General CE Chat

Asian = East Asian / Oriental

By your logic, let’s call Turks, Syrians, Israelis, Georgians, Russians and Persians “Asian” too

It’s dumb
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Asia is located East of the Urals, south of the Bosporus and East of the Sinai. Anyone who traces their ancestry to this land is logically and technically Asian (regardless of skin tone, religion, language, facial hair or almond eyes).

Edit: dumb me forgot my east from my west... Sorry.
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That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard because it pretends colloquial meanings of race and ancestry don’t mean anything
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My post is the second one. Is it really that dumb? How can a narrow colloquialism be considered superior to logic?
 


You may mean well. But such cases do more harm than good. It's a waste of finite Court time and resources, and a considerable expense to either the litigant, the taxpayer - or both.

The above opinion is expressed without intending to prejudice the outcome of any prospective Appeals case.
 
This monster is barreling at low speed. Fortunately, the strength continues to downgrade and appears to moving more west of the islands. This was going to be my first ever hurricane (I've experienced outer bands before but never the actual storm itself).

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/us/hawaii-hurricane-lane-updates.html

24hawaii-01alt-master1050.jpg
 
New Yorker profile of Greenwald:

"His instinct is to identify, in any conflict, the side that is claiming authority or incumbency, and then to throw his weight against that claim, in favor of the unauthorized or the unlicensed—the intruder. Invariably, the body with authority is malign and corrupt; any criticisms of the intruder are vilifications or “smears.” He rarely weighs counter-arguments in public, and his policy goals are more often implied than spoken."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/glenn-greenwald-the-bane-of-their-resistance
 
2cents said:
New Yorker profile of Greenwald:

"His instinct is to identify, in any conflict, the side that is claiming authority or incumbency, and then to throw his weight against that claim, in favor of the unauthorized or the unlicensed—the intruder. Invariably, the body with authority is malign and corrupt; any criticisms of the intruder are vilifications or “smears.” He rarely weighs counter-arguments in public, and his policy goals are more often implied than spoken."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/glenn-greenwald-the-bane-of-their-resistance
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Nail on head
 
2cents said:
New Yorker profile of Greenwald:

"His instinct is to identify, in any conflict, the side that is claiming authority or incumbency, and then to throw his weight against that claim, in favor of the unauthorized or the unlicensed—the intruder. Invariably, the body with authority is malign and corrupt; any criticisms of the intruder are vilifications or “smears.” He rarely weighs counter-arguments in public, and his policy goals are more often implied than spoken."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/glenn-greenwald-the-bane-of-their-resistance
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Going to push back:
1. It's no wonder that the least realistic parts of the article come from Joan Walsh. Irony is dead if you use her as a source about twitter fighting. She had been on the attack against Berniebros, whether white or male or not, starting day one from her perch at the top of the most respected left publication.
Specifically the stuff about Obama. Greenwald's position is reduced to 1 line: Obama didn't shut down Guantanamo. Obama's presidency is when I first read Greenwald in the Guardian and his focus was much broader - he used to write about NSA surveillance and FISA courts (all of which was later vindicated by Snowden), drone strikes and lack of transparency, blatant lying under oath from intelligence chiefs, prosecutions of journalists under the espionage act, and journalists continuing to behave like they did with Iraq- as PR flunkies for the Pentagon. He was fecking brilliant, and I'm glad Walsh has endorsed his writing with her criticism.

2. You need to contrast him with the Max Blumenthal/Ben Norton types on foreign policy - they spend every minute defending Assad, disputing every shred of evidence. He doesn't engage with that, he didn't call all the western evidence against Assad "smears".

3. Briefly, it's a bit much to expect him to do original reporting rather than media criticism on Russia, because there is no way, post-Snowden, that he's ever going to get any source in the intelligence agencies.

4. You can look for my posts in the 2016 US election thread from around the time of the DNC (July 25-28 2016). This was at the end of a campaign where Bernie, more progressive on literally every issue, had been implicitly called a racist sexist, repeatedly called an old white man, and led by people like Joan Walsh, all his supporters were bros. WIkileaks had shown that the party had been extremely well-tuned for specifically her election. She had got thousands of endorsements and hundreds of superdelegates before the race began - a race that was nowhere as easy as that gap suggested. She said that "single payer healthcare will never ever come to pass." Before calling 25% of the country deplorables, she said that Bernie supporters were shut-ins in their parents' basement.
Now, you get a convention where Hillary is going to make her case against an obvious fecking danger who has promised to improve lives and make America great (with racist bigotry fueling all his rhetoric). What does she do? She proudly gathers support from the same neocon class that got the US into Iraq. Entire sessions of the DNC are spent in troop worship and spook worship.
For the left, the Pentagon and CIA/FBI aren't new enemies. Their structural role will always be hostile to the left at home and abroad. Further, they had no message, really - America is already great, vote for this person who happily claims to symbolise all existing power in the US. Your life can't be shitty - the US is great! The only good speech a tthe convention came from Warren who mentioned economic issues. The others were troops talking about the constitution, or stuff like Michelle Obama "we go high when they go low" - there was no case being made to vote *for* Hillary.
It was revolting. And I think it broke a lot of leftists, definitely me, maybe Greenwald. The Democrats need to be fought from within.

https://www.redcafe.net/threads/201...ions-trump-wins.403345/page-485#post-19546893
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/201...ions-trump-wins.403345/page-499#post-19562689
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/201...ions-trump-wins.403345/page-497#post-19562583
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/201...ions-trump-wins.403345/page-496#post-19562511
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/201...ions-trump-wins.403345/page-495#post-19562378
 
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Greenwald has a worldview that sees conflicts as fundamental. There is always a good and an evil side, and their conflict is zero sum in nature. The only solution is to defeat/destroy the bad guys. This kind of thinking about conflict/disagreement is pretty common to many worldviews. Greenwald is pretty explicit about this and it informs his criticism of the media ("journalists are and should be activists").
A shitty but nonetheless accurate analogy would be: Can a lion and a zebra find a mutually benefical way to co-exist? Regardless of how reasonable and well-intented they are, either the lion starves or it eats the zebra. Their conflict is fundamental and irreconcilable. That how Greenwald looks at the world. His goal isn't to present a balanced/moderate view, that tries to take all views into account, because there isn't and can't be any middle ground. In this worldview people who try to moderate opinions are either ignorant about the real structure of conflict or deliberately evil; regardless, they help to maintain the unjust status-quo. Consequently he tries to smash the bad side as hard as he can. I might add that this is entirely reasonable once you accept his premises.
I still think Greenwald's publications have value, if one takes all this into account. He presents often a contrarian view point, that is underrepresented. You don't have to be right to highlight other people's mistakes/faults.
 
berbatrick said:
Going to push back:
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Not going to dispute most of what you've said, I'm not nearly as invested in American politics as you, these just aren't issues close to my heart. I don't personally mind Greenwald most of the time, he's certainly as you say a more substantial figure than the likes of Norton and Blumenthal (who unfortunately he often fraternizes with). I just think it's an interesting profile, Greenwald himself seems to like it about as much as he can:



I like that he seems fully aware of his dour, self-righteous asshole image, makes me wonder if this bit was said half in jest:

“I want it to be substantive—I don’t want it to be distorted,” he said. “If I did it on Twitter, it would be ‘Oh, Glenn Greenwald admits he’s wrong!’ I don’t actually think I’ve been wrong about anything.”​
 
What the feck
Parents with children at schools in the trust raised concerns that, as well as the high levels of exclusions, many schools were also using “consequences rooms” – small booths in which a child sits alone and in silence for hours on end as punishment for breaking school rules.

The booths have been described as “internal exclusions” and parents called on academy trusts to release information on the number of hours of education children were missing while in the booths.

According to Outwood Grange Academies Trust’s behaviour policy, “the rule when in detention and in the consequences room is occupy and ignore”.

“Students cannot sleep or put their heads on the desk. They must sit up and face forward,” it adds.

When in the booths, children are not allowed to “tap, chew, swing on their chairs, shout out, sigh, or any other unacceptable or disruptive behaviour”.

“You will be allowed to go to the toilet up to a maximum of three times during the day (maximum five minutes per visit),” the policy reads. “You must use the closest toilet and go directly there and back. You will be escorted to get your lunch, but you must stay silent.”

Pupils may complete work they have brought themselves but they do not have to.
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https://www.theguardian.com/educati...nt-of-consequence-rooms-criticised-by-parents
 
‘We don’t have any fear’: India’s angry young men and its lynch mob crisis


Annie Gowen
August 27

GOVARDHAN, India — The two young men at the leadership camp were soft-spoken yet assured, from well-off families, wearing aviator sunglasses and flip-flops.

The right-wing activists say they have beaten men they suspected of violating core Hindu beliefs and threatened interfaith couples because they fear Muslims are stealing their women. They say they’re ready to kill for their faith if necessary.

“Even if a life is lost, we don’t care,” said Ram Kumar, 23.

It’s been a summer of rage in India. Dozens have been killed by lynch mobs, and extremist Hindus continue to assault and kill others, many of them Muslims. In the latest viral video, religious pilgrims angered over a minor traffic incident used sticks to demolish a car as police looked on.

Much blame has been cast on India’s governing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with critics charging that they have encouraged violence by Hindu extremists. But India’s problem of male rage has roots beyond the strident Hindu nationalism embraced by the current government.

India has more than 600 million people under 25, and they have greater access to technology and education than ever before. Yet millions have little hope of finding decent jobs, and a “bachelor bomb” of more than 37 million surplus men — a legacy of generations of a preference for sons and aborting female fetuses — threatens social stability for decades.

“People are frustrated that they are not being able to get jobs,” a leader from Modi’s party, Vasundhara Raje, told the channel CNN-News18. “There is angst, which is spreading across communities and people. . . . It’s a reaction to their circumstances.”

More than 1 million job seekers enter the labor market each month, many with inadequate job skills, but the country generated only 1.8 million additional jobs last year, according to the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy, a research company. Modi says the number of new jobs last year was closer to 7 million.

Without solid prospects, many young men are gravitating to India’s growing right-wing nationalist organizations, where they find a sense of purpose.

Over time, a stereotype of a right-wing troll has emerged — keyboard jockeys with too much time on their hands, sitting in their childhood bedrooms furiously tweeting about every perceived slight to Hinduism and Modi.

This summer, Kumar attended a leadership camp sponsored by the Hindu nationalist World Hindu Council, where he learned to protect cows, which Hindus regard as sacred, protect women’s modesty and prevent outsiders from converting Hindus to other faiths. The youths did military drills in the baking heat, slept in spartan concrete dorm rooms and ate lentils and rice.

Kumar, a college graduate who runs a tent rental company, and Gaurav Sharma, 22, a law student, grew up in Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal, which they see not as an ethereal white monument but as a reminder of the Mughal invaders who subjugated India’s Hindus.

Kumar said that as a boy, he was shy. But after joining the Hindu nationalist movement, he said, “I have a strange sense of confidence now. The group has taught us what is right, what we need to do for society.”

Before long, he said, he was out on the streets chasing down and threatening interfaith couples, conducting the moral policing he feels is necessary because Muslim men allegedly seduce girls “as young as 14.” The Hindu activists call it “love jihad.”

Kumar said he also prowls the streets at night, searching for cattle traders who might be illegally smuggling cows for slaughter. Recently, he said, he and five others stopped a truck transporting cows and beat the Muslim driver, who pleaded for his life. The man was saved only by the arrival of the police, Kumar said.

“I was raging,” Kumar said. “If I had a pistol, I would have killed him.”

Sharma said he, too, has participated in assaults, punching one suspected cattle smuggler in the face. Elders have since shown him how to administer a beating without leaving marks on his victim.

“We have been taught to not hit the head and chest — that can be fatal,” he said. “We beat them in such a way so they get these serious, silent injuries — on the backs, on the legs — so they do not die. Otherwise, there will be a case against us.”

Since the BJP came to power in their state, Uttar Pradesh, led by the Hindu monk Yogi Adityanath, they do not fear being held accountable by the authorities.

“Earlier, there was a fear that the government would arrest us, but now with the Yogi government, we don’t have any fear,” Sharma said. “Even if a smuggler is killed during a fight, we don’t have to worry about it.”

He continued, “All these BJP leaders, they’ve said: ‘Do what you want to do about cow protection. Don’t worry. If there is any problem, we are there for you.’ ”

Modi has said that state governments should deal sternly with these “cow vigilantes” and that the government is committed to upholding the law, but other BJP politicians have sent a different message, meeting with or congratulating the alleged killers.

The young men harbor a deep sense of victimization and spend a lot of time on Hindu-pride-focused WhatsApp groups and alternate-history websites that recount the glories of India’s ancient civilization before the Mughal and British invaders imposed, as Modi puts it, 1,200 years of servitude. Critics say social media is deepening the division between Hindus and Muslims in India that existed before the bloody partition of India in 1947 that created a separate country for Muslims, and ultimately an Islamic republic in Pakistan.

“Our parents never told us anything bad about Muslims. But in madrassas, they learn that Hindus are bad,” Sharma said. “We will tell the next generations how bad these people are.”

Sharma and his peers face stiff competition for careers because they attended schools where classes are taught in Hindi and because they know only a few phrases of English, the lingua franca of aspirational India. Many of their classmates are struggling, selling vegetables or doing menial labor. Thirty classmates joined the military.

Kumar plans on having a traditional family, if only to have babies and “contribute to the population.”
“The Hindu population,” Sharma clarified.

Others in their generation may not get the chance. Demographer Christophe Guilmoto estimates that, because of the gender imbalance, 40 million surplus men in India will remain single between 2020 and 2080.

“There is a saying, ‘Behind every successful man is a woman’? But you don’t need women. You can leave them behind and achieve success in life,” Sharma said. For Sharma, the love of his life married someone else. He said he still regrets that he did not ask his parents for permission to marry her. But nobody in his family had ever had a “love marriage” — always arranged unions.

Now he has made a “final decision,” to the dismay of his parents, to remain single and devote himself to the Hindu nationalist cause — just like his idol, Modi, who, after an early marriage, has long embraced the bachelor lifestyle as a campaigner for Mother India.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7bb2ee20297d
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/world/europe/italy-steve-bannon-matteo-salvini.html

So The Brain has thought out another masterplan to save/dismantle Western civilisation: uniting European right wing populism in a pan-European movement. The current goal is to place a strong, united anti-immigration bloc in European Parliament in the 2019 elections.

Salvini is in, not shy to invoke some drama:
"In comments about the meeting, Salvini said on Saturday that next year's elections for the bloc were a chance for "historical change and the last opportunity to save Europe"
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/italys-salvini-touts-plan-save-europe-bannon-talks-125337647.html
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Bannon's intermediate target:
“This will be the time for the populists to take over,” Mr. Bannon said.

His goal, he said, is less winning a majority of legislators than sending enough populists to gum up Parliament and block the agenda of Mr. Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and thus “command by negation.”

Mr. Modrikamen added that he envisioned Mr. Salvini and other members of The Movement meeting in Brussels to hammer out common positions and to coalesce as a “blocking power.”
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I have no idea how that coalition is supposed to be structured on an organisational level. Hopes are that such a movement would ultimately be too disparate to connect on a meaningful scale. But it's not too hard to imagine that opposition towards a common enemy (and the initial absence of the necessity to actually work together on fundamental policies) could be enough of a uniting factor for a while.
 
feck them

Lobbyists for "creators" threw their lot in with the giant entertainment companies and the newspaper proprietors and managed to pass the new EU Copyright Directive by a hair's-breadth this morning, in an act of colossal malpractice to harm to working artists will only be exceeded by the harm to everyone who uses the internet for everything else.
Here's what the EU voted in favour of this morning:

* Upload filters: Everything you post, from short text snippets to stills, audio, video, code, etc will be surveilled by copyright bots run by the big platforms. They'll compare your posts to databases of "copyrighted works" that will be compiled by allowing anyone to claim copyright on anything, uploading thousands of works at a time. Anything that appears to match the "copyright database" is blocked on sight, and you have to beg the platform's human moderators to review your case to get your work reinstated.

* Link taxes: You can't link to a news story if your link text includes more than a single word from the article's headline. The platform you're using has to buy a license from the news site, and news sites can refuse licenses, giving them the right to choose who can criticise and debate the news.

* Sports monopolies: You can't post any photos or videos from sports events -- not a selfie, not a short snippet of a great goal. Only the "organisers" of events have that right. Upload filters will block any attempt to violate the rule.

Here's what they voted against:

* "Right of panorama": the right to post photos of public places despite the presence of copyrighted works like stock arts in advertisements, public statuary, or t-shirts bearing copyrighted images. Even the facades of buildings need to be cleared with their architects (not with the owners of the buildings).

* User generated content exemption: the right to use small excerpt from works to make memes and other critical/transformative/parodical/satirical works.

Having passed the EU Parliament, this will now be revised in secret, closed-door meetings with national governments ("the trilogues") and then voted again next spring, and then go to the national governments for implementation in law before 2021. These all represent chances to revise the law, but they will be much harder than this fight was. We can also expect lawsuits in the European high courts over these rules: spying on everyone just isn't legal under European law, even if you're doing it to "defend copyright."
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Socdems genuinely useless
Dm5kGq5X0AANQZs.jpglarge.jpeg

Edit - liberals actually stood up for a liberal principle, so they deserve credit

taken from here: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/12/vichy-nerds-2.html
 
PedroMendez said:
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Socialists: We should methodically build up a case documenting how capitalism denies freedom. This is a long project with a lot of research since companies won't admit this outright, and employees are under financial pres-
IBM: Hey look everyone, to increase productivity, we're going to start injecting workers using robots.
 
Probably need a separate thread for crap, dumbed-down punditry:

DnsudNPW0AAaaP7
 
Seen as we have an awful lot of it posted, is there a way around WaPo articles being blocked by a paywall?
 


I can't stop laughing about this. Maybe it's time for the jacobin writers to unionize to overcome this horrific exploitation. They also should show some solidarity with the poor sods from the tribune.:lol:
 
PedroMendez said:


I can't stop laughing about this. Maybe it's time for the jacobin writers to unionize to overcome this horrific exploitation. They also should show some solidarity with the poor sods from the tribune.:lol:
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I was following this since the hard left *hates* Jacobin and was very happy with this story. It might not be credible - the guy who wrote that payday report link has been attacking Jacobin many times before, and there was an allegation (which I can't find) that the people Jacobin didn't re-hire hadn't bothered to keep subscription lists or record books. Jacobin staff is unionised, AFAIK.
At the same time I've heard Sankara being interviewed and he was very proud of being a cut-throat owner of a commercially successful magazine.
So I don't know.
 
berbatrick said:
I was following this since the hard left *hates* Jacobin and was very happy with this story. It might not be credible - the guy who wrote that payday report link has been attacking Jacobin many times before, and there was an allegation (which I can't find) that the people Jacobin didn't re-hire hadn't bothered to keep subscription lists or record books. Jacobin staff is unionised, AFAIK.
At the same time I've heard Sankara being interviewed and he was very proud of being a cut-throat owner of a commercially successful magazine.
So I don't know.
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Workers should own the means of production. At least that's what jacobin tells me.
 
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