A: You do realize that defund the police doesn't actually mean completely get rid of the police, right?
B: Maybe you should actually pay attention to what the council wants. Minneapolis police: City Council members announce intent to defund the police department - CNN
C: The Minneapolis BLM group that spoke with the mayor on video made it unmistakably clear that they meant abolish.
D: i think part of the issue is that words like “defund” and “dismantle” don’t inherently imply any kind of replacement.
But, as pointed out, there is a replacement function in this specific proposal.
B: could've gone with "let's build a new way to police!" or something like that..
I think that's a useful way to gaslight people. It's the same with the untenable slogans like "#BelieveAllWomen"
E: and maybe you should have the intelligence, savvy, and political wisdom enough to know that what the most radical members of the city council say they want in the heat of this moment and what will actually happen are two different things? The mayor is not on board with this and the city council is not moving forward with dismantling armed officers at this point. They have announced some ideologically charged and frankly utopian aspirations for the future. They have committed to working with the community to "reimagine" what a policing force will look like. I bet that in the final analysis the outcome will look something like Camden, New Jersey. Either way, armed officers able to respond to 911 calls and other criminal activity will not be disbanded. But why let measure, reason, and common sense guide us in a moment like this??
B: This is the councilwoman's tweet:
Lisa Bender on Twitter: "Yes. We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a transformative new model of public safety." / Twitter
A: yes and that doesn't mean get rid of policing entirely.
B: Ok so what you're saying is, dismantle doesn't mean dismantle. Got it
E: why don't you just come out and admit that you're working for the Trump misinformation services? Holy fuck.
F: You do realize...” is always what I hear from people getting ready to tell me what THEY don’t realize.” Smooth move, Sparky!
G: They said they wanted a private company to take over, let's see how long that last
H: Ilhan Omar also said on video that we must "completely dismantle the Minneapolis PD" but of course by 'completely dismantle' she meant 'maintain strong force of armed officers for 911 calls but also reallocate some resources to social workers and community services'.
E: you and *** both could be a clarifying voice of reason right now instead of just parroting right wing talking points. Even if you disagree with the defund the police platform (as I do, I'd rather reasonable reform, including serious restraints on qualified immunity) you could still be more responsible in actually providing facts and details about what the "defund the police" experiments are really about. Frankly, I think the phrase is a terrible one and a gift to Trump and the right wing. There might be some valuable ideas here, but as you say, it would be an experiment. But it is not a move to do away with an armed police force and a 911 response team to criminal activity.
and she really has power in the party. Good grief.
H: Lol first I was told that these radical leftists were fringe Twitter and college campus idiots. Then they graduated and got jobs in media and academia. Still fringe idiots. Now they're in Congress and city councils voting to dismantle police departments and suggesting that calling 911 in the middle of the night is "white privilege"... still fringe and 'no power' for E. And calling out this incremental delusion is "parroting right wing talking points". Give me a break.
I: Did you think the same of the Charlotesvile protestors when they said "Jews will not replace us?"
J: Going by how some people claim the "dismantling doesn't mean entirely getting rid of it" is a valid defense, then "not consenting to sex doesn't mean entirely not wanting sex" is also valid.
K: It's funny to watch all the post-modernist takes here... *But defund doesn't actually mean defund, it means this other thing*.
In this case we can be confident there is no linguistic obfuscation. These people tell us they want to disband the police as a first step, without even having a plan.
Utter madness.
L: it's pretty obvious the legal system will be moved to twitter.
D: I’ve had activists tell me defund means exactly that and I’ve had activists tell me that defund “actually” means a long list of things that include reform, partial reallocation, retraining, and other similar things.
B: They are exploiting the ambiguity of these terms.
D: [I] think the people who started “defund the police” meant precisely that. Stop giving them money. That’s what defund means. I suspect a bunch of people piled on, then realized the literal definition of defund wasn’t actually a good idea. So they back tracked and came up with these contortions for what defund “actually” means. Because if they stop using the phrase they’ll be labeled unsupportive and thrown off woke island.
B: I mean if they mean reform then just...say what they mean?
M: Exactly, its either one or the other. But saying one while meaning the other is devious at the very least.
N: 2020 is the year we reinvent the definition of words. Dismantle now means to thoroughly & completely make slight changes to existing institutions...
O: I am marginally curious on who the blacks of Minnieapolis are going to blame next when their communities go to shit despite no cops around.
When you can't live without bananas
Saturday, June 13, 2020
Links - 13th June 2020 (2)
@VCBrags Twitter parody skewers Silicon Valley VCs - "In four short months, @VCBrags has amassed more than 31,000 followers and prompted a number of VCs to block it — including luminaries like Marc Andreessen and Paul Graham — all without saying a single word. Its entire shtick: Retweet boastful posts from VCs, and top them with three withering hand-clap emojis... "If I were a founder, I'd never take an investor lacking self-irony and it's funny to see how many VCs upset with this account.""
One chart shows the dire state of America's middle class - "The typical US worker can no longer afford a family on a year's salary, showing the dire state of America's middle class... Those between ages 25 and 34 have seen only a $29 income increase since 1974, when adjusted for inflation, according to a new SuperMoney report that analyzed US Census Bureau data."
I've seen libertarians saying this isn't a problem, since now one can afford to buy cheap, good crap
Aren't Women Wonderful? - Posts - "Jennifer Lawrence: If I meet Trump, it'll end with a "martini to the face."
*Multiple photos of her acting very friendly with Harvey Weinstein*"
"Yeah but Weinstein is a Democrat, though!"
Chad Prather on Twitter - "Police say a New Jersey man fought off an unwanted house visitor by using the suspect’s own gun, ultimately killing him"
"Dumbest label ever: Undocumented immigrant.
NBC New York: “Hold my beer.”"
">Undesired sexual exchange with a stranger
>Unwanted modification of a structure using fire
>Permanent change of life status
>Moving a car without the owner knowing
>Begging with guns
>Non optional charity for an unknown cause
>An offer he can't refuse"
NACHTMAHR - "The unprovoked attack of 15 Antifa activists on 4 of our fans in front of the door at our show in Basel last Saturday make it necessary to release the following statement.
- The reports in Antifa media that members of band were attacked, hurt or were in any way involved in the attack is untrue.
- We strongly condemn all violence especially if it’s targeted at people because of the way they dress, look or what gender or race they belong to
- We oppose every kind of political extremism
- We will never change the way we dress, the music we make or what we say in our lyrics due to external pressure
- We urge our fans to look out for each other in case an attack like this ever happens again
“Antifascism is only good until it starts to use fascist methods”
PLEASE SHARE."
15th Century Flemish Style Portraits Recreated In Airplane Lavatory - "While on a long-haul flight, when most people would sleep, read a book or chew on complimentary snacks, Nina Katchadourian spends her time locked in the airplane’s lavatory taking selfies in the style of 15th century Flemish paintings. Her series, dubbed “Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style,” is part of a bigger piece called “Seat Assignment,” which is based on improvising with materials close at hand while in flight ."
Snickers compares Welsh language to 'someone sitting on a keyboard' - " In a tweet on Tuesday, the company’s account wrote a thread of posts with possible Welsh place names under the question: ‘A place in Wales or someone sat on a keyboard?’ It listed places like the village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which has the second-longest official single-word place name in the world (after New Zealand’s Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu). Other contenders were Rhosllanerchrugog and Penmaenmawr, both real places in North Wales... Jac Jolly wrote: ‘Our beautiful Language is constantly belittled , we will do everything we can to stop that Ridicule, we will keep Yr iaith Gymraeg [the Welsh language] living, Cymrophobic people and companies like @SNICKERSUK threaten its survival , we won’t stand for that... Some were bemused by the ferocity of the pile-on, which included accusations of racism and threats of lifetime boycotts.Eleanor Johnston wrote: ‘Seriously?! I’m Welsh and not offended by this at all! When were jokes banned?!’"
Apparently not all white people can be made fun of. Presumably you're only allowed to make fun of the English due to Power Relations
The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything - "On the one hand, Hekkert told me, humans seek familiarity, because it makes them feel safe. On the other hand, people are charged by the thrill of a challenge, powered by a pioneer lust. This battle between familiarity and discovery affects us “on every level”"
Should Public Transit Be Free? More Cities Say, Why Not? - The New York Times - "“Transportation should be free,” she said. “It’s a basic need. It’s not a luxury.”... The argument against fare-free transit is a simple one: Who is going to pay for it?... Around 100 cities in the world offer free public transit, the vast majority of them in Europe, especially France and Poland... “There’s no such thing as free,” Mr. Kane said. “Someone has to pay. Boston has the highest-paid bus drivers in the country. They’re not going to work for free. The fuelers, the mechanics — they’re not going to work for free.” Advocates of free transit have suggested that the cost could be offset by a gas tax increase; but replacing $109 million would mean raising the gas tax by 3 and a half cents, Mr. Kane said. And all the while, he said, the system is straining to cope with the current demands... Scott MacLaughlin, a ticket agent for the Merrimack Valley Transit Authority, which serves Lawrence, is already worrying about what happens when Mayor Rivera’s two-year experiment in free transit ends, in 2021.“You’re going to take it away after two years?” he said. “When you give someone something for free and then you take it away, that’s always going to be an issue.” And that, Mayor Rivera said with a smile, was exactly the point.“To me, it’s not a pilot,” he said. “I want people to get used to it.”"
Food, shelter and water are basic needs too
Teaching Children How to Reverse an Overdose - The New York Times - "Desperate to save lives, county health officials have embraced a practical — if radical — strategy for stemming the tide of addiction: Teaching children as young as 6 how to reverse an overdose."
In rare rebuke, Chief Justice Roberts slams Schumer for 'threatening' comments - "Chief Justice John Roberts publicly chastised Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Wednesday over comments Schumer made outside the court as the justices were hearing a case on abortion rights. Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested that President Donald Trump's court appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, "won't know what hit" them if they vote to uphold abortion restrictions... Schumer's office later issued a second statement in which the senator criticized Roberts."
Threatening Supreme Court justices doesn't threaten the rule of law if they're conservatives
90's Movies' Fan Theories that Push Us To Watch These Films Again - "2. The Insurance Salesman In Groundhog Day Is Actually The Devil
5. Forrest Gump Tells Stories Specific To Each Person At The Bus Stop
9. Marla Singer Does Not Exist In Fight Club
10. Aladdin Takes Place In A Post-Apocalyptic Future
11. Jurassic Park Never Had Dinosaur DNA
13. The T-100 Evolves Emotionally In Terminator 2: Judgment Day
17. Clueless Had A Sequel
the sequel to Clueless did happen - and it was Legally Blonde
18. Jack Is A Time Traveler In Titanic
Jack appears pretty out of place in the era and talks about things that won't exist until years after the ship sinks, in 1912. He mentions fishing at Lake Wissota, but it wasn't created until 1917 - five years after the Titanic sank. He also tells Rose he'll take her on the roller coaster at the Santa Monica Pier, built in1916. Everything - from his haircut to his rucksack - doesn't fit in the time.
19. The Real World In The Matrix Is Still A Computer Simulation
Neo (Keanu Reeves) uses “powers” when he's supposedly outside of the Matrix. It would be impossible in the real world. Additionally, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) can control Bane even after he leaves the simulation. How? Because he never left.
20. Jeff Daniels Is Actually The Same Guy In Speed And Dumb & Dumber"
Meme - "By the "not all men" logic, Russian Roulette is a perfectly safe game to play. Sure, one of the chambers has a bullet in it...
but not all chambers"
So... This justifies racism too
Ellen K. Pao on Twitter - "CEOs of big tech companies: You almost certainly have incels as employees. What are you going to do about it?"
Replies: "Interview every employee, demanding details of their sex lives (or lack thereof) and fire all those who aren't getting their rocks off and are not happy about that?"
"Dear [APPLICANT], we regret to inform you that your application has been rejected. Although you were highly qualified, we here at [BIG TECH COMPANY] enforce a strict no-singles policy. Please return with proof of gf, past or present."
"Men have a personal responsibility to have sex? Who should police this?"
"Apparently Ellen thinks it should be CEOs job"
"Maybe give them a little designation? Perhaps something they could wear on their clothes to identify them?"
"Ellen is showing us why she got fired from her last two high profile jobs. You can apparently sleep your way to the top but at some point people expect you to perform. If this insipid challenge to CEOs is an indication, we can see why she gets axed regularly."
"This is the most baffling shower thought you should have left to go down the drain.Are companies supposed to track virginity status of employees?Would women be exempt from such checks???????"
"Pretty sure we could flip this any angle by adding "x as employees". In your case, it'd be "CEOs of big tech companies: You almost certainly have trannies who want you to pay for their surgery as employees. What are you going to do about it?""
Obama Announces He Is No Longer Responsible For The Economy | The Babylon Bee - ""All the gains were mine -- Trump didn't build that -- but this crash is all on Trump," Obama said as he admired the ocean, which will consume his home in fewer than twelve years. "My responsibility for the great economic gains in this country ended the moment the stocks started to tank this morning."The former president said that he does reserve the right to reverse his stance and reclaim credit for any economic gains realized after the market turns around, whenever that may be... Obama also assured panicked Americans that if they like their economy, they can keep their economy."
Jedi religion founder accuses Tesco of discrimination over rules on hoods - "Tesco has been accused of religious discrimination after the company ordered the founder of a Jedi religion to remove his hood or leave a branch of the supermarket in north Wales.Daniel Jones, founder of the religion inspired by the Star Wars films, says he was humiliated and victimised for his beliefs following the incident at a Tesco store in Bangor.The 23-year-old, who founded the International Church of Jediism, which has 500,000 followers worldwide, was told the hood flouted store rules... Jones, from Holyhead, who is known by the Jedi name Morda Hehol, said his religion dictated that he should wear the hood in public places and is considering legal action against the chain... Tesco said: "He hasn't been banned. Jedis are very welcome to shop in our stores although we would ask them to remove their hoods."Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all appeared hoodless without ever going over to the Dark Side and we are only aware of the Emperor as one who never removed his hood."If Jedi walk around our stores with their hoods on, they'll miss lots of special offers.""
Are hijabis required to remove their hijabs too?
One chart shows the dire state of America's middle class - "The typical US worker can no longer afford a family on a year's salary, showing the dire state of America's middle class... Those between ages 25 and 34 have seen only a $29 income increase since 1974, when adjusted for inflation, according to a new SuperMoney report that analyzed US Census Bureau data."
I've seen libertarians saying this isn't a problem, since now one can afford to buy cheap, good crap
Aren't Women Wonderful? - Posts - "Jennifer Lawrence: If I meet Trump, it'll end with a "martini to the face."
*Multiple photos of her acting very friendly with Harvey Weinstein*"
"Yeah but Weinstein is a Democrat, though!"
Chad Prather on Twitter - "Police say a New Jersey man fought off an unwanted house visitor by using the suspect’s own gun, ultimately killing him"
"Dumbest label ever: Undocumented immigrant.
NBC New York: “Hold my beer.”"
">Undesired sexual exchange with a stranger
>Unwanted modification of a structure using fire
>Permanent change of life status
>Moving a car without the owner knowing
>Begging with guns
>Non optional charity for an unknown cause
>An offer he can't refuse"
NACHTMAHR - "The unprovoked attack of 15 Antifa activists on 4 of our fans in front of the door at our show in Basel last Saturday make it necessary to release the following statement.
- The reports in Antifa media that members of band were attacked, hurt or were in any way involved in the attack is untrue.
- We strongly condemn all violence especially if it’s targeted at people because of the way they dress, look or what gender or race they belong to
- We oppose every kind of political extremism
- We will never change the way we dress, the music we make or what we say in our lyrics due to external pressure
- We urge our fans to look out for each other in case an attack like this ever happens again
“Antifascism is only good until it starts to use fascist methods”
PLEASE SHARE."
15th Century Flemish Style Portraits Recreated In Airplane Lavatory - "While on a long-haul flight, when most people would sleep, read a book or chew on complimentary snacks, Nina Katchadourian spends her time locked in the airplane’s lavatory taking selfies in the style of 15th century Flemish paintings. Her series, dubbed “Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style,” is part of a bigger piece called “Seat Assignment,” which is based on improvising with materials close at hand while in flight ."
Snickers compares Welsh language to 'someone sitting on a keyboard' - " In a tweet on Tuesday, the company’s account wrote a thread of posts with possible Welsh place names under the question: ‘A place in Wales or someone sat on a keyboard?’ It listed places like the village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which has the second-longest official single-word place name in the world (after New Zealand’s Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu). Other contenders were Rhosllanerchrugog and Penmaenmawr, both real places in North Wales... Jac Jolly wrote: ‘Our beautiful Language is constantly belittled , we will do everything we can to stop that Ridicule, we will keep Yr iaith Gymraeg [the Welsh language] living, Cymrophobic people and companies like @SNICKERSUK threaten its survival , we won’t stand for that... Some were bemused by the ferocity of the pile-on, which included accusations of racism and threats of lifetime boycotts.Eleanor Johnston wrote: ‘Seriously?! I’m Welsh and not offended by this at all! When were jokes banned?!’"
Apparently not all white people can be made fun of. Presumably you're only allowed to make fun of the English due to Power Relations
The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything - "On the one hand, Hekkert told me, humans seek familiarity, because it makes them feel safe. On the other hand, people are charged by the thrill of a challenge, powered by a pioneer lust. This battle between familiarity and discovery affects us “on every level”"
Should Public Transit Be Free? More Cities Say, Why Not? - The New York Times - "“Transportation should be free,” she said. “It’s a basic need. It’s not a luxury.”... The argument against fare-free transit is a simple one: Who is going to pay for it?... Around 100 cities in the world offer free public transit, the vast majority of them in Europe, especially France and Poland... “There’s no such thing as free,” Mr. Kane said. “Someone has to pay. Boston has the highest-paid bus drivers in the country. They’re not going to work for free. The fuelers, the mechanics — they’re not going to work for free.” Advocates of free transit have suggested that the cost could be offset by a gas tax increase; but replacing $109 million would mean raising the gas tax by 3 and a half cents, Mr. Kane said. And all the while, he said, the system is straining to cope with the current demands... Scott MacLaughlin, a ticket agent for the Merrimack Valley Transit Authority, which serves Lawrence, is already worrying about what happens when Mayor Rivera’s two-year experiment in free transit ends, in 2021.“You’re going to take it away after two years?” he said. “When you give someone something for free and then you take it away, that’s always going to be an issue.” And that, Mayor Rivera said with a smile, was exactly the point.“To me, it’s not a pilot,” he said. “I want people to get used to it.”"
Food, shelter and water are basic needs too
Teaching Children How to Reverse an Overdose - The New York Times - "Desperate to save lives, county health officials have embraced a practical — if radical — strategy for stemming the tide of addiction: Teaching children as young as 6 how to reverse an overdose."
In rare rebuke, Chief Justice Roberts slams Schumer for 'threatening' comments - "Chief Justice John Roberts publicly chastised Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Wednesday over comments Schumer made outside the court as the justices were hearing a case on abortion rights. Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested that President Donald Trump's court appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, "won't know what hit" them if they vote to uphold abortion restrictions... Schumer's office later issued a second statement in which the senator criticized Roberts."
Threatening Supreme Court justices doesn't threaten the rule of law if they're conservatives
90's Movies' Fan Theories that Push Us To Watch These Films Again - "2. The Insurance Salesman In Groundhog Day Is Actually The Devil
5. Forrest Gump Tells Stories Specific To Each Person At The Bus Stop
9. Marla Singer Does Not Exist In Fight Club
10. Aladdin Takes Place In A Post-Apocalyptic Future
11. Jurassic Park Never Had Dinosaur DNA
13. The T-100 Evolves Emotionally In Terminator 2: Judgment Day
17. Clueless Had A Sequel
the sequel to Clueless did happen - and it was Legally Blonde
18. Jack Is A Time Traveler In Titanic
Jack appears pretty out of place in the era and talks about things that won't exist until years after the ship sinks, in 1912. He mentions fishing at Lake Wissota, but it wasn't created until 1917 - five years after the Titanic sank. He also tells Rose he'll take her on the roller coaster at the Santa Monica Pier, built in1916. Everything - from his haircut to his rucksack - doesn't fit in the time.
19. The Real World In The Matrix Is Still A Computer Simulation
Neo (Keanu Reeves) uses “powers” when he's supposedly outside of the Matrix. It would be impossible in the real world. Additionally, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) can control Bane even after he leaves the simulation. How? Because he never left.
20. Jeff Daniels Is Actually The Same Guy In Speed And Dumb & Dumber"
Meme - "By the "not all men" logic, Russian Roulette is a perfectly safe game to play. Sure, one of the chambers has a bullet in it...
but not all chambers"
So... This justifies racism too
Ellen K. Pao on Twitter - "CEOs of big tech companies: You almost certainly have incels as employees. What are you going to do about it?"
Replies: "Interview every employee, demanding details of their sex lives (or lack thereof) and fire all those who aren't getting their rocks off and are not happy about that?"
"Dear [APPLICANT], we regret to inform you that your application has been rejected. Although you were highly qualified, we here at [BIG TECH COMPANY] enforce a strict no-singles policy. Please return with proof of gf, past or present."
"Men have a personal responsibility to have sex? Who should police this?"
"Apparently Ellen thinks it should be CEOs job"
"Maybe give them a little designation? Perhaps something they could wear on their clothes to identify them?"
"Ellen is showing us why she got fired from her last two high profile jobs. You can apparently sleep your way to the top but at some point people expect you to perform. If this insipid challenge to CEOs is an indication, we can see why she gets axed regularly."
"This is the most baffling shower thought you should have left to go down the drain.Are companies supposed to track virginity status of employees?Would women be exempt from such checks???????"
"Pretty sure we could flip this any angle by adding "x as employees". In your case, it'd be "CEOs of big tech companies: You almost certainly have trannies who want you to pay for their surgery as employees. What are you going to do about it?""
Obama Announces He Is No Longer Responsible For The Economy | The Babylon Bee - ""All the gains were mine -- Trump didn't build that -- but this crash is all on Trump," Obama said as he admired the ocean, which will consume his home in fewer than twelve years. "My responsibility for the great economic gains in this country ended the moment the stocks started to tank this morning."The former president said that he does reserve the right to reverse his stance and reclaim credit for any economic gains realized after the market turns around, whenever that may be... Obama also assured panicked Americans that if they like their economy, they can keep their economy."
Jedi religion founder accuses Tesco of discrimination over rules on hoods - "Tesco has been accused of religious discrimination after the company ordered the founder of a Jedi religion to remove his hood or leave a branch of the supermarket in north Wales.Daniel Jones, founder of the religion inspired by the Star Wars films, says he was humiliated and victimised for his beliefs following the incident at a Tesco store in Bangor.The 23-year-old, who founded the International Church of Jediism, which has 500,000 followers worldwide, was told the hood flouted store rules... Jones, from Holyhead, who is known by the Jedi name Morda Hehol, said his religion dictated that he should wear the hood in public places and is considering legal action against the chain... Tesco said: "He hasn't been banned. Jedis are very welcome to shop in our stores although we would ask them to remove their hoods."Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all appeared hoodless without ever going over to the Dark Side and we are only aware of the Emperor as one who never removed his hood."If Jedi walk around our stores with their hoods on, they'll miss lots of special offers.""
Are hijabis required to remove their hijabs too?
Post ID: 255135820227971013
Is Singapore's 'perfect' economy coming apart?
Is Singapore's 'perfect' economy coming apart? - Nikkei Asian Review
"Jialat, a Singlish word taken from Hokkien, literally means "drained." In his early 50s, Aziz -- not his real name -- was retrenched from his job in a professional services company two years ago, and turned to the gig economy to make ends meet, joining hundreds of other former white-collar workers in a nocturnal demimonde of midrange saloons and weary discontent. "Cannot retire. Cannot take my [pension]," Aziz said. "As soon as they let me take it, I'll buy a house in Indonesia and retire there. If I stay here, what am I going to do?"
Midlevel jobs in manufacturing and multinational companies are disappearing, and being replaced by technology and financial services roles, which are easier to fill with younger, more affordable migrants. Singaporeans like Aziz struggle to get back into the workforce. Only half of retrenched over-50s are reemployed full time within six months. Nearly three-quarters of people laid off in Singapore last quarter were what the country classifies as professionals, managers, executives and technicians, or PMETs.
A quarter of a million people are in functional poverty. The bottom 20% of Singaporean households have an average monthly shortfall of S$335 between their incomes and outgoings, according to the government's latest economic survey. Living costs have risen. Water bills are up 30% since 2017; medical costs have increased 10% in just over five years, an acute problem in a population that is aging rapidly. Technological disruption is breaking the link between economic growth and earnings. Growth has slowed to its lowest level since the 2009 financial crisis tipped the island into recession...
"The PAP's legitimacy has depended not primarily on electoral performance or democratic accountability. Its primary source of legitimacy has come from economic performance," says Donald Low, who spent 15 years in senior government roles and is now an associate partner at consultancy Centennial Asia Advisors. "I think the social compact is fraying. The PAP's capability to ensure upward social mobility as long as you work hard and get an education, that ability has been seriously eroded."...
The economic model, which began as a mixture of socialist nationalism and paternalistic authoritarianism, before veering toward Thatcherite shareholder capitalism in the 1990s, has been much mythologized by free marketeers and aspiring autocrats worldwide. Prosperous, crime-free, technologically advanced and just about free enough for comfort, the tiny city-state appeared to have found a formula to inoculate itself against the decline and division that seem to characterize other developed economies in the late stages of capitalism.
"On the surface of it, [the Singapore economy] looks astonishingly miraculous," says Yeoh Lam Keong, the former chief economist of Singapore's state fund GIC. "Everybody thinks it's a perfect economy. On the surface, it looks as though people must be looked after. But that's on the surface."
Yeoh is perhaps an unlikely critic of Singapore's political elite, having spent the majority of his professional life close to the heart of the establishment, stepping down from the GIC in 2011...
The roots of Singapore's current problems, Yeoh believes, were planted in the 1990s, when its politics lurched rightward. In line with the prevailing neoliberal thinking, the government moved toward a more market-based approach to the pricing and ownership of HDB flats... Property prices were booming, so in theory this meant that they would have a valuable asset in retirement, which they could sell or borrow against.
However, HDB houses are sold as leaseholds, and the leases are ticking down. The value of many older homes has peaked, and their owners face a retirement with a depreciating asset and a diminished pension pot. That means the signature social policy has gone from one of the most successful public housing initiatives of the 20th century, to a liability for some elderly citizens, Yeoh said. "It's a time bomb."
Perhaps a more consequential policy decision was made in the belief -- and up to that point, the experience -- that growth would continue to drive social mobility and job creation."
They thought that they wanted to maximize welfare by maximizing growth. They had one huge policy lever, which was immigration"...
Between 2000 and 2010, Singapore's immigrant population nearly doubled from 755,000 to 1.3 million, not counting foreign-born citizens given permanent residence status...
"Relative to the base population, you haven't seen that anywhere else. It's unimaginable. It depressed permanently the wages of all those at the bottom"...
"You're earning your adult life in a middle-income country, and you end up having to retire ... in one of the richest developed countries in the world," Yeoh says. "It's like working in the Philippines and retiring in London."...
"It was already tough for people in their 40s and 50s to find a job, but with the influx of foreigners it has made it harder"...
Yeoh insists that the inevitable impacts of globalization and technological shifts on average people need to be mitigated by governments through social safety nets. Time is running out, and the threats are mounting...
Welfare is a hard sell in Singapore, where meritocracy is still a mantra. The country has no unemployment insurance, very limited unemployment benefits or in-work benefits for low wage earners, little state support for pensions...
"Singapore, for the first 40 years, never needed robust social safety nets," Donald Low says. "Now that society is a lot more mature, and all the low-hanging fruit in terms of progress up the socioeconomic ladder ... have been harvested. With or without growth, social mobility is going to slow."...
Singapore runs a structural fiscal surplus -- S$2.1 billion in fiscal 2018. Almost uniquely among developed economies, Singapore has the financial firepower to tackle its problems.
"We are so parsimonious. We save everything for a rainy day," Yeoh said. "But we need to use that surplus to stave off the bogeyman. ... It's raining like hell."...
The resistance to deeper change, insiders say, is ideological. Speaking privately to Nikkei, current and former PAP members as well as government employees used the terms "ossified" and "calcified," as they lamented that a system once known for its flexibility and willingness to debate internally has hardened, and is no longer willing to challenge its core ideologies. Reformists have been sidelined, in favor of a more conservative, nostalgic core.
"I do think you see signs of atrophy and decay in what has been a highly successful, highly competent, professional, technocratic regime," one said.
Another argued that the combination of a state-controlled media and nervous academia, both prone to self-censorship, lead to an illusion of consensus that leaves policymakers "drinking their Kool-Aid" and blind to the concerns of people on the ground...
In 2011, in the aftermath of the 2009 recession and with mounting discontent over the PAP's population policy, there was an unprecedented swing away from the ruling party, which won 60% of the votes -- although that still translated to 93% of the available seats in parliament. The result led to a degree of introspection inside the government. Unpopular policies, including immigration policy, were revised. Activists said that civic space for public conversations opened slightly.
"There was a kind of flourishing of dissenting views," says Jolovan Wham, a prominent social activist. "That was very short-lived."
In recent months, independent news outlets, opposition politicians and activists, including Wham, have been hit with a variety of criminal and civil charges."
"Jialat, a Singlish word taken from Hokkien, literally means "drained." In his early 50s, Aziz -- not his real name -- was retrenched from his job in a professional services company two years ago, and turned to the gig economy to make ends meet, joining hundreds of other former white-collar workers in a nocturnal demimonde of midrange saloons and weary discontent. "Cannot retire. Cannot take my [pension]," Aziz said. "As soon as they let me take it, I'll buy a house in Indonesia and retire there. If I stay here, what am I going to do?"
Midlevel jobs in manufacturing and multinational companies are disappearing, and being replaced by technology and financial services roles, which are easier to fill with younger, more affordable migrants. Singaporeans like Aziz struggle to get back into the workforce. Only half of retrenched over-50s are reemployed full time within six months. Nearly three-quarters of people laid off in Singapore last quarter were what the country classifies as professionals, managers, executives and technicians, or PMETs.
A quarter of a million people are in functional poverty. The bottom 20% of Singaporean households have an average monthly shortfall of S$335 between their incomes and outgoings, according to the government's latest economic survey. Living costs have risen. Water bills are up 30% since 2017; medical costs have increased 10% in just over five years, an acute problem in a population that is aging rapidly. Technological disruption is breaking the link between economic growth and earnings. Growth has slowed to its lowest level since the 2009 financial crisis tipped the island into recession...
"The PAP's legitimacy has depended not primarily on electoral performance or democratic accountability. Its primary source of legitimacy has come from economic performance," says Donald Low, who spent 15 years in senior government roles and is now an associate partner at consultancy Centennial Asia Advisors. "I think the social compact is fraying. The PAP's capability to ensure upward social mobility as long as you work hard and get an education, that ability has been seriously eroded."...
The economic model, which began as a mixture of socialist nationalism and paternalistic authoritarianism, before veering toward Thatcherite shareholder capitalism in the 1990s, has been much mythologized by free marketeers and aspiring autocrats worldwide. Prosperous, crime-free, technologically advanced and just about free enough for comfort, the tiny city-state appeared to have found a formula to inoculate itself against the decline and division that seem to characterize other developed economies in the late stages of capitalism.
"On the surface of it, [the Singapore economy] looks astonishingly miraculous," says Yeoh Lam Keong, the former chief economist of Singapore's state fund GIC. "Everybody thinks it's a perfect economy. On the surface, it looks as though people must be looked after. But that's on the surface."
Yeoh is perhaps an unlikely critic of Singapore's political elite, having spent the majority of his professional life close to the heart of the establishment, stepping down from the GIC in 2011...
The roots of Singapore's current problems, Yeoh believes, were planted in the 1990s, when its politics lurched rightward. In line with the prevailing neoliberal thinking, the government moved toward a more market-based approach to the pricing and ownership of HDB flats... Property prices were booming, so in theory this meant that they would have a valuable asset in retirement, which they could sell or borrow against.
However, HDB houses are sold as leaseholds, and the leases are ticking down. The value of many older homes has peaked, and their owners face a retirement with a depreciating asset and a diminished pension pot. That means the signature social policy has gone from one of the most successful public housing initiatives of the 20th century, to a liability for some elderly citizens, Yeoh said. "It's a time bomb."
Perhaps a more consequential policy decision was made in the belief -- and up to that point, the experience -- that growth would continue to drive social mobility and job creation."
They thought that they wanted to maximize welfare by maximizing growth. They had one huge policy lever, which was immigration"...
Between 2000 and 2010, Singapore's immigrant population nearly doubled from 755,000 to 1.3 million, not counting foreign-born citizens given permanent residence status...
"Relative to the base population, you haven't seen that anywhere else. It's unimaginable. It depressed permanently the wages of all those at the bottom"...
"You're earning your adult life in a middle-income country, and you end up having to retire ... in one of the richest developed countries in the world," Yeoh says. "It's like working in the Philippines and retiring in London."...
"It was already tough for people in their 40s and 50s to find a job, but with the influx of foreigners it has made it harder"...
Yeoh insists that the inevitable impacts of globalization and technological shifts on average people need to be mitigated by governments through social safety nets. Time is running out, and the threats are mounting...
Welfare is a hard sell in Singapore, where meritocracy is still a mantra. The country has no unemployment insurance, very limited unemployment benefits or in-work benefits for low wage earners, little state support for pensions...
"Singapore, for the first 40 years, never needed robust social safety nets," Donald Low says. "Now that society is a lot more mature, and all the low-hanging fruit in terms of progress up the socioeconomic ladder ... have been harvested. With or without growth, social mobility is going to slow."...
Singapore runs a structural fiscal surplus -- S$2.1 billion in fiscal 2018. Almost uniquely among developed economies, Singapore has the financial firepower to tackle its problems.
"We are so parsimonious. We save everything for a rainy day," Yeoh said. "But we need to use that surplus to stave off the bogeyman. ... It's raining like hell."...
The resistance to deeper change, insiders say, is ideological. Speaking privately to Nikkei, current and former PAP members as well as government employees used the terms "ossified" and "calcified," as they lamented that a system once known for its flexibility and willingness to debate internally has hardened, and is no longer willing to challenge its core ideologies. Reformists have been sidelined, in favor of a more conservative, nostalgic core.
"I do think you see signs of atrophy and decay in what has been a highly successful, highly competent, professional, technocratic regime," one said.
Another argued that the combination of a state-controlled media and nervous academia, both prone to self-censorship, lead to an illusion of consensus that leaves policymakers "drinking their Kool-Aid" and blind to the concerns of people on the ground...
In 2011, in the aftermath of the 2009 recession and with mounting discontent over the PAP's population policy, there was an unprecedented swing away from the ruling party, which won 60% of the votes -- although that still translated to 93% of the available seats in parliament. The result led to a degree of introspection inside the government. Unpopular policies, including immigration policy, were revised. Activists said that civic space for public conversations opened slightly.
"There was a kind of flourishing of dissenting views," says Jolovan Wham, a prominent social activist. "That was very short-lived."
In recent months, independent news outlets, opposition politicians and activists, including Wham, have been hit with a variety of criminal and civil charges."
Post ID: 840913314139848531
Links - 13th June 2020 (1)
Gingerswappingresponse - Posts - "New BBC Drama will show world where White people are slaves to Black rulers"
"Is it about the Barbary slave trade? Between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries."
"That awkward moment when the BBC got so woke that somehow ended up being historically accurate by accident"
Diabetes: Scientists use human cells to cure disease in mice - "The mice were given severe diabetes using a substance known as streptozotocin, but human cells implanted in the animals were able to control their blood sugar levels, curing the disease."
Cracked.com - Posts - "Private prison threatens to close unless state or federal officials fill up 300 more beds"
"In any sane country, having to shut down a prison due to lack of criminals would be a success. But supply creates its own demand!"
Private prison demands New Mexico and feds find 300 more prisoners in 60 days or it will close - "county officials issued a statement citing the threatened closure and emphasized that every virtually every politician in the region, from county officials to state officials to congressmen, were scurrying to save jobs—as opposed to shutting a privatized prison by an operator that has been sued many times for sexual harassment, sexual assault, deaths, use of force, physical assaults, medical care, injuries and civil rights violations... This is a perfect snapshot of what’s upside-down with privatization: the lack of economic opportunities and politicians who genuflect at providing jobs, regardless of the larger social implications, pushing law enforcement into the dirty business of ramping up arrests and convictions so private firms and shareholders can make more money."
Democracy in Africa: success stories that have defied the odds - "Countries such as Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Namibia, Mauritius, Senegal and South Africa have not only become beacons of political rights and civil liberties, they have done so against the greatest of obstacles. These experiences teach us important lessons about where democracy can work, and why... A cohesive national identity is likely to make it easier to maintain national unity, while wealth and economic success have been found to promote political stability. A strong national infrastructure, underpinned by respect for the rule of law, means that the government is likely to be effective without being abusive. And, a vibrant middle class and powerful civil society are usually seen as important to promote accountability and responsive government.What is remarkable about the democratisation of African states is that most did not enjoy a single one of these “pre-conditions”... With the exception of Botswana, they are all diverse multi-ethnic societies in which the question of national identity has been problematic. In Ghana and Mauritius for instance, ethnic identities have historically played a role in structuring political networks. This increased the tension around elections. It is striking that, with the exception of Benin and possibly Senegal, these democracies have grown stronger during a period in which the world is supposed to be backsliding on democracy... Some might be tempted to think that the role of the global community has been critical in keeping governments on the straight and narrow. But in reality, democracy is built from within, as the fact that aid-dependent countries such as Uganda and Rwanda have remained firmly authoritarian shows only too well."
Douglas Chow - How superstition or a poor excuse can sabo u big... - " Ms Soh, a shareholder of the Korean restaurant chain, said: "When our lawyers found out that she replaced herself with her elderly illiterate mother as the sole director of her 20 companies and put up her Wilkinson Road bungalow for sale, we decided to freeze all her assets in case she dissipates everything and leaves us with a useless paper judgment."Ms Lena Sim said she had done so at the advice of a fengshui master after her business took a dive.And because she listened to her fengshui master, she was served a Mareva injunction in February, which saw the banks freezing her accounts. Ms Sim said she was unable to make payments to her food suppliers and landlords. Some suppliers have already stopped delivering ingredients to her restaurants.On Friday night, two of the chain's outlets - Ju Hao at Bukit Panjang Plaza and MOF Izakaya at Lot One - were repossessed by CapitaLand after she failed to pay rent. That was the last MOF outlet."
WWI helmet provides better blast protection than new US model: Study - "A helmet used by French soldiers in World War I provided better protection from overhead blasts than a modern American model... "While we found that all helmets provided a substantial amount of protection against blast, we were surprised to find that the 100-year-old helmets performed just as well as modern ones"
Would you kill one person to save five? Depends if you’re a millennial or not - "Across all countries, the average endorsement rate for the footbridge sacrifice was 51 per cent. It was higher in most western countries (61 per cent in the US; 56 per cent in Ireland). In contrast, most Asian countries were below average, with just 32 per cent of Chinese people finding the footbridge sacrifice morally acceptable.The report tries to explain what accounts for this cross-cultural difference? Is it average income? Levels of individualism? Religiosity? The authors suggest a different variable at play: relational mobility (RM), or the ease with which people in a given society can develop new relationships.Pushing someone off a bridge is the sort of thing that would give you a bad reputation in your community. But in a society where you can develop new friends the risk of being ostracised is reduced. Or as the report puts it, “People in low relational mobility societies may be less likely to express and even hold attitudes that send a negative social signal.”... Something has been lost in recent years – a sense of honour perhaps, or a religious attachment to fate. Something also has been gained – unemotional, technology-driven logic. Whether you find this concerning may depend on your historical perspective, given so many atrocities of recent decades have been conducted in a spirit of the ends justifying the means.
The Koran says if you kill a human being, it is like killing all mankind but if you save one you save all mankind. So should I kill one to save five?"
New Costa Rica photos raise questions about Trudeau's vacation spending - "Over the past few days, Trudeau has been criticized for spending large sums of taxpayer money for non-governmental business, as well as for having a large carbon footprint for taking the trip down south. In comparison, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was photographed coming back from his vacation in economy class."
Gad Saad - Posts - "Paris police attacker reportedly ran web search on killing 'infidels' before rampage"
"We may never know his true motives. We need to exhibit nuanced thinking. Likely due to paleo-ketogenic, socioethological, bio-botanical reasons"
Is Bernie Sanders the American Version of Jeremy Corbyn? - "One of the many problems with the concept of intersectionality is that it largely precludes activism on behalf of any single minority. Any particular identity is immediately overwhelmed by a variety of additional identities that supplant, complicate, or qualify it. And all these identities have their own hierarchy of oppressors and the oppressed, splintering them still further.And so it is with what was once the gay-rights movement. A simple defense of the rights and freedom of homosexuals — people, biologically male and female, who are attracted to their own sex — has become impossible in an intersectional framework... this is key, it seems to me, in understanding why “LGBTQ” activists have revealed such hostility to a figure like Pete Buttigieg. He does not deserve their support because he is white, male, cis, Christian, and has managed to be extraordinarily successful in life as well as politics. That places him quite high up on the oppressor matrix, his gayness notwithstanding... The first serious, openly gay candidate for the presidency does not represent “progress,” because he actually threatens “queer survival” — whatever that latter term actually means. In fact, Pete is, in their eyes, a regression — not because of his politics (which are very liberal), but simply because of his whiteness, maleness, cis-ness, and extraordinary talent. Queers should support a woman, a racial minority, a trans person, a disabled person, before they should support a white cis gay man... Yes, Pete Buttigieg is in “alignment” with “white supremacy.” And that is a far more important thing to know about him than his homosexuality. What Pete has revealed, in other words, is that the gay-rights movement is dead. There are simply too many intersectional identities within the category of being gay to contain them in a movement simply for “gay rights.” What that means is that no gay organization can simply be about gays anymore. It has to be about race, class, gender, ability, immigration status, HIV status, and gender identity. Which means that it has to be indistinguishable from every other intersectional movement. At some point, well-meaning but naïve white, cis, gay men will come to understand that the movement they are largely funding is dedicated to their demonization and marginalization. And maybe, those not wedded to intersectional ideology will eventually decide to stop cutting the checks that makes this possible."
And yet, we are told, liberals don't hate white people, men, cis people and Christians. But if you hate success...
Intersectinality poisons everything
Romanticizing the Hunter-Gatherer - "In 1966, at the ‘Man the Hunter’ symposium held at the University of Chicago, anthropologist Richard B. Lee presented a paper that would radically rewrite how academics and the public at large interpret life in hunter-gatherer societies. Questioning the notion that the hunter-gatherer way of life is a “precarious and arduous struggle for existence,” Lee instead described a society of relative comfort and abundance... It’s not often that you see a 50-year-old paper repeatedly referenced in mainstream publications, but you can find mentions of Lee’s work pretty much everywhere today... It is when you look into the data on mortality rates, and dig through diverse ethnographic accounts, that you realize how badly mistaken claims about an “original affluent society” really are.While you’ll read much about Lee’s work in the popular press, you’ll find little on his critics. Anthropologists Henry Harpending and LuAnn Wandsnider wrote, “Lee’s (1968, 1969, 1979) studies of !Kung diet and caloric intake have generated a misleading belief among anthropologists and others that !Kung are well fed and under little or no nutritional stress.”... Across hunter-gatherer societies, only about 57% of children born survive to the age of 15. Sedentary populations of forager-horticulturalists, and acculturated hunter-gatherers, have a greater number of children surviving into adulthood, with 64% and 67%, respectively, surviving to the age of 15... But what about egalitarianism? In a 2004 study, Michael Gurven marshals an impressive amount of cross-cultural data and notes that hunters tend to keep more of their kill for themselves and their families than they share with others... In the realm of reproductive success, hunter-gatherers are even more unequal than modern industrialized populations, exhibiting what is called “greater reproductive skew,” with males having significantly larger variance in reproductive success than females... polygynous marriage is practiced in the majority of hunter-gatherer societies for which there are data. Across these societies, the average age at marriage for females is only 13.8, while the average age at marriage for males is 20.7. Rather than defending what would be considered child marriage in contemporary Western societies, anthropologists often omit mentioning this information entirely... among the Mardu hunter-gatherers of Australia, “Mardu men accord themselves greater ritual responsibility, higher status, more power, and more rights than women. It is a society in which male interests generally prevail when rights are contested and in the centrally important arena of religious life.”... 11 of these 15 societies have homicide rates higher than that of the most violent modern nation, and 14 out of the 15 have homicide rates higher than that of the United States in 2016. The one exception, the Batek of Malaysia, have a long history of being violently attacked and enslaved by neighboring groups, and developed a survival tactic of running away and studiously avoiding conflict... “…the Batek frequently recount their nostalgic memories of British doctors, administrators and army personnel visiting their communities in helicopters to deliver medicines and other supplies,” which conflicts with the idea that hunter-gatherer societies would have no want or need of anything nation states have to offer... In wealthy, industrialized populations oriented around consumerism and occupational status, the idea that there are people out there living free of greed, in natural equality and harmony, provides an attractive alternative way of life. To quote anthropologist David Kaplan, “The original affluent society thesis then may be as much a commentary on our own society as it is a depiction of the life of hunter-gatherers. And that may be its powerful draw and lasting appeal.”... At this year’s annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, President Alisse Waterston said that the “responsibility now for anthropologists is to participate in envisioning an alternative world.”... If academics and journalists are unwilling to report uncomfortable facts, then they have no one but themselves to blame if they suffer a consequent loss of public trust"
Emo bois of India: Rise of the planet of emos - Posts - "Hi sweet you butiful. Very nice and very butiful"
"I thought I'd be safe on LinkedIn..."
"Every app is a dating app if you're south Asian enough"
Man Who Cut Off Finger To "Save His Life" After Snake Bite Told That It Was "Not Necessary At All" - "A man in China was out cutting firewood near his village in the mountains of the Shangyu district of Zhejiang province when a snake bit him on the index finger of his right hand.Believing it to be a "hundred pacer" snake (Deinagkistrodon acutus), and believing the bite of the snake to be fatal, the man named only as Zhang by local media took the decision to hack off his finger before the venom could spread around his body. The snake is known locally as the "hundred pacer" because of a belief that its venom is so strong you won't be able to walk more than 100 steps before dying... Zhang wrapped his hand in cloth and headed 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the nearest hospital in order to receive treatment, leaving what he believed to be his now-useless finger on the mountainside... “It’s not necessary at all," Dr Yuan told Hangzhou Daily. "The five-step snake is not that toxic."... “Some [bite victims used] knives to cut their fingers or toes, some used ropes or iron wires to bind the bitten limb tightly, and some even tried to destroy the venom in their body by burning their skin,” Dr Yuan told Hangzhou Daily.“When they arrive at the hospital, some people’s limbs are already showing signs of gangrene.”Doctors at the hospital say that if he had brought his finger along with him, they could even have reattached it"
"Is it about the Barbary slave trade? Between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries."
"That awkward moment when the BBC got so woke that somehow ended up being historically accurate by accident"
Diabetes: Scientists use human cells to cure disease in mice - "The mice were given severe diabetes using a substance known as streptozotocin, but human cells implanted in the animals were able to control their blood sugar levels, curing the disease."
Cracked.com - Posts - "Private prison threatens to close unless state or federal officials fill up 300 more beds"
"In any sane country, having to shut down a prison due to lack of criminals would be a success. But supply creates its own demand!"
Private prison demands New Mexico and feds find 300 more prisoners in 60 days or it will close - "county officials issued a statement citing the threatened closure and emphasized that every virtually every politician in the region, from county officials to state officials to congressmen, were scurrying to save jobs—as opposed to shutting a privatized prison by an operator that has been sued many times for sexual harassment, sexual assault, deaths, use of force, physical assaults, medical care, injuries and civil rights violations... This is a perfect snapshot of what’s upside-down with privatization: the lack of economic opportunities and politicians who genuflect at providing jobs, regardless of the larger social implications, pushing law enforcement into the dirty business of ramping up arrests and convictions so private firms and shareholders can make more money."
Democracy in Africa: success stories that have defied the odds - "Countries such as Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Namibia, Mauritius, Senegal and South Africa have not only become beacons of political rights and civil liberties, they have done so against the greatest of obstacles. These experiences teach us important lessons about where democracy can work, and why... A cohesive national identity is likely to make it easier to maintain national unity, while wealth and economic success have been found to promote political stability. A strong national infrastructure, underpinned by respect for the rule of law, means that the government is likely to be effective without being abusive. And, a vibrant middle class and powerful civil society are usually seen as important to promote accountability and responsive government.What is remarkable about the democratisation of African states is that most did not enjoy a single one of these “pre-conditions”... With the exception of Botswana, they are all diverse multi-ethnic societies in which the question of national identity has been problematic. In Ghana and Mauritius for instance, ethnic identities have historically played a role in structuring political networks. This increased the tension around elections. It is striking that, with the exception of Benin and possibly Senegal, these democracies have grown stronger during a period in which the world is supposed to be backsliding on democracy... Some might be tempted to think that the role of the global community has been critical in keeping governments on the straight and narrow. But in reality, democracy is built from within, as the fact that aid-dependent countries such as Uganda and Rwanda have remained firmly authoritarian shows only too well."
Douglas Chow - How superstition or a poor excuse can sabo u big... - " Ms Soh, a shareholder of the Korean restaurant chain, said: "When our lawyers found out that she replaced herself with her elderly illiterate mother as the sole director of her 20 companies and put up her Wilkinson Road bungalow for sale, we decided to freeze all her assets in case she dissipates everything and leaves us with a useless paper judgment."Ms Lena Sim said she had done so at the advice of a fengshui master after her business took a dive.And because she listened to her fengshui master, she was served a Mareva injunction in February, which saw the banks freezing her accounts. Ms Sim said she was unable to make payments to her food suppliers and landlords. Some suppliers have already stopped delivering ingredients to her restaurants.On Friday night, two of the chain's outlets - Ju Hao at Bukit Panjang Plaza and MOF Izakaya at Lot One - were repossessed by CapitaLand after she failed to pay rent. That was the last MOF outlet."
WWI helmet provides better blast protection than new US model: Study - "A helmet used by French soldiers in World War I provided better protection from overhead blasts than a modern American model... "While we found that all helmets provided a substantial amount of protection against blast, we were surprised to find that the 100-year-old helmets performed just as well as modern ones"
Would you kill one person to save five? Depends if you’re a millennial or not - "Across all countries, the average endorsement rate for the footbridge sacrifice was 51 per cent. It was higher in most western countries (61 per cent in the US; 56 per cent in Ireland). In contrast, most Asian countries were below average, with just 32 per cent of Chinese people finding the footbridge sacrifice morally acceptable.The report tries to explain what accounts for this cross-cultural difference? Is it average income? Levels of individualism? Religiosity? The authors suggest a different variable at play: relational mobility (RM), or the ease with which people in a given society can develop new relationships.Pushing someone off a bridge is the sort of thing that would give you a bad reputation in your community. But in a society where you can develop new friends the risk of being ostracised is reduced. Or as the report puts it, “People in low relational mobility societies may be less likely to express and even hold attitudes that send a negative social signal.”... Something has been lost in recent years – a sense of honour perhaps, or a religious attachment to fate. Something also has been gained – unemotional, technology-driven logic. Whether you find this concerning may depend on your historical perspective, given so many atrocities of recent decades have been conducted in a spirit of the ends justifying the means.
The Koran says if you kill a human being, it is like killing all mankind but if you save one you save all mankind. So should I kill one to save five?"
New Costa Rica photos raise questions about Trudeau's vacation spending - "Over the past few days, Trudeau has been criticized for spending large sums of taxpayer money for non-governmental business, as well as for having a large carbon footprint for taking the trip down south. In comparison, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was photographed coming back from his vacation in economy class."
Gad Saad - Posts - "Paris police attacker reportedly ran web search on killing 'infidels' before rampage"
"We may never know his true motives. We need to exhibit nuanced thinking. Likely due to paleo-ketogenic, socioethological, bio-botanical reasons"
Is Bernie Sanders the American Version of Jeremy Corbyn? - "One of the many problems with the concept of intersectionality is that it largely precludes activism on behalf of any single minority. Any particular identity is immediately overwhelmed by a variety of additional identities that supplant, complicate, or qualify it. And all these identities have their own hierarchy of oppressors and the oppressed, splintering them still further.And so it is with what was once the gay-rights movement. A simple defense of the rights and freedom of homosexuals — people, biologically male and female, who are attracted to their own sex — has become impossible in an intersectional framework... this is key, it seems to me, in understanding why “LGBTQ” activists have revealed such hostility to a figure like Pete Buttigieg. He does not deserve their support because he is white, male, cis, Christian, and has managed to be extraordinarily successful in life as well as politics. That places him quite high up on the oppressor matrix, his gayness notwithstanding... The first serious, openly gay candidate for the presidency does not represent “progress,” because he actually threatens “queer survival” — whatever that latter term actually means. In fact, Pete is, in their eyes, a regression — not because of his politics (which are very liberal), but simply because of his whiteness, maleness, cis-ness, and extraordinary talent. Queers should support a woman, a racial minority, a trans person, a disabled person, before they should support a white cis gay man... Yes, Pete Buttigieg is in “alignment” with “white supremacy.” And that is a far more important thing to know about him than his homosexuality. What Pete has revealed, in other words, is that the gay-rights movement is dead. There are simply too many intersectional identities within the category of being gay to contain them in a movement simply for “gay rights.” What that means is that no gay organization can simply be about gays anymore. It has to be about race, class, gender, ability, immigration status, HIV status, and gender identity. Which means that it has to be indistinguishable from every other intersectional movement. At some point, well-meaning but naïve white, cis, gay men will come to understand that the movement they are largely funding is dedicated to their demonization and marginalization. And maybe, those not wedded to intersectional ideology will eventually decide to stop cutting the checks that makes this possible."
And yet, we are told, liberals don't hate white people, men, cis people and Christians. But if you hate success...
Intersectinality poisons everything
Romanticizing the Hunter-Gatherer - "In 1966, at the ‘Man the Hunter’ symposium held at the University of Chicago, anthropologist Richard B. Lee presented a paper that would radically rewrite how academics and the public at large interpret life in hunter-gatherer societies. Questioning the notion that the hunter-gatherer way of life is a “precarious and arduous struggle for existence,” Lee instead described a society of relative comfort and abundance... It’s not often that you see a 50-year-old paper repeatedly referenced in mainstream publications, but you can find mentions of Lee’s work pretty much everywhere today... It is when you look into the data on mortality rates, and dig through diverse ethnographic accounts, that you realize how badly mistaken claims about an “original affluent society” really are.While you’ll read much about Lee’s work in the popular press, you’ll find little on his critics. Anthropologists Henry Harpending and LuAnn Wandsnider wrote, “Lee’s (1968, 1969, 1979) studies of !Kung diet and caloric intake have generated a misleading belief among anthropologists and others that !Kung are well fed and under little or no nutritional stress.”... Across hunter-gatherer societies, only about 57% of children born survive to the age of 15. Sedentary populations of forager-horticulturalists, and acculturated hunter-gatherers, have a greater number of children surviving into adulthood, with 64% and 67%, respectively, surviving to the age of 15... But what about egalitarianism? In a 2004 study, Michael Gurven marshals an impressive amount of cross-cultural data and notes that hunters tend to keep more of their kill for themselves and their families than they share with others... In the realm of reproductive success, hunter-gatherers are even more unequal than modern industrialized populations, exhibiting what is called “greater reproductive skew,” with males having significantly larger variance in reproductive success than females... polygynous marriage is practiced in the majority of hunter-gatherer societies for which there are data. Across these societies, the average age at marriage for females is only 13.8, while the average age at marriage for males is 20.7. Rather than defending what would be considered child marriage in contemporary Western societies, anthropologists often omit mentioning this information entirely... among the Mardu hunter-gatherers of Australia, “Mardu men accord themselves greater ritual responsibility, higher status, more power, and more rights than women. It is a society in which male interests generally prevail when rights are contested and in the centrally important arena of religious life.”... 11 of these 15 societies have homicide rates higher than that of the most violent modern nation, and 14 out of the 15 have homicide rates higher than that of the United States in 2016. The one exception, the Batek of Malaysia, have a long history of being violently attacked and enslaved by neighboring groups, and developed a survival tactic of running away and studiously avoiding conflict... “…the Batek frequently recount their nostalgic memories of British doctors, administrators and army personnel visiting their communities in helicopters to deliver medicines and other supplies,” which conflicts with the idea that hunter-gatherer societies would have no want or need of anything nation states have to offer... In wealthy, industrialized populations oriented around consumerism and occupational status, the idea that there are people out there living free of greed, in natural equality and harmony, provides an attractive alternative way of life. To quote anthropologist David Kaplan, “The original affluent society thesis then may be as much a commentary on our own society as it is a depiction of the life of hunter-gatherers. And that may be its powerful draw and lasting appeal.”... At this year’s annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, President Alisse Waterston said that the “responsibility now for anthropologists is to participate in envisioning an alternative world.”... If academics and journalists are unwilling to report uncomfortable facts, then they have no one but themselves to blame if they suffer a consequent loss of public trust"
Emo bois of India: Rise of the planet of emos - Posts - "Hi sweet you butiful. Very nice and very butiful"
"I thought I'd be safe on LinkedIn..."
"Every app is a dating app if you're south Asian enough"
Man Who Cut Off Finger To "Save His Life" After Snake Bite Told That It Was "Not Necessary At All" - "A man in China was out cutting firewood near his village in the mountains of the Shangyu district of Zhejiang province when a snake bit him on the index finger of his right hand.Believing it to be a "hundred pacer" snake (Deinagkistrodon acutus), and believing the bite of the snake to be fatal, the man named only as Zhang by local media took the decision to hack off his finger before the venom could spread around his body. The snake is known locally as the "hundred pacer" because of a belief that its venom is so strong you won't be able to walk more than 100 steps before dying... Zhang wrapped his hand in cloth and headed 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the nearest hospital in order to receive treatment, leaving what he believed to be his now-useless finger on the mountainside... “It’s not necessary at all," Dr Yuan told Hangzhou Daily. "The five-step snake is not that toxic."... “Some [bite victims used] knives to cut their fingers or toes, some used ropes or iron wires to bind the bitten limb tightly, and some even tried to destroy the venom in their body by burning their skin,” Dr Yuan told Hangzhou Daily.“When they arrive at the hospital, some people’s limbs are already showing signs of gangrene.”Doctors at the hospital say that if he had brought his finger along with him, they could even have reattached it"
Post ID: 7905296220703334447
Kenyans sweep distance races, Jamaicans sprints: How evolution has shaped elite sports
Kenyans sweep distance races, Jamaicans sprints: How evolution has shaped elite sports | Genetic Literacy Project
"Distance competitions? Athletes of East and North African ancestry dominate–most especially Kenyans from the Nandi Hills in the Rift Valley–while athletes of West African ancestry are no where to be seen.
Why are East Africans, including Kenyans, so dominant in distance running, but among the world’s slowest elite sprinters? And why are West African descended runners, including the sprinters from the tiny juggernaut of Jamaica, missing-in-action from elite distance running?
When it comes to opportunity, running is the most egalitarian of global sports, a natural laboratory. Unlike the props and costumes required for, say, professional football or ice hockey, or the intense coaching demanded of gymnastics, swimming or golf, anyone can just lace up and go for a run. Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila proved this quite memorably in the 1960 Rome Olympics, when—shoeless, coachless and inexperienced—he won the marathon...
Those who do not understand the power of genes might argue that the medal podium for runners should reflect a rainbow of diversity, as no country or region should have a lock on desire or opportunity. But just the opposite has happened in track and field: elite running has become almost entirely segregated by ancestry. African descended athletes dominate. And field events are dominated by athletes of Eurasian ancestry...
The most frequently heard reason for this pattern by skeptics, including many scientists, is that Rift Valley Kenyans and Jamaican athletes just work harder at running. They had to run back and forth to school. It’s a way out of often deplorable poverty... culture alone can only take one so far; Jamaicans are terrible at distance running...
West Africa, which has no strong cultural or state support for running, has dozens of outstanding sprinters relative to any group in the world other than sprinters in the West African diaspora. Each of these countries alone–Congo, Botswana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Senegal–has more elite sprinters than all of Asia combined...
The Kalenjin tribe alone has less than 0.1% of the world’s population, yet members of this tribe have together won more than 60 Olympic medals in middle- and long-distance events. It’s often claimed that Kenyans dominate distance races because they “naturally trained” as children—by running back and forth to school, for example.
“That’s just silly,” Kenyan-born Wilson Kipketer told me. Kipketer the second fastest 800-meter runner of all time and holder of six of the top 20 all-time fastest 800m times. “I lived right next door to school,” he laughed, dismissing cookie-cutter explanations. “I walked, nice and slow.”
No study has been done that suggests that elite runners as a group were more likely to run great distances to school. That’s a particularly absurd claim in Kenya today where even small rural villages, particularly in the Rift Valley, have inexpensive public bus service. Yet, the blank slate theory is advanced all the time, even by some scientist who should know better than to rely on anecdotes, as if it’s beyond question...
Like most young Kenyans, while growing up he hoped that he might catch the eye of a coach who combed the countryside to find the next generation of budding stars. He had dreams of being cheered as he entered the National Stadium in Nairobi. But his childhood fantasy was to be welcomed as a soccer player.
The national sport, the hero worship, the adoring fans, the social incentives that supposedly channel a kid into sports—that all speaks to Kenya’s enduring love affair with soccer, not running. Soccer was and is the national sports obsession of Kenyans. But Kipketer, like many Kenyans and East Africans, are rarely found among the elite of that sport; despite their zeal for soccer and all the social incentives to push them into playing high level soccer, most East Africans simply don’t appear to have the genetic package to make them the world-class quick burst runners that thrive in that sport. Social and cultural conditioning alone cannot turn athletic coal into diamonds...
Bengt Saltin, who recently passed away as the director of the Copenhagen Muscle Research Institute, and is considered one of the world’s expert in this area, has said his research estimated that an athlete’s “environment” accounts for no more than 25 percent of athletic ability. The rest comes down to the roll of the genetic dice...
'Differences among athletes of elite caliber are so small that if you have a physique or the ability to fire muscle fibers more efficiently that might be genetically based … it might be very, very significant. The fraction of a second is the difference between the gold medal and fourth place.'...
At the Olympics, with the exception of some competitive Koreans, the winners of the top strength events–weightlifting and most field events, such as the shot put, javelin and hammer–come from a band of Eurasian countries: across Eastern Europe and through Russia, Ukraine, China, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkey. They have relatively muscular bodies with comparatively short limbs and thick torsos. No prototypical sprinter or marathoner here. Despite the image of the sculpted African body, no African nation has won an Olympic lifting gold medal...
Why do we readily accept that evolution has turned out Jews with a genetic predisposition to Tay-Sachs, Southeast Asians with a higher proclivity for beta-thalassemia, and blacks who are susceptible to colorectal cancer and sickle-cell disease, yet find it inappropriate to suggest that Usain Bolt can thank his West African ancestry for a critical part of his success? Just last week, in a study published in Nature in which researchers analyzed the genetic codes of more than 60,000 people from five continents, concluded, “Finns Found to be Genetically Unique, Genes Vary Significantly From Europeans”...
Linking population circumscribed body type to elite sports performance is no different from acknowledging that Tibetan people are able to survive better at higher altitudes through higher no2 blood levels and a higher density of arteries in their limbs to transport what little oxygen is available. Genetics is color blind, and acknowledging human differences, is not racist...
As UCLA professor Jared Diamond has noted, “Even today, few scientists dare to study “racial” origins, lest they be branded racists just for being interested in the subject.” But we have no choice but to face this third rail of genetics. Over the past decade, human genome research has moved from a study of human similarities to a focus on patterned based differences. Such research offers clues to solving the mystery of diseases, the Holy Grail of genetics."
Looks like genetic literacy is "racist"
"Distance competitions? Athletes of East and North African ancestry dominate–most especially Kenyans from the Nandi Hills in the Rift Valley–while athletes of West African ancestry are no where to be seen.
Why are East Africans, including Kenyans, so dominant in distance running, but among the world’s slowest elite sprinters? And why are West African descended runners, including the sprinters from the tiny juggernaut of Jamaica, missing-in-action from elite distance running?
When it comes to opportunity, running is the most egalitarian of global sports, a natural laboratory. Unlike the props and costumes required for, say, professional football or ice hockey, or the intense coaching demanded of gymnastics, swimming or golf, anyone can just lace up and go for a run. Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila proved this quite memorably in the 1960 Rome Olympics, when—shoeless, coachless and inexperienced—he won the marathon...
Those who do not understand the power of genes might argue that the medal podium for runners should reflect a rainbow of diversity, as no country or region should have a lock on desire or opportunity. But just the opposite has happened in track and field: elite running has become almost entirely segregated by ancestry. African descended athletes dominate. And field events are dominated by athletes of Eurasian ancestry...
The most frequently heard reason for this pattern by skeptics, including many scientists, is that Rift Valley Kenyans and Jamaican athletes just work harder at running. They had to run back and forth to school. It’s a way out of often deplorable poverty... culture alone can only take one so far; Jamaicans are terrible at distance running...
West Africa, which has no strong cultural or state support for running, has dozens of outstanding sprinters relative to any group in the world other than sprinters in the West African diaspora. Each of these countries alone–Congo, Botswana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Senegal–has more elite sprinters than all of Asia combined...
The Kalenjin tribe alone has less than 0.1% of the world’s population, yet members of this tribe have together won more than 60 Olympic medals in middle- and long-distance events. It’s often claimed that Kenyans dominate distance races because they “naturally trained” as children—by running back and forth to school, for example.
“That’s just silly,” Kenyan-born Wilson Kipketer told me. Kipketer the second fastest 800-meter runner of all time and holder of six of the top 20 all-time fastest 800m times. “I lived right next door to school,” he laughed, dismissing cookie-cutter explanations. “I walked, nice and slow.”
No study has been done that suggests that elite runners as a group were more likely to run great distances to school. That’s a particularly absurd claim in Kenya today where even small rural villages, particularly in the Rift Valley, have inexpensive public bus service. Yet, the blank slate theory is advanced all the time, even by some scientist who should know better than to rely on anecdotes, as if it’s beyond question...
Like most young Kenyans, while growing up he hoped that he might catch the eye of a coach who combed the countryside to find the next generation of budding stars. He had dreams of being cheered as he entered the National Stadium in Nairobi. But his childhood fantasy was to be welcomed as a soccer player.
The national sport, the hero worship, the adoring fans, the social incentives that supposedly channel a kid into sports—that all speaks to Kenya’s enduring love affair with soccer, not running. Soccer was and is the national sports obsession of Kenyans. But Kipketer, like many Kenyans and East Africans, are rarely found among the elite of that sport; despite their zeal for soccer and all the social incentives to push them into playing high level soccer, most East Africans simply don’t appear to have the genetic package to make them the world-class quick burst runners that thrive in that sport. Social and cultural conditioning alone cannot turn athletic coal into diamonds...
Bengt Saltin, who recently passed away as the director of the Copenhagen Muscle Research Institute, and is considered one of the world’s expert in this area, has said his research estimated that an athlete’s “environment” accounts for no more than 25 percent of athletic ability. The rest comes down to the roll of the genetic dice...
'Differences among athletes of elite caliber are so small that if you have a physique or the ability to fire muscle fibers more efficiently that might be genetically based … it might be very, very significant. The fraction of a second is the difference between the gold medal and fourth place.'...
At the Olympics, with the exception of some competitive Koreans, the winners of the top strength events–weightlifting and most field events, such as the shot put, javelin and hammer–come from a band of Eurasian countries: across Eastern Europe and through Russia, Ukraine, China, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkey. They have relatively muscular bodies with comparatively short limbs and thick torsos. No prototypical sprinter or marathoner here. Despite the image of the sculpted African body, no African nation has won an Olympic lifting gold medal...
Why do we readily accept that evolution has turned out Jews with a genetic predisposition to Tay-Sachs, Southeast Asians with a higher proclivity for beta-thalassemia, and blacks who are susceptible to colorectal cancer and sickle-cell disease, yet find it inappropriate to suggest that Usain Bolt can thank his West African ancestry for a critical part of his success? Just last week, in a study published in Nature in which researchers analyzed the genetic codes of more than 60,000 people from five continents, concluded, “Finns Found to be Genetically Unique, Genes Vary Significantly From Europeans”...
Linking population circumscribed body type to elite sports performance is no different from acknowledging that Tibetan people are able to survive better at higher altitudes through higher no2 blood levels and a higher density of arteries in their limbs to transport what little oxygen is available. Genetics is color blind, and acknowledging human differences, is not racist...
As UCLA professor Jared Diamond has noted, “Even today, few scientists dare to study “racial” origins, lest they be branded racists just for being interested in the subject.” But we have no choice but to face this third rail of genetics. Over the past decade, human genome research has moved from a study of human similarities to a focus on patterned based differences. Such research offers clues to solving the mystery of diseases, the Holy Grail of genetics."
Looks like genetic literacy is "racist"
Post ID: 372234795960363503
Friday, June 12, 2020
Links - 12th June 2020 (3) (China's 'peaceful' rise)
Kenneth Tan - "China's crackdown on underground religious movements has just entered a whole new level. One province has apparently embarked on a hunt for members of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (aka Pastafarianism) lurking on university campuses."
China cuts 'freedom of thought' from top university charters - "Changes to the charter of one of China’s top universities, including dropping the phrase “freedom of thought” and the inclusion of a pledge to follow the Communist party’s leadership, has sparked fierce debate and a rare act of student defiance.The changes to the charter of Fudan University in Shanghai, considered one of China’s more liberal institutions, emerged on Tuesday when the education ministry said it had approved the revisions for three universities.Within hours, the Fudan amendments were trending on Weibo with one hashtag viewed more than a million times... That post, and many similar posts questioning the changes, in particular the removal of “freedom of thought”, were deleted by Wednesday afternoon although the issue was still being discussed in private WeChat groups.Since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China has tightened controls on the internet and various aspects of civil society in a campaign that has seen increased censorship and shrinking space for protests, including on campuses... Some of the commentators on Weibo discussed how the amendments pointed to an expansion of Communist party control, with the revised charter saying that Fudan’s “party committee is the core of the university” and would be responsible for setting its direction and making major decisions.The new charter said the university would “weaponise the minds of teachers and students using Xi Jinping’s socialism ideology with characteristics of China in the new era”.Fudan is ranked 109 globally in the Times Higher Education’s 2020 world university rankings.The two other universities that made changes to their charters were Shaanxi Normal and Nanjing, according to documents published by the Ministry of Education that showed it had approved the changes on 2 December.Their revised charters similarly included references to strengthening the leadership of the Communist party at the universities."
6-Year-Old Finds Note Allegedly From Chinese Prison In Tesco Holiday Card : NPR - "Six-year-old Florence Widdicombe was writing notes on Christmas cards to her school friends in South London when she discovered that one card had already been written on."We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu prison China," it said in English, written in all capital letters. "Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organization."It instructed the person who found the message to contact a Mr. Peter Humphrey, a former British journalist who was working as a corporate fraud investigator in China when he was detained in the Shanghai prison for 23 months... "I have since contacted several members of an informal network of ex-prisoners we jokingly refer to as the Qingpu Prison Alumni Association. Some of them confirmed that inmates in the foreign prisoner unit are being forced into mundane manual assembly or packaging tasks."... there has apparently been a major change since he was released from the prison in June 2015. "When I was there, manufacturing labor work was voluntary," he recalled. "Prisoners could do that as a way to earn pennies that they need to buy daily necessities like soap and toothpaste and biscuits. What has happened in the last year or so is that work has become compulsory."... As the BBC notes, the operative word in China's denial is "forced.""China's foreign ministry is likely making that denial in light of article 69 of the country's Prison Law, which stipulates that 'criminals with working capacity must participate in labour,' " explains the broadcaster's China correspondent. "Making Christmas cards — even ones destined to raise money for UK charities — is almost certainly the least worst outcome in China's penal system." A similar SOS note was found in 2014, sent by a worker from a Chinese prison sweatshop."
Plastic pollution off China's coast soars after drive to stop dumping it in rivers - "Environmental groups have previously expressed concern that China, desperate to clean up its own rivers, is dumping increasing amounts of trash in its seas instead."
Schneider: The Strange Case of ‘China’ and Its Top PISA Rankings — How Cherry-Picking Regions to Take Part Skews Its High Scores - "The temptation to look to China for lessons on effective education is built into the PISA rankings. “B-S-J-Z (China)” appears at the very top of all three — reading, math and science — often by a substantial margin. B-S-J-Z stand for Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the four mainland provinces that OECD allows China to “represent” it on PISA. This is in contrast to the norm of countrywide testing... Letting a country select only a few provinces to test violates PISA’s own norms, and the biased results can distort global views of what works in education and undermine PISA’s very credibility. Unfortunately, OECD’s preference for global reach over high quality continues to this day, as is evident in China being allowed to continue cherry-picking the provinces included in PISA. Here’s what U.S. PISA scores might look like if we could report a select subset of our country’s scores as representing the entire nation. In 2015, Massachusetts opted to administer PISA statewide. Not surprisingly, its students did extremely well. As the Massachusetts state department of education proclaimed on its website: “Massachusetts Students Score Among World Leaders on PISA Reading, Science and Math Tests: State’s Reading Scores at Same Level as World’s Top Nations.” Now consider the affluent New York City suburb of Scarsdale. It, too, contracted with OECD for a special districtwide assessment. In 2017, its board reported that Scarsdale outperformed “the international competition.” While U.S. performance on PISA is at best mediocre, imagine if we substituted Massachusetts, Minnesota, Scarsdale and, say, Evanston, Illinois — we could call it “M-M-S-E (U.S.)” — for the entire country. We would be right up there with B-S-J-Z (China), Singapore and Estonia, with all attendant bragging rights... Allowing China to handpick a few of its richest provinces as representing the entire country distorts the very purpose of PISA as a comparative test of national education systems. These four Chinese provinces represent only 13 percent of the population. Further, because of the hukou system, school enrollment in these provinces likely represents even a smaller share of junior and secondary education enrollment in China (9 percent). It is possible that the substitution of one province for another was driven by legitimate reasons known to China and to the OECD secretariat, and that this 60-plus-point jump in PISA scores was purely an innocent coincidence. Detailed data on the individual provinces were not released in 2015, and detailed data from 2018 have not been shared with the U.S. or, as far as we know, other OECD countries."
Are The PISA Education Results Rigged? - "If we dig deeper into the sampling, we come across another potential problem with the PISA testing: that the sampling done on mainland China (Beijing, Jiangsu, Guangdong and Shanghai) and other cities was not taken from a wide variety of schools. Rather, the very best schools were chosen and the very best students were cherry-picked from those schools... Almost two-thirds of all Chinese children live in rural areas, where school attendance rates can be as low as 40%. A survey by the China Association for Science and Technology showed only 6.2% of the Chinese people held basic science literacy in 2015."
China passed new law where password will be managed by government - "This “Password Law” contains 5 chapters and 44 articles, which divides passwords into 3 types of management, including core passwords, ordinary passwords, and commercial passwords. The core passwords and ordinary passwords are listed as state secrets, and commercial passwords are not. For confidentiality, these passwords are used by citizens, legal persons and other organizations."
China's Minorities Get Huge Affirmative-Action Benefits - "He will be able to get into one of China's best colleges with merely average grades, win a special scholarship to pay for it, have an easier time getting a job when he graduates and have more than one child after he gets married.Ya is the beneficiary of Chinese-style affirmative action... Still, Ya is not optimistic. "All of these privileges are just for effect," he said bitterly. "We still have no power."... just as in the United States, China's affirmative-action policy is controversial, divisive and, some argue, unsuccessful. It is also, to Western eyes, flawed. That is because the policy is not based on any philosophy of equality, or any desire to "celebrate differences." Instead, the Chinese people, for the most part, remain completely at ease with racial stereotypes... China's policy is purely pragmatic. The idea is to give the minorities just enough power, education or economic success to keep them quiet. As opposed to empowering minorities, it is meant to encourage assimilation and the creation of a peaceful, unified and essentially Han country. Indeed, treatment of minorities in the popular press, and for example, the creation of a "minority theme park" - a sideshow-like museum in Beijing, where curious Han can have their pictures taken with minorities like Ya - make continued Han chauvinism painfully apparent... China needs those resource-rich border areas and peace within its borders. So Communist Party leaders continue to pressure cadres in minority areas to satisfy minority demands however they can with the hope continued economic development in minority areas will quell any dissatisfaction and ultimately trickle down to fill minorities' pockets, Zhao said. "The government is so worried," Zhao said. "They know these preferences don't work, but the party has no other option.""
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, If we burn you burn with us - "A little less than halfway through Hong Kong's 50 year transition to full Chinese rule, Hong Kongers can feel China's influence growing day by day. And it's not just about the proposed laws, this year's notorious extradition bill or previous legislation that would have curbed freedom of speech, changed the school curriculum, or the way Hong Kong's parliament is elected. It's also about basic demography. Every day 150 Chinese citizens cross from the mainland to Hong Kong on one way tickets. Every day. That's more than a million people since 1997. And they come speaking a different language. Mandarin Chinese, pretty difficult for Cantonese speaking Hong Kongers to understand. Increasingly, it's being taught in primary schools, fueling a fear among Hong Kongers that their very language is under threat... she resented the fact that her 10 year old son Cyrus has to speak to his teachers in Mandarin. It's just not our mother tongue, dhe said. There are plenty of immigrant kids in Cyrus's class. Even some mainlanders who cross the border every day just to attend school. Laputa [sp?] takes a dim view of her immigrant neighbors. They're noisy, she complains. They don't use the rubbish bins properly, and they've got bad hygiene. Sometimes what you hear sounds distinctly xenophobic. A few years ago, the government was forced to ban so called locust protests directed against immigrants and visitors from the mainland. At the fish market in *something*, Ying, who didn't want to be identified by her full name, told me that in nine years of living in Hong Kong, she's never really felt welcome. Back in the mainland, she said, I worked in the garment industry, I was a boss. Here people regard me as useless. I’m forced to work as a cleaner... If nothing changes, the activists told me bleakly we will become Xinjiang"
Secret Video Offers Rare Look Inside Chinese Labor Program - The New York Times
Strange how "poverty alleviation initiatives" need barbed wire around the compounds and the "residents" are imprisoned inside and unable to see their families
Doubtless a fake video created by the CIA, according to China shills
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, US-China trade war escalates - "Frankly, when we started out with China back during the Nixon administration, the country had no significant geopolitical power or military power compared to the United States. And the goal was that China would liberalize socially and politically, as well as economically if we engaged them. And they did not do that. They took advantage of the trade relationship to build a stronger, more powerful, more authoritarian government. They still execute more people than the rest of the world combined. They've got a million Muslim Uighers locked up in concentration camps and they’re building nuclear weapons under no strategic arm limitation talks, they're threatening all their neighbors on every border, particularly in the South China Sea region. And we have funded all this. So now, frankly, reducing or eliminating our trade with the Chinese regime creates a more secure world for the United States...
What we've heard so far is the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson repeat the denial that these negotiations broke down because China had reneged on key commitments at the 11th hour reportedly in the hope that Trump was simply after a quick political win. The spokesman said China always honors its words, our position has always been clear. But tellingly, perhaps though, what we haven't heard from China is any alternative explanation for why these negotiations have broken down. And in fact, what I think is really interesting is that domestic coverage has been very, very muted, and clearly very controlled. And of course, the less coverage of any issue there is here in China, the more certain you can be of its sensitivity and its core political importance, and there is no doubt that this whole approach by Trump, essentially rewriting the rules of, you know, 40 years of the world's most important trading relationship, has got Beijing very rattled indeed...
The ideology problem is unresolved. And I think it's every bit as unresolved as it was in the 1930s. And I don't think empowering the dictatorial regimes at that time, in either Japan or Germany turned out to be the best approach. And I don't think it's the best approach today. So I think hanging tough and demanding behavioral change is important. And isn't just about whether they have open free markets or not. This is whether they're, again, putting people into concentration camps, using their military to hack private companies in the West and doing things that are are simply atrocious and unacceptable"
Searching for truth in China's Uighur 're-education' camps - "We were being taken into places that appeared to have been carefully spruced up - with satellite images revealing that much of the security infrastructure had recently been removed.And one by one the people we spoke to inside, some of them visibly nervous, told us similar stories. All of them members of Xinjiang's largest, mainly Muslim ethnic group - the Uighurs - they said they'd been "infected by extremism" and that they'd volunteered to have their "thoughts transformed".This was China's narrative in the mouths of people selected for us, and for whom any cross-examination might pose a serious risk.What might be the consequences if they did let something slip? How could we safely separate the propaganda from the reality? There are plenty of precedents for this kind of reporting dilemma... in the 1930s and 1940s, Germany organised media trips to camps at Sonnenburg and Theresienstadt, designed to demonstrate how "humane" they were. In all such cases, the reporter is witness to a story of vital global importance, but forced to try to tell it with only limited or highly controlled access to those most affected by it. In Xinjiang though, there is one big difference. The authorities grant access not only to show that the conditions inside the facilities are good, they also want to prove that they are not prisons at all... the Chinese officials accompanying us believed wholeheartedly in the narrative on display, some almost moved to tears as they looked on.These people, we were urged to recognise, were reborn. Once dangerously radicalised and full of hatred for the Chinese government, they were now safely back on the road to reform thanks to the timely, benevolent intervention of that same government... in accepting the access, our job was to try to peer beneath the official messaging and hold it up to as much scrutiny as we could.There were the bits of graffiti we filmed, written in Uighur, that we later had translated."Oh my heart don't break," read one. Another in Chinese said simply: "Step by step."... Those in it were "almost criminals," they said, viewed as a threat not because they'd committed a crime, but because they might have the potential to do so.And there was the admission that, once identified as having extremist tendencies, they were given a choice - but not much of one.The option was "of choosing between a judicial hearing or education in the de-extremification facilities"."Most people choose to study," we were told. Little wonder, given the odds of a fair trial.And we know, from other sources, that the definition of extremism is now drawn very widely indeed - having a long beard for example, or simply contacting relatives overseas... there was the cautious questioning that revealed much, not in what they could say, but what they couldn't.I asked one man, who'd been there for eight months already, how many people he'd seen "graduate" in that time.There was a slight pause before he answered. "About that, I have no idea," he said."
China hacked Malaysian, other Asian telcos to spy on Uighur travellers, say sources - "Hackers working for the Chinese government have broken into telecoms networks to track Uighur travellers in Central and Southeast Asia, two intelligence officials and two security consultants who investigated the attacks told Reuters.The hacks are part of a wider cyber-espionage campaign targeting “high-value individuals” such as diplomats and foreign military personnel, the sources said. But China has also prioritised tracking the movements of ethnic Uighurs, a minority mostly Muslim group considered a security threat by Beijing."
China races to destroy records after leaks reveal information on Uighur Muslim detention camps - "A Chinese local government is deleting data and destroying documents after classified papers were leaked offering information on its mass detention camps for Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities, according to four people in contact with government employees there.They claimed regional officials in Xinjiang province are also tightening controls on information and have held high-level meetings following the leaks... Another Uighur who had been detained in Xinjiang years before said his ex-wife called him two weeks ago and begged him to send his release papers to her, saying eight officers had come to her home to search for the papers and threatened she would be jailed for life if she could not produce the papers."It's an old matter, and they've know I've been abroad for a long time," he said. "The fact that they suddenly want this now must mean the pressure on them is very high." Some government workers have been rounded up as the state investigates the source of the leaks. In one case an entire family in civil service was arrested. Abduweli Ayup, a Uighur linguist in exile, said his wife's relatives in Xinjiang - including her parents, siblings, and in-laws - were detained shortly after the leaks were published, claiming they had no relation to the leaks as far as he was aware."
According to China shills who say we should listen to what people living in China (but not in Xinjiang) say (at the same time as ignoring those who are critical of it), we cannot trust what Uighers tell us, even if they have lived in Xinjiang or know many people who do.
Xinjiang, China: Uighur activist Rushan Abbas slams ‘concentration camps’ - "a disturbing policy implemented in the northwest region – a forced-living arrangement between Han Chinese men and Uighur women that’s been likened to “mass rape”. The Government claims it’s designed to promote harmony between the different cultural groups. But activists tell a different story... Han Chinese men had been assigned to monitor the homes of Uighur women whose husbands had been detained in prison camps... As part of the “Pair Up and Become Family” program, Han Chinese men stay with and sleep in the same beds as Uighur women. According to the Chinese Government, the program is designed to “promote ethnic unity”... to Rushan Abbas, a Uighur activist whose family members have been detained in the Xinjiang camps for more than a year, it’s nothing more than systemised rape – part of the Government's brutal ongoing crackdown against the country’s ethnic minority. “This is mass rape,” she told news.com.au. “The Government is offering money, housing and jobs to Han people to come and marry Uighur people. “Neither the girls nor their families can reject such a marriage because they will be viewed (by Chinese authorities) as Islamic extremists for not wanting to marry atheist Han Chinese. They have no choice but to marry them. “(The Han Chinese) have been raping Uighur women in the name of marriage for years. It took more than a year for the media to pick that up.”... Human rights organisations have slammed the program, saying there is “no evidence that families can refuse such visits” and describing it as “deeply invasive forced assimilation practices”... “Normally one or two people sleep in one bed, and if the weather is cold, three people sleep together,” he said, adding “it is now considered normal for females to sleep on the same platform with their paired male ‘relatives’”. They claimed the “relatives” and their female hosts sleep at least a metre apart at all times and that male Communist Party officials have never tried to take advantage of women... the Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar project that seeks to connect countries across continents on trade, with China at its centre. Geographically, Urumqi – the capital of Xinjiang – is a crucial intersection point in the “Belt” part of the project... The last thing the Chinese Government wants for such a crucial region in this plan is unrest or the loss of control. And that’s where the intense security crackdown comes in. This explains why the crackdown escalated around five years ago, in line with the Belt and Road Initiative taking off. Ms Abbas has long spoken out against the human rights abuses in Xinjiang – a move that has had disastrous consequences for her family in China. In September last year, she spoke about the conditions in the camps while seated on a panel hosted by a Washington think tank. Six days later, her aunt and sister both disappeared at the same time – despite living 1400 kilometres away from each other. “My sister is a medical doctor. Their ‘vocational training’ shouldn’t apply to her. My aunt is a retired schoolteacher. Both of them went to Chinese school and speak fluent Chinese. They shouldn’t have been targets”"
Her Uighur Parents Were Model Chinese Citizens. It Didn’t Matter. - The New York Times - "The Uighurs’ territory was officially called the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, but in reality, the Uighurs existed in a parallel system over which the Han maintained control in both official and unofficial ways. The Xinjiang chairman, the nominal head of the region, was always a Uighur, but the real power rested with the regional party secretary, who for decades was always Han... the state privileged Han for employment, loans and contracts, causing Uighur resentment to simmer, sporadically erupting into larger protests for ethnic rights... She started criticizing the Communist Party at family dinners, but Isaq told her to be quiet. “This government and this Communist Party have helped us a lot,” he told her. “Everything we have, it’s because the government allowed us to have it, so you can’t criticize it.” Humar rolled her eyes. She thought her parents were only saying that because they worked for state media. In the history books she had pored over, she read that in turbulent times, whenever a dynasty fell, another rose. There was a saying: Luan shi chu yingxiong — heroes rise out of chaos... She told Humar they would both have to be careful; they could not express sadness, confusion or anger in front of her party colleagues. If they did, she would be categorized as having minzu qingxu, an emotional attachment to your ethnic group, a mark of political unreliability for a non-Han minority... The party often tested the loyalty of minority members. Communist cadres were not allowed to be religious. During Ramadan, Han officials took their Uighur colleagues out to lunch, and kept a list of those who abstained from eating... On long rides between Hami and Beijing, Humar encountered passengers who, thinking she was also Han, complained about how dirty and uncivilized Uighurs were... She threw herself into the discussion of soqmaq, a traditional dessert that Uighur migrants sell throughout China. It was a notorious scam: Uighur vendors would ask how much a customer wanted and then cut off a much larger piece. Han customers assumed it was cake, but because it was actually nut-filled candy, the total cost of the weighed portion was astronomical. It was hard to argue with the vendors, who would gesture they didn’t understand Mandarin... New dictates from the Communist Party arrived daily concerning what was or wasn’t palatable. Humar categorized comments in a spreadsheet, marking things that might appear innocuous but were actually dog whistles — like references to Zuo Zongtang, a general who reconquered Xinjiang during the Qing dynasty... The government publicized a list of “75 behavioral indications of religious extremism.” Some were as vague as people who “store large amounts of food in their homes,” “those who smoke and drink but quit doing so quite suddenly” or “those who buy or store equipment such as dumbbells . . . without obvious reasons.” Human Rights Watch reported that the government put together a list of 26 “sensitive countries” with supposed connections to terrorism, including Egypt, Thailand and Malaysia. Those who were in contact with relatives in any of those countries came under increased suspicion... life for Zumret as a Uighur in Beijing, where she now lived, was becoming harder and harder. Landlords refused to rent her apartments. She moved six times in three months... In May 2018, a German researcher named Adrian Zenz, after analyzing government procurement and construction notices in over 40 localities, published a paper that showed the scope of the internment network; he estimated that perhaps more than one million people were in “political education” camps, around 10 percent of Xinjiang’s Uighur population. Most of what is known about what goes on inside the camp system comes from former detainees who have fled China, mostly to Kazakhstan. Very few of them have spoken publicly. In Almaty, I interviewed seven former detainees, who told similar stories"
Of course China shills claim that reports of the camps are fake news because they come from 8 (or something) interviews and are reported by one or two organistions known to be biased. It's easy to deliberately ignore inconvenient facts
'Think of your family': China threatens European citizens over Xinjiang protests - "Two days after Abdujelil Emet sat in the public gallery of Germany’s parliament during a hearing on human rights, he received a phone call from his sister for the first time in three years. But the call from Xinjiang, in western China, was anything but a joyous family chat. It was made at the direction of Chinese security officers, part of a campaign by Beijing to silence criticism of policies that have seen more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities detained in internment camps.Emet’s sister began by praising the Communist party and making claims of a much improved life under its guidance before delivering a shock: his brother had died a year earlier. But Emet, 54, was suspicious from the start; he had never given his family his phone number. Amid the heartbreaking news and sloganeering, he could hear a flurry of whispers in the background, and he demanded to speak to the unknown voice. Moments later the phone was handed to a Chinese official who refused to identify himself.By the end of the conversation, the façade constructed by the Chinese security agent was broken and Emet’s sister wept as she begged him to stop his activism. Then the Chinese official took the phone again with a final warning.“You’re living overseas, but you need to think of your family while you’re running around doing your activism work in Germany,” he said. “You need to think of their safety.” In interviews with more than two dozen Uighurs living across Europe and the United States, tales of threats across the world are the rule, not the exception. Uighurs living in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, and France all complained of similar threats against family members back in Xinjiang, and some were asked to spy for China... Beyond discouraging activism, Chinese officials have also tried to recruit Uighurs living abroad to spy on others in their community, asking for photos of private gatherings, names, phone numbers, addresses and licence plate numbers. Some are recruited when they go to Chinese diplomatic missions in Europe to request documents, and others are contacted by security agents over WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging app. Emet’s number is likely to have been leaked to Chinese security agents this way, he said, with his number well known in the Uighur community in Munich.Chinese agents offer cash, the promise of visas to visit Xinjiang or better treatment for family members as a reward, but also dangle the threat of harsh consequences for those same family members if their offers are refused. Uighurs described having crucial documents withheld from Chinese embassies and consulates unless they agreed.One Uighur living in Germany who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation said a Chinese agent asked for photos of Eid and other celebrations, and specifically asked for information on Uighurs who had recently arrived in Europe. The recent surge in activism among Uighurs overseas is mostly a direct response to the increasingly repressive policies in Xinjiang... “The biggest mistake European Union countries make is that once they allow China to get away with something, that emboldens Beijing,” he said. “China has systematic strategies in place and the threats to Uighurs in exile show that. Europe needs its own unified strategy to stand up to China and respond to these threats.”"
Of course, China shills claim that Uighers worldwide are part of a cartel conspiring to defame China. And/or that the Western media is making stuff up to defame China
Has Huawei’s Darkest Secret Just Been Exposed By This New Surveillance Report? - "Just a few days after the devastating leak of the so-called China Cables, a cache of documents exposing the truth of the surveillance regime deployed in Xinjiang to suppress the minority Uighur population, tech giant Huawei has become embroiled in the controversy. Huawei’s technology has been linked to Xinjiang before, but the company has always claimed this is only through third-parties, that Huawei itself is not involved. Not so, says a damaging new report, it is much worse than that... At the signing ceremony for the joint laboratory, a Huawei representative said the company "will integrate resources, provide industry-leading products and services, and cooperate extensively with local high-tech enterprises to build a safer and smarter society with the public security department of the autonomous region." That “safer” society, it is claimed, has resulted in somewhere between 900,000 and 1.8 million people being subjected to intrusive monitoring or interred in camps."
China Uighurs: Detained for beards, veils and internet browsing - "A document that appears to give the most powerful insight yet into how China determined the fate of hundreds of thousands of Muslims held in a network of internment camps has been seen by the BBC.Listing the personal details of more than 3,000 individuals from the far western region of Xinjiang, it sets out in intricate detail the most intimate aspects of their daily lives... It is evidence that appears to directly contradict China's claim that the camps are merely schools.In an article analysing and verifying the document, Dr Zenz argues that it also offers a far deeper understanding of the real purpose of the system... Row 598 contains the case of a 38-year-old woman with the first name Helchem, sent to a re-education camp for one main reason: she was known to have worn a veil some years ago.It is just one of a number of cases of arbitrary, retrospective punishment.Others were interned simply for applying for a passport - proof that even the intention to travel abroad is now seen as a sign of radicalisation in Xinjiang... In many cases though, there is little need for advanced technology, with the vast and vague catch-all term "untrustworthy" appearing multiple times in the document.It is listed as the sole reason for the internment of a total of 88 individuals.The concept, Dr Zenz argues, is proof that the system is designed not for those who have committed a crime, but for an entire demographic viewed as potentially suspicious... many of the cases in the Karakax List give multiple reasons for internment; various combinations of religion, passport, family, contacts overseas or simply being untrustworthy.The most frequently listed is for violating China's strict family planning laws.In the eyes of the Chinese authorities it seems, having too many children is the clearest sign that Uighurs put their loyalty to culture and tradition above obedience to the secular state... Like all Uighurs living overseas, Ms Abdulaheb lost contact with her family in Xinjiang when the internment campaign began, and she's been unable to contact them since... More than two dozen individuals are listed as "recommended" for release into "industrial park employment" - career "advice" that they may have little choice but to obey. There are well documented concerns that China is now building a system of coerced labour as the next phase of its plan to align Uighur life with its own vision of a modern society. "
The CIA must have a huge budget to be able to forge so many things!
China cuts 'freedom of thought' from top university charters - "Changes to the charter of one of China’s top universities, including dropping the phrase “freedom of thought” and the inclusion of a pledge to follow the Communist party’s leadership, has sparked fierce debate and a rare act of student defiance.The changes to the charter of Fudan University in Shanghai, considered one of China’s more liberal institutions, emerged on Tuesday when the education ministry said it had approved the revisions for three universities.Within hours, the Fudan amendments were trending on Weibo with one hashtag viewed more than a million times... That post, and many similar posts questioning the changes, in particular the removal of “freedom of thought”, were deleted by Wednesday afternoon although the issue was still being discussed in private WeChat groups.Since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China has tightened controls on the internet and various aspects of civil society in a campaign that has seen increased censorship and shrinking space for protests, including on campuses... Some of the commentators on Weibo discussed how the amendments pointed to an expansion of Communist party control, with the revised charter saying that Fudan’s “party committee is the core of the university” and would be responsible for setting its direction and making major decisions.The new charter said the university would “weaponise the minds of teachers and students using Xi Jinping’s socialism ideology with characteristics of China in the new era”.Fudan is ranked 109 globally in the Times Higher Education’s 2020 world university rankings.The two other universities that made changes to their charters were Shaanxi Normal and Nanjing, according to documents published by the Ministry of Education that showed it had approved the changes on 2 December.Their revised charters similarly included references to strengthening the leadership of the Communist party at the universities."
6-Year-Old Finds Note Allegedly From Chinese Prison In Tesco Holiday Card : NPR - "Six-year-old Florence Widdicombe was writing notes on Christmas cards to her school friends in South London when she discovered that one card had already been written on."We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu prison China," it said in English, written in all capital letters. "Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organization."It instructed the person who found the message to contact a Mr. Peter Humphrey, a former British journalist who was working as a corporate fraud investigator in China when he was detained in the Shanghai prison for 23 months... "I have since contacted several members of an informal network of ex-prisoners we jokingly refer to as the Qingpu Prison Alumni Association. Some of them confirmed that inmates in the foreign prisoner unit are being forced into mundane manual assembly or packaging tasks."... there has apparently been a major change since he was released from the prison in June 2015. "When I was there, manufacturing labor work was voluntary," he recalled. "Prisoners could do that as a way to earn pennies that they need to buy daily necessities like soap and toothpaste and biscuits. What has happened in the last year or so is that work has become compulsory."... As the BBC notes, the operative word in China's denial is "forced.""China's foreign ministry is likely making that denial in light of article 69 of the country's Prison Law, which stipulates that 'criminals with working capacity must participate in labour,' " explains the broadcaster's China correspondent. "Making Christmas cards — even ones destined to raise money for UK charities — is almost certainly the least worst outcome in China's penal system." A similar SOS note was found in 2014, sent by a worker from a Chinese prison sweatshop."
Plastic pollution off China's coast soars after drive to stop dumping it in rivers - "Environmental groups have previously expressed concern that China, desperate to clean up its own rivers, is dumping increasing amounts of trash in its seas instead."
Schneider: The Strange Case of ‘China’ and Its Top PISA Rankings — How Cherry-Picking Regions to Take Part Skews Its High Scores - "The temptation to look to China for lessons on effective education is built into the PISA rankings. “B-S-J-Z (China)” appears at the very top of all three — reading, math and science — often by a substantial margin. B-S-J-Z stand for Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the four mainland provinces that OECD allows China to “represent” it on PISA. This is in contrast to the norm of countrywide testing... Letting a country select only a few provinces to test violates PISA’s own norms, and the biased results can distort global views of what works in education and undermine PISA’s very credibility. Unfortunately, OECD’s preference for global reach over high quality continues to this day, as is evident in China being allowed to continue cherry-picking the provinces included in PISA. Here’s what U.S. PISA scores might look like if we could report a select subset of our country’s scores as representing the entire nation. In 2015, Massachusetts opted to administer PISA statewide. Not surprisingly, its students did extremely well. As the Massachusetts state department of education proclaimed on its website: “Massachusetts Students Score Among World Leaders on PISA Reading, Science and Math Tests: State’s Reading Scores at Same Level as World’s Top Nations.” Now consider the affluent New York City suburb of Scarsdale. It, too, contracted with OECD for a special districtwide assessment. In 2017, its board reported that Scarsdale outperformed “the international competition.” While U.S. performance on PISA is at best mediocre, imagine if we substituted Massachusetts, Minnesota, Scarsdale and, say, Evanston, Illinois — we could call it “M-M-S-E (U.S.)” — for the entire country. We would be right up there with B-S-J-Z (China), Singapore and Estonia, with all attendant bragging rights... Allowing China to handpick a few of its richest provinces as representing the entire country distorts the very purpose of PISA as a comparative test of national education systems. These four Chinese provinces represent only 13 percent of the population. Further, because of the hukou system, school enrollment in these provinces likely represents even a smaller share of junior and secondary education enrollment in China (9 percent). It is possible that the substitution of one province for another was driven by legitimate reasons known to China and to the OECD secretariat, and that this 60-plus-point jump in PISA scores was purely an innocent coincidence. Detailed data on the individual provinces were not released in 2015, and detailed data from 2018 have not been shared with the U.S. or, as far as we know, other OECD countries."
Are The PISA Education Results Rigged? - "If we dig deeper into the sampling, we come across another potential problem with the PISA testing: that the sampling done on mainland China (Beijing, Jiangsu, Guangdong and Shanghai) and other cities was not taken from a wide variety of schools. Rather, the very best schools were chosen and the very best students were cherry-picked from those schools... Almost two-thirds of all Chinese children live in rural areas, where school attendance rates can be as low as 40%. A survey by the China Association for Science and Technology showed only 6.2% of the Chinese people held basic science literacy in 2015."
China passed new law where password will be managed by government - "This “Password Law” contains 5 chapters and 44 articles, which divides passwords into 3 types of management, including core passwords, ordinary passwords, and commercial passwords. The core passwords and ordinary passwords are listed as state secrets, and commercial passwords are not. For confidentiality, these passwords are used by citizens, legal persons and other organizations."
China's Minorities Get Huge Affirmative-Action Benefits - "He will be able to get into one of China's best colleges with merely average grades, win a special scholarship to pay for it, have an easier time getting a job when he graduates and have more than one child after he gets married.Ya is the beneficiary of Chinese-style affirmative action... Still, Ya is not optimistic. "All of these privileges are just for effect," he said bitterly. "We still have no power."... just as in the United States, China's affirmative-action policy is controversial, divisive and, some argue, unsuccessful. It is also, to Western eyes, flawed. That is because the policy is not based on any philosophy of equality, or any desire to "celebrate differences." Instead, the Chinese people, for the most part, remain completely at ease with racial stereotypes... China's policy is purely pragmatic. The idea is to give the minorities just enough power, education or economic success to keep them quiet. As opposed to empowering minorities, it is meant to encourage assimilation and the creation of a peaceful, unified and essentially Han country. Indeed, treatment of minorities in the popular press, and for example, the creation of a "minority theme park" - a sideshow-like museum in Beijing, where curious Han can have their pictures taken with minorities like Ya - make continued Han chauvinism painfully apparent... China needs those resource-rich border areas and peace within its borders. So Communist Party leaders continue to pressure cadres in minority areas to satisfy minority demands however they can with the hope continued economic development in minority areas will quell any dissatisfaction and ultimately trickle down to fill minorities' pockets, Zhao said. "The government is so worried," Zhao said. "They know these preferences don't work, but the party has no other option.""
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, If we burn you burn with us - "A little less than halfway through Hong Kong's 50 year transition to full Chinese rule, Hong Kongers can feel China's influence growing day by day. And it's not just about the proposed laws, this year's notorious extradition bill or previous legislation that would have curbed freedom of speech, changed the school curriculum, or the way Hong Kong's parliament is elected. It's also about basic demography. Every day 150 Chinese citizens cross from the mainland to Hong Kong on one way tickets. Every day. That's more than a million people since 1997. And they come speaking a different language. Mandarin Chinese, pretty difficult for Cantonese speaking Hong Kongers to understand. Increasingly, it's being taught in primary schools, fueling a fear among Hong Kongers that their very language is under threat... she resented the fact that her 10 year old son Cyrus has to speak to his teachers in Mandarin. It's just not our mother tongue, dhe said. There are plenty of immigrant kids in Cyrus's class. Even some mainlanders who cross the border every day just to attend school. Laputa [sp?] takes a dim view of her immigrant neighbors. They're noisy, she complains. They don't use the rubbish bins properly, and they've got bad hygiene. Sometimes what you hear sounds distinctly xenophobic. A few years ago, the government was forced to ban so called locust protests directed against immigrants and visitors from the mainland. At the fish market in *something*, Ying, who didn't want to be identified by her full name, told me that in nine years of living in Hong Kong, she's never really felt welcome. Back in the mainland, she said, I worked in the garment industry, I was a boss. Here people regard me as useless. I’m forced to work as a cleaner... If nothing changes, the activists told me bleakly we will become Xinjiang"
Secret Video Offers Rare Look Inside Chinese Labor Program - The New York Times
Strange how "poverty alleviation initiatives" need barbed wire around the compounds and the "residents" are imprisoned inside and unable to see their families
Doubtless a fake video created by the CIA, according to China shills
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, US-China trade war escalates - "Frankly, when we started out with China back during the Nixon administration, the country had no significant geopolitical power or military power compared to the United States. And the goal was that China would liberalize socially and politically, as well as economically if we engaged them. And they did not do that. They took advantage of the trade relationship to build a stronger, more powerful, more authoritarian government. They still execute more people than the rest of the world combined. They've got a million Muslim Uighers locked up in concentration camps and they’re building nuclear weapons under no strategic arm limitation talks, they're threatening all their neighbors on every border, particularly in the South China Sea region. And we have funded all this. So now, frankly, reducing or eliminating our trade with the Chinese regime creates a more secure world for the United States...
What we've heard so far is the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson repeat the denial that these negotiations broke down because China had reneged on key commitments at the 11th hour reportedly in the hope that Trump was simply after a quick political win. The spokesman said China always honors its words, our position has always been clear. But tellingly, perhaps though, what we haven't heard from China is any alternative explanation for why these negotiations have broken down. And in fact, what I think is really interesting is that domestic coverage has been very, very muted, and clearly very controlled. And of course, the less coverage of any issue there is here in China, the more certain you can be of its sensitivity and its core political importance, and there is no doubt that this whole approach by Trump, essentially rewriting the rules of, you know, 40 years of the world's most important trading relationship, has got Beijing very rattled indeed...
The ideology problem is unresolved. And I think it's every bit as unresolved as it was in the 1930s. And I don't think empowering the dictatorial regimes at that time, in either Japan or Germany turned out to be the best approach. And I don't think it's the best approach today. So I think hanging tough and demanding behavioral change is important. And isn't just about whether they have open free markets or not. This is whether they're, again, putting people into concentration camps, using their military to hack private companies in the West and doing things that are are simply atrocious and unacceptable"
Searching for truth in China's Uighur 're-education' camps - "We were being taken into places that appeared to have been carefully spruced up - with satellite images revealing that much of the security infrastructure had recently been removed.And one by one the people we spoke to inside, some of them visibly nervous, told us similar stories. All of them members of Xinjiang's largest, mainly Muslim ethnic group - the Uighurs - they said they'd been "infected by extremism" and that they'd volunteered to have their "thoughts transformed".This was China's narrative in the mouths of people selected for us, and for whom any cross-examination might pose a serious risk.What might be the consequences if they did let something slip? How could we safely separate the propaganda from the reality? There are plenty of precedents for this kind of reporting dilemma... in the 1930s and 1940s, Germany organised media trips to camps at Sonnenburg and Theresienstadt, designed to demonstrate how "humane" they were. In all such cases, the reporter is witness to a story of vital global importance, but forced to try to tell it with only limited or highly controlled access to those most affected by it. In Xinjiang though, there is one big difference. The authorities grant access not only to show that the conditions inside the facilities are good, they also want to prove that they are not prisons at all... the Chinese officials accompanying us believed wholeheartedly in the narrative on display, some almost moved to tears as they looked on.These people, we were urged to recognise, were reborn. Once dangerously radicalised and full of hatred for the Chinese government, they were now safely back on the road to reform thanks to the timely, benevolent intervention of that same government... in accepting the access, our job was to try to peer beneath the official messaging and hold it up to as much scrutiny as we could.There were the bits of graffiti we filmed, written in Uighur, that we later had translated."Oh my heart don't break," read one. Another in Chinese said simply: "Step by step."... Those in it were "almost criminals," they said, viewed as a threat not because they'd committed a crime, but because they might have the potential to do so.And there was the admission that, once identified as having extremist tendencies, they were given a choice - but not much of one.The option was "of choosing between a judicial hearing or education in the de-extremification facilities"."Most people choose to study," we were told. Little wonder, given the odds of a fair trial.And we know, from other sources, that the definition of extremism is now drawn very widely indeed - having a long beard for example, or simply contacting relatives overseas... there was the cautious questioning that revealed much, not in what they could say, but what they couldn't.I asked one man, who'd been there for eight months already, how many people he'd seen "graduate" in that time.There was a slight pause before he answered. "About that, I have no idea," he said."
China hacked Malaysian, other Asian telcos to spy on Uighur travellers, say sources - "Hackers working for the Chinese government have broken into telecoms networks to track Uighur travellers in Central and Southeast Asia, two intelligence officials and two security consultants who investigated the attacks told Reuters.The hacks are part of a wider cyber-espionage campaign targeting “high-value individuals” such as diplomats and foreign military personnel, the sources said. But China has also prioritised tracking the movements of ethnic Uighurs, a minority mostly Muslim group considered a security threat by Beijing."
China races to destroy records after leaks reveal information on Uighur Muslim detention camps - "A Chinese local government is deleting data and destroying documents after classified papers were leaked offering information on its mass detention camps for Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities, according to four people in contact with government employees there.They claimed regional officials in Xinjiang province are also tightening controls on information and have held high-level meetings following the leaks... Another Uighur who had been detained in Xinjiang years before said his ex-wife called him two weeks ago and begged him to send his release papers to her, saying eight officers had come to her home to search for the papers and threatened she would be jailed for life if she could not produce the papers."It's an old matter, and they've know I've been abroad for a long time," he said. "The fact that they suddenly want this now must mean the pressure on them is very high." Some government workers have been rounded up as the state investigates the source of the leaks. In one case an entire family in civil service was arrested. Abduweli Ayup, a Uighur linguist in exile, said his wife's relatives in Xinjiang - including her parents, siblings, and in-laws - were detained shortly after the leaks were published, claiming they had no relation to the leaks as far as he was aware."
According to China shills who say we should listen to what people living in China (but not in Xinjiang) say (at the same time as ignoring those who are critical of it), we cannot trust what Uighers tell us, even if they have lived in Xinjiang or know many people who do.
Xinjiang, China: Uighur activist Rushan Abbas slams ‘concentration camps’ - "a disturbing policy implemented in the northwest region – a forced-living arrangement between Han Chinese men and Uighur women that’s been likened to “mass rape”. The Government claims it’s designed to promote harmony between the different cultural groups. But activists tell a different story... Han Chinese men had been assigned to monitor the homes of Uighur women whose husbands had been detained in prison camps... As part of the “Pair Up and Become Family” program, Han Chinese men stay with and sleep in the same beds as Uighur women. According to the Chinese Government, the program is designed to “promote ethnic unity”... to Rushan Abbas, a Uighur activist whose family members have been detained in the Xinjiang camps for more than a year, it’s nothing more than systemised rape – part of the Government's brutal ongoing crackdown against the country’s ethnic minority. “This is mass rape,” she told news.com.au. “The Government is offering money, housing and jobs to Han people to come and marry Uighur people. “Neither the girls nor their families can reject such a marriage because they will be viewed (by Chinese authorities) as Islamic extremists for not wanting to marry atheist Han Chinese. They have no choice but to marry them. “(The Han Chinese) have been raping Uighur women in the name of marriage for years. It took more than a year for the media to pick that up.”... Human rights organisations have slammed the program, saying there is “no evidence that families can refuse such visits” and describing it as “deeply invasive forced assimilation practices”... “Normally one or two people sleep in one bed, and if the weather is cold, three people sleep together,” he said, adding “it is now considered normal for females to sleep on the same platform with their paired male ‘relatives’”. They claimed the “relatives” and their female hosts sleep at least a metre apart at all times and that male Communist Party officials have never tried to take advantage of women... the Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar project that seeks to connect countries across continents on trade, with China at its centre. Geographically, Urumqi – the capital of Xinjiang – is a crucial intersection point in the “Belt” part of the project... The last thing the Chinese Government wants for such a crucial region in this plan is unrest or the loss of control. And that’s where the intense security crackdown comes in. This explains why the crackdown escalated around five years ago, in line with the Belt and Road Initiative taking off. Ms Abbas has long spoken out against the human rights abuses in Xinjiang – a move that has had disastrous consequences for her family in China. In September last year, she spoke about the conditions in the camps while seated on a panel hosted by a Washington think tank. Six days later, her aunt and sister both disappeared at the same time – despite living 1400 kilometres away from each other. “My sister is a medical doctor. Their ‘vocational training’ shouldn’t apply to her. My aunt is a retired schoolteacher. Both of them went to Chinese school and speak fluent Chinese. They shouldn’t have been targets”"
Her Uighur Parents Were Model Chinese Citizens. It Didn’t Matter. - The New York Times - "The Uighurs’ territory was officially called the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, but in reality, the Uighurs existed in a parallel system over which the Han maintained control in both official and unofficial ways. The Xinjiang chairman, the nominal head of the region, was always a Uighur, but the real power rested with the regional party secretary, who for decades was always Han... the state privileged Han for employment, loans and contracts, causing Uighur resentment to simmer, sporadically erupting into larger protests for ethnic rights... She started criticizing the Communist Party at family dinners, but Isaq told her to be quiet. “This government and this Communist Party have helped us a lot,” he told her. “Everything we have, it’s because the government allowed us to have it, so you can’t criticize it.” Humar rolled her eyes. She thought her parents were only saying that because they worked for state media. In the history books she had pored over, she read that in turbulent times, whenever a dynasty fell, another rose. There was a saying: Luan shi chu yingxiong — heroes rise out of chaos... She told Humar they would both have to be careful; they could not express sadness, confusion or anger in front of her party colleagues. If they did, she would be categorized as having minzu qingxu, an emotional attachment to your ethnic group, a mark of political unreliability for a non-Han minority... The party often tested the loyalty of minority members. Communist cadres were not allowed to be religious. During Ramadan, Han officials took their Uighur colleagues out to lunch, and kept a list of those who abstained from eating... On long rides between Hami and Beijing, Humar encountered passengers who, thinking she was also Han, complained about how dirty and uncivilized Uighurs were... She threw herself into the discussion of soqmaq, a traditional dessert that Uighur migrants sell throughout China. It was a notorious scam: Uighur vendors would ask how much a customer wanted and then cut off a much larger piece. Han customers assumed it was cake, but because it was actually nut-filled candy, the total cost of the weighed portion was astronomical. It was hard to argue with the vendors, who would gesture they didn’t understand Mandarin... New dictates from the Communist Party arrived daily concerning what was or wasn’t palatable. Humar categorized comments in a spreadsheet, marking things that might appear innocuous but were actually dog whistles — like references to Zuo Zongtang, a general who reconquered Xinjiang during the Qing dynasty... The government publicized a list of “75 behavioral indications of religious extremism.” Some were as vague as people who “store large amounts of food in their homes,” “those who smoke and drink but quit doing so quite suddenly” or “those who buy or store equipment such as dumbbells . . . without obvious reasons.” Human Rights Watch reported that the government put together a list of 26 “sensitive countries” with supposed connections to terrorism, including Egypt, Thailand and Malaysia. Those who were in contact with relatives in any of those countries came under increased suspicion... life for Zumret as a Uighur in Beijing, where she now lived, was becoming harder and harder. Landlords refused to rent her apartments. She moved six times in three months... In May 2018, a German researcher named Adrian Zenz, after analyzing government procurement and construction notices in over 40 localities, published a paper that showed the scope of the internment network; he estimated that perhaps more than one million people were in “political education” camps, around 10 percent of Xinjiang’s Uighur population. Most of what is known about what goes on inside the camp system comes from former detainees who have fled China, mostly to Kazakhstan. Very few of them have spoken publicly. In Almaty, I interviewed seven former detainees, who told similar stories"
Of course China shills claim that reports of the camps are fake news because they come from 8 (or something) interviews and are reported by one or two organistions known to be biased. It's easy to deliberately ignore inconvenient facts
'Think of your family': China threatens European citizens over Xinjiang protests - "Two days after Abdujelil Emet sat in the public gallery of Germany’s parliament during a hearing on human rights, he received a phone call from his sister for the first time in three years. But the call from Xinjiang, in western China, was anything but a joyous family chat. It was made at the direction of Chinese security officers, part of a campaign by Beijing to silence criticism of policies that have seen more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities detained in internment camps.Emet’s sister began by praising the Communist party and making claims of a much improved life under its guidance before delivering a shock: his brother had died a year earlier. But Emet, 54, was suspicious from the start; he had never given his family his phone number. Amid the heartbreaking news and sloganeering, he could hear a flurry of whispers in the background, and he demanded to speak to the unknown voice. Moments later the phone was handed to a Chinese official who refused to identify himself.By the end of the conversation, the façade constructed by the Chinese security agent was broken and Emet’s sister wept as she begged him to stop his activism. Then the Chinese official took the phone again with a final warning.“You’re living overseas, but you need to think of your family while you’re running around doing your activism work in Germany,” he said. “You need to think of their safety.” In interviews with more than two dozen Uighurs living across Europe and the United States, tales of threats across the world are the rule, not the exception. Uighurs living in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, and France all complained of similar threats against family members back in Xinjiang, and some were asked to spy for China... Beyond discouraging activism, Chinese officials have also tried to recruit Uighurs living abroad to spy on others in their community, asking for photos of private gatherings, names, phone numbers, addresses and licence plate numbers. Some are recruited when they go to Chinese diplomatic missions in Europe to request documents, and others are contacted by security agents over WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging app. Emet’s number is likely to have been leaked to Chinese security agents this way, he said, with his number well known in the Uighur community in Munich.Chinese agents offer cash, the promise of visas to visit Xinjiang or better treatment for family members as a reward, but also dangle the threat of harsh consequences for those same family members if their offers are refused. Uighurs described having crucial documents withheld from Chinese embassies and consulates unless they agreed.One Uighur living in Germany who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation said a Chinese agent asked for photos of Eid and other celebrations, and specifically asked for information on Uighurs who had recently arrived in Europe. The recent surge in activism among Uighurs overseas is mostly a direct response to the increasingly repressive policies in Xinjiang... “The biggest mistake European Union countries make is that once they allow China to get away with something, that emboldens Beijing,” he said. “China has systematic strategies in place and the threats to Uighurs in exile show that. Europe needs its own unified strategy to stand up to China and respond to these threats.”"
Of course, China shills claim that Uighers worldwide are part of a cartel conspiring to defame China. And/or that the Western media is making stuff up to defame China
Has Huawei’s Darkest Secret Just Been Exposed By This New Surveillance Report? - "Just a few days after the devastating leak of the so-called China Cables, a cache of documents exposing the truth of the surveillance regime deployed in Xinjiang to suppress the minority Uighur population, tech giant Huawei has become embroiled in the controversy. Huawei’s technology has been linked to Xinjiang before, but the company has always claimed this is only through third-parties, that Huawei itself is not involved. Not so, says a damaging new report, it is much worse than that... At the signing ceremony for the joint laboratory, a Huawei representative said the company "will integrate resources, provide industry-leading products and services, and cooperate extensively with local high-tech enterprises to build a safer and smarter society with the public security department of the autonomous region." That “safer” society, it is claimed, has resulted in somewhere between 900,000 and 1.8 million people being subjected to intrusive monitoring or interred in camps."
China Uighurs: Detained for beards, veils and internet browsing - "A document that appears to give the most powerful insight yet into how China determined the fate of hundreds of thousands of Muslims held in a network of internment camps has been seen by the BBC.Listing the personal details of more than 3,000 individuals from the far western region of Xinjiang, it sets out in intricate detail the most intimate aspects of their daily lives... It is evidence that appears to directly contradict China's claim that the camps are merely schools.In an article analysing and verifying the document, Dr Zenz argues that it also offers a far deeper understanding of the real purpose of the system... Row 598 contains the case of a 38-year-old woman with the first name Helchem, sent to a re-education camp for one main reason: she was known to have worn a veil some years ago.It is just one of a number of cases of arbitrary, retrospective punishment.Others were interned simply for applying for a passport - proof that even the intention to travel abroad is now seen as a sign of radicalisation in Xinjiang... In many cases though, there is little need for advanced technology, with the vast and vague catch-all term "untrustworthy" appearing multiple times in the document.It is listed as the sole reason for the internment of a total of 88 individuals.The concept, Dr Zenz argues, is proof that the system is designed not for those who have committed a crime, but for an entire demographic viewed as potentially suspicious... many of the cases in the Karakax List give multiple reasons for internment; various combinations of religion, passport, family, contacts overseas or simply being untrustworthy.The most frequently listed is for violating China's strict family planning laws.In the eyes of the Chinese authorities it seems, having too many children is the clearest sign that Uighurs put their loyalty to culture and tradition above obedience to the secular state... Like all Uighurs living overseas, Ms Abdulaheb lost contact with her family in Xinjiang when the internment campaign began, and she's been unable to contact them since... More than two dozen individuals are listed as "recommended" for release into "industrial park employment" - career "advice" that they may have little choice but to obey. There are well documented concerns that China is now building a system of coerced labour as the next phase of its plan to align Uighur life with its own vision of a modern society. "
The CIA must have a huge budget to be able to forge so many things!
Post ID: 4734576282925387849
Being judged by your skin colour
"You've never been judged by your skin color"
"Just was"
Keywords: for the color of your skin, never been judged for your race
Post ID: 5866956191280179372
Links - 12th June 2020 (2) (Trans Mania)
Tokyo 2020 Olympics: AOC boss Matt Carroll calls for transgender rules to be addressed - "Australian Olympic Committee CEO Matt Carroll has called for action on transgender athletes - just six months out from the Tokyo Games.With a record number of transgender athletes set to compete in this year’s Olympics, Carroll says he feels for the female athletes that are set to compete against transgender rivals in Japan."
The making of trans children - "transgender activists make children the focus of campaigns, television programmes and teaching materials.Children serve as a useful moral shield for transgender activists, deflecting questions and criticism. The very existence of trans children lends support to their claim that people are born with a sense of gender identity... Inventing Transgender Children and Young People, a new book edited by Michele Moore and Heather Brunskell-Evans, shatters each of the convenient myths that have built up around the transgender child... they show that far from being an ever-present biological reality, transgenderism is an entirely invented concept with no basis in neuroscience, psychology or psychiatry. They argue that there is little evidence to support claims that brains are sexed, and no evidence whatsoever to suggest that some fetuses develop with mismatched brains and bodies. In fact, they note, ‘The idea that transgenderism is an internal, pre-social phenomenon that has existed throughout history is not an evidenced fact, but a proposition’. And far from being a long-standing proposition, it was only around five years ago that the existence of the transgender child became widely accepted. One contributor locates the invention of transgenderism within the medical profession: ‘It became possible to conceptualise “gender identity” as dislocated from biological sex when new medical technologies for the first time made it possible for doctors to change the bodies of those born with indeterminate genitals and to assign them to a sex.’ In this way, he argues, ‘the availability of the treatment appears to have essentially created the demand’... Hiding behind children, especially children who are both victims and revolutionaries, may be useful for transgender activists intent on promoting their own ideology. But, as the contributors to Inventing Transgender Children make clear, it has devastating consequences for children, who are not only exploited by activists, but also by some teachers, doctors, social workers and psychiatrists – the very people meant to protect them from harm... even at the very moment we tell children about the tooth fairy we know that no such creature exists. A few years down the line, when an older and more sceptical child questions us, we confess to having been the purveyor of the coins. Yet, when it comes to gender identity, adults are instructed to lose all sense of reality... somehow, trans children are assumed to have the capacity to consent to such interventions long before they are able to purchase cigarettes or alcohol. Positive affirmation makes it more difficult for children to change their minds about their gender identity, and begin to accept the body they were born into. Climbing off the pedestal adults have put them on means denying being a brave revolutionary and admitting to being just like everyone else. Perhaps most tragically of all, positive affirmation prevents any invesitgation into why a child may have come to see themselves as transgender... The child learns only that their body is the source of all their problems and changing their body will make everything better... At any given point in time, selective medical symptoms are culturally legitimised and sanctioned. Women suffering from hysteria during the 19th century or anorexia in the late-20th century were experiencing mental distress, but the way this distress was expressed differed. Today, as Marchiano explains, gender dysphoria provides an acceptable cultural script for children – especially girls – to signal distress. Positive affirmation, in taking this cultural script at face value, fails to uncover deeper problems that may remain buried and untreated... Focusing on the symptoms rather than the cause of gender dysphoria, and pushing children into an individual process of transition, also prevents broader social questions from being raised... At the end, however, one question, for me at least, remains unanswered: why are we allowing this to happen? Why have so many apparently ‘caring’ adults been happy to cheer all this on? In the concluding chapter, Stephanie Davies-Arai and Susan Matthews offer a number of suggestions, from a taboo on homosexuality to a politically motivated drive to ‘convince girls from an early age to believe that “woman” is an identity they can choose and that some women have penises’, in order to ‘prevent the development of a feminist political consciousness’... The first is an identity-driven cult of victimhood, where social hierarchies are constructed, and those deemed to have suffered most, simply because of who they are, are placed on the top. The second is the problem adults currently have with socialising children. Some adults consciously reject this role, while others have their capacity to act persistently undermined. The result, in both cases, is that rather than assuming responsibility for children’s development, adults deny they have any authority, suspend disbelief and act upon the child’s wishes. The beatification of the militant child victim who must instruct adults in the correct way to behave is detrimental to the future of society. And it’s devastating for the children thrust into this position."
The sorts of people who go on about "neurosexism" and praise Testosterone Rex also claim trans people have the brains of the other sex
Review: Females by Andrea Long Chu - "SCUM Manifesto, her most famous piece of writing, is a very strange text written by a very unwell woman. Despite her intense interest in Solanas, Chu fails to mention those aspects of her biography that might explain the deep well of rage we see in her writing. The fact that Solanas’s father sexually abused her as a child, that she was beaten by her grandfather, that she was impregnated as a 15-year-old, that her baby was taken away, and that, after her release from prison, she spent the rest of her life shuttling in and out of psychiatric institutions, drug-addicted and trapped in prostitution. She ultimately died of emphysema and pneumonia, destitute and alone, at the age of 52. Chu does not tell us any of these salient facts. But then they aren’t very sexy, which is another way of saying that they aren’t very interesting to Chu. You see, Chu credits Solanas with persuading her not only that she is a woman but also that she is a lesbian. “Valerie can sound like a dominatrix,” she remarks, before confessing self-pityingly: “I find Valerie extremely attractive which probably means she never would have agreed to sleep with me.”... Solanas is presented, not as a traumatised woman driven to violence, but as a bit-player in a masochistic fantasy. Chu is quite open about the fact that her interest in Solanas is, to put it bluntly, a sex thing. Females — a witty, provocative and highly readable book — is about the nature of desire, identity and love. It is also, to a rather startling degree, about Chu’s masturbation habits. Most of the second half of the text is devoted to discussions of her porn preferences, particularly genres concerned with feminisation. “Sissy porn did make me trans,” writes Chu, in a passage that has provoked outrage among a section of trans activists, some of whom object to the candour with which Chu discusses the sexual aspects of her desire to transition... There is a sense that Chu is airing the trans movement’s dirty laundry by focusing so determinedly on sex. Indeed, she seems compelled to express ideas that are not supposed to be expressed. In her essay “On Liking Women”, she writes: “I am trying to tell you something that few of us dare to talk about, especially in public, especially when we are trying to feel political: not the fact, boringly obvious to those of us living it, that many trans women wish they were cis women, but the darker, more difficult fact that many trans women wish they were women, period.” It is largely due to the tender and confiding tone of Chu’s writing that this is, despite everything, a book well worth reading. The thesis is bonkers, of course. “Everyone is female” we are informed in the first line. “Femaleness is not an anatomical or genetic characteristic of an organism but rather a universal existential condition, the one and only structure of human consciousness.” You are forgiven for being confused, since Chu herself seems reluctant to commit to her argument, suggesting at times that it may all be, pace Solanas, “an elaborate joke”. But if you replace every use of “female” with “feminine”, the claim begins to make sense. No one conforms entirely to gender stereotypes, no man is as macho as he might have you believe, nobody can entirely escape the charge of being a “sissy”. We are all, Chu insists, a little bit queer — a perfectly defensible argument, inexplicably expressed in the obscurantist vocabulary of Literary Theory. But then “Everyone is, to varying degrees, somewhat feminine” would be a less explosive opening line. And also, I suspect, an approach that would offer less psychic comfort to Chu herself. Because, like many trans women, Chu’s conception of herself is not just as feminine, or even womanly, but as, crucially, female: a woman in every possible sense of the word. Yet at the same time Chu writes of the vulnerability of that identity, the constant internal and external threat of invalidation:
"'Gender transition begins, after all, from the understanding that how you identify yourself subjectively — as precious and important as this identification may be — is nevertheless on its own basically worthless. If identity were all there were to gender, transition would be as easy as thinking it — a light bulb, suddenly switched on. Your gender identity would simply exist, in mute abstraction, and no one, least of all yourself, would care. On the contrary, if there is any lesson of gender transition — from the simplest request regarding pronouns to the most invasive surgeries — it’s that gender is something other people have to give you. Gender exists, if it is to exist at all, only in the structural generosity of strangers.'
The feeling of desperate, conflicted desire is a thread running through Chu’s writing. Where she departs from mainstream trans activism is in vocalising that conflict, rather than wishing it away... Females, and the praise for Females, is the product of a school of feminism now dominant in academia that has abandoned interest in the material aspects of women’s lives and has instead embraced confection and self-obsession. This form of feminism is far more interested in the supposedly liberating power of lipgloss and orgasms than in the difficult business of incrementally improving the lot of women and girls. When a porn-obsessed writer can be lauded as a feminist prophet for describing the “barest essentials” of “femaleness” as “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes” we should wonder how on earth we got to this point. Chu’s writing may be funny, engaging and thought-provoking, but this is not a feminist book in any meaningful sense of the term."
Government advises schools that transgender boys need access to free period products - "Schools must make sure free period products are available in “communal areas” so they can be accessed by girls who identify as transgender boys.Earlier this week a Government rolled out its scheme to provide tampons, sanitary pads and other menstrual products... The Chancellor announced last year that sanitary products would be given out for free in secondary schools across England."
WATCH: Arrests made as antifa, trans protestors disrupt free speech event in Seattle - The Post Millennial - "Featuring Sabina Malik, Kara Dansky, and Twitter-banned Meghan Murphy, the sold-out talk was met with resounding support, but trans rights activists and antifa made their resentment and hostility clear."
Pronoun madness: the left’s collapse into narcissism - The Post Millennial - "The contemporary default to the latest woke narrative of “preferred pronouns” has served as a troubling reminder to what the trans lobby represents today across the political spectrum. For gender is the luxury of time and wealth afforded by a liberal arts education over the past two decades, carefully spun into a language of seemingly leftist speak, but with very little leftist behind the façade. Ultimately, gender identity becomes a cultural Mobius Strip of anti-intellectual proportions as this ideology propounds that everyone must necessarily “have” a gender. The paradox, of course, that a movement that claims that biological sex “assigned at birth” interrupts one’s personal snow flakery means that everyone has an inner gender “compass.” More troubling is that all persons who do not identify under the “trans umbrella” are said to identify with “their” gender, hence the prefix “cis-” has been foisted upon women for having the so-called “privilege” to exist. It is no small irony that regressive notions of gender which women fought against well over a century ago, has been brought back into fashion with a fury. Now is it not only considered progressive in certain woke circles that gender is not only natural but gender conformity is what all women secretly desire (eg. that we want to stay at home and wear stilettos while baking cookies)... the recent wave of “non-binary confessions” reveals the sham of what is this movement’s ethos: that gender is a facet of a rather narcissist movement and worse, individual excess.It is time to pull the plug on this movement because they is not only grammatically incorrect, but they is wrong."
Twitter bans gay journalist Andy Ngo for stating objective facts that transgender activists don’t like - "dissident gay journalist Andy Ngo, editor-at-large at the Post Millennial, ought to have known that our Twitter overlords wouldn’t permit him to cite facts disputing the transgender oppression narrative. Ngo made the mistake of daring to question Chelsea Clinton and the left-wing activist organization Human Rights Campaign for peddling the pervasive myth that transgender people are the subjects of mass hate crimes and identity-targeted murder. Of course, while all of these deaths are tragic, most of these people were not targeted or murdered on the basis of their identity. Rather, they just happened to be transgender and they were murdered. So Ngo questioned this dubious narrative, as to both murder rates and the fact that many are carried out not by evil cisgender white males but by black men. According to the Post Millennial, he tweeted, “The US is one of the safest countries for trans people. The murder rate of trans victims is actually lower than that for cis population. Also, who is behind the murders? Mostly black men.”... Research published in the American Journal of Public Health confirmed [that] “the overall homicide rate of transgender individuals was likely to be less than that of cisgender individuals.” So, Ngo literally stated two objective facts and got banned for it, with Twitter citing his tweet as “hateful conduct." But frankly, even if he had gotten his facts wrong or messed them up, even that would not justify a ban. Liberal journalists aren't banned for stating or even misstating facts, otherwise half CNN’s staff would have been purged from the platform by now."
Boy George says pronouns are a 'modern form of attention seeking' - "George has kicked off the new decade with a take on pronouns labelled ‘transphobic’ by activists, coming after singer-songwriter Marc Almond faced similar accusations last year. George decried the claims the artist was transphobic as well as ripping into “all this PC stuff”... another user asked George: “What does it take to show others respect by using their preferred pronouns?”To which George responded: Thanks for that, but I have eyes and can mostly describe what I see!”... PinkNews reached out to Boy George’s management, who replied: “The concept of […] asking whether Boy George is transphobic is so stupid it doesn’t warrant a response.”"
I’m a Pediatrician. Here’s What You Should Know About a New Study on Transgender Suicide. - "Transgender teens attempt suicide more frequently than adolescents generally.Unfortunately, this data may be used to pressure parents to put their children through radical transition-affirming therapies.This would be a serious mistake. The new study assumes the unproven belief that all gender identities are equally healthy and fixed in all children and teens. This is an ideological premise touted by professional medical and psychiatric guilds, not scientific fact.The study also offers no proof that these radical therapies—puberty-blocking drugs, double mastectomies for girls, and so on—will prevent adolescents from attempting suicide... adolescent girls who identified as male had the highest rate of ever having attempted suicide: 50.8 percent. Adolescents who identified as non-binary were next at 41.8 percent... biological girls are more likely than boys to attempt suicide... my hypothesis is that such a survey would reveal that the majority of non-binary and questioning teens are in fact biological girls.In other words, it is possible that the much higher rate of attempted suicide among female to male, non-binary, and questioning transgender youth has more to do with factors relating to their biological sex (i.e. being a girl) than it does with anything related to gender identity... Unfortunately, the authors of the latest study assume that these disparities primarily (if not exclusively) are owing to adverse treatment of trans-identifying youth by society and by their families—a theory called minority stress theory.They say more research needs to be done to “comprehensively examine the factors (e.g. gender minority stress) that explain why transgender adolescents experience higher odds of suicide behavior.” Thus, they rule out from the start the possibility that the actual transition from female to male might play a role in aggravating stress and provoking one to suicide.To support this, they cite a seriously flawed study that alleges trans-identifying youth receive mental health benefits when affirmed by their families. That study’s sample size was very small, it was short-term, and—critically—relied solely upon parent assessment to rate the children’s mental health... Parents will be sent a clear message: Help your child transition, or you may lose them to suicide—and it will likely be your fault.The result of this will be scores more children needlessly sterilized, placed on toxic cross-sex hormones, and maimed by a double mastectomy as young as the age of 13, and potentially given other mutilating surgeries—none of which have been proven to prevent suicide in the long term.In fact, evidence suggests that sex reassignment surgery does not improve rates of attempted suicide.The largest and most rigorous study to examine the rates of suicide for adults following their medical gender transition was conducted in Sweden, an LGBT-affirming country. The study followed participants for 30 years after their transition and found that the suicide rate was 19 times higher among transgender adults than among the non-transgender population.Clearly, these results do not support the alleged curative effects of transition... As Ray Blanchard and J. Michael Bailey, two LGBT affirming psychologists, have pointed out, it is quite possible that underlying traumas, mental health, and personality issues combine to cause both gender dysphoria and suicidality in vulnerable youth.And there is reason to suspect this may be especially true for girls... Physicians take an oath to first do no harm. Based on this principle alone, all of us should demand a halt to the medical transition of minors until rigorous non-agenda driven, long-term research is completed."
Ironically, FTM girls having the highest attempted suicide rate contradicts an earlier feminist argument that women are under more social pressure than men (and that women are seen as inferior). You'd think that they'd have the lowest suicide rate, since they now benefit from Male Privilege
Telling the truth on trans issues got me cancelled: one psychologist’s story - "being an “ally,” to use the popular term—is in no way inconsistent with reacting critically to political developments in the field that, to my mind, go beyond the bounds of science and responsible clinical practice. In particular, I have questioned why some mental-health professionals, educators and government officials have allowed the most ideologically extreme trans activists to dictate policy in areas of medicine, psychological counselling, academia and family law—in some cases running roughshod over the rights of not only women and children, but also other members of the LGBTQ community. As has been widely reported in the wake of the Jessica Yaniv trans-waxing controversy in B.C., this extremism now informs the usage policies of major social-media networks. I know this because Twitter banned me permanently this year for using “him/her” pronouns to refer to someone whose gender I did not know... I first defended University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson on the OPA listserv, following his expressed opposition to compelled speech. Several colleagues engaged with me in a manner that scarcely differed from that of Twitter’s most intransigent and venomous trolls. These interactions, which I’ve discussed on my website, led to my being banned from the OPA listserv... any deviation from the ideologically prescribed orthodoxy is seen as tantamount to thoughtcrime. You either fight back, or you go silent.As psychological professionals, we know from our training and clinical experience that humans are complicated creatures, with overlapping identities, anxieties and fears. Yet when it comes to the issue of trans identity, all of this knowledge often gets wilfully jettisoned in favour of bleated mantras that originate on social media, not in peer-reviewed literature. My disbelief and scorn were roused when I saw psychological professionals reduce complicated questions to ideological litmus tests... even the [Standards of Care (SOC)] authors concede that there is no way to determine which gender dysphoric or non-conforming children will continue to identify as trans in the long run. Estimates of this permanently non-desisting subpopulation range as low as six percent of all trans-identifying individuals. Even a conservative estimate suggests that more than half of people with gender dysphoria eventually will come to terms with their biological sex. No matter which estimate you find convincing, it is certain that a rigidly ideology-based approach will risk encouraging vulnerable young people to undergo potentially unnecessary forms of transition that could leave them sterile and full of regret. Yet by my observation, the vast majority of OPA members prefer to ignore evidence that those pushing for radical treatments at increasingly younger ages are apt to downplay or even deny such concerns. To even raise such issues, I have learned, renders one vulnerable to accusations of transphobia... psychologists must center the perspectives of the people we treat. But if all we’re doing is validating every claim we hear, without applying our knowledge of human psychology, what value are we providing?... In recent years, the reputations, careers and lives of many people have been ruined when they stated basic facts about biology and the psychological development of children."
New Israeli Research Reveals that Men Are Men and Women Are Women - "Professor Shmuel Pietrokovski and Dr. Moran Gershoni studied 20,000 genes, sorting them by sex, and searching for differences in expression in each tissue.They eventually found around "6,500 genes with activity that was biased toward one sex or the other in at least one tissue, adding to the already major biological differences between men and women."Some of the biggest differences were in genes responsible for body hair, fat storage, muscle building, and milk production for breastfeeding.The researchers also found that biological sex also plays a role in preventing specific illnesses. For example, some genes expressed only in the left ventricle of the heart in women work to protect their hearts from disease until the women reach menopause. Another gene, in the liver, processes drugs differently according to the gender.Essentially, their research means more than 21 percent of the entire human genome, which is composed of about 30,000 genes, are based on sex -- something a sex change operation and hormones cannot replace."
Cursed Baizuo Opinions - Posts - "FUCK TERFS I'm trans and it was my 21st birthday yesterday
I got shit on in a group I moderate for being trans and it sucked.
*Paypal link*"
"Why the paypal link tho?"
"I'm trans. Do I need any other reason?"
The making of trans children - "transgender activists make children the focus of campaigns, television programmes and teaching materials.Children serve as a useful moral shield for transgender activists, deflecting questions and criticism. The very existence of trans children lends support to their claim that people are born with a sense of gender identity... Inventing Transgender Children and Young People, a new book edited by Michele Moore and Heather Brunskell-Evans, shatters each of the convenient myths that have built up around the transgender child... they show that far from being an ever-present biological reality, transgenderism is an entirely invented concept with no basis in neuroscience, psychology or psychiatry. They argue that there is little evidence to support claims that brains are sexed, and no evidence whatsoever to suggest that some fetuses develop with mismatched brains and bodies. In fact, they note, ‘The idea that transgenderism is an internal, pre-social phenomenon that has existed throughout history is not an evidenced fact, but a proposition’. And far from being a long-standing proposition, it was only around five years ago that the existence of the transgender child became widely accepted. One contributor locates the invention of transgenderism within the medical profession: ‘It became possible to conceptualise “gender identity” as dislocated from biological sex when new medical technologies for the first time made it possible for doctors to change the bodies of those born with indeterminate genitals and to assign them to a sex.’ In this way, he argues, ‘the availability of the treatment appears to have essentially created the demand’... Hiding behind children, especially children who are both victims and revolutionaries, may be useful for transgender activists intent on promoting their own ideology. But, as the contributors to Inventing Transgender Children make clear, it has devastating consequences for children, who are not only exploited by activists, but also by some teachers, doctors, social workers and psychiatrists – the very people meant to protect them from harm... even at the very moment we tell children about the tooth fairy we know that no such creature exists. A few years down the line, when an older and more sceptical child questions us, we confess to having been the purveyor of the coins. Yet, when it comes to gender identity, adults are instructed to lose all sense of reality... somehow, trans children are assumed to have the capacity to consent to such interventions long before they are able to purchase cigarettes or alcohol. Positive affirmation makes it more difficult for children to change their minds about their gender identity, and begin to accept the body they were born into. Climbing off the pedestal adults have put them on means denying being a brave revolutionary and admitting to being just like everyone else. Perhaps most tragically of all, positive affirmation prevents any invesitgation into why a child may have come to see themselves as transgender... The child learns only that their body is the source of all their problems and changing their body will make everything better... At any given point in time, selective medical symptoms are culturally legitimised and sanctioned. Women suffering from hysteria during the 19th century or anorexia in the late-20th century were experiencing mental distress, but the way this distress was expressed differed. Today, as Marchiano explains, gender dysphoria provides an acceptable cultural script for children – especially girls – to signal distress. Positive affirmation, in taking this cultural script at face value, fails to uncover deeper problems that may remain buried and untreated... Focusing on the symptoms rather than the cause of gender dysphoria, and pushing children into an individual process of transition, also prevents broader social questions from being raised... At the end, however, one question, for me at least, remains unanswered: why are we allowing this to happen? Why have so many apparently ‘caring’ adults been happy to cheer all this on? In the concluding chapter, Stephanie Davies-Arai and Susan Matthews offer a number of suggestions, from a taboo on homosexuality to a politically motivated drive to ‘convince girls from an early age to believe that “woman” is an identity they can choose and that some women have penises’, in order to ‘prevent the development of a feminist political consciousness’... The first is an identity-driven cult of victimhood, where social hierarchies are constructed, and those deemed to have suffered most, simply because of who they are, are placed on the top. The second is the problem adults currently have with socialising children. Some adults consciously reject this role, while others have their capacity to act persistently undermined. The result, in both cases, is that rather than assuming responsibility for children’s development, adults deny they have any authority, suspend disbelief and act upon the child’s wishes. The beatification of the militant child victim who must instruct adults in the correct way to behave is detrimental to the future of society. And it’s devastating for the children thrust into this position."
The sorts of people who go on about "neurosexism" and praise Testosterone Rex also claim trans people have the brains of the other sex
Review: Females by Andrea Long Chu - "SCUM Manifesto, her most famous piece of writing, is a very strange text written by a very unwell woman. Despite her intense interest in Solanas, Chu fails to mention those aspects of her biography that might explain the deep well of rage we see in her writing. The fact that Solanas’s father sexually abused her as a child, that she was beaten by her grandfather, that she was impregnated as a 15-year-old, that her baby was taken away, and that, after her release from prison, she spent the rest of her life shuttling in and out of psychiatric institutions, drug-addicted and trapped in prostitution. She ultimately died of emphysema and pneumonia, destitute and alone, at the age of 52. Chu does not tell us any of these salient facts. But then they aren’t very sexy, which is another way of saying that they aren’t very interesting to Chu. You see, Chu credits Solanas with persuading her not only that she is a woman but also that she is a lesbian. “Valerie can sound like a dominatrix,” she remarks, before confessing self-pityingly: “I find Valerie extremely attractive which probably means she never would have agreed to sleep with me.”... Solanas is presented, not as a traumatised woman driven to violence, but as a bit-player in a masochistic fantasy. Chu is quite open about the fact that her interest in Solanas is, to put it bluntly, a sex thing. Females — a witty, provocative and highly readable book — is about the nature of desire, identity and love. It is also, to a rather startling degree, about Chu’s masturbation habits. Most of the second half of the text is devoted to discussions of her porn preferences, particularly genres concerned with feminisation. “Sissy porn did make me trans,” writes Chu, in a passage that has provoked outrage among a section of trans activists, some of whom object to the candour with which Chu discusses the sexual aspects of her desire to transition... There is a sense that Chu is airing the trans movement’s dirty laundry by focusing so determinedly on sex. Indeed, she seems compelled to express ideas that are not supposed to be expressed. In her essay “On Liking Women”, she writes: “I am trying to tell you something that few of us dare to talk about, especially in public, especially when we are trying to feel political: not the fact, boringly obvious to those of us living it, that many trans women wish they were cis women, but the darker, more difficult fact that many trans women wish they were women, period.” It is largely due to the tender and confiding tone of Chu’s writing that this is, despite everything, a book well worth reading. The thesis is bonkers, of course. “Everyone is female” we are informed in the first line. “Femaleness is not an anatomical or genetic characteristic of an organism but rather a universal existential condition, the one and only structure of human consciousness.” You are forgiven for being confused, since Chu herself seems reluctant to commit to her argument, suggesting at times that it may all be, pace Solanas, “an elaborate joke”. But if you replace every use of “female” with “feminine”, the claim begins to make sense. No one conforms entirely to gender stereotypes, no man is as macho as he might have you believe, nobody can entirely escape the charge of being a “sissy”. We are all, Chu insists, a little bit queer — a perfectly defensible argument, inexplicably expressed in the obscurantist vocabulary of Literary Theory. But then “Everyone is, to varying degrees, somewhat feminine” would be a less explosive opening line. And also, I suspect, an approach that would offer less psychic comfort to Chu herself. Because, like many trans women, Chu’s conception of herself is not just as feminine, or even womanly, but as, crucially, female: a woman in every possible sense of the word. Yet at the same time Chu writes of the vulnerability of that identity, the constant internal and external threat of invalidation:
"'Gender transition begins, after all, from the understanding that how you identify yourself subjectively — as precious and important as this identification may be — is nevertheless on its own basically worthless. If identity were all there were to gender, transition would be as easy as thinking it — a light bulb, suddenly switched on. Your gender identity would simply exist, in mute abstraction, and no one, least of all yourself, would care. On the contrary, if there is any lesson of gender transition — from the simplest request regarding pronouns to the most invasive surgeries — it’s that gender is something other people have to give you. Gender exists, if it is to exist at all, only in the structural generosity of strangers.'
The feeling of desperate, conflicted desire is a thread running through Chu’s writing. Where she departs from mainstream trans activism is in vocalising that conflict, rather than wishing it away... Females, and the praise for Females, is the product of a school of feminism now dominant in academia that has abandoned interest in the material aspects of women’s lives and has instead embraced confection and self-obsession. This form of feminism is far more interested in the supposedly liberating power of lipgloss and orgasms than in the difficult business of incrementally improving the lot of women and girls. When a porn-obsessed writer can be lauded as a feminist prophet for describing the “barest essentials” of “femaleness” as “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes” we should wonder how on earth we got to this point. Chu’s writing may be funny, engaging and thought-provoking, but this is not a feminist book in any meaningful sense of the term."
Government advises schools that transgender boys need access to free period products - "Schools must make sure free period products are available in “communal areas” so they can be accessed by girls who identify as transgender boys.Earlier this week a Government rolled out its scheme to provide tampons, sanitary pads and other menstrual products... The Chancellor announced last year that sanitary products would be given out for free in secondary schools across England."
WATCH: Arrests made as antifa, trans protestors disrupt free speech event in Seattle - The Post Millennial - "Featuring Sabina Malik, Kara Dansky, and Twitter-banned Meghan Murphy, the sold-out talk was met with resounding support, but trans rights activists and antifa made their resentment and hostility clear."
Pronoun madness: the left’s collapse into narcissism - The Post Millennial - "The contemporary default to the latest woke narrative of “preferred pronouns” has served as a troubling reminder to what the trans lobby represents today across the political spectrum. For gender is the luxury of time and wealth afforded by a liberal arts education over the past two decades, carefully spun into a language of seemingly leftist speak, but with very little leftist behind the façade. Ultimately, gender identity becomes a cultural Mobius Strip of anti-intellectual proportions as this ideology propounds that everyone must necessarily “have” a gender. The paradox, of course, that a movement that claims that biological sex “assigned at birth” interrupts one’s personal snow flakery means that everyone has an inner gender “compass.” More troubling is that all persons who do not identify under the “trans umbrella” are said to identify with “their” gender, hence the prefix “cis-” has been foisted upon women for having the so-called “privilege” to exist. It is no small irony that regressive notions of gender which women fought against well over a century ago, has been brought back into fashion with a fury. Now is it not only considered progressive in certain woke circles that gender is not only natural but gender conformity is what all women secretly desire (eg. that we want to stay at home and wear stilettos while baking cookies)... the recent wave of “non-binary confessions” reveals the sham of what is this movement’s ethos: that gender is a facet of a rather narcissist movement and worse, individual excess.It is time to pull the plug on this movement because they is not only grammatically incorrect, but they is wrong."
Twitter bans gay journalist Andy Ngo for stating objective facts that transgender activists don’t like - "dissident gay journalist Andy Ngo, editor-at-large at the Post Millennial, ought to have known that our Twitter overlords wouldn’t permit him to cite facts disputing the transgender oppression narrative. Ngo made the mistake of daring to question Chelsea Clinton and the left-wing activist organization Human Rights Campaign for peddling the pervasive myth that transgender people are the subjects of mass hate crimes and identity-targeted murder. Of course, while all of these deaths are tragic, most of these people were not targeted or murdered on the basis of their identity. Rather, they just happened to be transgender and they were murdered. So Ngo questioned this dubious narrative, as to both murder rates and the fact that many are carried out not by evil cisgender white males but by black men. According to the Post Millennial, he tweeted, “The US is one of the safest countries for trans people. The murder rate of trans victims is actually lower than that for cis population. Also, who is behind the murders? Mostly black men.”... Research published in the American Journal of Public Health confirmed [that] “the overall homicide rate of transgender individuals was likely to be less than that of cisgender individuals.” So, Ngo literally stated two objective facts and got banned for it, with Twitter citing his tweet as “hateful conduct." But frankly, even if he had gotten his facts wrong or messed them up, even that would not justify a ban. Liberal journalists aren't banned for stating or even misstating facts, otherwise half CNN’s staff would have been purged from the platform by now."
Boy George says pronouns are a 'modern form of attention seeking' - "George has kicked off the new decade with a take on pronouns labelled ‘transphobic’ by activists, coming after singer-songwriter Marc Almond faced similar accusations last year. George decried the claims the artist was transphobic as well as ripping into “all this PC stuff”... another user asked George: “What does it take to show others respect by using their preferred pronouns?”To which George responded: Thanks for that, but I have eyes and can mostly describe what I see!”... PinkNews reached out to Boy George’s management, who replied: “The concept of […] asking whether Boy George is transphobic is so stupid it doesn’t warrant a response.”"
I’m a Pediatrician. Here’s What You Should Know About a New Study on Transgender Suicide. - "Transgender teens attempt suicide more frequently than adolescents generally.Unfortunately, this data may be used to pressure parents to put their children through radical transition-affirming therapies.This would be a serious mistake. The new study assumes the unproven belief that all gender identities are equally healthy and fixed in all children and teens. This is an ideological premise touted by professional medical and psychiatric guilds, not scientific fact.The study also offers no proof that these radical therapies—puberty-blocking drugs, double mastectomies for girls, and so on—will prevent adolescents from attempting suicide... adolescent girls who identified as male had the highest rate of ever having attempted suicide: 50.8 percent. Adolescents who identified as non-binary were next at 41.8 percent... biological girls are more likely than boys to attempt suicide... my hypothesis is that such a survey would reveal that the majority of non-binary and questioning teens are in fact biological girls.In other words, it is possible that the much higher rate of attempted suicide among female to male, non-binary, and questioning transgender youth has more to do with factors relating to their biological sex (i.e. being a girl) than it does with anything related to gender identity... Unfortunately, the authors of the latest study assume that these disparities primarily (if not exclusively) are owing to adverse treatment of trans-identifying youth by society and by their families—a theory called minority stress theory.They say more research needs to be done to “comprehensively examine the factors (e.g. gender minority stress) that explain why transgender adolescents experience higher odds of suicide behavior.” Thus, they rule out from the start the possibility that the actual transition from female to male might play a role in aggravating stress and provoking one to suicide.To support this, they cite a seriously flawed study that alleges trans-identifying youth receive mental health benefits when affirmed by their families. That study’s sample size was very small, it was short-term, and—critically—relied solely upon parent assessment to rate the children’s mental health... Parents will be sent a clear message: Help your child transition, or you may lose them to suicide—and it will likely be your fault.The result of this will be scores more children needlessly sterilized, placed on toxic cross-sex hormones, and maimed by a double mastectomy as young as the age of 13, and potentially given other mutilating surgeries—none of which have been proven to prevent suicide in the long term.In fact, evidence suggests that sex reassignment surgery does not improve rates of attempted suicide.The largest and most rigorous study to examine the rates of suicide for adults following their medical gender transition was conducted in Sweden, an LGBT-affirming country. The study followed participants for 30 years after their transition and found that the suicide rate was 19 times higher among transgender adults than among the non-transgender population.Clearly, these results do not support the alleged curative effects of transition... As Ray Blanchard and J. Michael Bailey, two LGBT affirming psychologists, have pointed out, it is quite possible that underlying traumas, mental health, and personality issues combine to cause both gender dysphoria and suicidality in vulnerable youth.And there is reason to suspect this may be especially true for girls... Physicians take an oath to first do no harm. Based on this principle alone, all of us should demand a halt to the medical transition of minors until rigorous non-agenda driven, long-term research is completed."
Ironically, FTM girls having the highest attempted suicide rate contradicts an earlier feminist argument that women are under more social pressure than men (and that women are seen as inferior). You'd think that they'd have the lowest suicide rate, since they now benefit from Male Privilege
Telling the truth on trans issues got me cancelled: one psychologist’s story - "being an “ally,” to use the popular term—is in no way inconsistent with reacting critically to political developments in the field that, to my mind, go beyond the bounds of science and responsible clinical practice. In particular, I have questioned why some mental-health professionals, educators and government officials have allowed the most ideologically extreme trans activists to dictate policy in areas of medicine, psychological counselling, academia and family law—in some cases running roughshod over the rights of not only women and children, but also other members of the LGBTQ community. As has been widely reported in the wake of the Jessica Yaniv trans-waxing controversy in B.C., this extremism now informs the usage policies of major social-media networks. I know this because Twitter banned me permanently this year for using “him/her” pronouns to refer to someone whose gender I did not know... I first defended University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson on the OPA listserv, following his expressed opposition to compelled speech. Several colleagues engaged with me in a manner that scarcely differed from that of Twitter’s most intransigent and venomous trolls. These interactions, which I’ve discussed on my website, led to my being banned from the OPA listserv... any deviation from the ideologically prescribed orthodoxy is seen as tantamount to thoughtcrime. You either fight back, or you go silent.As psychological professionals, we know from our training and clinical experience that humans are complicated creatures, with overlapping identities, anxieties and fears. Yet when it comes to the issue of trans identity, all of this knowledge often gets wilfully jettisoned in favour of bleated mantras that originate on social media, not in peer-reviewed literature. My disbelief and scorn were roused when I saw psychological professionals reduce complicated questions to ideological litmus tests... even the [Standards of Care (SOC)] authors concede that there is no way to determine which gender dysphoric or non-conforming children will continue to identify as trans in the long run. Estimates of this permanently non-desisting subpopulation range as low as six percent of all trans-identifying individuals. Even a conservative estimate suggests that more than half of people with gender dysphoria eventually will come to terms with their biological sex. No matter which estimate you find convincing, it is certain that a rigidly ideology-based approach will risk encouraging vulnerable young people to undergo potentially unnecessary forms of transition that could leave them sterile and full of regret. Yet by my observation, the vast majority of OPA members prefer to ignore evidence that those pushing for radical treatments at increasingly younger ages are apt to downplay or even deny such concerns. To even raise such issues, I have learned, renders one vulnerable to accusations of transphobia... psychologists must center the perspectives of the people we treat. But if all we’re doing is validating every claim we hear, without applying our knowledge of human psychology, what value are we providing?... In recent years, the reputations, careers and lives of many people have been ruined when they stated basic facts about biology and the psychological development of children."
New Israeli Research Reveals that Men Are Men and Women Are Women - "Professor Shmuel Pietrokovski and Dr. Moran Gershoni studied 20,000 genes, sorting them by sex, and searching for differences in expression in each tissue.They eventually found around "6,500 genes with activity that was biased toward one sex or the other in at least one tissue, adding to the already major biological differences between men and women."Some of the biggest differences were in genes responsible for body hair, fat storage, muscle building, and milk production for breastfeeding.The researchers also found that biological sex also plays a role in preventing specific illnesses. For example, some genes expressed only in the left ventricle of the heart in women work to protect their hearts from disease until the women reach menopause. Another gene, in the liver, processes drugs differently according to the gender.Essentially, their research means more than 21 percent of the entire human genome, which is composed of about 30,000 genes, are based on sex -- something a sex change operation and hormones cannot replace."
Cursed Baizuo Opinions - Posts - "FUCK TERFS I'm trans and it was my 21st birthday yesterday
I got shit on in a group I moderate for being trans and it sucked.
*Paypal link*"
"Why the paypal link tho?"
"I'm trans. Do I need any other reason?"
Post ID: 5745226045173973959
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