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thatsonemorbidcorvid · 10 months

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“By simply existing as women in public life, we have all become targets, stripped of our accomplishments, our intellect, and our activism and reduced to sex objects for the pleasure of millions of anonymous eyes.

Recently, a Google Alert informed me that I am the subject of deepfake pornography. I wasn’t shocked. For more than a year, I have been the target of a widespread online harassment campaign, and deepfake porn—whose creators, using artificial intelligence, generate explicit video clips that seem to show real people in sexual situations that never actually occurred—has become a prized weapon in the arsenal misogynists use to try to drive women out of public life. The only emotion I felt as I informed my lawyers about the latest violation of my privacy was a profound disappointment in the technology—and in the lawmakers and regulators who have offered no justice to people who appear in porn clips without their consent. Many commentators have been tying themselves in knots over the potential threats posed by artificial intelligence—deepfake videos that tip elections or start wars, job-destroying deployments of ChatGPT and other generative technologies. Yet policy makers have all but ignored an urgent AI problem that is already affecting many lives, including mine.

Last year, I resigned as head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, a policy-coordination body that the Biden administration let founder amid criticism mostly from the right. In subsequent months, at least three artificially generated videos that appear to show me engaging in sex acts were uploaded to websites specializing in deepfake porn. The images don’t look much like me; the generative-AI models that spat them out seem to have been trained on my official U.S. government portrait, taken when I was six months pregnant. Whoever created the videos likely used a free “face swap” tool, essentially pasting my photo onto an existing porn video. In some moments, the original performer’s mouth is visible while the deepfake Frankenstein moves and my face flickers. But these videos aren’t meant to be convincing—all of the websites and the individual videos they host are clearly labeled as fakes. Although they may provide cheap thrills for the viewer, their deeper purpose is to humiliate, shame, and objectify women, especially women who have the temerity to speak out. I am somewhat inured to this abuse, after researching and writing about it for years. But for other women, especially those in more conservative or patriarchal environments, appearing in a deepfake-porn video could be profoundly stigmatizing, even career- or life-threatening.

As if to underscore video makers’ compulsion to punish women who speak out, one of the videos to which Google alerted me depicts me with Hillary Clinton and Greta Thunberg. Because of their global celebrity, deepfakes of the former presidential candidate and the climate-change activist are far more numerous and more graphic than those of me. Users can also easily find deepfake-porn videos of the singer Taylor Swift, the actress Emma Watson, and the former Fox News host Megyn Kelly; Democratic officials such as Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; the Republicans Nikki Haley and Elise Stefanik; and countless other prominent women. By simply existing as women in public life, we have all become targets, stripped of our accomplishments, our intellect, and our activism and reduced to sex objects for the pleasure of millions of anonymous eyes.

Men, of course, are subject to this abuse far less frequently. In reporting this article, I searched the name Donald Trump on one prominent deepfake-porn website and turned up one video of the former president—and three entire pages of videos depicting his wife, Melania, and daughter Ivanka. A 2019 study from Sensity, a company that monitors synthetic media, estimated that more than 96 percent of deepfakes then in existence were nonconsensual pornography of women. The reasons for this disproportion are interconnected, and are both technical and motivational: The people making these videos are presumably heterosexual men who value their own gratification more than they value women’s personhood. And because AI systems are trained on an internet that abounds with images of women’s bodies, much of the nonconsensual porn that those systems generate is more believable than, say, computer-generated clips of cute animals playing would be.

As I looked into the provenance of the videos in which I appear—I’m a disinformation researcher, after all—I stumbled upon deepfake-porn forums where users are remarkably nonchalant about the invasion of privacy they are perpetrating. Some seem to believe that they have a right to distribute these images—that because they fed a publicly available photo of a woman into an application engineered to make pornography, they have created art or a legitimate work of parody. Others apparently think that simply by labeling their videos and images as fake, they can avoid any legal consequences for their actions. These purveyors assert that their videos are for entertainment and educational purposes only. But by using that description for videos of well-known women being “humiliated” or “pounded”—as the titles of some clips put it—these men reveal a lot about what they find pleasurable and informative.

Ironically, some creators who post in deepfake forums show great concern for their own safety and privacy—in one forum thread that I found, a man is ridiculed for having signed up with a face-swapping app that does not protect user data—but insist that the women they depict do not have those same rights, because they have chosen public career paths. The most chilling page I found lists women who are turning 18 this year; they are removed on their birthdays from “blacklists” that deepfake-forum hosts maintain so they don’t run afoul of laws against child pornography.

Effective laws are exactly what the victims of deepfake porn need. Several states—including Virginia and California—have outlawed the distribution of deepfake porn. But for victims living outside these jurisdictions or seeking justice against perpetrators based elsewhere, these laws have little effect. In my own case, finding out who created these videos is probably not worth the time and money. I could attempt to subpoena platforms for information about the users who uploaded the videos, but even if the sites had those details and shared them with me, if my abusers live out of state—or in a different country—there is little I could do to bring them to justice.

Representative Joseph Morelle of New York is attempting to reduce this jurisdictional loophole by reintroducing the Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act, a proposed amendment to the 2022 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Morelle’s bill would impose a nationwide ban on the distribution of deepfakes without the explicit consent of the people depicted in the image or video. The measure would also provide victims with somewhat easier recourse when they find themselves unwittingly starring in nonconsensual porn.

In the absence of strong federal legislation, the avenues available to me to mitigate the harm caused by the deepfakes of me are not all that encouraging. I can request that Google delist the web addresses of the videos in its search results and—though the legal basis for any demand would be shaky—have my attorneys ask online platforms to take down the videos altogether. But even if those websites comply, the likelihood that the videos will crop up somewhere else is extremely high. Women targeted by deepfake porn are caught in an exhausting, expensive, endless game of whack-a-troll.

The Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act won’t solve the deepfake problem; the internet is forever, and deepfake technology is only becoming more ubiquitous and its output more convincing. Yet especially because AI grows more powerful by the month, adapting the law to an emergent category of misogynistic abuse is all the more essential to protect women’s privacy and safety. As policy makers worry whether AI will destroy the world, I beg them: Let’s first stop the men who are using it to discredit and humiliate women.

Nina Jankowicz is a disinformation expert and the author of How to Be a Woman Online and How to Lose the Information War.

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kakuma-queer · 1 year

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Hello world, reaching to everyone as one of the queer refugees from Kenya Kakuma refugees camp. Life has never been good since we came to the camp years ago in 2019 ,2020 and 2021. Although life is hard, LGBTIQA refugees have continuously joined us in the camp in the latest years leading to a larger number of lgbtiqa refugees in Kenya.

The camp has over 200,000 total number of refugees with just about 1300 lgbtiqa+ refugees. Its just a smaller ratio of lgbtiqa regugees facing persevution from the bigger number of other refugees.

Most of us have fled from Uganda where things turned out to be hard on queer people including death and imprisonment of lgbtiqa people. I call upon everyone tk help and support the the fellow queer people surbive through this trauma. You can’t imagine we have lost friends through death due to homophobia. One of us who was killed badly by setting fire on them did noy live for a month later. When we rushed them to hospital, doctors knew was trans and so devided to delay him and later died. We please need everyone to help. Even contacting UNHCR can help.

Look we have a youtube channel for more information and links like petitions and fundraiser are attached to our youtube channel

Our fundraising campaign, help and donate if you can, if you can't please share, we are currently looking forward to constructing an iron sheet fence as it will improve our safety.

As the leadership team for our group, we estimated it to take $1200. We also love to install a solar system that will cost us $700, will include solar panel, battery, inverter, lights and extensions. Where we shall be able to charge our phones from our premises and also have security lights to avoid attacks at night. and avoid unnecessary movements that also put us at risk of attacks. Please help and support us so that we can improve our safety. With the iron sheet fence we shall reduce on the risks of attacking us by homophobes especially when we are sleeping. I please call upon your support as we shall account for all the money donated to us. Thanks

It takes a good and kind heart to help, you will always stick on our hearts yiu people that make us feel we sre loved and cared about. Sustaining ourselves has failed us. We would prefer having jobs however no one can give a job to a demon like how the call us to be.

Hospital treatment in the government and UNHCR hospitals is hard because of homophobia and delays on LGBT people. For the love and support of one another, we love you.

#lgbt pride #asian lgbtq dramas #lgbtqa #lgbt #lgbt art #gaystagram #gay pride #queer community #queer #queer history #biseuxal #asexual #queer spaces #lesibian #mtf trans #transmasc #trans rights #transgender #lgbt rights

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queer-africa · 2 years

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Hello world, reaching to everyone is one of the members of the queer refugees community from Kenya Kakuma refugee camp. Life has never been good since we came to the camp years ago in 2019 and 2020. Although life is hard, lgbtiqa refugees have continuously joined us in the camp in the latest years leading to a bigger number of lgbt refugees in Kenya.

The camp has over 200,000 total number of refugees with just about 1300 lgbtiqa+ refugees. Its just a smaller ratio of lgbtiqa regugees facing persevution from the bigger number of other refugees.

Look we have a youtube channel for more information and links like petitions and fundraiser are attached to our youtube channel

Our fundraiser below

Hospital treatment in the government and UNHCR hospitals is hard because of homophobia and delays on LGBT people. For the love and support of one another, we love you

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argyrocratie · 3 months

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"When I first went to Jamaica in 2012 as a graduate student studying the environmental politics of the Maroons, an Afro-Indigenous community who freed themselves from enslavement in the 18th century and established an autonomous society in the mountainous interior of the island, Chinese overseas development policy seemed irrelevant to my work. Yet as my field research progressed over the following eight years, first as a doctoral student in African diaspora studies and then as a post-doctoral researcher, the impact of Chinese infrastructural development and extractive industry on the Jamaican people and environment became increasingly apparent.

The timing of my field work overlapped with an unprecedented surge in Chinese economic and diplomatic engagement with Jamaica and the Caribbean as a whole.

(...)

It is beyond the scope of this article to detail the political economic dynamics and immense social impact of debt in Jamaica over the last 40 years.4 Suffice it to say that the island became a byword for structural adjustment during this period, with every new loan from the World Bank, or default on payments thereof, coming with International Monetary Fund-mandated austerity.

Health and education were notable casualties of this socio-economic assault. By the start of my field research, Jamaican child mortality had almost doubled over the span of a single decade while completion of primary school dropped from 97% to 73% in the same period. This despite the fact that Jamaica had already repaid more money than it had been lent, with continuing debt servicing accounting for a 106% debt-to-GDP ratio according to the latest World Bank figures.

All this is only a small snapshot of the catastrophic outcomes of debt wielded as a tool of neocolonialism.

With the island’s status as one of the most indebted countries on the planet, Chinese infrastructural development was received with fanfare from Jamaican elites, a possible economic lifeline out of the debt trap.

(...)

Jamaican elites may appreciate that they can pay back debts with land, and that China does not directly require broad policy changes like the structural adjustment conditions of IMF and World Bank loans.

However, even with the above and the fact that the Jamaican debt to China is small compared to that claimed by Western IFIs and private firms, Jamaican politicians are growing increasingly wary of the costs of doing business with China. In November 2019, Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced that Jamaica would no longer borrow from China, a scant seven months after formally joining the BRI.

As usual, most Jamaicans are not privy to the inter-governmental discussions and deals driving these decisions, but their government’s newfound reticence in engaging with China reflects deeper concerns among BRI partners that the initiative is a debt trap.

(...)

Almost two decades of Chinese loans and infrastructure-led development have left Jamaican workers and farmers as precarious and dispossessed as ever. The hard-fought and generational struggle for Jamaican workers’ power (trade unions were instrumental to Jamaica’s independence struggle) has been curtailed and rolled back by China’s transposed sovereignty.

Furthermore, Chinese mining interests appear poised to pick up where their Western counterparts left off in terms of irreversible ecological destruction and threats to indigenous survival. Certainly, Jamaica cannot bear another 50 years of capitalist exploitation and extractive industry.

If there is any hope in turning this dire situation into revolutionary momentum, it will be in Jamaicans making common cause with the Chinese laborers imported to the country. According to China Labor Watch, Chinese workers on overseas BRI projects are often subject to “deceptive job ads, passport retention, wage withholding, physical violence and lack of contracts” to the extent of constituting forced labor and human trafficking.

In fact, at least one Chinese worker in Jamaica has already blown the whistle on such conditions. Unfortunately, as of the time of writing this article, there appears to be no organized effort to make solidaristic alliances among Jamaican workers, Chinese workers, and Maroons. The Maroons are organized as an indigenous community seeking land and sovereign rights, rather than workers seeking class emancipation, and remain locked in a fractious political battle with the Jamaican state toward those ends.

Furthermore, the cultural and language barriers between Jamaicans and imported Chinese workers are significant. Yet both countries have rich revolutionary traditions. If Jamaican labor militancy and Maroon struggle were able to reconcile and align their interests, while cultivating strategic allies among the heavily exploited Chinese workers, a powerful relationship of international solidarity from below could be forged."

...

#jamaica #Belt and Road Initiative

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kdramaxoxo · 3 months

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Can you recommend like a fun, silly, summery drama? I'm looking for similar vibes as Cheer Up or Age of Youth (female friendships are a plus). It's hard to find something without melodrama.

First off, I LOVE your user icon! (- ‿◦ )

And I definitely want to help you find something silly and easy to watch, especially as we enter the depths of winter! Some of these are a little less slice of life but still fun. Also I know you already watched/mentioned a couple of these but I'm adding them to the list for everyone else who might be game!

Light Hearted Fun K-dramas (little or no melo)

Soundtrack #1 (slice of life/romance) Best friends for almost 20 years, the two leads start having feelings for one another while working on a project. This drama only has a few episodes which is a shame because it's really cute! As a Park Hyung Sik Stan (sorry but Happiness broke me), he's great in this one and he hasn't lost all of his military weight yet which I LOVE :D

Fanletter Please! (slice of life/ romance) A sick child writes fan letters to her favorite star, an actress who for kdrama reasons is afraid of fan letters. This was a super sweet, short drama - I really liked it so much!

Into The Ring (workplace/romcom): The perfect slice-of-life rom com! Goo Se Ra has trouble holding down a job due to her passionate personality so after she loses her latest job working for the ML, she decides to run for a small government office position because it pays a salary. Literally she does it for the money which is just *chef’s kiss.* The show is about her dealing with local politics and it’s SO FUNNY and smart and the OTP is the best!

King The Land (rom/com): A cold chaebol hotel owner meets his match (literally and figuratively) who is a top notch employee. There's a lot of push pull and the ML (MY BIAS!) Lee Junho's character falls hard and fast. It does have slow moments but if you literally want to watch a happy couple be happy (plus the skinship is chef's kiss and there is so much of it) you'll enjoy this one.

Melo Is My Nature (slice of life): This drama is by far my favorite slice-of-life drama of 2019. Found family, strong and complex characters, I laughed, I cried. Plus a gay character that’s an actual character, with the gay as a casual side note (classy k-drama!!) It was just a perfect show for me. There’s romance, but all of the stories are super interesting.

Top Management (slice of life) I know this show is mainly on Youtube Premium BUT I just got an email from Youtube basically saying “hey we know you never want to pay to watch our shows so we’re just going to let you ok?” so that’s something… Adorable mini drama about a girl who can see the future and becomes the rookie manager for a kpop band. Fun and easy.

Business Proposal (rom/com) Seriously this drama is almost the exact same plot as The Secret Life of My Secretary. It's really fun and cute (just like the latter) and if you like one, you'll like the other ;-)

True To Love / Bo Rah Deborah (rom/com) Bo Rah is a relationship expert publishing her book. She works with a man who is her total opposite making it a cute enemies to lovers. Yoo in Ah is literally so adorable I love watching her! (If I'm honest I can't remember a TON about this drama but I do remember it being an easy watch).

Her Private Life (romcom): Park Min Young really knows how to pick dramas. I loved this one about a museum curator who is secretly a fangirl obsessed with an idol. It’s fun and fluffy but does have a very mild childhood trauma thing with his mother but I mean, 99% of dramas like this do? If you like this one, Touch Your Heart and Why Secretary Kim are by the same person and have similar vibes.

Touch Your Heart (rom/com) A sweet, silly and very mild rom com about a serious boss and his hallyu star secretary. This show was an obvious response to the chemistry that Lee Dong Wook and Yoo In Na had in Goblin so it was nice to see them together again. Yoo In Na is such a fun person to watch!

Fight for My Way (slice of life/romcom): I love this drama! Always a fave for me, this drama is funny and heartwarming! The leading lady is a strong female which I LOVE, and Park Seo Joon plays her really cute down to earth best friend. It’s a childhood friends to lovers trope with a group of regular people (no rich heirs in this show!) and has a happy ending and a lot of cute flirting, cuddling and kissing. Argh I love these two!

Age of Youth 1 (slice of life): Age of Youth/ Hello My Twenties is one of the best k-dramas that centers around strong female friendships. A group of wildly different girls find themselves rooming together in an apartment. Lots of romance too, but the girl’s lives and friendships are the primary focus.

Shopping King Louie (romcom): Ridiculously fun and lighthearted romp following a spoiled and useless chaebol with amnesia who is being taken care of by a country bumpkin in the city. Very low stakes, super adorable couple, and as many tropes as you can fit in your bag, this one is one of my favorites to recommend.

Eulachacha Waikiki / Laughter In Waikiki (slice of life comedy, romance) I hope you’re ready for a crazy amount of unlikely situations and nutty hijinks because this show is probably one the most silly ones I’ve ever watched. It follows a group of friends who own a hostel so it’s a slice of life drama. At certain points I was like “this is TOO silly” but I’m glad I stuck with it cause it was so hilarious. Plus, the baby is a star!

Wok of Love (rom/com) Despite the fact that the show was shortened by two episodes because of sports, this drama is a funny and quirky show worth watching. Many people dropped it because it was SO crazy for the first couple of episodes (it has a talking horse people!), but it does settle into a really sweet and fun story about a chef, a gangster and a rich girl and her family. If you love food, this show is for YOU!

And finally, if you don't mind a bit of melo, I highly recommend Run On!

Enjoy <3

#kdrama recommendations #kdrama recs #kdrama #king the land #i wrote this list right before bed and im not really awake #so how many typos will there be?#lee junho #on the list twice as he should be #soundtrack no 1 #fanletter place #true to love #i love a list

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unicorrrrrn · 11 months

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what are your fav kdramas?

Yay! An ask on my main tumblr!! I have SO many favorite k-dramas that I love for different reasons but these are the ones that come to mind that I think about a lot.

Most of My favorite K-dramas:

Extraordinary You/ A Day Found By Chance (fantasy/romance): This magical k-drama has my heart. It plays with all of the predictable tropes and then just goes crazy! While not perfect towards the end, I give this show bonus points for being super creative AND inspiring me to read a LOT of fan fic. I think about this drama more than any other.

Fight for My Way (romcom) I love this drama! The couple is one of my OTPs and it’s really funny and a mostly lighthearted story of a group of friends. It’s down to earth and adorable - I’ve never had anyone complain about this one!

Just Between Lovers (romance/melo): Slice of Life romance between poor trauma babies just trying to live! The OTP is one of my favorite couples EVER and even as the years go on, very few couples have matched their love in my opinion. There’s a lot of comfort/healing themes with for me is just *chef’s kiss.* Lee Junho became my bias wrecker because of that drama.

The Eighth Sense (bl queer romance): This is the only 2023 drama to make this list! It's super atmospheric and has so much more character development than any korean bl I've ever seen. I loved it so much!

Run On: (rom com) This show follows four people in their daily lives: An athletic, a translator, a CEO and an artist. Soft soft couples!! Y'all know I love this slice of life rom com for so many reasons, but you might not know that Kang Tae Oh’s character (the himbo painter) is like one of my dream boys. BLORBO FROM MY SHOWS. Also there is so much bi nuance and an ace character, just saying!

The Best Hit / Hit The Top (romcom): A famous 90′s boyband dude travels into the future and meets up with his family and friends in this really cute drama featuring Yoon Shi Yoon. I LOVE Yoon Shi Yoon in pretty much everything but this role was made for him - he is hilarious. It’s a slice of life but features the k-pop music industry so the setting is unique.

Flower of Evil: A psychological thriller centered around a jewelry maker who is running from his past, and his cop wife (power couple alert!) who doesn’t know his original identity. The chemistry of the couple is amazing and all of the characters are nuanced and interesting. I was on the edge of my seat, AND sobbing! I’m going to be rewatching this in 2021 for sure.

The Smile Has Left Your Eyes (psychological thriller): This drama has a lot of psychological thriller-y aspects but the style of filming is really interesting and the leads could not be more angsty (especially the guy). It takes them a while to get together and while not entirely pleasant, this show is one of my faves.

Healer: Everyone knows healer will always have my heart and it’s a super popular k-drama. Healer is played by Ji Chang Wook (swoon) and he gets involved with a feisty reporter played by Park Min Young (also swoon). It’s an action adventure with some very classic tropes: Rich people scandals, murders and hidden pasts. But it also has some of my favorite tropes: Beta Male Lead, childhood friends to lovers and traumatic pasts.

Cheating because it's a jdrama: Cherry Magic! (30-sai made Dotei Da to Mahotsukai ni Nareru rashii): I know this is a Jdrama but it’s the only drama that got a perfect score from me in 2020! If you’ve never felt like trying a jdrama, Cherry Magic is the one! Every episode was so endearing and sweet, and it even has ace representation, and does it well! I basically smiled the whole time and loved every second. Soft Romance and the best couple!

#i love a list #kdrama recommendations #my top #i know i'm missing at least 10 #lol #ask #dylan-rodrigues

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month

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This day in history

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me next weekend (Mar 30/31) in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON, then in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

#20yrsago VLC will play iTunes Music Store tracks https://memex.craphound.com/2004/03/25/vlc-will-play-itunes-music-store-tracks/

#15yrsago British local governments deploy anti-teenager pink lights designed to make kids ashamed of their appearance http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2009/03/26/anti-teenager-pink-lights-to-show-up-acne/

#15yrsago Congress considers inventory of spectrum use in America https://memex.craphound.com/2009/03/25/congress-considers-inventory-of-spectrum-use-in-america/

#15yrsago Live notes and streams from the FTC’s hearing on DRM in Seattle https://web.archive.org/web/20090329200416/https://teleread.org/2009/03/25/ftc-drm-town-hall-meeting-now-in-session/

#15yrsago Ankle weights save tippy strollers from forgetful parents (like me) https://web.archive.org/web/20090327143337/http://www.parenthacks.com/2009/03/add-ankle-weights-to-umbrella-strollers-to-keep-them-from-tipping.html

#10yrsago Oh No Ross and Carrie: podcasting investigative journalists join cults, try woo, and get prodded — for science! https://memex.craphound.com/2014/03/25/oh-no-ross-and-carrie-podcasting-investigative-journalists-join-cults-try-woo-and-get-prodded-for-science/

#10yrsago Judge tells porno copyright troll that an IP address does not identify a person https://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-not-person-140324/

#10yrsago AT&T to Netflix: if you don’t bribe us to do our job, you’re asking for a “free lunch” https://memex.craphound.com/2014/03/25/att-to-netflix-if-you-dont-bribe-us-to-do-our-job-youre-asking-for-a-free-lunch/

#10yrsago LAPD says every car in Los Angeles is part of an ongoing criminal investigation https://gizmodo.com/los-angeles-cops-argue-all-cars-in-l-a-are-under-inves-1547411605

#10yrsago Big Data Hubris: Google Flu versus reality https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/0314policyforumff.pdf

#10yrsago James Kochalka’s “The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza” https://memex.craphound.com/2014/03/25/james-kochalkas-the-glorkian-warrior-delivers-a-pizza/

#5yrsago Chinese censors incinerate entire run of a kickstarted Call of Cthulhu RPG sourcebook https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9Urosc-JEY

#5yrsago London developer makes last-minute changes to lock poor kids out of “communal” playground https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/25/too-poor-to-play-children-in-social-housing-blocked-from-communal-playground

#5yrsago Peak Indifference: are we reaching climate’s denial/nihilism tipping point? https://www.wired.com/story/peak-indifference-on-climate-change/

#5yrsago Rebooting UUCP to redecentralize the net https://web.archive.org/web/20190324140104/https://uucp.dataforge.tk/

#5yrsago The Vessel: a perfect symbol for the grifter capitalism of New York City’s privatized Hudson Yards “neighborhood” https://thebaffler.com/latest/fuck-the-vessel-wagner

#1yrago The Golden Rule (them what has the gold makes the rules) https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/25/consequentialism/#dotards-in-robes

#pluralistic

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mariacallous · 11 months

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Meduza's The Beet: Heels for freedom

Hello, and welcome back to The Beet!

Eilish Hart here, the editor of this weekly dispatch from Meduza that brings you original reporting from across Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. If someone forwarded you this email, sign up here to receive future issues of The Beet. Want to sample some more of our work first? Check out last week’s story about how independent journalism persists in Turkmenistan. And don’t miss my full interview with Access Now tech-legal counsel Natalia Krapiva, who kindly joined Meduza’s The Naked Pravda podcast to discuss recent revelations about the use of Pegasus spyware in Armenia during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war and its aftermath.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in Warsaw last Sunday for an anti-government march timed to coincide with the 34th anniversary of the partially-free elections that ushered in the fall of Poland’s Communist regime. With a parliamentary vote coming up in Poland later this year, and President Andrzej Duda now moving to water down a controversial piece of legislation that critics fear will be used to target the opposition, this is something to keep an eye on. But it’s not the topic of this week’s feature. Instead, we’re turning to Warsaw to celebrate the start of Pride Month with a story that takes us inside the Polish capital’s drag scene and introduces us to its late queen, Kim Lee. Journalist Joanna Kozlowska reports for The Beet.

Heels for freedom: Kim Lee and the history of Polish drag

By Joanna Kozlowska

Kim Lee in her Warsaw studio before a performance. 2019.

ZULA RABIKOWSKA

Just over a century ago, looking into the future after emerging from a world war and 120 years of foreign occupation, Poland abolished all aristocratic titles. Later, decades of Communism rendered all thoughts of royalty remote. Yet this year, the Polish capital has crowned a queen, and the choice may surprise some.

A short walk west from Warsaw’s main train station, stepping into the whitewashed mansion that houses a branch of the municipal museum, visitors are greeted by a riot of pastel colors. A black-haired figure in a sumptuous golden dress smiles from a poster near the entrance that reads, Kim Lee. The Queen of Warsaw. The museum’s latest blockbuster offering, the temporary exhibition celebrates an artist lovingly dubbed “Poland’s best and only Vietnamese drag queen,” whose life story is as stunning as the costumes assembled inside.

“Kim Lee had to be real, because nobody could have made her up,” a column in Poland’s largest left-wing daily recently proclaimed. “If she were a character from a TV show, conservative reviewers would tear it apart. More progressive ones, too, might doubt the scriptwriters’ sanity.”

A display from the exhibition “Kim Lee. The Queen of Warsaw.” 2023.

TOMASZ KACZOR / MUZEUM WARSZAWY

Of the half dozen people The Beet’s correspondent interviewed who knew Kim Lee’s creator Andy Nguyen before COVID-19 cut his life short in 2020, all would agree. Nguyen’s story is indeed almost too unusual to be true.

A star student in his native Vietnam, Nguyen came to Poland on a scholarship just as Communism was being dismantled. He got a research job at one of the country’s top physics institutes, only to see his pay fall to a pittance during the economic turmoil of the 1990s. He then worked odd jobs to support himself and his young family. For a time, the former scientist ran a market stall selling East Asian goods that a close friend compared to those at Warsaw’s now-demolished 10th-Anniversary Stadium. (Once the site of Communist Party galas, the stadium was later reduced to a sprawling outdoor bazaar where vendors from all over the former Eastern Bloc hawked pirated software, flouncy underwear, and dubious health remedies).

Nguyen’s drag persona, Kim Lee, was born at the turn of the millennium and soon shot to stardom beyond the wildest dreams of anyone in Poland’s fledgling drag scene. “She whizzed into the mainstream like a meteor,” says Teo Łagowska, a performer with Warsaw’s Drag King Szarm Trio collective.

Nguyen’s long-time partner, Remigiusz Szeląg, concurs. “Kim performed everywhere,” he recalls. “Non-stop, all over Poland, he was a fixture at ‘straight’ parties and club nights, at burlesque shows. He appeared on TV, on discussion panels. He twice gave lectures at the University of Warsaw — needless to say, in full drag.”

Andy Nguyen (Kim Lee) getting ready for a performance in his studio. Warsaw, 2019.

ZULA RABIKOWSKA

Pleasant surprises

Magdalena Staroszczyk, who curated the exhibition in Warsaw, has no doubt that it belongs in a public museum. She is visibly proud of bringing the project to fruition, not least given the Polish government’s enduring anti-LGBTQ stance. “Queer history should be just as present in various institutions as any other [history],” she underscores.

For almost a decade, Poland has made headlines for its ruling party’s dogged defense of “traditional values” that critics say amounts to little more than anti-LGBTQ policies. Successive electoral campaigns have seen the Law and Justice Party intimidate voters with the “rainbow menace,” while top officials — including Poland’s current president and education minister — have suggested that LGBTQ people don’t deserve equal rights. By October 2019, more than 60 local and regional councils had adopted anti-LGBTQ declarations, with right-leaning councilors decrying the spread of an “LGBT ideology” they claim threatens families. Local authorities and Polish courts have since scrapped some of these resolutions (in many cases for fear of losing E.U. funding), but a sense of deep unease remains.

Both Szeląg and Krzysztof Tomasik, Nguyen’s friend of many years and the author of multiple books on Polish LGBTQ history, describe the Warsaw exhibition as a turning point for queer visibility. The show, Tomasik stresses, is housed in a state institution — a clear victory for those calling for greater inclusion, even if the museum’s financing comes from Warsaw’s relatively liberal city hall, rather than Poland’s Culture Ministry.

Staroszczyk, the curator, sees Nguyen’s’s life and work as an integral part of Warsaw’s history. She also notes the artist’s close links to the city’s Wola district in particular, where the museum is located. Nguyen, a long-time resident of the neighborhood, kept more than 1,000 hand-sewn costumes in a space in Wola that became known as “Kim Lee’s Dressing Room.” He also performed in many local clubs, some of which popped up in the district’s shuttered factories.

Nguyen choosing an outfit for a performance. 2019.

ZULA RABIKOWSKA

Nguyen sewing a costume in his studio. 2019.

ZULA RABIKOWSKA

Today, Wola retains a post-industrial feel, with the high-rises that used to house its workers towering over the museum’s Neoclassical pile. Staroszczyk says that neighbors have been venturing in to get what for many is their first taste of drag.

“We have one neighbor in particular, an older lady who I’m told has seen the show several times already. She’s been delighted and has been bringing friends along. That was one of the pleasant surprises,” the curator says.

Groups of retirees — most but not all of them women — regularly book guided tours of the exhibition, Staroszczyk adds.

Local councilors from the Law and Justice Party, meanwhile, questioned the rationale behind the exhibition, while some right-wing and Catholic publications accused the museum of promoting a “deviant lifestyle.” However, as of early June, there has been no sustained political or media campaign against the show, nor protests trying to disrupt it.

On an overcast Saturday in May, the exhibition was well-attended. Groups of visitors admired Kim Lee’s hand-crafted creations — from silk kimonos to voluminous gowns that wouldn’t look out of place in Bourbon-era Versailles — and attempted their own drag transformations, trying on frilly boas and curly blond wigs. Two middle-aged women giggled with delight as they posed before a mirror garlanded with flowers. One 19-year-old visitor named Maciek admitted he’d been surprised to discover that Kim Lee had sold out clubs years before RuPaul’s Drag Race — the U.S. reality competition series that brought drag to a wide audience — premiered on Polish Netflix in the early 2010s.

The opening of the exhibition “Kim Lee. The Queen of Warsaw.” 2023.

TOMASZ KACZOR / MUZEUM WARSZAWY

Polish divas and a whiff of the West

Researcher Jakub Wojtaszczyk, whose book of interviews with Polish drag performers was published last June, says that self-described drag queens began appearing in the early to mid-1990s, not long after Communism’s collapse. Their acts often harked back to Polish “divas” from Communist times: cabaret star Violetta Villas with her layered, feathered gowns, 1960s sex symbol Kalina Jędrusik, who scandalized crowds with her backless outfits, and patrician mezzo-soprano Irena Santor were all clear favorites.

One of the drag scene’s stalwarts, Lady Brigitte, recalls impersonating both Villas and Santor during her performances in the 1990s. She says that many queer men at the time embraced Villas as an icon. “She was a colorful flower, a bright light that seemed to have arrived [in Communist Poland] from America, she was bold and courageous, and above all, different,” the drag queen says.

“Of course, we’d also tackle foreign figures like Cher and Tina Turner — you wanted to have that whiff of the West. But most of each show would revolve around Polish artists,” she explains.

According to Ludmiła Janion, a cultural studies scholar at the University of Warsaw, the history of Polish “queer icons” goes much deeper. As she speaks, Janion pulls out photos of cross-dressing Polish actors from the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, one of them the spitting image of U.S. dance pioneer Isadora Duncan. One of the extraordinary performances of that time, she says, comes from the 1937 comedy Neighbors (Piętro wyżej, in Polish). A glittering romp about a feud between two music-loving residents of a Warsaw townhouse, it shows cabaret heartthrob Eugeniusz Bodo wow an audience with his impersonation of the American actress Mae West. “Sex appeal is our womanly weapon,” Bodo sings as he whirls around the stage in a blond wig and a sparkling black dress.

Eugeniusz Bodo (center) impersonating Mae West in the 1937 film “Neighbors”

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Some Polish film critics view the scene as a nod to LGBTQ audiences, pointing to the blossoming of queer culture in interwar Warsaw. “Bodo never got married. He wasn’t the type to chase after women,” Janion explains. “Of course, we can’t be sure that he was gay, but he was an ambiguous figure,” she adds, noting the actor’s string of cross-dressing characters during the brief but intense flourishing of Warsaw’s cabaret scene in the early 20th century.

With the advent of Communism, this artistic freedom came to an end. Cross-dressing performances did not disappear, Janion says, but like much else, they retreated to the private sphere; to the semi-safety of high-rise apartments and tipsy evenings with friends. As a result, records of these “clothes-flipping parties” are sparse and hard to find.

The parties themselves might have slipped into obscurity if Kim Lee hadn’t stopped to chat with an older gentleman who’d come to see her show one day in 2008. She soon found out that Andrzej Szwan, 69 at the time, had decades of “clothes-flipping” performances under his belt, even if his ornate costumes had scarcely left his building. With Nguyen’s help, Szwan transformed into one of Poland’s most eye-catching drag queens: Lulla la Polaca. Now 84, Szwan is still performing and much-loved by the media, including Vogue’s Polish edition and the country’s most august opinion magazines.

However, researchers Janion and Wojtaszczyk disagree about whether the “clothes-flipping parties” of Communist times and earlier film and cabaret performances can be classed as drag. Wojtaszczyk would rather reserve the term for modern-day performers who choose to use it themselves, while Janion is happy to speak about “a continuum of drag performances” that involve cross-dressing, an audience, and a note of homoerotic tension.

Andrzej Szwan (Lulla la Polaca) in the 2022 documentary film “Boylesque”

HBO

‘Sister, you’re the activist type’

Lulla la Polaca, for one, was quick to call herself a drag queen once she started performing publicly. She also proudly describes herself as an LGBTQ activist. Most people I speak to agree that the term could also apply to Kim Lee, though not all Polish drag performers embrace it.

“I’d always say to her: sister, you’re the activist type,” recalls Polish drag queen Lady Brigitte, referencing a double act she and Kim put on in the 2000s. Lady Brigitte herself has a more ambivalent attitude towards activism (“I performed at fund-raisers, but they were mostly for homeless animals”), though she expresses admiration for Nguyen’s engagement with Polish LGBTQ groups at the time.

“There must have been more than twenty,” Szeląg replies when asked how many queer rights organizations Nguyen was involved in during his lifetime. He adds that Nguyen was also active in Poland’s Vietnamese community — “although he liked to keep that part of his life separate,” initially for fear of negative reactions to his same-sex relationship and stage persona.

These concerns ultimately proved unfounded, Szeląg maintains. “Poland’s Vietnamese community has undergone a great transformation,” he explains, describing various relatives and friends of Nguyen’s he’s met over the years. “A while ago, a journalist from London came to interview its members for a story. Asked about famous Polish-Vietnamese people, every single one mentioned Kim Lee.”

In Kim Lee’s Dressing Room

PAT MIC / MUZEUM WARSZAWY

Szeląg and Tomasik say that Nguyen didn’t like to dwell on the racist taunts he sometimes faced. Be that as it may, he publicly weighed in on what Polishness could and should mean by starring in a music video that parodied Poland’s infamous 2014 Eurovision entry. “We are Slavic” by Polish singer Cleo and record producer Donatan, with its busty, butter-churning milkmaids and appeals for foreigners to “try Polish women,” prompted a collective groan from the country’s feminists and liberals. Donatan’s comments denigrating that year’s winner — Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst — only added fuel to the fire.

Kim was not one to sling back insults. Instead, she twirled around a meadow in Polish folk dress, lip-syncing to lines about “hot Slavic blood” and Polish women “ruddy as fresh bread.”

Wojtaszczyk and the drag performers The Beet’s correspondent interviewed also recalled Kim’s role in integrating Poland’s drag scene and raising its profile, whether through hosting “Miss Drag” pageants or judging competitions. Teo Łagowska and Agnieszka Małgowska of the Drag King Szarm Trio — the aforementioned Warsaw collective of female and gender-queer performers who embody mostly masculine characters — stressed that Kim advocated inclusivity within a scene that they say still sidelines groups like theirs.

Nguyen’s untimely death from the coronavirus in 2020 was “a shock for Poland’s rainbow community,” Małgowska says. “We always thought that Kim would become a senior drag queen, like Lulla [la Polaca], that she would dance until the end of time,” she laments.

In Kim Lee’s Dressing Room

PAT MIC / MUZEUM WARSZAWY

Szeląg, Tomasik, and Staroszczyk all spoke of the Museum of Warsaw exhibition as a means of mourning the artist and honoring his memory. Tomasik, the author and Kim’s long-time friend, says that a “terrible sadness” remains, but he also notes his satisfaction that Polish drag is finally beginning to get official recognition. “It’s an art with a decades-long history and its own icons,” he says. “These are just the first attempts to commemorate, remember, and honor them.”

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beardedmrbean · 6 months

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Pre-election polls suggested that Swiss voters had three main concerns: Rising fees for the obligatory, free market-based health insurance system; climate change, which has eroded Switzerland’s many glaciers; and worries about migrants and immigration.

The final tally late Sunday showed the people's party, known as SVP by its German-language acronym, gained nine seats compared to the last vote in 2019, and climbed to 62 seats overall in parliament's 200-member lower house. The Socialists, in second, added two seats to reach 41 in that chamber, known as the National Council.

It marked the latest sign of a rightward turn in Europe, after victories or electoral gains by conservative parties in places like Greece, Sweden and Italy over the last year, even if voters in Poland rejected their national conservative government last week.

A new political alliance calling itself The Center, born of the 2021 fusion of the center-right Christian Democrat and Bourgeois Democrat parties, made its parliamentary election debut and took third place – with 29 seats, eclipsing the free-market Liberal party, which lost a seat and now will have 27.

Environmentally minded factions were the biggest losers: The Greens shed five seats and will now have 23, while the more centrist Liberal-Greens lost six, and now will have 10.

Political analyst Pascal Sciarini of the University of Geneva said Monday that the result was largely a “swing of the pendulum” and that support for the Greens was diluted in part because many voters felt they had already taken a big step toward protecting the environment by overwhelmingly approving a climate bill in June that will curb Switzerland's greenhouse gas emissions.

“At first glance, it’s a bit surprising because the climate crisis is even more present than it was four years ago – when climate worries were the dominant issue among the population,” he said.

He suggested that the bounce back for the SVP was a sign that rising insurance premiums and concerns about growing migration into Switzerland captured many voters’ minds this time.

“It’s perhaps that there was a sort of competition among concerns – and that made the job harder for the Greens to make climate concerns the dominant theme in the media,” Sciarini said.

Overall, the vote isn’t likely to have significant impact on Swiss foreign policy, he said. The country’s executive branch operates like a permanent government of national unity, where no single faction has total sway – what’s known among the Swiss as their “magic formula” of democracy to ensure balance and moderation, and ensure that personalities don’t dominate politics.

Even with their electoral victory, the SVP only holds just over 30% of seats in the lower house. The composition of the legislature, which is elected every four years, ultimately shapes the composition of the executive branch, which is called the Federal Council and includes President Alain Berset, who plans to leave government at the end of the year.

But the legislative vote result won’t significantly alter the composition of the Federal Council, where the SVP already has two seats – as do the Socialists, the free-market Liberals, while the Center has one.

The Center party, by outscoring the Liberals, may make a bid to swipe one of their two seats, and the Socialists will have to choose a successor for Berset; Those are the only likely changes to the Federal Council.

The Swiss president is essentially “first among equals” in the seven-member council, where each of the members hold portfolios as government ministers and take turns each year holding the top job – which is essentially a ceremonial one to represent Switzerland abroad. Berset will be succeeded next year by centrist Viola Amherd.

In Switzerland, voters also participate directly in government decision making. Voters regularly go to the polls – usually four times a year – to vote on any number of policy decisions. Those referendum results require parliament to respond.

More broadly, Switzerland has found itself straddling two core elements to its psyche: Western democratic principles like those in the European Union – which Switzerland has refused to join – and its much vaunted “neutrality” in world affairs.

A long-running and intractable standoff over more than 100 bilateral Swiss-EU agreements on issues like police cooperation, trade, tax and farm policy, has soured relations between Brussels and Bern – key trading partners.

The Swiss did line up with the EU in imposing sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine. The Federal Council is considering whether to join the EU and the United States in labeling Hamas a terror organization. Switzerland has joined the United Nations in labeling al-Qaida and Islamic State group as terrorists.

Switzerland, with only about 8.5 million people, ranks 20th in world economic output, according to the International Monetary Fund, and it’s the global hub of wealth management: where the world’s rich park much of their money, to benefit from low taxes and a discreet environment.

#nunyas news

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bopinion · 4 months

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2023 / 50

Aperçu of the Week:

"Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling."

(Edna Ferber, US-American writer and Pulitzer Prize winner)

Bad News of the Week:

It's happening now: international aid for Ukraine is faltering. Western governments are increasingly calling for a negotiated peace and would like to reinvest in national interests, as elections are soon to be held. After almost two years of reporting on the war, the Western media are showing a certain tiredness of the topic that could probably only be revived by Taylor Swift. Western populations are increasingly realizing that sanctions and military aid are good for morale but bad for the wallet. And then attention and compassion - to put it insensitively - have been strongly rivaled by the Gaza war.

Vladimir Putin has the resources on his side. The Russian ruler has a productive weapons industry, immense manpower that can be mobilized, no scruples, secure state revenues, no opposition or free media, strategic partners and above all: time. On the other hand, the USA is facing the end of its military aid due to Republican power games. Something Europe cannot compensate for. And Europe is facing a blockade of civilian aid funds (guess what? That's right: Viktor Orbán). Something the USA does not want to compensate for.

Both were foreseeable. At the latest when it became clear that the hopeful summer offensive by the Ukrainian armed forces could not actually achieve anything. In fact, it is about defending our values. Yes, the Western world ignored Libya. Abandoned Afghanistan. Looked the other way on Yemen for years until it began to hurt its own trade. But we can't just sit back and accept that a geostrategic war of aggression is being waged on the European continent. When a bully terrorizes kids in the playground, you hope that the others will stick together and stand up to him. Is that asking too much?

Good News of the Week:

The real Donald is back. I'm not talking about the beloved Disney character but about the Polish Prime Minister. The new and the old - since Donald Tusk already hold office from 2007 to 2014. After a long wait, since the Polish President - from PiS, what a surprise! - first tasked the supposed election winner PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość / Law and Justice) with forming the government, even though it has no coalition partner, the will of the people was respected and the opposition took over. With Donald Tusk as Prime Minister.

It cannot have been a coincidence that his first official act was to attend the EU summit. Tusk is very familiar with its procedures. After all, he was President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019 - the number one job on this continent. And for years he was accused of putting European interests above Polish ones. Which is a paradox in itself. After all, if any nation can draw on its history to realize that it can flourish in Europe, then it is Poland.

The history of our neighboring country to the east is very complex. With many tragically dark, but also hopefully bright chapters. One thing is clear: both countries benefit from good neighborly relations. That's why it was unpleasant for us to be used as a pawn in the election campaign. In one election campaign commercial, the PiS party leader Jarosław Aleksander Kaczyński shouted into the phone that it was time to stop being dictated to by Berlin (there was also a version with Brussels). A cheap attempt by the populists to sell their right-wing nationalism as a defense of patriotic independence. Even a law (officially in order to protect elections) was passed to prevent the opposition from winning the election. And despite the lack of a parliamentary majority, the PiS was tasked with forming a government (which was doomed to failure in the foreseeable future).

It didn't help, as hundreds of thousands on the streets and ultimately the majority of the Polish electorate demanded: away from xenophobia, media surveillance and obstruction of justice. Towards democracy, freedom and Europe. Now everyone wins. The European Union is happy about a strong and self-confident, but open and cooperative Poland. And Poland is finally (back) where it belongs: in the middle of Europe.

Personal happy moment of the week:

Last Friday I was invited to a student party. Officially by my daughter's student council (political science at Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University), which is an honor that otherwise only a few professors and hand-picked alumni are entitled to. So that I could have a drink, I naturally traveled by bike and public transport. And took the penultimate regional train - just to be sure. So I was sitting on the train with Moby on my headphones when I noticed at an intermediate station that quite a few passengers had somehow got off. Then a train attendant speaks to me: "It's always the same with the headphone wearers. You have to get out of here!".

I realize that the part of the train I'm sitting in is being unhooked and parked here. I rush out of the carriage and forward to the section of the train that continues to my station. But the door no longer opens and the train starts moving. Fuck! It flashes through my mind that I now have to wait for the last train. For an hour. In sub-zero temperatures at two in the morning. At a station in the middle of nowhere, where there is neither a kiosk nor a waiting room, just a draughty platform. But after a meter the train stops, the button to open the door lights up green and I can board. The train driver has obviously seen me in the rear-view mirror. And decided that he has a soft spot for headphone wearers. Thank you very much, you made me happy.

I couldn't care less...

...about Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. He has been blocking important decisions in the European Union for years because it won't let him do everything he wants - such as disempowering the judiciary, disregarding human rights or controlling the media. He does not fit the image of a European at all. Although hardly any other EU country is as dependent on European funds as his. He would like to keep it that way. And not share financial resources with others, especially not with Ukraine. He is using his veto for this, as many decisions at European level require unanimity according to the statute. But even he will not be able to prevent Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia from seeing their future in Europe. Even if he has to leave the room even more often for important votes: Destiny is destiny.

As I write this...

...the German military ends its mission in Mali. The Bundeswehr is a so-called "parliamentary army" that may only be deployed by resolution of the Bundestag and only for defense purposes. Since the Yugoslavian wars, it has also been deployed internationally to defend civilians and democracy, for example as part of United Nations blue helmet missions. Mali is a failed state in West Africa that has been continously in armed battles since its independence from the colonial power France in 1960. The UN mission was supposed to ensure a peace process.

A decade, many deaths and billions later, the foreign military forces are withdrawing. And leave the country in just as desolate a state as they found it. Memories of Afghanistan come to mind. Perhaps we should think about the method of "creating peace without weapons" ("Frieden schaffen ohne Waffen"). I am very sure that the establishment of a permanent school and healthcare system, for example, would have done more for the population than temporary military bases.

Post Scriptum

This year's world climate conference COP28 in Dubai is over. Doubts had already been raised in the run-up to the conference as to whether the event management by one of the most important producers of fossil fuels, of all people, could ensure a targeted phase-out of precisely these forms of energy. And these doubts proved to be justified. The final communiqué, which was ratified by all participating states, contains a soft formulation that calls for a long-term phase-out of oil and gas, but does not create any obligations. Which reminds me of my son promising for the umpteenth time to tidy up his room. Because he realizes it in theory. And then nothing happens in practice.

At the same time, more and more ambitious climate protection measures are being scaled back or at least called into question. Because the hope of some technological miracle in the future (keyword "carbon capture and storage") feels so much better than giving up the comfort we are used to. Humanity has the knowledge, skills and abilities to prevent the worst. But it simply shows far too little willingness to do what is necessary. Out of laziness and convenience. Like my son. I am so tired...

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kenyandisclosure · 5 months

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The plight of Kenya's jobless youth: A story of hope and despair.

By Emmanuel Okiru, 17 November 2023

Kenya is facing a serious challenge of youth unemployment, which affects millions of young people who are either out of work or stuck in low-quality and informal jobs. According to the World Bank, the youth unemployment rate in Kenya was 13.35 percent in 2022, among the highest in the world. The situation is worse in urban areas, where the youth unemployment rate was 19.1 percent in 2009, the latest year for which data is available.

The causes of youth unemployment are complex and multifaceted, ranging from a slow-growing economy, a mismatch between the skills of the labor force and the demands of the market, a lack of access to capital and credit, and a high population growth rate that outstrips the creation of new jobs. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has exaggerated the problem, as many businesses have closed down or reduced their operations, leading to massive layoffs and income losses.

However, despite all these, there are also stories of hope and resilience among the Kenyan youth who are trying to overcome the barriers and create opportunities for themselves and others. Some of them have benefited from various initiatives and programs that aim to provide them with skills, training, mentorship and funding to start and grow their own businesses or find decent employment.

One such program is the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF), which was established by the government in 2006 to support youth entrepreneurship and innovation. The fund offers loans, grants and business development services to youth groups and individuals who have viable business ideas or existing enterprises. According to the fund's website, over 12 billion Kenyan shillings has been disbursed to more than 1.4 million youth since its inception.

One of the beneficiaries of the YEDF is Mary Wanjiku, a 24-year-old who runs a poultry farm in Kiambu County. She started her business in 2019 with 100 chicks, after receiving a loan of 50,000 shillings from the fund. She has since expanded her farm to 500 birds and sells eggs and chicken to local hotels and supermarkets. She has also employed two other young people to help her with the daily operations.

"I am very grateful to the YEDF for giving me this opportunity to start and grow my business. It has changed my life and given me a sense of purpose and dignity. I am able to support myself and my family, and also create jobs for other youth in my community," this is what she had to say in an interview with the Kenyan disclosure team.

This is just an example of how some Kenyan youth are coping with the challenge of unemployment and how some programs are trying to address it. However, there is still a lot that needs to be done to create more and better opportunities for the millions of young people who are still struggling to find their place in the society and the economy.

YEDF Testimonial video. Source: https://m.facebook.com/StateHouseKenya/videos/short-video-youth-enterprise-development-fund-yedf-beneficiaries/891250118940038/?locale=ms_MY

Photo gallery depicting the state of Unemployment in Kenya.

Kenyan youth protesting over increased unemployment. Source; Business Daily Newspaper, 2020.

Jobseekers wait to hand in their documents during recruitment at County Hall in Nairobi

Source; Nation Media Group, 2019.

Job seekers queuing for interviews in Nairobi. Source; The East African Newspaper.

Kenyan doctors protest against unemployment. Source; https://www.aa.com.tr

Unemployment rate in Kenya over the years.

The graphs below give a clear depiction of Kenya's state of employment over the years;

Source: <a href='https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/KEN/kenya/unemployment-rate'>Source</a>

Unemployment rate in Kenya from Q3 2019 to Q4 2022. Source; https://www.statista.com/statistics/1134370/unemployment-rate-in-kenya/

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