How much of modern (Western?)
culture and lifestyle is dictated by commercial
pressures? How much are trends started in America in the 1920's (Only
Yesterday ) still shaping our lives? Is Commerce the new morality in international affairs? Is "Free Speech" a subtle tool for
encouraging Consumerism (removing self-restraint and promoting instant
gratification) Or is a lack of "Free Speech"
encouraging lazy thinking (by removing intellectual confrontations and
challenges) and opening us to exploitation by ad-men and con-men?
How sustainable is our lifestyle?
Is it creating social as well as environmental pressure that
might threaten it?
Millions of
people in China are celebrating being single on the social
network Sina Weibo - because it's "Singles Day" on 11
November. Here's BBC Trending's quick guide to the day and the
huge viral phenomenon, driven by online retailers, that it has
become.
What is it?
It's meant to be a day set aside for single
people to spoil themselves. The date is four single 1s - 11.11
- or as they call it in China, "bare sticks" - in other words,
you're unattached.
Who started it?
It's hard to be sure but an often repeated explanation
is that it started as a grassroots movement among students at
Nanjing University in the early nineties. They bought
themselves presents, as a sort of "anti-Valentines day".
So it's just grown from there?
No - it's grown because of heavy promotion by
online retailers and brands. In 2009, the online retail giant
Alibaba decided to turn the day into a massive marketing
opportunity. Every Singles Day, Alibaba offers huge discounts,
aimed at those who are single. It's also a shopping day for
other brands and retailers - China Daily called it "China's
Black Friday" last year, comparing it to the big US sales day
after Thanksgiving, after sales of 10 billion yuan
(US $1.63 billion) were recorded on just one online shopping
site.
So it's big, then?
It's one of the biggest online conversations
each year. It's perhaps no surprise that the Singles Day
hashtag on Weibo has reached hundreds of
millions of people over the years - because the online
retailers who help drive it know their sites are just a click
away.
But wait - people are also getting married
this "Singles Day"? Er...
This appears to be a growing trend. Last year,
the Xinhua news agency reported a "wedding boom"
on Singles Day. It seems some people see the "bare sticks"
next to each other (11.11) as a romantic symbol of singles
finding one another.
What's this picture?
Image copyrightWEIBO
This twist on Communist-style propaganda art is
used all over the internet to represent Singles Day, including
on the Weibo page for the hashtag. The slogan translates as:
"Our Singles Day strength".
What's going viral this Singles Day?
Image copyrightBIG BANG THEORY/ SINA
WEIBO
The Chinese account of the US sitcom, the Big
Bang Theory, has been making jokes about the
upcoming day on Weibo. Some students are sharing selfies of
themselves holding boards explaining why it's OK to be single
and stating that they aren't interested in finding a partner.
One student has dreamt up a fake "Singles card" that looks
like a marriage licence, which is also drawing clicks. But big
brands are still among the top Singles Day trends.
Once upon a time
a Nobel Prize winning economist had a cat called Lightning.
Now, Lightning appeared to like his cat food, a
rather pricey gourmet dish which claimed to be a cut above
the rest.
But maybe, thought the Nobel Prize winning
economist, I have been fooled into thinking this cat food is
a cut above the rest - when it isn't.
There is only one way to find out, said the
economist.
And that is to eat it myself. And so he did. It was, he
said with a giggle, pretty much like any other cat food.
And the moral of this tale, he says, is that he had been
"phished for a phool" - or manipulated into buying
something.
Now the economist in question, Robert Shiller and his
fellow Nobel laureate George Akerlof, have written Phishing
for Phools, about how the sellers of cat food and thousands
of other products and services "phish" us into buying things
we do not want or need.
"Of course they do it," he says. "If you had a cat food
company you wouldn't say 'Dried Dead Fish' on the label...we
live in a constructed world that's filled with deception
like this."
Fools or not
"Phishing" was initially coined to describe internet fraud,
but Profs Shiller and Akerlof use it more broadly to cover a
world of deception, and add the term "phools" to describe
its victims.
Being gulled into paying more for cat food is hardly a
serious affair. But the two economists see it as a microcosm
of something much bigger in society.
Image copyrightChip
SomodevillaImage caption:
Firms
routinely manipulate us into buying things we don't
need or want, says Robert Shiller
The financial crisis of 2008 was caused in part, says Prof
Shiller, by buyers being manipulated into buying financial
products that were ultimately destructive to them and to
society.
So the sale of deeply flawed mortgage-backed securities and
their accompanying credit-default swaps flourished on the
back of free markets and the reputations of the banks and
finance house that sold them.
Not everyone goes along with this. "A bigger cause of the
financial crisis than people fooling others was that
everyone fooled themselves," says George Mason University
economist, Prof Alex Tabarrok.
"From government regulators to mortgage bundlers to home
buyers, people simply came to believe that house prices
could never fall and they acted accordingly."
Profs Shiller and Akerlof argue that if people were fooling
themselves there were plenty of others happy to help them on
their way.
Behavioural economics
The two authors are behavioural economists, who inject
psychology and sociology into their economics.
There's nothing new about that, but this latest foray into
the "dismal art" has a distinctly dismal view of human
nature.
"Most people will pick little shortcuts, little
dishonesties," says Prof Shiller.
"You are pushed [to dishonesty] by many pressures, one is a
sense of responsibility to your investors, another is to
your employees. And you think everybody does this.
"Nobody's making a stink.... of course you do it, and the
ones who don't do it are failing and going out of business.
That's a phishing equilibrium."
Prof Tabarrok's view couldn't be more different: "If you
look around the world it's the capitalist societies that are
the high trust societies.
"There is no question that overall capitalism generates
trust, honest dealings, customer service and good will.
Distrust and cheating are the human norm and they have
declined with the extension of the capitalist, 'trader
values'."
The monkey-on-the-shoulder
Not so, say the behavioural economists.
Profs Shiller and Akerlof argue that the free markets
persuade us to do things with results that no one could
possibly want.
The blame, they say, lies in our "monkey-on-the-shoulder"
tastes - those pernicious voices that tell us to buy what we
think we want, rather than what we really want.
Prof Tabarrok takes issue with this difference.
"I do not think it is so simple. People disagree, sometimes
violently, about which decisions are the ones that no one in
their right mind could possibly want.
"Consider the different reactions around the world to Bruce
Jenner's transition to Caitlyn Jenner [the transgender US
athlete].
"Moreover, what's wrong with the monkey on the shoulder?
Isn't a bit of monkeying around also a part of the good
life?"
But Profs Shiller and Akerlof say this world of "phishers"
pervades everything, from pharmaceutical companies that sell
us drugs, politicians whose power is manipulated by the
wealth of their backers, and tobacco companies that defend
their right to sell their wares as seductively as possible.
On alcohol Prof Shiller talks passionately of how it
destroys marriages and lives: "We have TV adverts showing
beautiful young people enjoying liquor.
"We live in a society now where it's difficult to say no to
a drink. But we would be in a much better society if we did
that - because of the problems of alcohol.
"I am not saying we should all stop drinking but I can see
the forces that make it much worse than it could be."
Regulators as heroes
So what to do about it?
Perhaps surprisingly, both economists are still fervent
believers in the free market, and the power it has to
improve lives.
What it needs is better regulation, they say.
But regulation is a hard sell to those who believe in the
free market.
"How can the preferences of a regulator, or even a set of
regulators, be superior to those of the ones being
regulated?" wrote Siddharth Singh, the editor of Mint,
India's second largest business magazine.
"What is needed," said Mark Hendrickson in Forbes magazine,
"is not a hyper-regulatory nanny government to try to
insulate us from our own shallowness and silliness. The
remedy for 'phoolishness' lies beyond the scope of
government."
But says Prof Shiller, "our civilization has gotten so
complicated we do need complex regulation.
"It's not that the government knows better, it's that civil
society knows better. Civil society is a concept, a
civilization of responsible adults who do not delegate all
decisions to 'the government'.
"In a civil society, society doesn't just take it for
granted that whoever is, say, prime minister, is right. We
are personally responsible. And that's why things work -
it's not just because of free markets."
Diwali is perhaps the most
important Hindu festival celebrated in north India, but over
the past decade or so, it has degenerated into a crass
commercial fiesta, writes the BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi.
In my family, Diwali was traditionally the festival of
lights - when we decorated our homes with diyas (little clay
lamps), prayed to Lakshmi, the "goddess of wealth", to make
us rich, and Ganesha, the cute elephant-headed god who
removed obstacles in our path, helped us pass our exams when
we were young, and made us generally happy.
We would wear new clothes and gorge on traditional sweets -
some bought from the market and some made at home by my
extremely talented mother.
We never had firecrackers - as a child whenever I asked my
dad for money to buy crackers, he would say "you might as
well burn the money".
The first time I spent some money on crackers was when I
became a mother and bought some for my son when he was a
year old. He was so frightened by the noise that I had to
hide in the house with him and so, that also became the last
time.
But Diwali in Delhi no longer resembles the happy festival
of my childhood days.
In recent years, it's degenerated into a mega shopping
festival, with endless traffic snarls and noisy firecrackers
adding to the thick blanket of grey smog already choking the
city's lungs, making the mere act of breathing here a
dangerous exercise.
The sorry state of affairs has been worrying many
Delhi'ites. In the past few years, there have been campaigns
to make people shun fireworks, but clearly they have failed.
Image copyrightAPImage caption: Delhi
is among the world's most polluted cities
The Delhi high court recently said crackers were "as bad as
explosives" and the parents of three infants also appealed
to the Supreme Court to ban them.
The court turned down the plea
but the judges told the government to launch campaigns to
"sensitise the public on the ill effects and pollution of
bursting of crackers" and said they would be prohibited
between 10pm and 6am.
But will that really happen? I doubt that - and I say that
because in my neighbourhood in south Delhi, the crackers
have already been bursting for days now. And they have been
going on well past the 10pm deadline.
In an angry Facebook post, a friend who lives in east Delhi
said he was woken up at 12:56am by neighbours bursting loud
crackers.
Image copyrightAFPImage
caption On
Diwali, Hindus pray to Lakshmi, the "goddess of wealth"
But the things that have most come to symbolise Diwali in
Delhi - and which I hate the most - are the shopping
frenzies that take over the city in the weeks preceding the
festival, coupled with some truly ludicrous gift-giving.
From several weeks before Diwali, daily newspapers grow
noticeably thicker thanks to multiple pages containing just
advertisements for all the shiny new things you can buy.
You are encouraged to buy a newer and bigger television
set, replace that old washing machine even though it works
perfectly well, get gadgets and home appliances that you
neither have use - nor space - for.
Image copyrightAFPImage caption: During
Diwali, Delhi is often stuck in monster traffic jams
And while you are at it, go out and buy some gold and
diamonds too. And that swanky new car. Oh, and since you're
buying around Diwali, you'd probably get a free gold coin,
or a free music system to go with that new set of wheels.
And since Diwali is also a time to be generous towards your
fellow beings, don't forget that unnecessarily large basket
of dry fruits, chocolates or gifts to give away to friends,
relatives and business contacts.
And of course the millions of boxes of unhealthy sugary
Indian sweets. It doesn't matter that India is certified as
the "diabetes and hyper-tension capital" of the world.
And then of course load them into millions of cars to
deliver them to their intended recipients.
Image copyrightAFPImage caption: The
Delhi high court recently said that crackers were
"as bad as explosives"
And then sit for hours in endless traffic jams, getting
cranky, honking horns.
During Diwali, my mother would always end the prayer
ceremony by drawing a path on the floor so that when the
goddess of wealth came to our house - just like Santa at
Christmas - she would know where to go.
But today, I doubt Goddess Lakshmi would come to Delhi,
repulsed by its noise and pollution. And even if she did,
she would probably just be stuck in the traffic jam.
Current negotiations
between the UK and India are a "huge moment for our two
great nations", India's PM Narendra Modi has said on his
visit to Britain.
In a speech to Parliament, he said the two countries needed
to create "one of the leading global partnerships".
Mr Modi and David Cameron are due to sign deals between
Indian and UK firms worth more than £9bn.
The leaders said they would collaborate on issues including
finance, defence, nuclear power and climate change.
Mr Modi, whose three-day visit is the first by an Indian
prime minister in a decade, said India's relationship with
the UK was of "immense importance".
Image copyrightEPA
He also said that India viewed the UK as its "entry point
to the EU".
"Yes we are going to other European countries as well, but
we will continue to consider the UK as our entry point to
the EU as far as possible," he added.
Mr Modi said the UK and India were "two strong economies
and two innovative societies" but he said their relationship
"must set higher ambitions".
"We are igniting the engines of our manufacturing sector,"
he told MPs.
"The progress of India is the destiny of one sixth of
humanity," he added.
His speech marked the first time a serving Indian prime
minister had spoken in the UK's Parliament.
Media caption: Narendra
Modi: "This is a relationship of immense importance to
us"
Narendra Modi is seen as a
divisive politician - loved and loathed in equal measure
He is leader of the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and took over as PM in May
2014 after leading his party to a spectacular general
election win
He served as the chief
minister of Gujarat from 2001 and is regarded as a dynamic
politician who helped make the western state an economic
powerhouse
But he is also accused of
doing little to stop the 2002 religious riots when more
than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed -
allegations he has consistently denied
Mr Modi is known as a
brilliant public speaker and is very popular among Indian
communities abroad - 60,000 people are expected to fill
Wembley Stadium to hear him speak
Mr Modi's arrival in London was marked with a flypast by
the RAF's aerobatic team, the Red Arrows, over the House of
Commons.
On his way to give a speech to Parliament, he visited a
statue of India's independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.
During the trip, Mr Modi will meet the Queen and address
crowds at Wembley Stadium.
After his Parliament speech Mr Modi addressed business
leaders and politicians at London's Guildhall.
He said India was an attractive investment destination.
"Ours is the country of vibrant youths and a rising middle
class. We welcome your ideas, innovations and enterprises,"
he said.
BBC News correspondent Christian Fraser said India's
growing economy was "crucially important to British industry
and trade".
Indian businesses in the UK
110,000
people are employed by Indian companies operating
in the UK
13 Indian
companies each employ more than 1,000 people in
the UK
65,000 people
work for Tata Group, which owns 5 of those 13
companies
28,000 of
those work for Tata Motors, which owns Jaguar Land
Rover
The visit comes at an unsettled time in India, where Mr
Modi's Hindu-nationalist party lost a recent regional
election.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered the defeat in the
northern Indian state of Bihar, amid concerns over a rise in
religious intolerance in India.
His supporters will hope his visit will help him spring
back from that defeat.Media captionModi
Miles: Why is India PM Narendra Modi always flying?
Protesters gathered outside Downing Street, criticising Mr
Modi over a number of issues including claims of religious
persecution, and interference in Nepal.
Campaigners from the UK-based Awaaz Network say they are
against Mr Modi's "violent authoritarian agenda that seeks
to undermine India's democratic and secular fabric".
Dozens of writers have signed a letter to Mr
Cameron, asking him to urge Mr Modi to "provide better
protection for writers, artists and other critical voices
and ensure that freedom of speech is safeguarded" in India.
Supporters of Mr Modi also gathered to welcome him.
Analysis
Image copyrightReuters
By Justin Rowlatt, BBC South Asia correspondent
At the heart of these big foreign visits is trade.
India is now the fastest-growing large economy in the
world and David Cameron wants the UK to have a piece of
the action. Meanwhile Mr Modi wants to promote his
signature policy and encourage British firms to "make in
India".
The big theme will be about how the two nations can
enhance their "partnership".
You can expect the two leaders to announce billions of
pounds worth of new deals between British and Indian
companies. There'll also be talk about how the City of
London can play a bigger role in the Indian economy, with
plans for Indian companies to raise money in UK markets.
Mr Modi will be hoping that footage of him at Buckingham
Palace and being cheered by a huge crowd in Wembley
Stadium will help burnish his image in India after his
party's humiliating defeat in the state elections in
Bihar.
But he is a controversial figure and the visit is likely
to be marked by demonstrations and protests.
Image copyrightAPImage caption: Narendra Modi
inspected soldiers from the Scots Guards outside
the Treasury in London
During the visit, he will stay at Chequers, Mr Cameron's
official country retreat in Buckinghamshire.
On Friday, Mr Modi will speak, mainly in Hindi, to some
60,000 people due at the Wembley event, which is expected to
be a celebration of the Indian diaspora's contribution to
the British economy.
Organisers have promised an Olympic-style reception for the
Indian prime minister.
Image caption "Here we live off the
land and if it doesn't work we are in so much
trouble", says Amadou Souare
The UN predicts over
50 million people will be forced to leave their homes by
2020 because their land has turned to desert. This is
already happening in Senegal, writes Laeila Adjovi.
Cattle herder Khalidou Badara took me up a hill in
Louga, northern Senegal, to describe to me how his area
has changed.
"When I was a child, I did not even dare to walk up to
here because the vegetation was so dense.
"But these past few years, the wind and sand have been
taking over.
"There are almost no more trees, and the grass does not
grow anymore, and so each year, we have to go further
and further away to find grazing for our cattle."
His life has become more complicated because of
desertification.
He's not the only one. The UN says land degradation
affects 1.5 billion people globally.
Desertification is the persistent degradation of dry
land ecosystems by human activities and by climate
change.
It translates into scarcer rains and decreasing soil
quality, which leads to less grazing for livestock and
lower crop yield.
Lost land
Each year, UN figures say, 12 million hectares of land
are lost. That's land where 20 million tonnes of grain
could have been grown.
People living off the land feel they have no choice but
to migrate.
In another part of Louga - the village of Pendayayake -
I met Cheikhou Lo.
Image
caption: Cheikhou Lo says he
can't work because of the drought
He had sown hectares of peanuts and beans in the hope
of selling them.
But lack of rain and soil erosion mean the peanuts and
beans have not ripened.
His failed harvest is only good to feed animals.
Image
caption: Cheikhou Lo's
peanut harvest has been ruined this year
"Years ago, there was more rain and we were able to
produce more," he told me.
"We could live on the crops until the next rainy
season. Now, with that drought, we can't work.
"If we had boreholes and sufficient means, we could
grow vegetables, plant trees, and we could stay here".
"But if not, many have to leave and go elsewhere to be
able to survive."
Forced to leave
His 27-year-old nephew Amadou Souare added that in the
village there is only one borehole and not enough means
to dig another one.
"Here we live off the land," he said.
"And if that does not work, we are in so much trouble."
Image
caption: There used to be
much more rain in northern Senegal
Many young people from the village have left. Cheikou
Lo's own children, now adults, went to find jobs in
Dakar.
Some have travelled to Gabon, others are planning to go
to Europe or Brazil.
"We would rather they stayed here to develop the
village but with no jobs and no means, how can we ask
them to stay?" he asked.
A wall of trees
One project is trying to slow the effects of
desertification.
The Great Green Wall initiative aims to create a
barrier of vegetation in vulnerable areas across the
continent, from Senegal to Djibouti.
The organisation says hundreds of thousands of trees
have already been planted in the region.
In Senegal, the wall is intended to make a 545km (338
mile) long curtain of vegetation.
Image
caption: People may not be
able to wait the 10 years the trees will take to
grow
The organisation also makes fodder banks for herders,
vegetable gardens to prevent malnutrition and teaches
children how to protect the environment.
The idea is to meet minimal living conditions so people
can survive.
After all, El Hadj Goudiaby from the national agency of
the Great Green Wall explained, the trees will only have
an impact in 10-15 years' time.
"Can people here really wait that long? No."
Pushed by the desert
Month by month, people continue to leave. A few hours
away, Dakar, the capital city, offers hope of a better
life.
Malik Souare grew up in Pendayayake.
Unable to live off the land, he decided to move to
Dakar, and found a job as a driver.
But now, he dreams of going even further away.
"You know, everyone wants to get ahead. So I would
prefer to leave. Go to England maybe. That is the place
where my hopes are now," he said.
For more and more rural communities at the mercy of the
environment, migration appears to be the only choice.
According to the UN, over 50 million people could move
from the desertified areas of sub-Saharan Africa towards
North Africa and Europe by 2020.
Pushed by the desert and pulled by opportunity, more
and more people like Mr Souare will picture their future
abroad.
Media caption:
More than 60 leaders are meeting to discuss the mass
movement of people, Gavin Lee reports.
Fourteen migrants have drowned in the latest boat sinking as
European Union and African leaders gathered in Malta to
discuss measures to stem the flow of people into Europe.
Seven of those who died when a wooden boat sank
between Turkey and the Greek island of Lesbos were children.
Coastguards rescued 27 survivors.
The meeting in the Maltese capital Valletta was
planned after about 800 died in a migrant boat sinking off
Libya in April.
The UN says nearly
800,000 migrants have arrived in Europe by sea so far in 2015,
while some 3,440 have died or gone missing making the journey.
Some 150,000 people from African countries such
as Eritrea, Nigeria and Somalia have made the dangerous
journey across the Mediterranean from Africa so far this year,
arriving mainly in Italy and Malta.
But this has been dwarfed by the arrival of some
650,000 people - mostly Syrians - via Turkey and Greece.
BBC world affairs reporter Richard Galpin says
the crisis has evolved so quickly since this year that
European leaders have been struggling to keep up and formulate
any coherent policies.
At the two-day Malta summit, EU leaders are
expected to offer countries in Africa billions of euros in
exchange for help with the migrant crisis.
Media caption:
Clive Myrie reports from Ethiopia on the Eritrean
children fleeing to safety
The European Commission is setting up a €1.8bn
"trust fund" for Africa and has urged member states to match
that sum. However, there are doubts about whether they will do
so.
The aim is to tackle the economic and security
problems that cause people to flee, and persuade African
countries to take back more failed asylum seekers.
African leaders are likely to insist on a much
clearer path for smaller numbers of their citizens to migrate
officially to Europe, in exchange for help on the crisis, says
the BBC's Chris Morris in Malta.
Deep divisions
Tensions in the EU have been rising because of
the pressures faced by those countries where most migrants
initially arrive, particularly Greece, Italy and Hungary. Most
migrants then head to Germany or Sweden - regarded as the most
welcoming to refugees - to claim asylum.
EU leaders have agreed a controversial programme
to relocate thousands of migrants - but so far only about 130
have been successfully moved from Greece and Italy.
Wednesday evening saw Swedish Interior Minister
Anders Ygeman announce that his country will impose temporary
border controls from noon on Thursday local time for 10 days
until 21 November to allow it to cope with tens of thousands
of new arrivals.
"We moved forward with temporary border controls
in order to obtain security and stability... not to limit the
number of asylum seekers, but to get better control of the
flow of asylum seekers to Sweden," he said.
Other developments on Wednesday highlighted deep
divisions between EU members on the migrant issue.
Hungary was bitterly critical of Germany's
announcement that it planned to send more Syrian refugees back
to the first EU country they had entered, after reinstating
the EU's Dublin Regulation on asylum. Berlin said this would
not include Greece, the first point of entry for most
migrants.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said:
"The Dublin system is dead."
He also accused German politicians of making
"irresponsible statements" which some migrants had interpreted
as an invitation to come to Europe.
Meanwhile, Slovenia has begun building a
razor-wire fence along its border with Croatia, a day after
the government said it would install "temporary
technical obstacles", but stressed official border
crossings would remain open and that the move was designed to
restore order.
Croatia criticised the Slovenian fence, saying
it would be better to spend money on preparing reception
centres for migrants.
Until recently,
people in Mongolia had to travel more than 1,000km (600 miles)
across the Gobi desert to Beijing to get to their nearest
record shop. But this year, a new specialist store opened in
the capital, Ulan Bator.
Batbold Bavuu began collecting records by
accident 10 years ago, rescuing them from rubbish bins at the
music college where he was a student.
Those discs formed the basis of his collection and the
inspiration for his new shop, Dund Gol Records. The business
started off in the corner of a children's library, tucked away
in a tiny area with tall, dusty windows. His mission: to make
vinyl cool again in Mongolia.
"It's not just what I do, it's who I am," says Batbold, who
usually goes by his nickname, Boldoo. "The most important part
is the music, it's a big part of my life, so that's why I'm
doing this."
His mother, who used to sing him Mongolian folk songs,
first introduced him to music, and then in the early 1990s
he got into hip hop.
"What I liked most was hip hop's sampling culture. I like
funk, soul, jazz music, and later I just got into
everything… I'm not the typical collector, I collected very
fast. I collected because I like to sample music, that's why
I like every genre."
Boldoo moved to London to study, took sound engineering
courses, and then eventually began to write rap lyrics. He
released a record with a Japanese artist in 2007, before
returning to Ulan Bator to run a club and host underground
parties.
Now he's put his 3,000 records on sale - an eclectic mix
that includes Cuban tracks, Yemeni Jewish music, hip hop,
Edith Piaf, pop groups from Belarus and rare state-sponsored
Mongolian rock bands.
With possibly the largest record collection in the country,
he has a wide selection of albums from the Soviet era - some
that were officially released and others that were smuggled
into the country, evading strict controls imposed by the
Communist authorities.
As far as he knows, this is the country's first specialist
record store. During Mongolia's 65 years as a Soviet
satellite, when it came under Moscow's influence, music was
sold in book shops and department stores.
Dund Gol which means Middle River, is nostalgically named
after the river that flows though the city. Boldoo grew up
nearby and spent his childhood fishing there, though as Ulan
Bator expanded, water levels dropped and the fish have all
but disappeared.
Development has brought foreign visitors though. Boldoo has
welcomed shoppers from Israel, South Africa, the US, Germany
and Egypt who come to dig for forgotten musical treasures.
Billy Macrae, a photographer from London, heard about Dund
Gol from a Norwegian friend who introduced him to Boldoo via
the shop's Facebook page.
When Macrae walked into the store, some of the first things
he noticed were the Bee Gees and Beatles albums.
"It's quite unique in that these records have been sitting
in someone's ger (yurt) for about 30 years, and some
of them seem really well preserved," he says. "I think a lot
of the particular copies would have been issued in the USSR
and I don't think you'd find them in a shop in London for
example."
Now, rather than sifting through rubbish bins, Boldoo finds
that vinyl comes to him.
His foreign customers often post him records when they get
home and sometimes local families call asking him to sell
their discs in his shop. "Every Mongolian family used to
have few records," he says. "It was very trendy during the
80s, but most of them played Frisbee with them."
On one of the last days of summer, before the air turned
thick with the smell of coal fires, Boldoo got a call from
young man living in one of the slum districts, where close
to 800,000 nomads have set up their traditional yurts.
Between sips of milky Mongolian tea, he inspected 100 or so
records and came away with music by Charles Aznavour and
Elvis Presley, a rare set of flexible and colourful German
78s, a disc in the shape of a postcard and an album of
African-American gospel music pressed in the Czech Republic
in 1963.
Boldoo suspects the collection once belonged to a Mongolian
diplomat who acquired the music on trips abroad more than 25
years ago - someone in such a position would have been able
to bring them into Mongolia undetected.
Though his loyal customer base consists mostly of European
and American visitors, Mongolians are also starting to take
more notice.
Baapii came to Dund Gol just to see a record player - she'd
only ever seen them in films. "I was thinking, 'Why don't we
have this in Mongolia? I want to see this too,'" she says
while flicking through Beethoven records.
"It's so nice to see it." She plans to come back another
day to buy a turntable - Boldoo recently imported 10 to sell
to his customers.
The shop seems to be doing well and has already moved to a
larger site a few blocks away from the children's library.
Boldoo is now sharing a place with a delicatessen where he
has more space to display the albums that were once confined
to cardboard boxes. He is also cataloguing his collection in
the hope of selling online too.
"The good part is that I acquire a lot of knowledge," he
says. "I learn languages because all these records have been
pressed and written in different languages. I meet lots of
interesting people with lots of stories. It's very
profitable to meet like-minded people from all around the
world to exchange knowledge and culture."
This article was made possible through a fellowship from
the International Reporting Project.
Self-censorship
can be as much a threat to free speech as its government
equivalent, argues Roger Scruton.
Any discussion of free speech needs to deal with
two important issues - jokes and race. Jokes are not opinions,
but they can cause just as much offence. So should there be
the same freedom to make jokes as to express opinions?
The issue of race has been the subject of deep
self-questioning in modern communities. The most horrible
genocide in recent history - the Holocaust - occurred because
people felt free to hate the Jews and to broadcast that hatred
in speech that was protected by law. The oppression of black
people in America and their exclusion from the privileges of
citizenship was advocated freely and destructively throughout
recent times. And again the opinions were protected by law.
Don't these and similar cases justify the current belief that
free speech is not a good in itself, and that groups liable to
be targeted by collective hatred should be protected from its
abuse?
These two issues are of pressing concern to us.
The Charlie Hebdo affair in France reminds us that jokes can
give such offence as to inspire the most violent response to
them. And we should surely not be surprised if the French
comedian Dieudonne, who regularly includes anti-Semitic jokes
in his stand-up shows, is now banned from many places in
France and Belgium.
Image copyrightGetty
ImagesImage caption
Controversial French comedian Dieudonne
We should remember, however, that offence can be
taken even when it has not been given. There are radical
feminists who search every innocent remark about women for the
hidden sexist agenda. Even using the masculine pronoun in the
grammatically sanctioned way, so as to refer indifferently to
men and women, can cause offence and is now being banned on
campuses all across America. It is not that you wish to give
offence. But you are up against people who are expert in
taking it, who have cultivated the art of taking offence over
many years, and who are never more delighted than when some
innocent man falls into the trap of speaking incorrectly.
Typically a joke tries to cut things down to
size, so that you can feel at ease with the thing you laugh
at. Most ethnic jokes are like that - ways of dealing with
ethnic diversity, by helping people to feel content with their
own group, and not threatened by the others. Sometimes it is
your own group that is cut down to size - as in the many
Jewish jokes that show some Jewish foible to be an amusing
eccentricity rather than a threat. Jokes become popular
because they soften things, making reality, with all its
divisions, less of a threat. Here is a well-known joke from
the Northern Ireland troubles - one man stops another in the
street and points a gun at his chest. "Catholic or
Protestant?" he demands. "Atheist," comes the reply. To which
the response is "Catholic atheist or Protestant atheist?"
Humour of that kind is pointing both to the absurdity of
sectarian conflict, and also to the fact that it is a
pretence, an excuse for hatred rather than a response to it.
It is reminding us that the art of taking offence is used by
small-minded people to gain an unwarranted advantage over the
rest of us.
Of course there are jokes in bad taste, jokes
that express unpleasant or malicious attitudes. We teach our
children not to tell jokes of that kind, and not to laugh when
others tell them. Humour is informed by moral judgment. We
hope to turn it towards acceptance and forgiveness, and away
from malice and contempt. But how should we deal with the joke
that gives offence?
You cannot legislate against offence. No
legislation, no invention of new crimes and punishments, can
possibly introduce irony, forgiveness and good will into minds
schooled in the art of being offended. This is as true of
radical feminists as of sectarians and radical Islamists.
While we have a moral duty to laugh at them, they have also
made it dangerous to do so. But we should never lose sight of
the fact that it is they, not we, who are the transgressors.
Those who suspect mockery at every turn, and who react with
implacable anger when they think they have discovered it, are
the real offenders.
So what about racist speech? Is this any
different from the other kinds of protected speech, or is
there some special reason for criminalising it? Does the
Holocaust justify banning the opinions that gave rise to it?
Many people think so, and in France the legislature has gone
further and criminalised those who deny that the Holocaust
occurred.
Image copyrightSean
GallupImage caption: The
Berlin Holocaust memorial: Should denial of the
event be punishable by law?
Racist opinions won't go away just because we
forbid their expression. Indeed, forbidding them may give them
a special allure. What was most destructive about the Nazi
propaganda against the Jews was not so much the expression of
those nasty opinions, but the suppression of those who sought
to refute them. It was the lack of free speech that allowed
the opinions to rampage out of control, free from the
arguments that would have exposed them to ridicule. By
contrast, black people in America earned their status as equal
citizens partly because of free discussion, which persuaded
ordinary Americans that racial stereotyping is both irrational
and unjust. It is because they gave voice to their opinions
that the racists were defeated.
The case is of vital importance to us in
Britain. The policing of the public sphere with a view to
suppressing "racist" opinions has caused a kind of public
psychosis, a sense of having to tiptoe through a minefield,
and to avoid all the areas where the bomb of outrage might go
off in your face. And this bomb has been planted and primed by
people many of whom see the accusation of racism as a useful
way to undermine our belief in our country and its way of
life. Hence police forces, public officials, city councillors
and teachers have hesitated to think what they know to be
true, or to act against what they know to be wrong. We have
seen this in the cases of sexual abuse in Rotherham and
elsewhere. when reluctance to single out an immigrant
community for blame has been one reason for failing to act. My
recent novel The Disappeared is an attempt to explore the
depths of the moral disorder that has entered our society,
through this kind of self-censorship, which prevents a
teacher, a police officer or a social worker from acting,
precisely when most sure that he or she must act.
Self-censorship is even more harmful than
censorship by the state. For it shuts down the conversation
completely. Because of mass migration our society has
undergone vast and potentially traumatic changes, but without
the benefit of public discussion, and as though we had no
choice over our future. The depths of confusion and resentment
are beginning to be perceivable, not only here but all across
Europe, and it is discussion alone that would have prevented
them. Those who have tried to initiate that discussion have
been subjected to witch-hunts and character assassination of a
kind that few people can easily endure. The result has been a
loss of reasoned argument in places where nothing is needed so
much as reasoned argument.
Image copyrightPAImage caption 2013:
Cambridge students protest against the appearance of
right-wing French politician Marine Le Pen at the
university's debating society
One last word about the art of taking offence.
Nowhere has this art been more assiduously cultivated than on
American campuses, where an entirely new culture of
trepidation has set out to capture the adolescent psyche. When
discussing any of the matters in which the secular dogmas have
staked a claim - race, sex, orientation, sexual politics - the
professor may now be required to issue "trigger warnings",
lest he stray into areas that might trigger the memory of some
traumatic event in the life of the student. Visiting speakers
with heretical views about feminism or homosexuality are also
preceded by trigger warnings. Some campuses even provide safe
rooms where the trembling students can retire for consolation
should they have been exposed to the contamination of an
unorthodox point of view.
Amusing though this is, you have to be careful
not to laugh at it, at least if you are a professor who has
not got tenure. Those who wish to maintain the student mind in
a condition of coddled vulnerability, unhardened by opposition
and unpractised in argument, now police the campus, with the
result that these places which should have been the last
bastion of reason in a muddled world, are instead the places
where all the muddles come home for nourishment. The example
vividly illustrates the way in which the attacks on free
speech can go so far as to close off the route to knowledge.
And in the end that is why we should value this freedom, and
why John Stuart Mill was so right to defend it - as
fundamental to a free society - without it we will never
really know what we think.