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China Moves to Overhaul Protections for Women's Rights, Sort Of - The New York Times - 0 views

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shared by criscimagnael on 03 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • The announcement was presented — in official news reports, on social media — as a major victory for Chinese women. The government was set to overhaul its law governing women’s rights for the first time in decades, to refine the definition of sexual harassment, affirm prohibitions on workplace discrimination and ban forms of emotional abuse.
  • The proposed revisions are the latest in a series of conflicting messages by the Chinese government about the country’s growing feminist movement. On paper, the changes, which China’s legislature reviewed for the first time last month, would seem to be a triumph for activists who have long worked to push gender equality into the Chinese mainstream.
  • At the same time, the authorities, ever leery of grass-roots organizing, have detained outspoken feminist activists and sought to control the country’s fledgling #MeToo movement. Sexual harassment lawsuits — already rare — have been dismissed.
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  • The government has also recently emphasized its dedication to women’s employment rights, especially as it urges women to have more children amid a looming demographic crisis.
  • Pickup artistry — a practice that arrived in China from the United States — commonly refers to the use of manipulative techniques, including gaslighting, to demean women and lure them into having sex. It became a booming industry in China, with thousands of companies and websites promising to teach techniques, and it has been widely condemned by both the government and social media users.
  • Women have also been increasingly pushed out of the workplace and into traditional gender roles since China’s leader, Xi Jinping, assumed power. Some fear that the campaign to encourage childbirth could turn coercive.
  • The gesture, at least, is extensive. As revised, the law would offer the most comprehensive legal definition yet of sexual harassment, to include behaviors such as sending unwanted sexually explicit images or pressuring someone into a relationship in exchange for benefits. It also instructs schools and employers to introduce anti-harassment training and channels for complaints.
  • The law would also codify women’s right to ask for compensation for housework during divorce proceedings — following the first-of-its-kind decision by a Chinese divorce court last year to award a woman more than $7,700 for her labor during her marriage.
  • When Peng Shuai, a star tennis player, recently said on social media that a top Chinese leader had pressured her into sex, she was censored within minutes, and many worry that she is under surveillance.
  • “The priority should be on bottom-up enforcement, where you empower individuals who have been harassed to use the law to protect their rights,” he said.
  • It is rare for victims of harassment to go to court. An analysis by Mr. Longarino and others found that 93 percent of sexual harassment cases decided in China between 2018 and 2020 were brought not by the alleged victim but by the alleged harasser, claiming defamation or wrongful termination. Women who have made public harassment claims have been forced to pay those they accused.
  • Nonlegal complaints can bring heavy consequences, too. In December, Alibaba, the e-commerce giant, fired a woman who had accused a superior of raping her. The company said that she had “spread falsehoods,” even though it had earlier fired the man she accused.
  • Even when women do sue their harassers, they face steep hurdles. Perhaps the most high-profile #MeToo case to go to court was brought by Zhou Xiaoxuan, a former intern at China’s state broadcaster, who asserted that Zhu Jun, a star anchor, had forcibly kissed and groped her. But the case faced years of delays. In September, a court dismissed the claim and said she had not provided enough evidence, though Ms. Zhou said the judges had rejected her efforts to introduce more.
  • several male bloggers with large followings on the social media platform Weibo denounced the provisions against degrading or harassing women online, saying they would give “radical” feminists too much power to silence their critics.
  • A woman in southern Guangdong Province who asked to use only her last name, Han, out of fears for her safety, said that she had endured years of physical and emotional abuse by her ex-husband. Even though she managed to secure a divorce last year, he continues to stalk and threaten her, she said. She obtained a restraining order, viewed by The New York Times, that cited chat logs and recordings.
  • If the law is revised, she continued, the police will be forced to recognize that she has a right to seek their help.
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What really went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted - 0 views

www.thetimes.co.uk/...ndemic-china-america-qhjwwwvm0 pandemic lab secret research crisis history
shared by Javier E on 10 Jun 23 - No Cached
  • One of the reasons there is no published information on such work, according to all three investigators, is because the shadow project on the mine viruses at the Wuhan institute was being funded by the Chinese military.
  • The State Department investigators wrote in their report: “Despite presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.”
  • A report published in April, co-authored by Dr Robert Kadlec, who was responsible for the US’s vaccine development programme, concluded that Zhou’s team must have been working on a vaccine no later than November 2019 — just as the pandemic began. One of the US investigators said testimony from scientists connected to the Wuhan institute’s collaborators suggested Covid-19 vaccine work was going on at the laboratory before the outbreak.
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  • The military was also given positions of responsibility in the Wuhan institute, according to a US Senate report. A book published in 2015 by the military academy discusses how Sars viruses represent a “new era of genetic weapons” that can be “artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed”.
  • The authors are PLA researchers, and one of the book’s editors has collaborated on numerous scientific papers with Wuhan scientists. They discuss how Sars can be weaponised by fusing it with other viruses and “serial passaging” the resulting mutant to make it more dangerous.
  • The investigators believe the Chinese military had taken an interest in developing a vaccine for the viruses so they could be used as potential bioweapons. If a country could inoculate its population against its own secret virus, it might have a weapon to shift the balance of world power.
  • The PLA had its own vaccine specialist, Zhou Yusen, a decorated military scientist at the academy, who had collaborated with the Wuhan scientists on a study of the Mers coronavirus and was working with them at the time of the outbreak.
  • Suspicion fell on him after the pandemic because he produced a patent for a Covid vaccine with remarkable speed in February 2020, little more than a month after the outbreak of the virus had first been admitted to the world by China.
  • In May 2020, aged just 54, Zhou appears to have died, a fact mentioned only in passing in a Chinese-media report and in a scientific paper that placed the word “deceased” in brackets after his name. Witnesses are said to have told the US investigation that Zhou fell from the roof of the Wuhan institute, although this has not been verified.
  • However, there was a no-go area: the Moijang mine. Seven of Hughes’s team headed to the mine in June 2020, including Camping Huang, the PhD student who had investigated the miners’ mystery illness soon after they died.
  • The investigators also saw communications intercepts that allegedly show three Wuhan institute researchers working at its level 3 laboratory on coronavirus gain-of-function work had fallen sick with coronavirus symptoms in the second week of November 2019, when many experts believe the pandemic began. One of the researchers’ family members later died.
  • An investigator said: “We were rock-solid confident that this was likely Covid-19 because they were working on advanced coronavirus research in the laboratory of Dr Shi. They’re trained biologists in their thirties and forties. Thirty-five-year-old scientists don’t get very sick with influenza.”
  • On November 19, the safety director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences made a visit, according to the institute’s website. He addressed a meeting of the institute’s leadership with important “oral and written” instructions from China’s president, Xi Jinping, regarding “a complex and grave situation”.
  • A later study by academics at Wuhan University located the hotspots in Wuhan where people were reporting on social media that they needed treatment for Covid. At the time, the authorities were eager to play down the suggestion that the city’s Huanan seafood market was the source of the outbreak; the study was used to show that the initial hotspots in December and January were several miles away.
  • When the study was first published, the Wuhan institute was not marked on the map it provided. So a report by the US Senate did just that — and found the institute right next to the biggest hotspot in the month before the province was locked down on January 23. The first case in Britain was recorded a week later.
  • Even before the West was told a mysterious virus was killing people in Wuhan, the Chinese authorities were beginning an information clampdown.
  • In the first months of the pandemic, there was a strong desire among Chinese scientists to head off to the bat caves in Yunnan to see whether they could find a place where Covid may have originated.
  • One of the investigator sources said the secret military-funded experiments on the mine virus, RaTG13, began in 2016. At around that time, the Wuhan institute became even less open about its work and mostly stopped revealing any new coronaviruses it discovered. In the lead-up to the pandemic, the Wuhan institute frequently experimented on coronaviruses alongside the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, a research arm of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). In published papers, military scientists are listed as working for the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, which is the military academy’s base.
  • When they arrived, they were told the Moijang mine was closed, so they sampled bats in another abandoned copper mine nearby. On the first day of their work, police arrived, seized the samples and took them to their station, where they were interrogated and detained for 48 hours.
  • Officers also went to their hotel and seized the samples they had collected from elsewhere. Even though the team had approval to test in the area, they were ordered to leave. “We did provide documentation to show we were there legally,” said Hughes. “But there was just too much fear and so they didn’t release those samples.”
  • Most coronavirus experts in China, she said, were too fearful of the consequences to examine Covid’s origins. “They haven’t touched it because of the risks associated with working on it.
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Taiwan Wants China to Think Twice About an Invasion - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...671895 taiwan china invasion preparation history culture politics
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  • Taiwan is now on pace to spend more than $19 billion on defense in 2023. But China spends more than $200 billion a year
  • Instead of building large, conventional hardware (airplanes, tanks, submarines), military experts have urged Taiwan to focus on so-called asymmetric capabilities (anti-ship weapons, surface-to-air missiles, stockpiles of small arms and ammunition), which have served Ukraine well in repelling a larger invader. That, combined with a bigger force of civilian reserves, could make the cost of an invasion too high for China. This approach has earned a nickname in global defense circles: “the porcupine strategy.”
  • China now has the world’s largest navy, with more than 350 ships and submarines. Its rocket force maintains the world’s largest arsenal of land-based missiles, which would feature in any war with Taiwan.
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  • Admiral Lee Hsi-ming, who was chief of Taiwan’s General Staff from 2017 to 2019, has championed the shift to asymmetric capabilities and has emerged as a Cassandra-like figure in his warnings that Taiwan is not preparing fast enough
  • You may not be able to stop an invasion, Lee says, but you can stop China from subjugating Taiwan. This entails denying China the ability to control the battle space. The Chinese haven’t fought a war in several decades, and Taiwan has geographic advantages—including ample mountains and few beaches suitable for amphibious operations
  • the first three section headings: “I. Taiwan Is Part of China—This Is an Indisputable Fact,” “II. Resolute Efforts of the CPC to Realize China’s Complete Reunification,” and “III. 2fChina’s Complete Reunification Is a Process That Cannot Be Halted.”
  • Lee points to two possible scenarios. The first is a coercive approach in which China encircles and pressures Taiwan—perhaps even seizing outlying islands and engaging in missile strikes. The second is a full-scale invasion.
  • Politically, Lee said, the message from China to the U.S. and Taiwan is simple: “I can do whatever I want in Taiwan, and there’s nothing the U.S. can do about it.” This message came across unequivocally in a white paper that Beijing released in August.
  • Anti-ship missiles, anti-tank weapons, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, drones, long-range artillery, and small arms could wreak havoc on an invading force, and disrupt the supply chains necessary to sustain an occupation.
  • Lee also argues that Taiwan’s civilian population should be organized into a trained Territorial Defense Force, so that any attempted occupation would be met by the broadest possible resistance. “As long as China fails, Taiwan wins the war,”
  • “The purpose is to make China believe that if you want to invade Taiwan, you will suffer huge losses,” Lee said. “And if you still invade Taiwan, you will not be able to succeed.
  • as Lee sees it, the pace must quicken. “Taiwan needs a strategic paradigm shift,”
  • When Chiang fled to Taiwan—with roughly 2 million Chinese from the mainland—there were some 6 million people already living on an island that was just emerging from 50 years of Japanese rule. Most of the people living on the island when Chiang arrived could claim roots in Taiwan going back hundreds of years. They had their own languages and culture. So too did the island’s many Indigenous groups, such as the Amis, the Atayal, and the Paiwan.
  • To subjugate the island, Chiang killed and imprisoned tens of thousands over decades—a period known as the White Terror. He set up a military dictatorship under the leadership of his Chinese nationalist Kuomintang Party (KMT) and, from this offshore platform, vowed to reclaim mainland China.
  • After the election of President Ma Ying-jeou, in 2008, links of trade, investment, and travel helped reduce tensions with China. Ma was from the KMT, and the party’s Chinese heritage and its ties to Taiwan’s business elite eased the way to détente with Beijing.
  • But many Taiwanese, particularly the young, feared that forging too close a connection could ultimately give Beijing leverage over Taiwan. In 2014, in what became known as “the Sunflower Movement,” named for the flower that served as a symbol of hope, students occupied the Taiwan legislature to oppose a free-trade agreement with China. After a tense standoff, they succeeded in stopping the deal.
  • tus quo is really interesting, because in the American context that is what it mean
  • But the idea of it here is: There is no need to declare independence, because we are already independent. This country functions like an independent nation, but someone else says it is not.” Recent polling suggests that fewer than 5 percent of people in Taiwan identify as “only Chinese.”
  • n Chinese and KMT officials 30 years ago, an outcome
  • at represents anything but consensus. To the Chinese Communist Party, the consensus is that there is one China, and the government in Beijing is the sole legitimate authority. To the KMT, the consensus is that there is one China, but the Republic of China in Taiwan is the legitimate government. To the DPP, there is no consensus, only a fraught political reality to be managed
  • China proposes a “one country, two systems” regime, in which Taiwan becomes a formal part of China but maintains an autonomous political system. There is one big problem with this proposal: Hong Kong
  • in 2020, several “national-security laws” were passed giving the authorities broad powers to crush dissent. Activists were rounded up. Independent media were shut down. One country, two systems was dead. The fate of Hong Kong has had a profound impact on Taiwan.
  • Ukraine inspired the Taiwanese society a lot, including how Zelensky told their story,” Chiang said. He was almost matter-of-fact when he told me, “I would say war between China and Taiwan will definitely happen. We want to win.”
  • In our conversation, Tsai talked about what she had learned from Ukraine. One lesson is simply the need for international support—to defend itself or, better, to avoid a war in the first place
  • Another lesson of Ukraine is the importance of national character. Outside support, Tsai emphasized, depends on qualities only Taiwan can provide. “You need to have good leadership,” she said, “but more important is the people’s determination to defend themselves, and the Ukrainian people showed that.
  • Hanging over all of this is the role of the United States. As one Taiwanese ex
  • ert pointedly asked me: “We can make ourselves a porcupine, but what are you going to do?”
  • Would the U.S. risk the biggest naval battle since World War II to break a Chinese blockade? Would the U.S. attack an invading Chinese force knowing that U.S. military personnel in Japan, Guam, and possibly Hawaii are within range of Chinese rockets? Would the American people really support a war with the world’s most populous country in order to defend Taiwan?
  • how the U.S. can help prepare Taiwan than on what the U.S. would do in a conflict.
  • small victories only point up the scale of the challenge. Wu himself has used the term cognitive warfare to describe the comprehensive nature of China’s pressure on Taiwan. “They use missiles, air, ships, disinformation, cyberattacks, and economic coercion,” he told me. As a warning sign, China has banned hundreds of exported products from Taiwan. “They claimed that our mangoes tested positive for COVID,”
  • . If China takes Taiwan, Wu suggested that the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions could extend to the East China Sea, threatening Japan; to the South China Sea, where China has built militarized islands and claims an entire body of water bordering several nations; to the Indian Ocean, where China is expanding influence and could establish military bases; and to the Pacific Ocean, where China is working to establish security pacts with island nations
  • I sat there reading message after message, all posted in closed chat rooms, meant to bend Taiwanese minds to Beijing’s worldview. The meanings of buzzwords like cognitive warfare and resilience came into sharper focus. Facing the seemingly bottomless resources of a massive totalitarian state, here were two young people working for free on a Wednesday night, quietly insisting on the notion that there is indeed such a thing as objective reality.
  • to preserve this, Taiwan has to find some mix of the approaches that I’d heard about: preparing for a war while avoiding it; talking to China without being coerced by it; drawing closer to the U.S. without being reduced to a chess piece on the board of a great game; tending to a young democracy without letting divisions weaken it; asserting a unique identity without becoming an independent country.
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AI could change the 2024 elections. We need ground rules. - The Washington Post - 0 views

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  • New York Mayor Eric Adams doesn’t speak Spanish. But it sure sounds like he does.He’s been using artificial intelligence software to send prerecorded calls about city events to residents in Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Urdu and Yiddish. The voice in the messages mimics the mayor but was generated with AI software from a company called ElevenLabs.
  • Experts have warned for years that AI will change our democracy by distorting reality. That future is already here. AI is being used to fabricate voices, fundraising emails and “deepfake” images of events that never occurred.
  • I’m writing this to urge elected officials, candidates and their supporters to pledge not to use AI to deceive voters. I’m not suggesting a ban, but rather calling for politicians to commit to some common values while our democracy adjusts to a world with AI.
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  • If we don’t draw some lines now, legions of citizens could be manipulated, disenfranchised or lose faith in the whole system — opening doors to foreign adversaries who want to do the same. AI might break us in 2024.
  • “The ability of AI to interfere with our elections, to spread misinformation that’s extremely believable is one of the things that’s preoccupying us,” Schumer said, after watching me so easily create a deepfake of him. “Lots of people in the Congress are examining this.”
  • Of course, fibbing politicians are nothing new, but examples keep multiplying of how AI supercharges misinformation in ways we haven’t seen before. Two examples: The presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) shared an AI-generated image of former president Donald Trump embracing Anthony S. Fauci. That hug never happened. In Chicago’s mayoral primary, someone used AI to clone the voice of candidate Paul Vallas in a fake news report, making it look like he approved of police brutality.
  • But what will happen when a shocking image or audio clip goes viral in a battleground state shortly before an election? What kind of chaos will ensue when someone uses a bot to send out individually tailored lies to millions of different voters?
  • A wide 85 percent of U.S. citizens said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the spread of misleading AI video and audio, in an August survey by YouGov. And 78 percent were concerned about AI contributing to the spread of political propaganda.
  • We can’t put the genie back in the bottle. AI is already embedded in tech tool campaigns that all of us use every day. AI creates our Facebook feeds and picks what ads we see. AI built into our phone cameras brightens faces and smooths skin.
  • What’s more, there are many political uses for AI that are unobjectionable, and even empowering for candidates with fewer resources. Politicians can use AI to manage the grunt work of sorting through databases and responding to constituents. Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson has an AI chatbot trained to answer questions like him. (I’m not sure politician bots are very helpful, but fine, give it a try.)
  • Clarke’s solution, included in a bill she introduced on political ads: Candidates should disclose when they use AI to create communications. You know the “I approve this message” notice? Now add, “I used AI to make this message.”
  • But labels aren’t enough. If AI disclosures become commonplace, we may become blind to them, like so much other fine print.
  • The bigger ask: We want candidates and their supporting parties and committees not to use AI to deceive us.
  • So what’s the difference between a dangerous deepfake and an AI facetune that makes an octogenarian candidate look a little less octogenarian?
  • “The core definition is showing a candidate doing or saying something they didn’t do or say,”
  • Sure, give Biden or Trump a facetune, or even show them shaking hands with Abraham Lincoln. But don’t use AI to show your competitor hugging an enemy or fake their voice commenting on current issues.
  • The pledge also includes not using AI to suppress voting, such as using an authoritative voice or image to tell people a polling place has been closed. That is already illegal in many states, but it’s still concerning how believable AI might make these efforts seem.
  • Don’t deepfake yourself. Making yourself or your favorite candidate appear more knowledgeable, experienced or culturally capable is also a form of deception.
  • (Pressed on the ethics of his use of AI, Adams just proved my point that we desperately need some ground rules. “These are part of the broader conversations that the philosophical people will have to sit down and figure out, ‘Is this ethically right or wrong?’ I’ve got one thing: I’ve got to run the city,” he said.)
  • The golden rule in my pledge — don’t use AI to be materially deceptive — is similar to the one in an AI regulation proposed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers
  • Such proposals have faced resistance in Washington on First Amendment grounds. The free speech of politicians is important. It’s not against the law for politicians to lie, whether they’re using AI or not. An effort to get the Federal Election Commission to count AI deepfakes as “fraudulent misrepresentation” under its existing authority has faced similar pushback.
  • But a pledge like the one I outline here isn’t a law restraining speech. It’s asking politicians to take a principled stand on their own use of AI
  • Schumer said he thinks my pledge is just a start of what’s needed. “Maybe most candidates will make that pledge. But the ones that won’t will drive us to a lower common denominator, and that’s true throughout AI,” he said. “If we don’t have government-imposed guardrails, the lowest common denominator will prevail.”
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What We Know About Brittney Griner's Detention in Russia - The New York Times - 0 views

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  • As tensions rose between Russia and the United States, Russian authorities detained Brittney Griner, a W.N.B.A. star, on drug charges.
  • Russia is talking about potentially serious charges.The Russian Federal Customs Service said that a sniffer dog had prompted it to search the carry-on luggage of an American basketball player at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow, and that it had found vape cartridges containing hashish oil. A state-owned Russian news agency then identified the player as Ms. Griner.
  • Hashish oil is a marijuana concentrate that has a high concentration of the psychoactive chemical THC, and it is commonly sold in cartridges that are used in vape pens.
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  • a charge that could carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
  • “Brittney has always handled herself with the utmost professionalism during her long tenure with USA Basketball,” U.S.A. Basketball said on Twitter.
  • The timing of the detention remains murky. Its political implications do, too.
  • “This follows a pattern of Russia wrongly detaining & imprisoning US citizens,” Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, wrote on Twitter on Saturday, citing the case of Trevor Reed, a former U.S. Marine whom a Russian court sentenced to nine years in prison in 2020 on charges of violence against police officers that his family and supporters described as fraudulent.
  • Ms. Griner was in Russia to play. Many W.N.B.A. stars rely on income from overseas leagues.
  • The financial incentives are compelling. W.N.B.A. players make a fraction of what their male counterparts do, with their maximum salary in 2022 at $228,094 while the top N.B.A. players are paid tens of millions of dollars.
  • Some observers criticized the gender pay gap in American basketball in connection to Ms. Griner’s detention.
  • “Whenever an American is detained anywhere in the world, we of course stand ready to provide every possible assistance,” Mr. Blinken said. “And that includes in Russia.”
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Salvadoran authorities are committing 'massive' human rights violations, with nearly 2%... - 0 views

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  • Salvadoran authorities have committed "massive" human rights violations, including thousands of arbitrary detentions and violations of due process, torture, and ill-treatment, according to a new report from Amnesty International.
  • The report, released Thursday, found that since late March, nearly 2% of the country has been detained, with at least 18 people having died in state custody.
  • More than 36,000 people have been detained since
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  • "Hopefully, just as they care because we have captured criminals, they would care about our children, about our elderly, about our working people, about the innocent Salvadorans who have suffered at the hands of those same criminals," he said during a speech before the Legislative Assembly.
  • In one instance, a 16-year-old, who was arrested in April and held for 13 days for being an alleged member of an illegal group, was chained to a wall of the detention center, where he said he was beaten by police. Later, he was transferred to youth detention center, where he was beaten by gang members, who he said also threw a bag of urine at his head, it said.
  • Many of the detainees are being held without due process "purely because the authorities view them as having been identified as criminals in the stigmatizing speeches of President Bukele's government, because they have tattoos, are accused by a third party of having alleged links to a gang, are related to someone who belongs to a gang, have a previous criminal record of some kind, or simply because they live in an area under gang control, which are precisely the areas with high levels of marginalization and that have historically been abandoned by the state," according to Amnesty.
  • Bukele, the self-proclaimed "world's coolest dictator," took office in June 2019 with broad support, after promising to stand tough against gang violence
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Opinion | The Question Is No Longer Whether Iranians Will Topple the Ayatollah - The Ne... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...an-protests-veil-khamenei.html iran revolution crisis culture history politics
shared by Javier E on 15 Dec 22 - No Cached
  • The protests in Iran, now in their third month, are a historic battle pitting two powerful and irreconcilable forces: a predominantly young and modern population, proud of its 2,500-year-old civilization and desperate for change, versus an aging and isolated theocratic regime, committed to preserving its power and steeped in 43 years of brutality.
  • However the protests are resolved, they seem to have already changed the relationship between Iranian state and society. Defying the hijab law is still a criminal offense, but women throughout Iran, especially in Tehran, increasingly refuse to cover their hair.
  • The ideological principles of Ayatollah Khamenei and his followers are “Death to America,” “Death to Israel” and insistence on hijab.
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  • Mr. Khamenei’s ruling philosophy has been shaped and reinforced by three notable authoritarian collapses: The 1979 fall of Iran’s monarchy, the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Arab uprisings of 2011. His takeaway from each of these events has been to never compromise under pressure and never compromise on principles.
  • The Iranian regime’s repressive capacity — at least on paper — remains formidable. Ayatollah Khamenei is commander in chief of 190,000 armed members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who oversee tens of thousands of Basij militants tasked with instilling public fear and morality.
  • Iran’s nonideological conscription army, whose active forces are an estimated 350,000, is unlikely to take part in mass repression
  • Until now, the political and financial interests of Ayatollah Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards have been intertwined. But persistent protests and chants of “Death to Khamenei” might change that
  • The sociologist Charles Kurzman wrote in his seminal book, “The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran,” that the paradox of revolutionary movements is that they are not viable until they attract a critical mass of supporters but that to attract a critical mass of supporters, they must be perceived as viable.
  • If the organizing principle that united Iran’s disparate opposition forces in 1979 was anti-imperialism, the organizing principles of today’s socioeconomically and ethnically diverse movement are pluralism and patriotism.
  • The faces of this movement are not ideologues or intellectuals but athletes, musicians and ordinary people, especially women and ethnic minorities, who have shown uncommon courage. Their slogans are patriotic and progressive — “We will not leave Iran, we will reclaim Iran,” and “Women, life, freedom.”
  • The demands of the current movement are brilliantly distilled in Shervin Hajipour’s song “Baraye,” or “For,” which has become the anthem of the protests and articulates a “yearning for a normal life” rather than the “forced paradise” of a religious police state.
  • Abbas Amanat, a historian of Iran, observed that one of the keys to Iran’s civilizational longevity, which dates to the Persian Empire of 2,500 years ago, is the power of its culture to co-opt its military invaders. “For nearly two millenniums, Persian political culture and, in a broader sense, a repository of Persian civilizational tools successfully managed to convert Turkic, Arab and Mongolian conquerors,” he told me. “Persian language, myth, historical memories and timekeeping endured. Iranians persuaded invaders to appreciate a Persian high culture of poetry, food, painting, wine, music, festivals and etiquette.”
  • When Ayatollah Khomeini acquired power in 1979, he led a cultural revolution that sought to replace Iranian patriotism with a purely Islamic identity. Ayatollah Khamenei continues that tradition, but he is one of the few remaining true believers. While the Islamic Republic sought to subdue Iranian culture, it is Iranian culture and patriotism that are threatening to undo the Islamic Republic.
  • Four decades of the Islamic Republic’s hard power will ultimately be defeated by two millenniums of Iranian cultural soft power. The question is no longer about whether this will happen but when.
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Trump Killed Not Just the Libertarian Party But Maybe the Libertarian Movement Too - 0 views

www.theunpopulist.net/...illed-not-just-the-libertarian libertarian movement party politics history culture crisis trump
shared by Javier E on 25 May 24 - No Cached
  • Though libertarianism as a political philosophy will continue, there is no longer anything resembling a coherent libertarian movement in American politics. That’s because the movement still bearing its name is no longer recognizably libertarian in any meaningful sense of the term. Nor can it still claim to be a political movement, which implies an association organized around not just a consistent set of ideas but a distinct political identity
  • For over a decade now, since Trump has dominated the national stage, longstanding disagreements have boiled over into a complete schism. There are those who have effectively become adjuncts of MAGA, and some who have gone firmly in the opposite direction, while others took a stance more akin to anti-anti-Trump voices who neither endorse nor firmly oppose the former president but train their ire toward those opposing Trump.
  • requires tracing internal libertarian disputes that began long before the rise of Trump. In some ways, they are a microcosm of similar developments in the American intellectual landscape writ large
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  • In his 2007 history of the movement, Radicals for Capitalism, Brian Doherty identifies five key figures who most shaped the nascent ideology and its organized advocacy: author Ayn Rand, and economists Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Murray Rothbard
  • With one exception, all paired radical free-market and smaller government views with liberal tolerance and cosmopolitanism on social issues. None were religious, and Rand and Mises were both avowedly irreligious. Friedman and Hayek both trended more moderate and pragmatic, and also achieved the highest degree of mainstream intellectual recognitio
  • It was in Rothbard that the divergence began which today has culminated in the Libertarian Party’s convention transforming into a literal Trump rally
  • He was in many ways the most radical—an avowed anarchist—and the most marginal
  • he was also the most involved in creating a self-consciously libertarian movement and many of its institutions. In this he was aided by his skills as a prolific polemicist.
  • From the start, Trump’s brand of illiberal populism had more than a passing resemblance to Rothbard’s paleo strategy—minus, as many classical liberal critics had long predicted, any meaningful moves to actually shrink government
  • By accommodating and embracing conservative culture warriors, even including avowed white supremacists, Rothbard believed he was forming the basis of a political coalition to demolish modern big government
  • it included an open embrace of police brutality, fuming about the need to “dispense instant punishment” to “bums,” while railing against efforts to undo America’s white supremacist past. Later, opposition to immigration became one of the paleo posture’s signature issues.
  • Across the loose constellation of libertarian think tanks, advocacy organizations, and electoral efforts in both the L.P. and the GOP, the embrace or rejection of Rothbard’s “paleo” idea was a source of perennial tension. Rothbard himself was involved for a time in both the Libertarian Party and the Cato Institute, co-founding the latter before being acrimoniously ejected after a few years.
  • the other end of the movement came to embrace the view of libertarianism as fundamentally an extension of the larger liberal tradition, continuous with a classical liberal political philosophy rather than a socially conservative one.
  • Free markets and limited government were still a big part of the picture, but in service to a vision of a dynamic and pluralistic free society.
  • As much as each held a dim view of the other, both continued to work under the “libertarian” label.
  • As he outlined in a 1992 essay, “Right Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement,” paleolibertarianism was an explicit alliance between small-government radicalism and the extremist far-right.
  • it still embodied the burn-it-all-down reactionary ethos that saw tearing down established institutions as a necessary first step, even if that required an unrestrained autocrat
  • After the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, the then party leadership denounced the “blood and soil” rhetoric. But to the Rothbardians, this smacked of unacceptable wokeness. Within a few days, the Mises Caucus—named more for the ideas exhibited by the think-tank than the actual economist—was founded. Over the next few years, this group began launching hostile takeovers of state parties and then the national party. As they did so, the party increasingly adopted rhetoric that sounded more like the tiki-torch brigade than one committed to individual liberty.
  • The two camps within the movement—the cosmopolitan and the paleo—already strained to nearly the breaking point, went through the inevitable rupture. A number of differences and disagreements fueled the split, but most central was the divide into MAGA-friendly and anti-Trump sympathies.
  • It is no longer possible to ignore the conflict of visions about what kind of society freedom was supposed to yield. One in which private bigotry and established hierarchies were allowed free rein? Or an open and all-embracing one where different people and lifestyles disapproved by the traditional order could flourish?
  • The only way the libertarian movement’s demise could bring down libertarianism as a political-philosophical framework is if one expected the ideas themselves to disappear. Happily, a robust conviction of the centrality of individual liberty—or of the need to fight a tyrannical state—is in no danger of fully fading away.
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North Carolina Reckons With its Jim Crow Past - The Atlantic - 0 views

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  • n 2016, bitter and unyielding contests have placed the state at the center of national debates about race, civil rights, violence, and elections. In the span of a year, an anti-transgender bathroom bill sparked rallies and a fierce debate over civil rights, flames licked the streets of a resegregated Charlotte during protests over a police shooting, a local GOP office was firebombed, and a collection of new laws have been enacted—and promptly challenged in court. But the most contentious and sustained rift has been in the arena of voting rights, and it is there where White’s words resound most loudly.
  • Inserts in the hymnals boasted of the church’s commitment to racial, sexual, and gender inclusivity and advertised a training for sensitivity to transgender and gender non-conforming folks.
  • The latent difficulty of registering to vote compounds with some other obstacles for minorities to depress turnout even in the absence of Jim Crow laws.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “The 14th Amendment says every person has a right to equal protection under the law,” he told the crowd.  “When you engage in intentional voter discrimination, you are robbing people of their equal protection under the law.” His words were both a benediction and a battle cry.
  • Even after 1965, North Carolina still struggled mightily with racial equality at the ballot. Thirty-six percent of all eligible black adults were registered to vote in North Carolina in 1963, and while that number jumped to 50 percent after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, it stalled there.
  • By 1980, the proportion of registered black voters had barely inched up to 52 percent. Adjustments made in 1982, including a new legal test for discrimination based on the effect of changes rather their intent, restored some momentum.
  • Why didn’t—or couldn’t—more black people vote once extended the franchise? One reason is that all the structural barriers to voting hadn’t been eliminated. Research indicates that polling places in minority neighborhoods tend to be less common, understaffed, and underfunded relative to those in white neighborhoods, making longer lines in minority areas much more likely.
  • Economic and social frustrations deeply affected vulnerable people of color in North Carolina.
  • That infusion of black voters—who mostly vote Democratic—helped to unseat Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole, deliver one of North Carolina’s House seats to a Democrat, and give the party the General Assembly,
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North Carolina Reckons With its Jim Crow Past - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...501257
shared by lindsayweber1 on 27 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • In 2016, bitter and unyielding contests have placed the state at the center of national debates about race, civil rights, violence, and elections. In the span of a year, an anti-transgender bathroom bill sparked rallies and a fierce debate over civil rights, flames licked the streets of a resegregated Charlotte during protests over a police shooting, a local GOP office was firebombed, and a collection of new laws have been enacted—and promptly challenged in court. But the most contentious and sustained rift has been in the arena of voting rights, and it is there where White’s words resound most loudly.
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Protesters shut down Milo Yiannopoulos event at UC Davis - CNN.com - 0 views

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shared by horowitzza on 14 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • A speech by right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos' at UC Davis was over before it even started Friday after protests erupted, forcing sponsors to cancel the event.
  • UC Davis College Republicans canceled the controversial talk after consulting with the university's police department and student affairs officials.
  • "Our community is founded on principles of respect for all views, even those that we personally find repellent. As I have stated repeatedly, a university is at its best when it listens to and critically engages opposing views, especially ones that many of us find upsetting or even offensive."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Earlier in the evening, protesters blocked access to the venue. Surrounding the lecture hall with signs, they chanted, "Say it loud, say it clear, racists are not welcome here."
  • As tensions rose between supporters and protesters, a determination was made that it was no longer feasible to continue the event safely.
  • "It's disgusting," Shkreli told CNN's affiliate KOVR as he left the venue. "Progressivism is about having a conversation."
  • The British conservative has been accused of racism and transphobia but he took no responsibility for inspiring the tweets directed at Jones after his review of "Ghostbusters."
  • "Gays are always canaries in the coal mine. This has given them the excuse they needed because (Leslie Jones) is a black woman," he said. "Twitter has just died as a free speech platform.
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In Poland, a window on what happens when populists come to power - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-92e8-c07f4f671da4_story.html poland populism demagogue culture politics trump crisis
shared by Javier E on 19 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • The Law and Justice Party rode to power on a pledge to drain the swamp of Polish politics and roll back the legacy of the previous administration. One year later, its patriotic revolution, the party proclaims, has cleaned house and brought God and country back to Poland
  • Opponents, however, see the birth of a neo-Dark Age — one that, as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to move into the White House, is a harbinger of the power of populism to upend a Western society. In merely a year, critics say, the nationalists have transformed Poland into a surreal and insular place — one where state-sponsored conspiracy theories and de facto propaganda distract the public as democracy erodes.
  • In the land of Law and Justice, anti-intellectualism is king. Polish scientists are aghast at proposed curriculum changes in a new education bill that would downplay evolution theory and climate change and add hours for “patriotic” history lessons. In a Facebook chat, a top equal rights official mused that Polish hotels should not be forced to provide service to black or gay customers. After the official stepped down for unrelated reasons, his successor rejected an international convention to combat violence against women because it appeared to argue against traditional gender roles.
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  • Cheered on by religious conservatives, the new government has defunded public assistance for in vitro fertilization treatments. To draft new sexual-education classes in schools, it tapped a contraceptives opponent who argues that condom use increases the risk of cancer in women. The government is proffering a law that critics say could soon be used to limit opposition protests.
  • Yet nothing has shocked liberals more than this: After a year in power, Law and Justice is still by far the most popular political party in Poland. It rides atop opinion polls at roughly 36 percent — more than double the popularity of the ousted Civic Platform party.
  • Trump is promising a tax code rework that could trigger a bonanza of cash rebates for Americans. In Poland, Law and Justice put cash in pockets in other ways, but always while merging social conservatism and nationalism with populist economics. The new government doled out money to families with children. They also slashed Poland’s retirement age — to as young as 60 for women and 65 for men.
  • Opponents call such actions the “buying” of support, moves that will only drive up Polish debt and masquerade a long-term power grab that could entrench Law and Justice for years.
  • Embracing the new government, to some measure, also means buying into the disturbing worldview it sells: You can only trust a Pole — even then, only some.
  • And the party’s views have never been more effectively disseminated. The national broadcaster in Poland would often tilt toward the party in power. But following its victory, Law and Justice launched an unprecedented purge of journalists at the channel, turning it into what opponents describe as a propaganda machine where conspiracy theories flourish. It recently ran a piece on the health risks of child vaccinations. 
  • The new government is also skeptical of the Paris climate change agreement to cut carbon emissions and has pulled support for Polish wind and solar farms. At the same time, it is pumping more money into coal.  “Who really knows what is causing global warming?” Pawel said. “And Poland needs the coal industry.”
  • There is no more talk in Poland, for instance, of offering any legal rights to same-sex couples. Earlier this year, the office of a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender group in Warsaw was badly vandalized. Police never caught the perpetrators. “Homosexuality was quiet before, then they tried to normalize it,” she said. “You don’t see that happening now.” 
  • Already, the new government has taken steps to limit the power of the constitutional court, chipping away, critics say, at checks and balances. A new draft law would also allow government-appointed governors the right to decide on future permits for demonstrations. 
  • “I’m here marching because it may be the last time we’re allowed to,” she said. “I don’t think many of us really understand what’s happening in Poland.”
  • Mizolebska said she is deeply concerned about what sees as an attack on women’s reproductive rights. A near-total abortion ban — women and doctors faced up to five years in jail — was defeated in October after a massive street protest. But she fears it may yet come back.
  • She is also concerned about a new proposed school curriculum the Polish Academy of Sciences says will marginalize evolution theory by reducing its prominence in some grades. Sciences more generally would receive less time, in favor of more hours for Polish history. 
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Trump has taught me to fear my fellow Americans - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html fascism demagogue conservatism americans betrayal
shared by Javier E on 31 May 16 - No Cached
  • What word comes to mind when you see the name Donald Trump? For some people, it might be “anger,” since he provokes it and stokes it. For others, it might be “ignorance,” since he knows so little and, like many unburdened by knowledge, is untroubled by facts. Some might say “fear,” since it would take some scary police tactics to push 11 million people over the border to Mexico. For me, none of those words suffices. I would say “betrayal.”
  • Do the people who support Trump realize that they are betraying not merely Muslims but the principles that the United States stands for? We don’t apply religious tests to anything
  • Donald Trump has taught me to fear my fellow American. I don’t mean the occasional yahoo who turns a Trump rally into a hate fest. I mean the ones who do nothing. Who are silent. Who look the other way.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • When I see these Trump supporters on television — the commentators, the Politician’s Puttanesca (a dish to poison the body politic) — I have to wonder where they would draw the line. The answer seems to be: nowhere. They want to win. They want to beat Hillary Clinton, a calling so imperative that sheer morality must give way
  • Maybe the talking heads on TV would draw the line at some mild version of fascism, but would the American people do the same? Here, I must hesitate. The easy yes of yesteryear has given way to awful doubt. Trump could win. He could become president, commander in chief, ruler of the Justice Department and head of the IRS. In other words, the American people could elect someone who has not the slightest appreciation for the Constitution or American tradition
  • History nags. It admonishes. “American exceptionalism” is a phrase that refers to the past, not necessarily the future. Nothing is guaranteed. I’d like to think that Americans really are exceptional, that we have an exceptional faith in democracy and the rule of law. I now have some doubt. I always knew who Trump was. It’s the American people who have come as a surprise.
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Bangladesh LGBT editor hacked to death - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-36128729 bangladesh lgbt editor hacked death
shared by sarahbalick on 26 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Bangladesh LGBT editor hacked to death
  • Bangladesh police say a top gay rights activist and editor at the country's only LGBT magazine is one of two people who have been hacked to death.
  • Another person was also injured when the attackers entered a Dhaka flat.
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  • The two men were murdered two days after a university teacher was hacked to death by suspected Islamist militants.
  • So-called Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility - but the Bangladeshi government insists there is no IS presence in the country.
  • "I am devastated by the brutal murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another young Bangladeshi," said US Ambassador Marcia Bernicat."We abhor this senseless act of violence and urge the government of Bangladesh in the strongest terms to apprehend the criminals behind these murders," she added.
  • A British photographer who knew Mr Mannan and the other victim, known as
  • "Tonoy" and named in Bangladeshi media as Tanay Mojumdar, said they and other friends had set up Roopbaan with the aim of spreading tolerance.
  • Homosexuality is technically illegal in Bangladesh and remains a highly sensitive issue in society.
  • "Both were extremely gentle, non-violent and aware that being openly gay and active in their work was a personal danger," the photographer said.
  • "Until a year ago the only threat to coming out was shame of the family and having to start a new life elsewhere in Bangladesh. Now it's one of danger," he said.
  • Imran Sarker, who led major protests by secular activists in 2013 against Islamist leaders, said he had received a phone call warning that he would be killed "very soon".
  • Last year, four prominent secular bloggers were also killed with machetes.The four bloggers had all appeared on a list of 84 "atheist bloggers" drawn up by Islamic groups in 2013 and widely circulated.
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Alberta wildfire: Emergency declared in Fort McMurray - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-us-canada-36209649 alberta wildfire emergency
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  • Alberta wildfire: Emergency declared in Fort McMurray
  • A state of emergency has been declared in the province of Alberta in Canada
  • Officials say the fast-moving blaze could destroy much of the city.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • after a wildfire forced all 88,000 residents of Fort McMurray to flee.
  • gutted 1,600 buildings, including a new school.
  • Several firms have shut down some pipelines
  • So far there have been no reports of deaths or injuries, but two women gave birth in one evacuation centre
  • It was something you'd see in a movie probably. I was stuck between a concrete barrier and the fire and I thought 'You know what? I might not make it out'.
  • "There's whole neighbourhoods that are gone. A hotel burned down, a gas station exploded. One lady that I met she actually was sheltered behind like an electrical box when it actually exploded and she felt a shockwave."
  • "You could hear the pop, pop, pop because of the propane tanks,"
  • Fort McMurray itself is sealed off to all but the emergency services, but it is reportedly a scene of devastation.One police officer who lives and patrols in the city told the BBC that, in his assessment, around half of it had been destroyed.
  • "It's well known that one of the consequences of climate change will be a greater prevalence of extreme weather events around the planet,"
  • he said.
  • "However, any time we try to make a political argument out of one particular disaster…that can sometimes not have the desired outcome."
  • Officials said the size of the blaze was now more than 10,000 hectares (39 square miles) and it was being tackled by 100 firefighters.
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Barry Latzer on Why Crime Rises and Falls - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...487583 crime demographics culture law enforcement Policy
shared by Javier E on 20 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • Barry Latzer: The optimistic view is that the late ‘60s crime tsunami, which ended in the mid-1990s, was sui generis, and we are now in a period of "permanent peace," with low crime for the foreseeable future
  • Pessimists rely on the late Eric Monkkonen's cyclical theory of crime, which suggests that the successive weakening and strengthening of social controls on violence lead to a crime roller coaster. The current zeitgeist favors a weakening of social controls, including reductions in incarcerative sentences and restrictions on police, on the grounds that the criminal-justice system is too racist, unfair, and expensive. If Monkkonen were correct, we will get a crime rise before long.
  • the most provocative feature of your book: your belief that different cultural groups show different propensities for crime, enduring over time, and that these groups carry these propensities with them when they migrate from place to place.
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  • this idea and its implications stir more controversy among criminologists than any other. Would you state your position as precisely as possible in this brief space?
  • Latzer: First of all, culture and race, in the biological or genetic sense, are very different. Were it not for the racism of the 18th and 19th centuries, we might not have had a marked cultural difference between blacks and whites in the U.S. But history cannot be altered, only studied and sometimes deplored. 28 28
  • Different groups of people, insofar as they consider themselves separate from others, share various cultural characteristics: dietary, religious, linguistic, artistic, etc. They also share common beliefs and values. There is nothing terribly controversial about this. If it is mistaken then the entire fields of sociology and anthropology are built on mistaken premises.
  • With respect to violent crime, scholars are most interested in a group's preference for violence as a way of resolving interpersonal conflict. Some groups, traditionally rural, developed cultures of “honor”—strong sensitivities to personal insult. We see this among white and black southerners in the 19th century, and among southern Italian and Mexican immigrants to the U.S. in the early 20th century. These groups engaged in high levels of assaultive crimes in response to perceived slights, mainly victimizing their own kind.
  • This honor culture explains the high rates of violent crime among African Americans who, living amidst southern whites for over a century, incorporated those values. When blacks migrated north in the 20th century, they transported these rates of violence. Elijah Anderson's book, The Code of the Streets, describes the phenomenon, and Thomas Sowell, in Black Liberals and White Rednecks, helps explain it. 28 28
  • Theories of crime that point to poverty and racism have the advantage of explaining why low-income groups predominate when it comes to violent crime. What they really explain, though, is why more affluent groups refrain from such crime. And the answer is that middle-class people (regardless of race) stand to lose a great deal from such behavior.
  • Likewise, the lead removal theory. The same "lead-free" generation that engaged in less crime from 1993 on committed high rates of violent crime between 1987 and 1992.
  • Frum: Let’s flash forward to the present day. You make short work of most of the theories explaining the crime drop-off since the mid-1990s: the Freakonomics theory that attributes the crime decline to easier access to abortion after 1970; the theory that credits reductions in lead poisoning; and the theory that credits the mid-1990s economic spurt. Why are these ideas wrong? And what would you put in their place? 28 28
  • both the abortion and leaded-gasoline theories are mistaken because of a failure to explain the crime spike that immediately preceded the great downturn. Abortions became freely available starting in the 1970s, which is also when lead was removed from gasoline. Fast-forward 15 to 20 years to the period in which unwanted babies had been removed from the population and were not part of the late adolescent, early adult, cohort. This cohort was responsible for the huge spike in crime in the late 1980s, early 1990s, the crack cocaine crime rise. Why didn't the winnowing through abortion of this population reduce crime?
  • The cultural explanation for violence is superior to explanations that rest of poverty or racism, however, because it can account for the differentials in the violent-crime rates of groups with comparable adversities
  • As for economic booms, it is tempting to argue that they reduce crime on the theory that people who have jobs and higher incomes have less incentive to rob and steal. This is true. But violent crimes, such as murder and manslaughter, assault, and rape, are not motivated by pecuniary interests. They are motivated by arguments, often of a seemingly petty nature, desires for sexual conquest by violence in the case of rape, or domestic conflicts, none of which are related to general economic conditions
  • Rises in violent crime have much more to do with migrations of high-crime cultures, especially to locations in which governments, particularly crime-control agents, are weak.
  • Declines are more likely when crime controls are strong, and there are no migrations or demographic changes associated with crime rises
  • In short, the aging of the violent boomer generation followed by the sudden rise and demise of the crack epidemic best explains the crime trough that began in the mid-1990s and seems to be continuing even today.
  • Contrary to leftist claims, strengthened law enforcement played a major role in the crime decline. The strengthening was the result of criminal-justice policy changes demanded by the public, black and white, and was necessitated by the weakness of the criminal justice system in the late ‘60s
  • On the other hand, conservatives tend to rely too much on the strength of the criminal-justice system in explaining crime oscillations, which, as I said, have a great to do with migrations and demographics
  • The contemporary challenge is to keep law enforcement strong without alienating African Americans, an especially difficult proposition given the outsized violent-crime rates in low-income black communities.
  • Frum: The sad exception to the downward trend in crime since 1990 is the apparent increase in mass shootings
  • Should such attacks be included in our thinking about crime? If so, how should we think about them? 28 28
  • If we separate out the ideologically motivated mass killings, such as Orlando (apparently) and San Bernardino, then we have a different problem. Surveilling potential killers who share a violent ideology will be extremely difficult but worthwhile. Limiting the availability of rapid-fire weapons with high-capacity ammunition clips is also worth doing, but politically divisive.
  • of course, developments abroad will affect the number of incidents, as will the copycat effect in the immediate aftermath of an incident. This is a complex problem, different from ordinary killings, which, by the way, take many more lives.
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North Korean man arrested in Kim Jong Nam's death - 0 views

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shared by ecfruchtman on 20 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • ecfruchtman on 20 Feb 17
     
    North Korean Ri Jong Chol was arrested Friday in Selangor, Malaysia. He is one of four people detained in the death of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Selangor Police Chief Abdul Samah Mat said the latest suspect was arrested at a condominium in Selangor state, but he declined to give further details.
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Why Nobody Cares the President Is Lying - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...es-the-president-is-lying.html nobody president lying new york times
shared by redavistinnell on 07 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Why Nobody Cares the President Is Lying
  • On his first full day in office Mr. Trump insisted that his inaugural crowd was the largest ever, a baseless boast that will likely set a pattern for his relationship both to the media and to the truth.
  • For years, as a conservative radio talk show host, I played a role in that conditioning by hammering the mainstream media for its bias and double standards. But the price turned out to be far higher than I imagined. The cumulative effect of the attacks was to delegitimize those outlets and essentially destroy much of the right’s immunity to false information. We thought we were creating a savvier, more skeptical audience. Instead, we opened the door for President Trump, who found an audience that could be easily misled.
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  • Unfortunately, that also means that the more the fact-based media tries to debunk the president’s falsehoods, the further it will entrench the battle lines.
  • The press secretary also declined to answer a straightforward question about the unemployment rate, suggesting that the number will henceforth be whatever the Trump administration wants it to be.
  • In a stunning demonstration of the power and resiliency of our new post-factual political culture, Mr. Trump and his allies in the right media have already turned the term “fake news” against its critics, essentially draining it of any meaning. During the campaign, actual “fake news” — deliberate hoaxes — polluted political discourse and clogged social media timelines.
  • For years, the widely read Drudge Report has linked to the bizarre conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who believes that both the attacks of Sept. 11 and the Sandy Hook shootings were government-inspired “false flag” operations.
  • But now any news deemed to be biased, annoying or negative can be labeled “fake news.” Erroneous reports that the bust of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the Oval Office or misleading reports that sanctions against Russia had been lifted will be seized on by Mr. Trump’s White House to reinforce his indictment.
  • Mr. Trump and his allies are empowering this alt-reality media, providing White House access to Breitbart and other post-factual outlets that are already morphing into fierce defenders of the administration.
  • By now, it ought to be evident that enemies are important to this administration, whether they are foreigners, refugees, international bankers or the press.
  • But discrediting independent sources of information also has two major advantages for Mr. Trump: It helps insulate him from criticism and it allows him to create his own narratives, metrics and “alternative facts.”
  • The Russian dissident and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov drew upon long familiarity with that process when he tweeted: “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”
  • In that world, the leader becomes the only reliable source of truth; a familiar phenomenon in an authoritarian state, but a radical departure from the norms of a democratic society. The battle over truth is now central to our politics.
  • Scottie Nell Hughes, was asked to defend the clearly false statement by Mr. Trump that millions of votes had been cast illegally. She answered by explaining that everybody now had their own way of interpreting whether a fact was true or not.
  • Or as George Orwell said: “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.”
  • In the meantime, we must recognize the magnitude of the challenge. If we want to restore respect for facts and break through the intellectual ghettos on both the right and left, the mainstream media will have to be aggressive without being hysterical and adversarial without being unduly oppositional.
  • There may be short-term advantages to running headlines about millions of illegal immigrants voting or secret United Nations plots to steal your guns, but the longer the right enables such fabrications, the weaker it will be in the long run. As uncomfortable as it may be, it will fall to the conservative media to police its worst actors.
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Delaware prison officer killed in hostage raid - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-us-canada-38844252
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  • abbykleman on 02 Feb 17
     
    A prison officer has been killed after authorities stormed a men's jail block a day after inmates took hostages in the US state of Delaware. Another officer was rescued and taken to hospital as police raided C block at the James T Vaughn Correctional Center in the town of Smyrna.
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Can Megyn Kelly Escape Her Fox News Past? - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...513842 fox news media propaganda politics obama
shared by Javier E on 06 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • The TV producer in Ailes saw a marketing niche, and the political operative in him saw a direct way of courting voters. Rupert Murdoch owned the network, but Ailes was its intellectual author. In the two decades since, the network has thrived without legitimate competition of any kind. It has proved to be a big tent, sheltering beneath it some excellent reporters but also a collection of blowhards, performance artists, cornballs, and Republican operatives in rehab from political failures and personal embarrassments. With the help of this antic cast, the Fox audience has come to understand something important that it did not know before: The people who make “mainstream” news and entertainment don’t just look down on conservatives and their values—they despise them.
  • Her understanding of the legal aspects of news stories and her tendency to conduct interviews as hostile cross-examinations (“Stay in bounds!” “I’ve already ceded the point!” “Don’t deflect!”) made her a riveting journalist-entertainer
  • Almost as soon as the election ended, Fox News went back to work on the mission, emphasizing a variety of themes, each intended to demonize the left. At the top of the list was the regular suggestion that Barack Obama was an America-hating radical, an elaboration of Glenn Beck’s observation (on Fox) that the president had “a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Other themes included the idea that straight white men were under ever-present threat from progressive policies and attitudes; that Planned Parenthood was a kind of front operation for baby murder; that political correctness had made the utterance of even the most obvious factual statements dangerous; and that the concerns of black America—including, especially, those of the Black Lives Matter movement—were so illogical, and so emotionally expressed, that they revealed millions of Americans to be beyond the reach of reason.
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  • We will never know to what extent Fox created or merely reported on the factor that turned out to be so decisive in the election: that to be white and conscious in America was to be in a constant state of rage.
  • In the middle of all this, feeding clips of ammo into the hot Fox News machine, was Megyn Kelly. To watch her, during one of her interviews on the subject of race and policing, interrupt a black guest to ask her whether she’d ever called white people “crackers” was to see Kelly in action, fired up and ready to go. In some respects, she was an independent actor at Fox, with her own show and ultimate control of its editorial content. But she was also a cog in something turning, and what the great machine ultimately produced was President Donald Trump.
  • As she tells it, one of the first questions Ailes asked her was “how the daughter of a nurse and a college professor understood anything other than left wing dogma.” She replied that although she’d been raised in a Democratic household, she had always been apolitical. She got the job.
  • he wanted people who hadn’t been tainted by the left-wing media machine, so they could be trained in the attitudes and opinions the network had been founded to advance.
  • Kelly is an unbelievably talented broadcaster—smart, funny, quick-witted, and able to handle a bit of fluff with as much zeal as she tackles a serious story. There can’t have been anyone more telegenic in the history of the business.
  • By 2010, the network had become so popular that—according to Gabriel Sherman’s biography, The Loudest Voice in the Room—Ailes added a new goal to the mission: the election of the next president.
  • she evinced her signature political stance: free-market enthusiasm combined with Nixonian law-and-order conservatism. “Enjoy prison!” she would call out after showing a video of an especially inept criminal enterprise.
  • She popped off the screen—fun, sexy, tough—and became popular not just with conservatives but also (in the mode of a guilty pleasure) with many progressives, including her sometime nemesis Jon Stewart, who once said she was his favorite Fox personality.
  • to see her segments on Black Lives Matter—which first aired as the primaries were getting under way and continued until the general election itself—was to see how Fox often stirred up racial anger among its viewers, a kind of anger that was crucial fuel for the Republican outcome Roger Ailes so desired.
  • hen Kelly was a litigator in high-stakes lawsuits, she learned a skill of the trade: taunting her adversaries until they snapped. “I might say something passive-aggressive just to get opposing counsel mad,” she writes. “And then when he got worked up about it, I would say calmly, ‘You seem upset. Do you need a break? We can take a moment if you’d like to step outside and get yourself together.’ ” She became “an expert in making them lose their cool.”
  • n her regular application of it to black activists, she contributed to an ugly mood that was the hallmark of Fox all last year: one of white aggrievement at a country gone mad, led by a radical black president supported by irrational black protesters who were gaining power.
  • , she introduced her TV audience to Malik Shabazz, the president of Black Lawyers for Justice and a former president of the New Black Panthers Party. Shabazz is a radical—an anti-Zionist who believes that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade and were involved in the 9/11 attacks, he is in a sense far more radical than Bill Ayers—but Kelly did not tell the audience that. Nor did she tell them that she had had Shabazz on her show in the past. The two proved useful to each other; he got to go deep behind enemy lines to spread his theories, while she got to show her audience members a black man who really does hate them. But to the casual viewer, he seemed like merely another Black Lives Matter supporter, no more or less extreme in his views than D. L. Hughley.
  • This was Fox News last spring and summer and into the fall: a place where black guests were always a few prodding questions away from telling the audience what they really felt about whites, and a place where white hosts were quick to defend other members of their race from unfair accusations of bias. These tactics were integral to the network’s mission: to get conservative ideas out there, to help elect a Republican president, and to make exciting television while doing it. Kelly proved adept on all fronts.
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