These are names of the sons of a district-level communist leader in Tamil Nadu state, with the youngest set to marry Mamata Banerjee on Sunday.
Even little Marxism will not miss out when Socialism gets married in southern India this weekend with his big brothers Communism and Leninism in attendance.
All are the progeny of A Mohan, a district secretary of the Communist Party of India in Tamil Nadu state where left-wing ideology still burns red hot.
“My first son was born during the fall of the Soviet Union and everywhere in the news I was reading that this was the end of communism,” Mohan told AFP news agency.
“But there is no end for communism as long as the human race lives on, so I named my first-born Communism,” he said.
His next two sons were named Leninism – whose five-month-old son Marxism will also attend the nuptials on Sunday – and Socialism, the groom.
Pictures of the invitation to the wedding, embossed with hammer-and-sickle emblems, have gone viral on social media.
Socialism to wed Mamata Banerjee
Socialism’s bride-to-be, meanwhile, is P Mamata Banerjee, named by her grandfather after firebrand chief minister of West Bengal state, who recently defeated Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing party in state elections.
The fact that this other Banerjee also ended several decades of communist rule in 2011 in West Bengal to become its chief minister is not spoiling the party.
India leaned more towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and names such as Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Pushkin and even Pravda – the name of the USSR’s state newspaper – are not unheard of, particularly in the south.
Tamil Nadu’s current chief minister is MK Stalin, named by his father in honour of the Soviet communist dictator just days before he died in Russia.
Mohan said that there was nothing unusual about his sons’ names. Some of his comrades gave their children names such as Moscow, Russia, Vietnam and Czechoslovakia, he said.
But he admitted that his boys, especially Communism, were sometimes teased at school. One hospital refused to admit Communism when he was three years old.
“They were scared of the name Communism and initially I faced a lot of troubles. But over time, things smoothed out,” he said.
All three sons, now in their 20s, are fellow members of the local communist party, and Leninism named his son after none other than German philosopher Karl Marx.
“Now I am waiting for a granddaughter from one of my sons, who I will name Cubaism,” Mohan added.
We gather the numbers to know from the week’s biggest economic news stories so you can impress yourself and your friends.
Gather round, folks, it’s that time of the week again. Many of you may be meeting up with family and friends you haven’t seen in a while after the isolation of the pandemic, which means you need some fascinating facts to sprinkle into all those new conversations.
This week’s topics range from El Salvador’s Bitcoin revolution to mass youth unemployment in Oman to a spike in child labour around the world and a slowdown in China’s birth rates. And who could forget the gold coin that smashed records by selling for $18.9m? Not exactly chump change!
So here’s our roundup of the week’s biggest numbers critical to keeping your convos with friends and loved ones interesting, worldly and maybe even fun. Remember fun?
7,000
That’s how many users Bitcoin Beach, a pilot crypto project in the small El Salvadoran beach town of El Zonte, has. And those numbers will likely grow after the Central American nation’s president announced it would become the first to use Bitcoin as legal tender this week.
Bitcoin Beach has been educating the community about how to use the digital currency in daily transactions, as Al Jazeera’s Kaelyn Forde reports, but there could be more to the Salvadoran president’s decision than meets the eye.
49 percent
That’s the staggering level Oman’s youth unemployment rate reached in 2019, according to figures from the World Bank.
Young people took to the streets last month to demand more economic opportunity just weeks after the country introduced austerity measures meant to offset Oman’s burgeoning debt. Al Jazeera’s Sean Mathews writes that what’s happening in Oman will likely spread to other petro-dependent Gulf economies battered by the collapse in oil prices that started in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
A man makes a purchase at a small store that accepts Bitcoin near the southern coast of El Salvador [File: Salvador Melendez/Reuters]
160 million
Strangely enough, as youth unemployment has skyrocketed in some regions, so has child labour – a rise unseen in nearly two decades. A new report from the United Nations this week found that about 160 million children around the world are working – up 8.4 million over the last four years. The numbers are “a wake-up call,” the chief of the International Labour Organization said.
The loss of work or income for a parent or guardian and school closures have pushed millions of kids into the workforce, and the problem could get worse if governments don’t act.
1.3 births
The level China’s fertility rate per woman slowed to in 2020, despite Beijing loosening its stringent one-child policy and allowing families to have up to three kids. But as Al Jazeera’s Michael Standaert reports this week, the birth rate is likely to hover around that level unless Chinese authorities make it easier for families to afford to have kids.
$11.2bn
That’s how much trade happens between Israel and China – a sizable spike from the $1bn trade level at the turn of the century. China is now just behind the United States as Israel’s largest trading partner. But the blossoming economic ties have made things interesting, diplomatically speaking, Al Jazeera’s Sean Mathews reports.
Israel has looked past China’s vocal support for Palestine and Israeli leaders have not paid much attention to China’s response to last month’s Gaza war, which as one Israeli expert said is viewed as “lip service” in Tel Aviv. But there are also some dangers. Israel may be sacrificing its own security as well as Washington’s unwavering support by pursuing closer relations with Beijing, Mathews writes.
The 1933 Double Eagle coin is seen encased during a media preview before its auction at Sotheby’s in New York City, the United States [File: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]
$18.9m
That’s how much a gold coin sold for at a Sotheby’s record-smashing auction in New York on Tuesday. Well, not just any old coin. The 1933 Double Eagle is the last US gold coin struck for circulation. With a face value of $20, it was designed at the request of then-US President Theodore Roosevelt.
But all 1933 Double Eagles were ordered destroyed when President Franklin Roosevelt, in an effort to lift America’s battered economy from the depths of the Great Depression, took the nation off the gold standard. Only two survived to be sent to the Smithsonian — and one remained in private hands. With Liberty striding forward on one side and an American eagle on the other, it sure is a beauty.
Shenzhen, China – On a sweltering June afternoon in a quiet corner of Lianhuashan Park at the heart of China’s high-tech showcase city of Shenzhen, 25-year-old Mr Ling is engaged in the decidedly low-tech activity of browsing advertisements for potential partners.
Men get light blue cards, women light pink, grouped by decade of birth. The cards hang stiff and impersonal from hundreds of wires in the circular “Matchmaking Corner” structure built by the municipal government, whose offices are a quick walk away.
Like many younger men and women living in Shenzhen without official residency in the city, Ling faces chances of finding a wife, starting a family, and actually staying in the city long-term that are slim – even if he’d prefer to take that course.
“The biggest issue is work and having enough money and getting a house,” he said. “I have a few friends who used to work in Shenzhen but have now moved to other areas. The cost of living puts too much pressure on them.”
Ling’s hukou – China’s internal family registration system – ties most of his health and social insurance, as well as his future children’s education, to a rural village in Shandong province far to the north, the place of his birth.
Ling, who did not want his full name used to protect his privacy, works as a real estate agent. But the job entails little beyond answering phones, escorting potential buyers to properties, with little chance of upward mobility.
As China moves to allow couples to have up to three children, it is increasingly clear that the government will need to address the needs and concerns of people like Ling who would like to start families and have children but are pressured by a lack of education, living costs and barriers to movement such as the hukou system – realities of life in China that are dissuading many working couples from contemplating the idea of having more than one child, let alone two or three.
A lack of education, living costs and barriers to movement such as the hukou system are realities of life in China that are dissuading many working couples from contemplating the idea of having more than one child, let alone two or three [File: Giulia Marchi/Bloomberg]
‘How can we take care of nine?’
An online survey circulated in early May in China found that slightly over half of young people don’t want to have one child, let alone a second or third.
One reason is the cost of buying a house. Most men feel they need to have property before proposing marriage, so that is a major premarital barrier for a man and his extended family, which often helps pay for that first house. Others included concerns over who would take care of the children, the high cost of education and after-school programmes, point systems in first and second-tier cities that determine if a child can get into a local school or not, and changing mindsets among younger people who want to pursue individual dreams that don’t revolve around creating a family.
Women – who shoulder the lion’s share of childcare – are also increasingly less willing to have a second child after becoming exhausted from looking after their first.
One remark that circulated on Chinese social media the hours after China announced the move to a three-child policy on the final day of May was of a couple saying: “We already have to take care of a family of eight, how can we take care of nine?”
Translation: Working-age couples in China often have to take care of themselves as well as two sets of parents who don’t have much income from savings or pension plans if any, plus any kids they already have.
Though the parents of such workers often do help with home and childcare, the costs associated with healthcare as they age – along with child-rearing costs – are a huge burden.
China’s fertility rate slowed to 1.3 births per woman in 2020 and looks likely to hover around that rate unless authorities in Beijing ease pressure on working families. While those authorities say efforts to improve policies related to maternity leave and insurance, as well as to strengthen tax and housing policy support, are under way, most working parents in China are not getting their hopes up.
Government benefits that were rolled out after China eased its one-child policy in 2015 failed to reduce financial burdens and increase birth rates significantly [File: Akio Kon/Bloomberg]
Benefits rolled out after the one-child policy was eased in 2015 failed to reduce burdens and increase birth rates significantly.Chang Qingsong, an associate professor at the Population Research Institute of Xiamen University, believes the government should go further and remove the limits entirely so families can decide whether they want kids or not.
“The Chinese government could loosen the limit on the number of children that a family can have, and provide maximum support to the families who have the ability and conditions to have more babies,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Instead of prescribing how many children they can have, the government needs to reduce the burdens on families to increase their intent to give birth,” he said. “Predictably, even if couples were allowed to have a third child, most couples would not.”
Moving the needle
Failing or stagnant birth rates might not mean all that much at this moment, but as China’s population ages rapidly, economic growth could take a hit as the labour force shrinks 15 years from now, according to a note from Yue Su, principal economist with The Economist Intelligence Unit.
The new three-child policy could also have further negative short-term impacts on women, she wrote, with companies assuming women would want more children and potentially opting to hire men instead in order to dodge maternity costs and time away from work.
Failing or stagnant birth rates might not mean all that much at this moment, but as China’s population ages rapidly, economic growth could take a hit as the labour force shrinks 15 years from now [File: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg]
Ashton Verdery, an associate professor of sociology and demography at Penn State University, said it appears that the three-child policy is more of a reaction to the recent census data showing China has a rapidly aging population and is fast closing in on its peak population, but a detailed policy to try to address the pressures could come later.“I wouldn’t be surprised if they pivot towards some sort of special credits that people get for having more children or other policies that ease the challenges of having more children,” he told Al Jazeera.
For example, Chinese authorities are reportedly encouraging some regions to trial parental leave schemes.
“I could imagine that China may build more housing that is friendly for larger families and things like that,” he said. “The Chinese state has much greater involvement in the economy and therefore might be able to move the needle a bit.”
For Scott Rozelle, a development economist and a co-director of the Rural Education Action Program at Stanford University, China’s demographic problem is not so much about quantity as it is about quality.
Much of that lack of quality in the labour force is because China has failed to provide education for all youth through high school, particularly in rural areas.
Research shows early indications that the birth rate decline is largely coming from rural areas of China primarily because women there do not feel their families could support more than one or two children [File: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg]
Without raising the education levels of rural children and re-educating those rural hukou holders who didn’t make it through high school, simply having more children isn’t going to solve China’s looming labour problems and keep it from finding itself in a middle-income trap like Mexico or Brazil.
“The quality of people really matters in this post-industrial world,” Rozelle said. “If you don’t have a high school education, you’re not going to do well in online sales, you’re not going to be able to start a business.”
Recent research Rozelle has conducted shows early indications that the birth rate decline is largely coming from rural areas of China primarily because women there do not feel their families could support more than one or two children.
“My hypothesis is that the big fall in fertility has basically come from rural China in the past 10 years,” he told Al Jazeera. “Women now have so much more decision-making power over critical decisions like family size.”
China is currently putting into place a major policy for rural revitalisation across the country, but most of it is focused on agriculture and infrastructure programmes, rather than education, health and social welfare.
Rozelle said surveys of rural families over the years find that while they appreciate many of those infrastructure upgrades, for most the priority boils down to one thing: education.
“It’s coming where we aren’t going to need big quantities of labour to run our societies, what we need is high-quality labour,” Rozelle said. “So does rural revitalisation need to include education? Absolutely.”
DNT Yaounde – The United States Senate yesterday approved Biden nominee Christopher John Lamora as the new Ambassador to Cameroon. But there is one problem – Ambassador Lamora is gay and homosexuality is illegal in Cameroon.
Lamora is reported to have decided to leave his husband behind in the States to take up his new appointment in Yaounde raising the question as to whether the status of homosexuality or the practice of it is what is illegal in the central African country.
Lamora will join Isi Yanouka, Israeli Ambassador to Cameroon who is also suspected to be a member of the LGBTQ community.
It remains to be seen how this seeming diplomatic row would be settled. Cameroonian President Paul Biya is said to be a staunch opponent of the LGBTQ community.
How Lamora presents his credentials to Biya remains to be seen.
In addition to the jail time, Damien Tarel, the attacker, also gets a 14-month suspended sentence and is banned from ever holding public office in France. Tarel is also not allowed to own weapons for five years.
DNT Paris – Damien Tarel, the far right Frenchman who shocked the world by rudely slapping French President Emmanuel Macron has been sentenced to a four-month jail term after 14 of the 18-month sentence is suspended.
Rumors surfaced on social media that Tarel’s lawyers were planning to use a self defense argument that Macron was violating the COVID-19 protocol by coming too close to him.
But that argument was dead on arrival because apparently Tarel shouted a far right slogan at Macron prior to unleashing the slap, thus taking away the covid motive.
The shocking incident involving French President Emmanuel Macron and a Frenchman was caught on camera just when the French leader was greeting people behind a fence during a visit to the Drome region in southeast France to discuss reopening of restaurants as the country eases out of lockdown measures.
Macron raced past his security detail and expose himself to the slapped by Tarel, who was the first person approached by the president. The video went viral on social media.
According to a DNT correspondent, the Drome region is somewhat of a bastion of the political far right in France making it even more surprising that Macron’s protection was not elevated.
Tarel was reported to be very exuberant in court displaying no remorse whatsoever. Hehas the option of appealing hi sentince but it was unclear at the time of going to press whether his lawyers would consider it.
DNT News with correspondence reports from Paris, Frace
The Chinese national seen in the viral video whose absurd behavior led to a physical confrontation with a Sierra Leonian national has been officially terminated from the Chinese Railway Seventh Group (CRSG).
In a brief statement, CRSG apologized for the behavior of the staff member and indicated that management “has decided to relieve (him) of his duty immediately.”
Following up on an earlier statement by Kingho Mining Company (KMG) which stated that the “said employee of CRSG was withdrawn from the mine site,” DNT sought explanation as to the meaning of “withdrawn.”
The KMG representative in Freetown promptly responded saying that “he is not our employee. We can only remove him from our site. It’s CRSG that hired him and has the power to sack him, which they have done.”
The KMG representative included the formal statement from CRSG stating the termination of the Chinese national.
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — In the global race to vaccinate people against COVID-19, Africa is tragically at the back of the pack.
In fact, it has barely gotten out of the starting blocks.
In South Africa, which has the continent’s most robust economy and its biggest coronavirus caseload, just 0.8% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to a worldwide tracker kept by Johns Hopkins University. And hundreds of thousands of the country’s health workers, many of whom come face-to-face with the virus every day, are still waiting for their shots.
In Nigeria, Africa’s biggest country with more than 200 million people, only 0.1% are fully protected. Kenya, with 50 million people, is even lower. Uganda has recalled doses from rural areas because it doesn’t have nearly enough to fight outbreaks in big cities.
Chad didn’t administer its first vaccine shots until this past weekend. And there are at least five other countries in Africa where not one dose has been put into an arm, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The World Health Organization says the continent of 1.3 billion people is facing a severe shortage of vaccine at the same time a new wave of infections is rising across Africa. Vaccine shipments into Africa have ground to a “near halt,” WHO said last week.
“It is extremely concerning and at times frustrating,” said Africa CDC Director Dr. John Nkengasong, a Cameroonian virologist who is trying to ensure some of the world’s poorest nations get a fair share of vaccines in a marketplace where they can’t possibly compete.
The United States and Britain, in contrast, have fully vaccinated more than 40% of their populations, with higher rates for adults and high-risk people. Countries in Europe are near or past 20% coverage, and their citizens are starting to think about where their vaccine certificates might take them on their summer vacations. The U.S., France and Germany are even offering shots to youngsters, who are at very low risk of serious illness from COVID-19.
Poorer countries had warned as far back as last year of this impending vaccine inequality, fearful that rich nations would hoard doses.
In an interview, Nkengasong called on the leaders of wealthy nations meeting this week at the G-7 summit to share spare vaccines — something the United States has already agreed to do — and avert a “moral catastrophe.”
“I’d like to believe that the G-7 countries, most of them having kept excess doses of vaccines, want to be on the right side of history,” Nkengasong said. “Distribute those vaccines. We need to actually see these vaccines, not just … promises and goodwill.”
Others are not so patient, nor so diplomatic.
“People are dying. Time is against us. This IS INSANE,” South African human rights lawyer Fatima Hasan, an activist for equal access to health care, wrote in a series of text messages.
The Biden administration made its first major move to ease the crisis last week, announcing it would share an initial batch of 25 million spare doses with desperate countries in South and Central America, Asia and Africa.
Nkengasong and his team were in contact with White House officials a day later, he said, with a list of countries where the 5 million doses earmarked for Africa could go to immediately.
Still, the U.S. offer is only a “trickle” of what’s needed, Hasan wrote.
Africa alone is facing a shortfall of around 700 million doses, even after taking into account those secured through WHO’s vaccine program for poorer countries, COVAX, and a deal with Johnson & Johnson, which comes through in August, two long months away.
Uganda just released a batch of 3,000 vaccine doses in the capital, Kampala — a minuscule amount for a city of 2 million — to keep its program barely alive.
There and elsewhere, the fear is that the luck that somehow enabled parts of Africa to escape the worst of previous waves of COVID-19 infections and deaths might not hold this time.
“The first COVID was a joke, but this one is for real. It kills,” said Danstan Nsamba, a taxi driver in Uganda who has lost numerous people he knew to the virus.
In Zimbabwe, Chipo Dzimba embarked on a quest for a vaccine after witnessing COVID-19 deaths in her community. She walked miles to a church mission hospital, where there were none, and miles again to a district hospital, where nurses also had nothing and told her to go to the region’s main government hospital. That was too far away.
“I am giving up,” Dzimba said. “I don’t have the bus fare.”
South African health workers faced similar disappointment when they crowded into a parking garage last month, hoping for vaccinations and ignoring in their desperation the social distancing protocols. Many came away without a shot.
Femada Shamam, who is in charge of a group of old-age homes in the South African city of Durban, has seen only around half of the 1,600 elderly and frail people she looks after vaccinated. It is six months, almost to the day, since Britain began the global vaccination drive.
“They do feel very despondent and they do feel let down,” Shamam said of her unvaccinated residents, who are experiencing “huge anxiety” as they hunker down in their sealed-off homes 18 months into the outbreak. Twenty-two of her residents have died of COVID-19.
“It really highlights the biggest problem … the haves and the have-nots,” Shamam said.
As for whether wealthy countries with a surplus of vaccine have gotten the message, Nkengasong said: “I am hopeful, but not necessarily confident.”
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A man makes a purchase at a small store that accepts Bitcoin near the southern coast of El Salvador [File: Salvador Melendez/Reuters]
The 1933 Double Eagle coin is seen encased during a media preview before its auction at Sotheby’s in New York City, the United States [File: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]
A lack of education, living costs and barriers to movement such as the hukou system are realities of life in China that are dissuading many working couples from contemplating the idea of having more than one child, let alone two or three [File: Giulia Marchi/Bloomberg]
Government benefits that were rolled out after China eased its one-child policy in 2015 failed to reduce financial burdens and increase birth rates significantly [File: Akio Kon/Bloomberg]
Failing or stagnant birth rates might not mean all that much at this moment, but as China’s population ages rapidly, economic growth could take a hit as the labour force shrinks 15 years from now [File: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg]
Research shows early indications that the birth rate decline is largely coming from rural areas of China primarily because women there do not feel their families could support more than one or two children [File: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg]
