost there there. Moreover, in the construction of a Gong writing system, Thai government policies again came into play, as minority scripts must be based on Thai script to be officially recognized. The lack of /g/ in Thai phonology marks a problem of orthography for the /g/ rich Gong phonology. Also, changing verb intonations do not exist in Thai as in Gong, and Gong accent markers are often omitted in the Thai script. The influence that Thai has had on Gong speakers has changed the way that younger speakers now pronounce their language, with a convergence toward Thai phonology.

Bradley created a Gong Thai-based script in 1982, in conjunction with Gong elders and Mahidol University, in Bangkok. But because of the convergence toward Thai phonology, maintaining a maximally traditional phonology within the writing system has become unrealistic. It is this type of bittersweet problem linguists must face as they catalogue indigenous languages. Can they alter a language’s probable path to extinction? Would it be unethical to not to try?

But now we segue back to the idea of “dangerous languages” and add another language to this group, Lisu, a surprising addition since it is an indigenous language that is replacing other indigenous languages. The Lisu are a 1 million-strong ethnic group spread across southwest China, northern parts of Burma and Thailand, and northwest India. Lisu assimilates outsiders easily, often through marriage—; Bradley gave the example of a number of Lisu having Mandarin names due to the intermarriage of Han Chinese men and Lisu women.

The Lisu language may be stable, but there are several aspects of traditional Lisu culture that are currently endangered. Literacy in Lisu is associated with Christianity in many areas, and so Lisu is losing traditional religious oral texts, medical knowledge, and other aspects that are often considered inappropriate by literate Lisu.

But the term “literate Lisu” can be confusing since Lisu live in four countries, use four different national languages in education, and have more than four different writing systems. The Lisu prefer a 1914 script introduced by Protestant missionaries, which accurately represents Lisu phonology but looks somewhat unusual with upside-down and quasi-latin symbols and punctuation marks. Other Lisu orthographies use Chinese, Chinese Pinyin, and Thai scripts.

As a linguist in South Asia, Bradley deals with both thriving and dying languages. What his work comes down to is cultural preservation, whether describing a Gong man basket-weaving, or recording oral Lisu religious stories, giving an ethnic group a living identity even when the traditional language is gone. Globalization has many victims. Languages may not be high on the list when we think of things endangered by modernity. Whether or not we should actively try to save these languages can be debated—but what therse is no question of is that the world will have lost something special when they are gone.

Winter is over, and the Green is green once again. The Olympians are back in their homes, and the tapping season has come to an end. Our pallid complexions are reverting to their tanner states, and our windows are left open so that our musty, dusty rooms can finally breathe in the aromas of Hanover. We at the DFP, with a new Editorial board and a cleansed critical palette, are excited for and committed to another term of keeping our eyes, ears, and noses open, following leads, and voicing our opinions. Whether or not you agree with us, we hope you, too, will share your voice with us and remain open to change.

Yes, it’s the season of renewal: by the time you read this issue, new members of the Board of Trustees will have been elected and the Student Assembly elections will be underway (the latter will be covered in a special DFP “SA Elections” issue).

Some of the new changes are a little hard to grasp. For the first time in decades, we may no longer be sending “blitzes”. Instead, as Parker Phinney explains in his article on email server change, we are most likely going to be sending, well, emails. Though for many of us, the idea wrenches the heart at its very mention—we will all miss that iconic dog-attacking-the-pixilated-mailman—we can rest assured that the change is all for good reason. It will make communication more efficient and reliable, and hopefully our Darmouth Experience will be purer: the more memory we can store in our email server, the more we space we can clear in our minds.

As Liz Klinger notes in her article, this summer Thayer Dining Hall will be closed for demolition and renovation. But before you storm the steps of Parkhurst, look on the bright side—at least Collis will be open. What’s more, if things go according to plan, the construction of “The Class of 1953 Commons” will provide a whole array of new-age common spaces to complement those already in nearby Robo and Collis. Who knows, it might even have a catchy nickname.

Meanwhile, in national news, magic mushrooms can cure depression, The Census is going gay (hopefully) and the healthcare Bill was passed over spring break. Zach De covers the census in his article, and some of the Health Care Bill’s more exact dimensions are clearly enumerated for our readers in Sora Ryu’s article on Health Care Reform.

Universal Health Care is one of those ideological shifts that for many seems overly technical, like the email server change, and so is reduced and boiled down until it is no longer a debate of Health Care Reform vs. no Health Care Reform but instead Socialism vs. Capitalism, or even charity vs. responsibility. This is simply not case—the two paradigms simply are not that different. There is no inherent reason why health care cannot share properties of both, and meet the needs of all parties.

Turning this idea on its head, as Sora Ryu writes in her article on Dambisa Moyo, helping the less fortunate is not—indeed, should not—be a matter of charity. It is hard for us, sitting around our coffee tables, eating our delicious Novak food, talking on our cell phones, to ever take the stance that helping starving children is not the right decision. We can’t see where our money is going or how it is being used; all we know is that we can’t stand for doing nothing. The problem with this mindset is that we are at the center, and once we drop our money through the slot or send our check in the mail, we have already achieved that feeling of moral satisfaction, whether or not it has benefitted anyone. Exploring this principle on the ground in Ghana, James Wang explains that the correct way to approach poverty in Africa is with investment and microfinance. If we can trust the people of Africa with the ability to repay small loans, new monetary freedom will stimulate the economy.

While the new Editorial Board at the DFP is looking forward to investigating these topics in the coming term, it is important to remember that even at a time like this (looking outside), not everything is like bunnies and sunshine.

The SEIU and staff cuts seem to have faded into the background, and the six-figure success of our Haiti relief effort is certainly a cause for celebration. Ethan Wang ’13, in a recent opinion article in “The Dartmouth,” chirped a familiar tune, writing “These two causes [Haiti and the staff] have generated a lot of attention on campus — but perhaps a little too much”. These “buzzwords”, as Wang writes, have become obsolete fashion statements, and the programs the college has enacted to address these issues “do little more than unnecessarily drain resources.”

Ethan Wang argues that we should not have taken in two Haitian immigrants for term at Dartmouth, because such an experience “will give them a fleeting taste of our privileged academic environment before returning to their impoverished country”. Wang concludes that they are not “Making the most of their experience.” But how can Wang make claims like this without having spoken to the students himself? I am sure you would find they are far from disappointed or bitter with their experiences here. As leaders in the Haiti relief effort, it is also the College’s obligation to uphold its, and our, image in the academic sphere by showing that we are willing to do more than publish photographs of our experts getting off of planes with fancy equipment. We are embracing the problem here as our own.

Labeling words like “Haiti” and “Staff” as buzzwords so that we can feel more comfortable about dismissing them does not show any well-formulated opinion. When there are no better alternatives, sometimes the most meaningful thing to do is to offer “a kind gesture” rather than embrace a colder, more financially “efficient,” logic.

One of the themes of this issue is that we have to know when charity is productive and when it becomes “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” In both cases, of course, the intentions are good, but the difference (or, perhaps, the devil) is in the details. Whose hands touch the money before it reaches its destination? When we choose to help one group of people, what more needy groups are we ignoring? Are we really making a difference?

As we prepare for a new term and the discussions to come, we have to make sure we keep in mind the consequences of our decisions in the future. We do not make decisions just to win or lose in the moment of disagreement, just as we cannot forget the struggle that got us here on issues like Haiti and the Staff. In the same way, we must consider how we look back on things like Blitzmail and Thayer Dining Hall as different people. If we remain open to change now, we will thank ourselves later.

THE MASTHEAD
Editor-in-Chief: Paul Lintilhac
Publisher: Ted Wojcik
Executive Editor: Zach De

You’re hungry. You and your friends decide to go to Thayer Dining Hall since Collis is crowded and chaotic, as usual. When you reach Thayer, you enter a large, emotionless abyss—a sea of chairs, fans and fancy TV screens, along with troops of tired, hollowed-eyed students trying to clock in their social time for the week. The fans are so loud that you usually are limited to small talk and niceties. Buying food and catching up with friends has never been so dull and boring.

Thankfully, the college is planning on renovating Thayer beginning this summer, and will be renamed to the Class of 1953 Commons when it opens. That may mean that sophomores will not be able to eat at FoCo during their sophomore summer, but hold your groans, for Collis will remain open. Moreover, in the long run, this renovation can potentially reinvent the facetime rat-race that is the Dartmouth dining experience.

Although the Thayer renovation seems recent in our minds, it’s actually a part of a 10-year plan that began with a proposal to expand north campus by constructing the Class of 1953 Commons (separate from the future Class of 1953 Commons that is currently Thayer/FOCO), which would act as Dartmouth’s second major dining hall, house ORL’s Office and Dartmouth’s first graduate suite/headquarters, among other purposes. The Commons would have temporarily replaced Thayer as the main dining hall while Thayer was to be demolished and rebuilt. However, these plans were delayed several times, and the Class of 1953 Commons construction has since been canceled amid budget cuts.

In planning stages, designers had considered possibilities of a completely new Thayer dining hall; however, because they have started a new proposal to renovate the existing Thayer, the designers are now limited to working with Thayer’s existing skeleton. The schedule gives them just about one year to finalize the proposal, get permits, and finally start the physical renovation. Although there is a decade of off-and-on preliminary plans behind them, there still seems to be no precise plans on how to best use the existing Thayer, including how to make it more sustainable, though the redesign commits to reducing energy consumption.

With everyone involved in finalizing proposals, now seems like the best opportunity to have a say in Thayer’s renovation. If the plans follow the timeline, they would directly affect the ‘12s, ‘13s and ’14s, and it’d be something that we ‘10s and ‘11s would be coming back to in future visits to our alma mater.

The current renovation plan features an increase in Thayer seating from 700 seats to 1000, a change from the original plan to decrease the number to 600 seats. It has yet to be illuminated whether this change will improve the dining experience, or if the new plan will make it easier for people to work and cook. Maybe it will just turn into a suffocating zoo like our favorite morass, Collis, where the staff must constantly retrieve food from downstairs, and where we must constantly bump and spill coffee on other harried students.
One Collis is enough, thank you.

Also, there seems to be no official plan for the basement and 2nd floor, two potentially cool new social spaces. The Thayer basement—particularly the area with the ping pong tables—has a kitchen that is rarely used. I mean, there’s already a kitchen down there, and it would not involve drastic renovations. Plus, pubs are fun. I’m not thinking that it should be another Lone Pine necessarily—it was difficult to have a conversation there, too. I’m thinking more along the lines of Wellesley College’s Punches Alley and The Hoop—fun, relaxing, a good place to hang out with friends and, of course, a good place for face-time.

The main floor of Thayer could easily be divided and refurbished to look more welcoming and satisfying, or they could throw in a bunch more chairs and call it Class of 1953 Commons. The designers may have years of technical experience, but they don’t know what it’s like to eat at Thayer every day for four years; there exists no open forum between the designers and the staff and students. Parkhurst, where’s the line of communication? Let’s talk.

Aid and the well being of Africa are so inextricably linked in today’s culture that to question the value of the former seems utterly sacrilegious. However, this is exactly what Dambisa Moyo PhD discussed on April 1 over lunch with the Great Issues Scholars. Born and raised in Zambia, Moyo received her BA and MBA at American University in Washington, D.C., her Masters at Harvard and her Ph.D in economics at Oxford. She went to work at the World Bank in D.C. and now has worked for eight years at Goldman Sachs in debt capital markets, hedge fund coverage and in global macroeconomics. She signed copies of her book Dead Aid for the scholars. Her book expounds on the controversial topic of her talk in Moore Hall.

The simple truth is that Western aid doesn’t help; it actually hurts.

There are three things that everyone can agree on whether one is pro-aid or not. The first is that someday Africa should not need aid. Second, everyone knows that in order for Africa to climb out of poverty, African governments need to be motivated to help their people. Third, everyone knows that aid contributes to Africa’s problems, whether they believe aid should be curtailed or not.

It is important to distinguish which aid is hurting Africa. There are three kinds of aid: emergency or humanitarian aid, charity aid sponsored by NGOs, and government-to-government aid. Moyo argues that emergency and charity aid are not the problem. Rather, government-to-government aid, Moyo claims, is holding Africa back and perpetuating the need for aid in the first place.

Government-to-government aid has been so ineffective that since 1970, Africa as a continent has actually become poorer. Today seventy percent of a billion people—a sixth of the world’s population—live on less than a dollar a day. Yet despite the massive failure that government-to-government aid has incurred, the initiative had noble intentions. In the middle of the twentieth century, government-to-government aid seemed like it would work — the Keynesian model illustrated that savings created from aid would lead to investment which would lead to growth for an Africa newly-emerged from colonialism. In 1944, the Bretton Woods Conference lead to the creation of the International Monetary Fund, which oversaw the transactions of huge loans to help nations ravaged by World War II and Africa get back on their feet. For Europe, and much later, India, short but effective aid projects such as the Marshall Plan and the Green Revolution, respectively, helped jump-start economies. However, a continual stream of government-to-government aid to Africa has actually allowed growth to stagnate and poverty to rise. Today, Africa needs to grow its GDP a whopping seven percent per year (almost China’s rate of development) in order to even put a dent into the poverty it has sunk into. At this point, aid is not even scratching the surface.

One reason large scale aid has been allowed to continue for so long is because it’s virtually impossible to have logical discussion about aid. Many of those who staunchly back aid do so for reasons steeped in emotion. Seven African presidents, people elected to represent the interests of the African people, have stated that their nations to do not need this continual stream of aid. However, no one cares about what these elected officials have to say. Instead, it is celebrities like Bono who actually represent Africa in the eyes of the global community. According to the emotional appeals of celebrities, Africa needs aid. Isn’t it odd that the international community doesn’t hold elected leaders responsible for their counties, but it turns to non-Africans for counsel on African interests? Would Americans like it if a foreign pop star represented our interests in the international sphere?
Exactly why does aid not work? Most people think that aid does not work because its effects are stymied by corruption. It’s true; African governments no longer have to be held accountable for their people’s needs and interests. Those in power concern themselves only with holding on to power; aid money doesn’t reach people because it is being stolen by people who will continue to receive aid and remain in power even if they are not providing basic goods and services to the people they claim to serve.

Aid also doesn’t work because it leads to inflation. Too many dollars clogging a small economy make goods and services excessively expensive for ordinary people. People lose their jobs and can’t afford to obtain the basic necessities. Coupled with Dutch disease, the exploitation of natural resources and depressed manufacturing, inflation is the major economic reason for why aid, in the long run, fails. However, an imagined moral duty reminiscent of a modern-day White Man’s Burden continues to prevail.

The problem of dependency also prohibits development since African governments abdicate their responsibility to the people who pay taxes. The governments that depend on aid neglect budgeting and allotting tax money for basic public goods such as healthcare, national security, and infrastructure. This is especially evident when governments don’t lift a finger while waiting on the West to do everything for them. Now the West provides adequate services and billions of dollars in aid. But most of the aid money is squandered on personal gain by aforementioned corrupt officials or is lost in bureaucracy. Western governments are not African governments nor the African people. We cannot be called upon to know an African nation’s needs or do the African government’s jobs for them.

Despite this, the West insists on giving aid to complacent, even corrupt African governments. We maintain an embassy in Zimbabwe and still send aid to Zimbabwe’s government even while we express outrage over the corruption and oppression of Mugabe’s regime. In following our hearts rather than our minds, we are hurting those we intend to help. Africa has the youngest population in the world, but with economic stagnation in many of the continent’s countries there are few job opportunities for these nations’ youth. There is little impetus for these young adults to pursue a degree beyond high school. Disenfranchised unemployed, and uneducated, these youth have little where to turn but to crime and delinquency. Many youths start families early and remain in poverty, in a country with few opportunities and very little economic mobility. Aid has created a continent without a future.

In most African countries there is virtually no middle class—only a huge gap between the rich and the poor. As a result, there are constantly coups in African countries, as different groups of people revolt and try to seize the Presidency and their only chance at a decent life. The high political uncertainty and instability engendered by the economic problem of aid is not just a domestic problem, but an international problem. Restless and unemployed—or worse, underemployed—youth will not only turn to crime and rebellion but will become pirates and terrorists. The hijacking of cruises of the coast of Somalia or the Ugandan underwear bomber is just the beginning. We will only see more of these cases if the question of systematic poverty and negligence resulting from problems that aid engenders is not addressed.

Yet such aid continues to be wasted for reasons not easily grappled with. The international community simply does not expect Africans and black people in general to be able to fend for themselves. There is a quotation from President George W. Bush which (believe it or not) adequately describes this notion: “Beware the soft bigotry of low expectations.” India and China, both with populations larger than a billion, each have a greater percentage poor people than that of the African continent. Yet, we do not see charities trying to entice donors to give money using pictures or videos of Chinese or Indian children on the internet or the television, as neither the Chinese nor the Indian government will allow this, and for good reason.

African children are the poster kids for aid even though that aid probably will not improve their futures. There is obviously a double standard similar to the outright paternalism and racism of old. We need to beware the pity that hides the smug smile of superiority. We cannot feel we are doing our best with the band-aid of aid. We cannot be so comfortable with a perpetually impoverished black continent. And yet, there would be a huge political backlash to any political candidate who suggested ending aid. The West should take a stand and let African nations know that over the next ten or twenty years, aid will gradually decrease and finally come to an end. If people are paid, they should be paid to innovate and thrive, not merely survive. Most importantly, if Africa begins to clean up its act we should reward it economically, not in aid, but in further investments, so that African economies can continue to grow.

There are already hints of an economic overhaul in the making. Kenya and Tanzania have already entered the global market, obtaining budding credit reports. More impressively, under the charismatic leadership of President Kagame, Rwanda has rebounded from the horrific genocide the nation experienced in 1994. Most Westerners only know Rwanda as seen in the film Hotel Rwanda. Yet Kagame’s Rwanda has jumped 63 places in the world economy since 1994. This drastic improvement is the result of a few big changes catalyzed by a simple motivation.

If aid is greatly reduced and Africa is allowed to succeed, the whole world will be better off. No longer will Africa be the ‘sick man’ of the global economy. No longer will we have an entire continent with GDPs lagging behind everybody else’s. Africa not only has great potential for investments and new capital, but also the many intellectuals who could be brought out of poverty and obscurity in order to give back to the global community. All it takes is a belief in the African people, a belief that they are people just like any other people, a people looking for economic and social opportunities for themselves and their children.[cap

Healthcare reform has become the law of the land. This is a momentous, yet tumultuous time in America’s history. A great victory has been won but like all great victories, health care reform is controversial. The great majority of Republicans have sworn to roll back healthcare. The Democrats have a huge struggle on their hands, but they have history on their side. Katrina Swett, wife of former Congressman Dick Swett and current Democratic candidate for Congress visited the Dartmouth College Democrats on Monday, April 13th. She believes healthcare reform is just one of the many aspects of a decent society. Democrats fought hard to erect socially progressive programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Civil Rights Equality throughout the twentieth century. All of these reforms, now sacrosanct in our society, met fierce backlash when they were first introduced. However, just like it is hard to imagine a United States of America without a commitment to racial equality or Social Security today, it will be hard to imagine a world without a better health care system tomorrow.

The healthcare reform bill is not perfect. Some Democrats feel this reform hasn’t gone far enough. And of course the reform bill will face modifications and improvements in the future. However, healthcare reform is a big step in the right direction when it comes to addressing the wrongs of so many insurance company abuses or making health insurance affordable to millions of everyday Americans. Here is exactly what healthcare reform offers, in case anyone is confused. According to http://www.healthcare.BarackObama.com:
1) 5.6 million people with pre-existing conditions will no longer be denied insurance. Starting this year, no child will be denied health insurance due to a pre-existing condition, and by 2014, discrimination against adults with pre-existing conditions will become a thing of the past.

2) Starting in 2014, tax credits for up to 29 million individuals will help pay for health insurance. Individuals and middle-class families who cannot get or afford health insurance through work will be eligible for tax credits that will provide affordable coverage through new health insurance exchanges.

3) 3.5 million small businesses that offer employees health coverage can receive tax cuts of up to 35 percent this year and up to 50 percent in 2014.

4) In 2007 medical expenses were the cause of 62% of all bankruptcies in the US. Healthcare reform will cap the annual-out-of-pocket spending on insurance in order to save 500,000 families from bankruptcy each year.

5) Most importantly, 48 million uninsured Americans will have the opportunity to purchase new, affordable insurance options. Young adults will now be covered by their parents’ insurance until age 26 instead of age 21 (something very important to many college students) and many Americans who were once denied healthcare or couldn’t afford healthcare can be covered, thanks to fairer insurance policies, tax credits and affordable health coverage at lower rates.

There’s definitely a lot of good in the healthcare bill. Yet despite this big step, there are many people who would just as much like to take an even bigger step backward. The new G.O.P slogan is “Repeal and Replace.” Another, less official slogan is “Fire Nancy Pelosi.” On the eve of the historic vote, tensions ran high. Immediately preceding the passage of healthcare reform, thousands of protestors descended on Capitol Hill. On Saturday, March 20th, House Democrats passing through the Longworth House office building were subjected to abusive and derogatory remarks and behavior. Members of the Tea Party spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), called Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) a faggot (in offensive lipsy screams no less) and called Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a former civil rights activist, a nigger.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) commented on the mob-like mentality of the day, saying “It was absolutely shocking to me … I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit-ins… And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus.” He later received an anonymous fax with a picture of a noose. The next day, a brick was thrown through the front office window of Rep. Louise Slaughter’s (D-NY) district office. On Sunday night, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Tex.) “in the heat and emotion of the debate” shouted “baby-killer” at conservative Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) on the House floor. Neugebauer later claimed he was referring to the healthcare bill and not Stupak. That weekend a number of calls for President Obama’s assassination appeared on Twitter, Facebook and signs carried by Tea Party protestors. Death threats have been sent out to Democratic congress people, threatening to harm them and their families.

Frankly, having to resort to epithets and death threats only illustrates how very desperate Republicans are. Swett is also alarmed at the direction political rhetoric is taking. Vitriolic language steeped in extreme Republican ideology is not healthy for the overall body politic. This hyperactive hate towards healthcare reform does not produce an environment people would like to live in, much less discuss the issues in. The Republican Party and the Tea Party seem to want to keep their base whipped up with enough fear, hatred and paranoia to carry them over to November’s primaries. Threatening behavior is conducive neither to compromise nor to intellectual debate. However, while the Republicans are involved in an emotional, vengeful discourse against what Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky calls a “raft of sweetheart deals that were struck behind closed doors,” Democrats continue the fight for more accessible healthcare in a cool and collected manner.

Democrats need to believe in and continue fighting for healthcare. The battle isn’t over. In fact, it’s just begun. Throughout the blogosphere and news cycle a number of dark and gloomy predictions have been voiced over the Democrats’ future. One commentator believes that by throwing in his lot with House Speaker Pelosi and by resisting smaller reforms, President Obama has opened a Pandora’s box. Not only has he widened the gaping hole of the great partisan divide, but he has sharpened the Republican argument against him. Before, the Republicans were saying “no” just to get by. Their party had no real rallying point. After their tremendous loss in 2008, the Republicans were back at the drawing board, trying to revitalize and re-center the party with women and youth. Some even said the party was dead; now the Republicans have found their calling card. They hope everyone will look at the messy, drawn-out journey to healthcare and wonder how this perversion of democracy hacked together by a weak majority with socialist leanings ever became law. In contrast, a few disappointed liberals think that letting healthcare reform fail and then blaming “the party of no” for it would have been a better way to save face. Many in this apocalyptic camp, right and left alike, think that in betraying pro-choice (the President signed an executive order to cut funding for non-rape, non-incestuous abortion in the healthcare bill in order to please Stupak and other conservative Democrats), and in throwing the public option under the bus, only to still enrage the right, President Obama will pay in the ballot box, come 2012.

Yet to succumb to pessimism is to look at only one side of the coin. On the other hand, the Republican Party’s groundless, and stubborn behavior united The Left behind a call to action. Healthcare reform was long overdue. As candidate Swett put it, it was embarrassing to see that the US had fallen behind every other developed nation when it came to healthcare. The long ideological battle allowed President Obama to find his inner FDR and LBJ. The nation got to see President Obama use not his “celebrity status” but the wits and calm demeanor we elected him for. He was also fortunate to have powerful and determined allies such as Pelosi and Congressman Reid. After Brown won Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts, many liberals were ready to throw in the towel and run away from healthcare reform. But Obama and Pelosi were not fazed by the loss of the coveted majority. They bounced back. During last summer’s raucous town hall meetings, as his approval ratings were falling and his fresh-out-of-the-election political capital was dwindling, many said that President Obama’s campaign would live or die with healthcare reform. And healthcare reform lived. President Obama won.

By pushing healthcare reform through Congress, no one can hit President Obama with the “did-nothing” label. Come this fall, the Democrats can come before the people with a promise fulfilled. The elderly, the freelancers, the uninsured, the college students, the single moms, and the working class parents cannot forget what President Obama has just done for them. President Obama will be forever remembered for bringing healthcare reform to pass. As Paul Begala put it, “When David Obey swung that gavel—the same gavel used to hammer home Medicare—and struck it on that historic rostrum, it made a joyful noise unto the Lord. And I for one said, ‘Hallelujah.’”

The aftermath of healthcare reform will be rough but it is certainly not hopeless. The Democrats need to continue to believe that they have done something great for this country, even in the face of severe criticism. Eventually, everyone will come to realize that there is no going back; we can only move forward. Healthcare reform is here to stay.

Over Spring break, I went to Ghana on behalf of WomensTrust, a microfinance institution, to help fix their operations. Yet, I didn’t go as a white knight. I was not the savior for a poor, ignorant people, nor were the local people on the staff supplicants to my “developed world knowledge.” I was a partner, someone who had a few specialized skills that could help them and at the same time learn from them. I did not sweep in to grandly dictate to them how things should be. To do so would be to disregard the fact that they were intelligent human beings who knew the situation best—they were, after all, the ones living in it.

Although affording respect to these local people seems obvious, it has not traditionally been the way that Westerners have approached any type of “aid” when they visited upon Africa. The old model involved broad, context-less decisions made by detached overseers from the developed world sitting in temperature-controlled, wood-paneled rooms, sipping tea or coffee.

It was believed that just because something worked in the developed world, it would work anywhere. Pronouncements from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and their precursors created monoculture cash cropping, paradropped aid, and numerous other disastrous policies that numerous critics (including Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid, who recently visited Dartmouth) charge as having done nothing to truly help African countries. If anything, this sort of “aid” held them back. These so-called solutions imposed “growth” from the outside without truly developing the foundation for a healthy economy.

But in recent years, the sentiments of the development community have radically shifted. Microfinance and other “sustainable” forms of aid have been embraced as a market solution to poverty. While sustainable aid is not an end-all solution, ever since Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank demonstrated that the poor could and would repay small loans, international aid has been eagerly embracing this new form of development.

But there is still something in this new attitude towards aid that does not address a fundamental criticism of the old regime. While microfinance attempts to spur economic development through loans, which in turn create small businesses and build those local economies that were lacking before, its administration is still largely unilateral. While the intended target of growth is now bottom-up, the policies themselves are still very much top-down.

There may be some local staff. There may even be some representation in the leadership of these institutions by (rich) local people. But essentially, they are still too many of the same people from the old aid regime, making decisions from the developed world that affect people thousands of miles away.

This isn’t to say that most microfinance organizations trying to help Africa have bad intentions. In fact, I’d be highly skeptical if someone tried to claim that they have done no good at all.

The problem, however, with unilateralism, making decisions on high without local context, is that you ignore valuable knowledge that only people who live there know. The rationale before, which still lingers, is that this knowledge is of limited use—the reason that these people are in the state they’re in is because all they have is this knowledge! Although not stated outright, many aid organizations start with the premise that they are helping the helpless and the ignorant. Part of why microfinance was originally slow to catch on was because aid organizations believed that the poor were uneducated and too “unsophisticated” to put loans to any good use.

A recent book called Portfolios of the Poor reveals the folly of that belief. The researchers who wrote the book followed the lives of various families in developing countries below the World Bank defined poverty line of $2 a day. These families recorded their financial transactions in financial diaries, which the authors then analyzed. With these diaries, the researchers discovered that contrary to popular belief, the finances of the poor are not simple at all. The financial life of below-poverty-line families is actually more complicated than the finances of many rich-world families.

Smoothing consumption and “forced savings” are concepts that we learn in economics classes, and use to some degree in our daily lives—but we do so without the urgency that those in the developing world have. For them, money received tomorrow might mean there isn’t anything to eat today—or until next growing season. For them, finance is a matter of having food on the table or not. It is, in some cases, a matter of life or death.

In the developed world, we can have the best intentions but still not know how to best help. Many microfinance institutions give loans only for “business development” purposes. It’s a rational thing to do, academically—after all, if the poor develop a business that can provide them with income, they’ll have the cash flow necessary to repay the loan and raise themselves up.

Food on the table or other types of “consumption loans” don’t necessarily pass this intellectual muster. But oftentimes, in reality, having enough to eat and thus enough strength to work—or being able to send one’s children in school, or being able to pay for transportation to work, or scores of other “consumption” purposes—would do more for generating cash flow and “raising them up” than buying space for a stand.

WomensTrust is a microfinance institution (MFI) run on the ground by locals who also contribute concretely to the strategic direction of the institution in collaboration with a U.S.-based board of directors. The ultimate goal is to eventually make WomensTrust an entirely Ghanaian institution, a project that led me there in order to help finish implementing a management information system (MIS)—something I had chosen during a project that I headed through SEEDS Consulting (Social Enterprise and Economic Development Society) at Dartmouth. Essentially, an MIS is the combination of the IT systems and human procedures that capture, track, and process information in an institution. In this case, the MIS needed to track active clients, loans outstanding, loans needing repaying etc.—basic information for financial institutions, no matter how big or small.
In accordance with the mission of WomensTrust, however, I did not go to Ghana to just arbitrarily remake their loan processes and change how they did things. Before I could do anything, I had to first learn, observe, and understand why they did what they did—and only then offer changes that I believed would best benefit them. I wasn’t arbitrarily telling the Ghanaian staff how to do its job, nor was I blindly surrendering to how things were currently run. I assessed their needs and offered recommendations, just as a consultant in the U.S. offers his or her recommendations to a company’s management team. I wasn’t dealing with children. I was dealing with people worthy of respect—equal partners at the table who were fully capable of both giving and taking criticism.

I sat with them. I asked questions. I observed. While on the surface their processes looked like an irrational mess, the reality was much more subtle and complicated—which I would have never discovered had I waltzed in and assumed that I knew everything that I needed to know. I learned that they used a seemingly inefficient and chaotic agglomeration of paper and Excel for rational reasons. For instance, when I asked why they gave paper booklets to their clients with a mess of stapled receipts instead of formal statements like a bank, I learned that otherwise floating bits of paper could easily get lost in people’s busy lives. In a rural village, one can hardly expect something like online banking. On top of that, many of their clients were illiterate and the simplicity of a receipt per transaction, although messy, could be understood far more easily than lines of text on a bank statement. At the same time, the system truly was messier and more chaotic than it had to be, even with these considerations. Thus, after I understood these factors, I engaged the staff to create a new system that would preserve these elements of understandability while improving internal tracking. Although this is a simplified example, it illustrates the two-way nature of the process.

Engaging the local staff in this way, I quickly found that even though they were “unsophisticated people from Africa” who in many cases had little to no formal education, they most certainly knew what they were doing and were more than capable of this type of dialogue. One staff member, for instance, had only a sixth grade education but a sharp enough intellect to immediately grasp the fundamentals of why such data tracking was necessary—and, I might add, point out some omissions that I had made. Many of these concepts are ones that I’ve had trouble explaining to Dartmouth graduate students. The point here goes beyond mere respect for or deference to local context—instead, it emphasizes the need to understand, in situations like these, that outsiders like me deal with rational human beings, not children or “underprivileged people” to be understood in the abstract. It is this type of feedback and response from both sides that makes institutions like WomensTrust a bottom-up solution to the unilateralism that has previously created developing-world dependence on the charity of the West.

Ultimately, exactly what I did was less important than the way I approached what I did. Dialogue, the philosophy that drives WomensTrust and intitutions like it, is the key to successful aid. Even now, after acknowledging the failures of past development efforts, we often make the mistake of underestimating those we are trying to help. The importance of dialogue is slowly catching on as microfinance and other more “economy-building” types of aid mature, and as we discover their flaws when practiced unilaterally. But beyond the practicalities of the situation and whatever economic and psychological incentives underlie it, understanding this principle is a matter of basic respect. We must recognize that thosewe are trying to help are not merely some alien “other”—they are people like us. Far from wallowing in ignorance, these people are making their way in logical, rational ways though constrained by various challenges inherent in impoverished nations. It is these challenges that we should work together in overcoming. But in doing so, we must remember basic respect for these people as people. To do otherwise is not only patronizing on our part—it is crippling our efforts to truly make an impact.

To me, switching away from Blitzmail means giving up on the beautiful dream of a decentralized, community-maintained cyberspace. For those of you who don’t know, Dartmouth’s Taskforce on E-mail and Collaboration Tools (TEC-T) is reviewing two possibilities for the future of Dartmouth email: Google Apps and Microsoft Online Services, both services offered free of charge. The taskforce plans to make a recommendation by May 25th, and the transition could begin as early as June. Switching to one of these services will mean that our email will no longer be hosted on Dartmouth-owned servers. It also means the software powering our email system—including the clients we run on our own computers—will no longer be built and maintained by Dartmouth staff and other community members.

The switch makes a lot of sense in light of budget cuts; running our own mail servers and maintaining our own custom email software is expensive. By switching to Google or Microsoft, the school will save some money and we students will likely enjoy more storage space and an email client that feels more modern.

Nonetheless, there’s something sad about the switch away from Blitzmail, and not just because it represents the death of a part of our beloved “Dartmouth experience.” To me, the Internet represents a place where there is room for everyone—a place where Walmart will never be the only store in town. Only on the Internet is the cost of entry so low, and the accessibility of niche communities so high that every single mom and pop can set up shop and find success, whether that success is measured in dollars or Twitter followers. The Internet is a place where we can escape the cold, impersonal behemoth of American capitalist monopolies.

And yet Google and Microsoft, the Walmarts of the Internet, are replacing a home-grown email system that we just don’t have the money to maintain any longer. It’s time to move on to the shiny new corporate-controlled email 2.0. It’s probably for the best. I’m ready to accept the future, but I still think we should take a minute to realize that we have given up on claiming a distinct space on the Internet. We’ve given the world just a bit more reason to stop chasing the dream of a decentralized, community-maintained cyberspace.